Values and necessities

The fourth myth about economic matters that must be abandoned to have the Christian (or in this case even a moral) attitude is the myth that necessities are in the same class as values, but are just "extremely valuable": the myth that was expressed by Benjamin Franklin as "When the well is dry, we know the worth of water."

My contention is that when the well is dry, we know that water is far beyond worth; and when it is full, we know that water is far beneath worth. In neither case is it a goal of ours to drink water; water is something we presuppose in order to be human, not something whose drinking defines our lifestyle (unless it is drinking Perrier as opposed to the stuff that comes out of the ground around here).

Values function entirely differently, economically, from necessities, and the Christian must be aware of this fact if he is going to view money and its relationships correctly. Let us look at the differences, as pointed out in my book on economic ethics:

First, we have a human right to necessities; we have no right as human to any value. The reason for this is simply that without a necessity we cannot live a minimally human life, and humans have a right not be less than human; but humans have no right as human to be they type of human they happen to want to be.

Secondly, what values lead to (goals) are important; what necessities lead to (essential properties of humans) are not important, but necessary. Since the essential properties belong to us by nature, they are not a purpose of our activities. If we have them, we (rightly) take them for granted, because we have them simply because we are human; if we do not have them, we consider ourselves deprived, because we have a right to them.

Thirdly, there is nothing immoral in choosing to give up a value or the goal it leads to; it is immoral to choose to give up a necessity. The reason for this is that we are free to be what we choose, within the limits of our given humanity; and so any goal within those limits can be either chosen or rejected by us. But it is morally wrong for a person to dehumanize himself (e.g. to cut off an arm or blind himself), because this is to deprive himself of a property he has by nature.

The only time a necessity can be given up is when having it means giving up a greater necessity. But necessities may never be morally given up for any value, no matter how great. You may not cut off your finger even for ten million dollars.

Therefore, necessities cannot be classified with values; they have either zero value (if we have them), or infinite value (if we don't). Since, morally speaking, a person may give up any and all values, but may not give up a necessity, then it follows that, when confronted with a choice of having a necessity or having a great many values, the values must be given up; thus, the person who does not have the necessity must "value" it above all values--or, its value is infinite.

There are all sorts of moral implications of this, which we need not, for our purposes, go into; but what are the implications for the Christian? I think that the human dimension of the Christian comes into the forefront on this point. It is a question of recognizing the distinction, seeing what things are necessities and values, and acting consistently in one's own life in such a way that the necessities are respected, but that this respect doesn't get confused with values and the flexibility connected with them.

Let me illustrate. A Christian physician should recognize that his service (health care) is a necessity for his patients, not a value; they don't come to him because they want to make their lives something distinctive, but because they have something wrong with them that they need corrected.

Now the physician has a right to compensation for his service; otherwise, he would be the slave of his patients. But since his service is a necessity, then, unlike the Pete Roses of this world, he has no right to become rich from his service.

Physicians are apt to resent this, because isn't health care of much more value than playing baseball? No. It is a necessity; baseball is a value. You must not compare the two. The problem with becoming rich from a necessity is this: you are becoming rich by charging people who (a) cannot refuse to pay whatever you ask (because on their side the "value" is not very great, but infinite), (b) cannot morally refuse the service (because then they are deprived of health), and (c) have a right to health care (because, as a necessity, one has a human right to it).

Now people have an obligation to pay for health care, because, even though they have a right to have it, they do not have a right to enslave anyone in order to have it--you never have a right that violates anyone else's right, and the provider has a right to compensation for his service. But the provider has a right only that he should not lose by performing the service; he has no right to become rich by his services. No one ever has a human right to be rich--and since this is so, no one has a right to the opportunity to become rich.

Hence, the physician, for whom providing the service is a value, and is finite (he is not dehumanized if he does not perform the service) is the only one who can assess what the value of his service is--because on the other side, it is a necessity, and not quantifiable. Hence, he has to say, "What is the lifestyle that will enable me to live decently but not extravagantly? Anyone has a right to live decently by his service to others--to be more than poor, but not rich.

He then must figure out what this means in terms of yearly income, and what that means in terms of fees to "the average" patient so that his income will not exceed this yearly "decent" figure, and then adjust the fee from patient to patient, based on the patient's ability to pay, so that the loss to each patient should be minimized. That is, a rich patient is "hurt" less by paying, say, fifty dollars for a service than a poor one would be by paying one dollar; and so, within the limits of the "decent" salary, fees should depend on ability to pay with as little strain on budgets as possible.

