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+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.92 -->
+<title>Self-Interest
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/self-interest.translist" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<div class="reduced-width">
+<h2>Self-Interest</h2>
+
+<address class="byline">by Loyd Fueston</address>
+<hr class="thin" />
+
+<div class="article">
+<p>
+Is Self-Interest Sufficient to Organize a Free Economy?</p>
+
+<p>
+The quick answer is, &ldquo;No.&rdquo; And few of the better-known
+theoreticians of the free-market have ever thought that self-interest
+was, or even could be, sufficient to organize, or long maintain, a
+free economy. Among those theoreticians, Adam Smith is often regarded
+as having been the primary philosopher of self-interest. In a book
+written to correct a number of misunderstandings of Smith's teachings,
+we find the following summaries of Smith's view about
+self-interest:</p>
+
+<blockquote class="italic"><p>
+Far from being an individualist, Smith believed it is the influence
+of society that transforms people into moral beings. He thought that
+people often misjudge their own self-interest.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>
+Even more directly to the point:</p>
+
+<blockquote class="italic"><p>
+[Adam Smith] regarded the attempt to explain all human behavior on
+the basis of self-interest as analytically misguided and morally
+pernicious.&nbsp;<a href="#fn1">[1]</a>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>
+As Adam Smith certainly realized, self-interest will be one of the
+principal forces organizing economic activities in any society, but
+that is as true of the most repressive or brutal society as it is of
+a relatively free and open society. Most of us will not like the
+results of self-interest untempered by a respect for other creatures.
+As a recent example, in running their country to the disadvantage of
+most Soviet citizens, the leaders of the Communist Party and of the
+Soviet military and intelligence services were advancing their own
+self-interests, at least as they understood or misunderstood those
+interests.</p>
+<p>
+The advantages enjoyed by Americans over citizens of the Soviet
+countries, and the advantages we still enjoy over the nominally free
+citizens of Russia and other eastern European countries, are those of
+a society organized to allow a high percentage of Americans to act in
+such a way as to serve both their self-interest and some substantial
+stock of moral principles. Not only our habits and customs, but also
+our positive laws &mdash; such as those of copyright &mdash; enter
+into that organization of our society, for good or bad, but not in a
+morally neutral manner.</p>
+<p>
+Self-interest is not necessarily evil, though it can lead people to act
+in morally reprehensible ways. The love of self, and the consequent
+development of self-interest, is one aspect of a creature who is also
+a social, and hence moral, being. Self-interest itself can serve
+moral interests in a free society so long as that society has the
+proper foundations. The elements of those foundations include not only
+a populace sharing a substantial body of moral beliefs and habits but
+also the formal political structures, positive laws, and accepted
+court decisions capable of supporting both social order and personal
+freedom. Once those are in place, and once they have been
+internalized by the bulk of the citizens, then self-interest will
+provide a fuel of sorts to keep an economy functioning effectively
+without leading to immoral results on the whole. The question is
+always: Is our society organized properly, in its positive laws and
+in the habits we teach our children and reinforce in ourselves, so that
+self-interest and moral principles do not generally come into
+conflict?</p>
+<p>
+Those people aware of modern mathematics or of programming techniques
+should appreciate the recursive, and inherently unstable, interactions
+between individual morality and social structure. To oversimplify in
+a useful manner: People with substantial moral beliefs organize
+societies along those beliefs and those societies then begin to form
+the habits and beliefs of children, immigrants, etc. according to
+those same beliefs. Always, it is a messy historical process which
+can be destroyed or rerouted into less desirable paths. There is
+inevitably a question as to whether we are straying from a proper path
+and also a question as to how robust the society is, i.e., how much
+of a disturbance it would take to destroy much of what is good about that
+society.</p>
+<p>
+Sometimes, good people will decide that something has gone wrong and
+it is time to fight for a moral principle even if it becomes necessary
+to sacrifice, or at least qualify, their own self-interest. In the
+words of Thomas Sowell, a free-market theorist of our time:</p>
+
+<blockquote class="italic"><p>
+There are, of course, noneconomic values. Indeed, there are
+<em>only</em> noneconomic values. Economics is not a value itself but
+merely a method of trading off one value against another. If
+statements about &lsquo;noneconomic values&rsquo; (or, more
+specifically, &lsquo;social values&rsquo; or &lsquo;human
+values&rsquo;) are meant to deny the inherent reality of trade-offs,
+or to exempt some particular value from the trade-off process, then
+such selfless ideals can be no more effectively demonstrated than by
+trading off financial gains in the interest of such ideals. This is an
+economic trade-off.&nbsp;<a href="#fn2">[2]</a>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>
+In context, Professor Sowell was not arguing against those imputing
+some sort of moral power to self-interest; he was instead arguing
+against those who think there should be an easy path to the reform of
+a society which may have a particular moral defect. Those are two
+sides to the same coin &mdash; serving self-interest may put a person
+in conflict with moral values and the attempt to serve moral values
+may lead to some sacrifice of one's self-interest.</p>
+<p>
+Self-interest can be a powerful fuel for a society, at least when the
+citizens of that society are well-formed individuals, but there is
+no mystical or magical aspect to self-interest that guarantees moral
+results. Self-interest will lead to generally moral results to the
+extent that moral constraints, external but mostly internal, guide
+the actions of the self-interested parties. A society with the proper
+constraints does not come into existence by some act of magic, but
+rather by the acts of people who are aiming at a higher purpose, whether
+the preservation of liberty in the society as a whole or the
+preservation of a cooperative spirit within communities of
+programmers, or maybe both of those at the same time.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="infobox">
+<h3>Footnotes</h3>
+<ol>
+ <li id="fn1">Both quotes are from page 2 of &ldquo;Adam Smith: In His Time and
+Ours&rdquo;, Jerry Z. Muller, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
+1993.</li>
+ <li id="fn2">From page 79 of &ldquo;Knowledge &amp; Decisions&rdquo;,
+Thomas Sowell, New York: Basic Books, 1980.</li>
+</ol>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+<div class="unprintable">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to
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+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
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+
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+Please see the <a
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+README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting translations
+of this article.</p>
+</div>
+
+<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
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+ be under CC BY-ND 4.0. Please do NOT change or remove this
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+ Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the
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+
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+
+<p>Copyright &copy; 1998 Loyd
+Fueston <a href="mailto:fueston@banet.net">&lt;fueston@banet.net&gt;</a></p>
+
+<p>Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
+permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.</p>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
+
+<p class="unprintable">Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2020/10/06 08:00:33 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>