Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Economics March 13 2012

note: this was edited on July 19th, 2012 A.D.No one forced me to do it. I did it on my own.

In my writing style observations often stem from personal experience. I may have an experience in a bookstore for example. I write about it. Here are some comments then, that are concerned with "personableness." Personableness in trade would be the relationship or personableness aspect of interaction with store personnel while shopping/buying. This is something I feel acutely, as an autistic person. The store is any store. Or any store similar, in some way, I don't know which, to the Barnes & Noble bookstore in downtown Chicago: the test example. This is considered, in my world, a serious piece of intellectuality that I am kindly previewing to you.

     I am not buying from a person. Not from the B&N associate, that's for sure, but additionally, I am not buying goods from any person named "B&N." What am I doing?     
     I am buying from capitalism. I know I am not buying the book from a clerk. "It's just our policy," says the sales associate...  "I only work here" is a good one, too. Or: "it's not my fault." Any of those will do. All this comes out of an experience I just had. Today. What it makes me think about is that we are not dealing with a person anymore when we shop. Were we ever?, I dunno. OK, then.
     Let's assume I am good and on some level, I want to be a moral person. Or let's assume that I "ought" to be moral. There are extensive arguments that we could use to support this approach, but there is little time to do all that. I don't have time.
     Regardless of whether the world I live in is a capitalistic one or not what is relevant here is that I am "supposed to" do good; I want to. Supposing I am nice, then, how is it that I actually do good? By what force, what cause, do I do good, moreover, in such a system as capitalism?
     We are good people, but we are in capitalism. If capitalism is to be a viable social form (an alternative word would be: viable society), there is a legitimate question here. Where would the morality aspect of living in that capitalist society come from?
     This is a legitimate inquiry: a person who is buying (I could have said "acting," although I caution that I am not saying, ala Hayek, that these are the same) is acting as a human being, or as a social being; in acting, he or she is actually buying from society, or she is acting within her society. This makes sense. The persons is acting within his/her society. The opposite is not indicated, though, and there is no reason to suggest that the buyer, when engaging in commerce, somehow acts outside of her other social acts. There is no reason to assume that somehow the specific act of buying things belongs to some separate category of action. Then, she is indeed acting as a social being when she acts within capitalism. We are human, and we shop.
     Therefore, it is completely reasonable to ask where the humanity is within capitalism. The people own capitalism. That is the real basis of it.

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