I submit that if this is done, lawsuits for malpractice will gradually go down, because patients will then see their physicians as living modest if not poor lives, and will recognize human frailty; whereas now, patients feel bled by the fees if not by leeches, when they see the doctors in mansions with multiple BMW's in the garages; and they want to get back at them whenever the opportunity offers.

The point, of course, is that "supply and demand" and "what the market will bear" is not what must govern transactions dealing with necessities. It is perfectly all right when dealing with values; and in fact, interfering with the "market" when it is a question of values is counterproductive and probably morally wrong. This is the mistake of Communism. The mistake of Capitalism is to let "the market" determine prices even with necessities.

One more example. For most workers, work is a necessity, not a value. You work--for someone--or you starve; or, alternatively, you undergo that moral starvation of being on "welfare" which is the ill-fare of simply receiving without doing anything to show yourself that you deserve to receive. In a world of mutual service, this type of reception without service is to be endured only when it is impossible to do otherwise.

So work is a necessity. This means that employers can get away with hiring people for wages barely more than starvation and can impose working conditions that are humanly all but unendurable--and, especially in times of high unemployment, they will find workers "willing" to take the jobs rather than face the worse alternative.

This "willingness" is analogous to the "willingness" of the patient dying of heart disease to pay the physician a hundred thousand dollars for the operation. When the alternative is only a worse evil, then "willingness" is the willingness of someone with a gun pointed at his chest.

Hence, any moral employer will offer wages, insofar as he can, that allow the workers to achieve reasonable goals, and not simply keep breathing; and he will see to it that working conditions are decent. Maximizing profit is not the goal of business. Business is a team-effort providing a service to the consumer, and compensating those who perform the service.

Profit is the compensation of the entrepreneur, not really for the "risk" of his money, but for his sinking the money into the business, when he could be doing something to his own benefit with it, and also for taking responsibility for the business and what it does both for and to the consumer and for and to the employees in it. This is a very great service, and it deserves compensation.

Again, however, this service is a necessity for the firm (without the entrepreneur, it simply can't exist), and so the value of the entrepreneur's service can only be assessed by him. Like the physician, he has to ask how much money he needs to achieve the lifestyle that is his goal in life, and adjust the profit accordingly. Should returns over this figure go to higher salaries for employees or lower prices for consumers, or both, and in what proportions?

Note that the entrepreneur is not quite in the same position as the physician, however, if the service the firm is providing is a value, because then it need not exist; and so he need not have as his goal a "merely decent" but modest lifestyle.

But this gets us into many complications. What I want to stress here is that the Christian businessman need not think that there is something inherently wrong with capitalism and with profit; Marx was simply mistaken when he thought that profit was an exploitation of the worker. But the Christian businessman need not fall into the trap of assuming that the business is in business "really" to maximize return on investment, and the service to the consumer and wages for the worker are simply means to that end. There are three coordinate goals for any business: a decent profit for the entrepreneur, a decent salary and working conditions for the employees, and a good product or service at a reasonable price for the consumer. It is the entrepreneur's function to balance off these three goals, taking the realities of the situation into account.

And the Christian, not having himself and his own greatness as the one overarching reason for all his actions, but having a divine respect for everything, himself included, is in the best position to be able to do this.

I personally think that capitalism, when the distinction between values and necessities is taken into account, is the system of economics that most closely approximates the reality of money and economic relations, and the system that leaves people freest to determine their own lives for themselves. Once again, it is in itself a good thing, but is fallen, and can be redeemed. And it is not socialism which will redeem it; socialism, I think, for various reasons, is a mistake which is contrary to the true nature of economic relations, and is doomed to be the specious solution which enslaves those unlucky enough to choose it. No, what will redeem economics is capitalism with a Christian attitude behind it.

There is again an enormous amount that could be said on how specifically the Christian can Christianize his economic life; but I must reiterate that this is just a preface, a foreword. The treatise must come later, and I suspect that it will not come from me, but be a treatise that will be written in action more than words.

Let me then pass on to the Christian at work, with the work looked on now not in an economic sense as a service to others, but in the sense of how the Christian transforms the world.