Ronnie Ellis
Frankfort, Ky. — By Ronnie Ellis
CNHI News Service
FRANKFORT, Ky. – For years I listened, alternately amused and perplexed, to those who defended with a religious fervor unregulated markets, sanctifying profit – and sometimes greed, although usually by another name.
Profit, fairly obtained, isn’t evil. The part that amused or perplexed was the notion that somehow their position was validated by – in their view – unquestioned sanction by the founding fathers. But reading about the founding generation, it’s difficult to pigeon-hole Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John and Samuel Adams and their contemporaries into a single, neat philosophy. Puritan Sam Adams, for instance, frequently criticized opulent wealth and luxury.
Only Hamilton, who raised himself from illegitimacy and poverty to status and wealth, seems to fit precisely the mold glorified by contemporary capitalists who see themselves as society’s productive class whose creation of wealth benefits the rest of us – whether we deserve it or not. If only we’d stay out of their way. But then, as the economy fell apart, some of those people – some on Wall Street calling themselves “masters of the universe” – aren’t as committed to their ideology as they thought. They’re perfectly willing to call on the rest of us to save their backsides.
And despite the rising anger, average folks are feeling about bail outs and executive bonuses for those who put us in economic peril, we really don’t seem to have much choice. You’ve heard the arguments. If the banks fail we’ll all suffer, if your neighbor defaults on his mortgage, the value of your house will plummet, millions of jobs are at stake in the auto industry. Those bonuses are contractual obligations.
Which brings us back to the founders. They sought liberty (as opposed to freedom to do whatever one chooses) – political and religious liberty but, yes, economic liberty, too. They didn’t like taxes, but most of all they objected to taxes imposed by any but their own chosen representatives whose power could be checked by replacing them. They saw concentrated power – any concentration of unchecked power, political, military or economic – as a threat to liberty and a license to dictate, fearing such threats more than they adored unfettered free markets. (There were provincial as well as philosophical reasons – New Englanders were happy to use import duties to protect their manufacturing interests. And of course “free markets” which relied on human slavery really weren’t free at all.)
Perhaps had we continued to be wary of concentrations of power we wouldn’t be dealing with giant insurers like AIG and mega-banks which “are too big to fail.”
The economic crisis and the necessity of government intervention are likely to change the political landscape in lasting ways. So long as more and more average Americans’ wealth increased through the stock market, most were happy enough to accept the idea that less regulation and oversight of financial giants benefited everyone. The staggering, sometimes almost incomprehensible wealth of those Wall Street “masters of the universe” didn’t harm anyone on Main Street. They took us along for the ride and we were happy to ride along – until the train ran off the tracks. No one much questioned whether such wealth creation actually created anything more tangible than paper illusions. As long as the quarterly 401 (k) statements kept growing and housing values rose, everyone was happy. Wealth, even greed, seemed to have become virtues.
Last September, that all changed. It likely will be a long time before the public again trusts such concentrated economic power in the hands of so few.
Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort, Ky. He may be contacted by email at rellis@cnhi.com.
