Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics this year. I heard him being interviewed on Public Radio International. He said something to the interviewer that was very profound, but before I get to this let’s back up a bit and mention the current state of the economy.
It’s late 2008. Our economy has recently gone south due to bad choices on bad investments. The media and the public have been trying to make sense of it all. Some blame the real estate market. Others blame the banks. Then there are those that blame themselves. That’s right: themselves. Well, it’s not that they blame themselves; in more specific terms, they are blaming ourselves. They blame our greed for getting us into this dilemma — cultural greed, if you will.
The movie Wall Street has come up in several interviews I’ve listened to (not to mention news articles I’ve read). Do you remember this movie? It starred Michael Douglas and was about a Wall Street stock broker, insider trading, and greed. The most famous bit of dialogue from that screenplay came from the mouth of Michael Douglas’ character, “Greed is good!”
It’s part of our culture. It’s who we are as Americans. This is a capitalistic market. Greed is part of that.
Here is where I bring Paul Krugman into focus. He said the following during his interview, “We harness greed. We don’t worship it.” He was comparing reality with what the movie Wall Street represented. He was referring to the idea that every individual has his/her self-interest at heart. It’s human nature. All of us use self-interest to provide for ourselves, but we do not worship it as the pinnacle of our beliefs. This struck me as something profound; especially in light of all the discourse I’ve been hearing for the past four months. It was something positive, something good, in a sea of cynicism.
Blame is going around. We use it to appease our anxiety and fear. Yes, there are those who worship self-interest, those who believe in greed. But there is also the many who live and work knowing they do so for the benefit of society, for the benefit of others. Let’s remember that economies expand and contract like many things, and let’s not become trapped in blame that feeds our own cynicism.
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