I assume we’ve all read about the odd sales on eBay lately. One woman sold the rights to her middle name and another to her first name. A man dubbed “the human billboard” has sold many advertising slots on his body, including his forehead.
I assume most of us have also seen Fear Factor, the show where hard-bodied young people put themselves through all sorts of degrading stunts — eating disgusting “food” and being dunked in muck or put in precarious positions — for money.
And perhaps many of us have heard about the father who is selling his serial killer son's videotaped confession on the Internet. It is a brutal and shocking videotape with details about the crimes. Families of the victims obviously find it disturbing, but, as far as the authorities can discern, it's legal.
I believe in the free market and the need to allow people to pursue their economic self-interest. Such economic self-interest is healthy for society.
But here's the paradoxical problem: self-interest is also unhealthy. Economic self-interest is a form of selfishness, and selfishness is not good for society. If selfishness dominates, charities dry up, families don't get started, laws get broken, and society, including its economy, grinds to a halt.
Economic thinkers for hundreds of years (including the economic pioneer Adam Smith) have struggled with this paradox, and I'm not going to resolve it here.
But from a personal standpoint — for you and me — merely knowing about this paradox can help us get a feel for what's proper and what's not. With it, we can better order our souls, which are really the only things that we can ultimately control anyway. Perhaps, in turn, we can lend some understanding to those around us, thereby making a small contribution to the good of our culture as a whole.
The simplest thing to understand about the paradox is that it means certain things take primacy over money. Higher things — like justice and human dignity, to name just two of many scores — provide the broader framework within which individuals and families and societies can function and flourish. If the higher things are subrogated to the pursuit of money, our souls will collapse, as will our families and society.
If a person has the proper disposition toward money, questions arising from its subrogated position will come up repeatedly in everyday life. Does the lawyer draft the contract that will cheat another person? Does the doctor prescribe a contraceptive and — a good example in today's news — does the pharmacist fill the prescription? Does the teacher pass along an atheistic form of evolution to his students? Does the shopper tell the clerk that she received excess change? Does the investor allow his money to be invested in companies that engage in pornography and the production of abortifacients? Does the mother shop at Wal-Mart, even though the behemoth is killing her community's downtown shopping district? When should a person boycott a company's products because they donate to Planned Parenthood? Does the teenager refuse to buy a musical compact disk because it's produced by a record label that promotes violence and sexual license? Do we walk to church this Sunday in order to cause less pollution?
The examples could go on and on. Some of the examples have obvious answers, some don't.
But if we don't understand the basic truth that money is a “small good,” one that sits far down the ladder beneath a host of virtues and loftier pursuits, we won't be prepared to wrestle with these issues because we may not even recognize them as issues.
I think it's safe to say that the father who is selling his serial killer son's confession doesn't recognize the issues. Neither do the Fear Factor contestants nor the guy with advertising on his forehead.
Jesus Christ drove the money lenders and vendors out of the temple for a reason, and it's not because he opposed the free market. It's because he opposed a free market that didn't know its lowly limits and failed to show the proper respect for greater things.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Wednesday Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
