survival and corruption

[undergroundpanther]

Vanity
The focus of all this was The Fable of the Bees. It is twelve pages of rhyming couplets with a heavy metrical swat. It sounds quite old fashioned but the topic is entirely modern. How does corruption, covert viciousness and crime mesh with a vibrant economy, society’s opulence, and its growth? Mandeville: there is no contradiction, they are a match.

Immorality, crime and wrongdoing all translate into business energy - exactly what a free economy needs to flourish. See that rascal selling stolen goods? See that tradesman cheating? See that flatterer ply his lies for gain? They all work so industriously. See that lawyer splitting cases to create more work and more enmity? It’s all business. It’s all good for the economy.

Mandeville saw society as an energetic hive of bees. Bees were thought to be selfish and gluttons for sweet nectar. So the more their industrious selfishness, the more the hive grew.

The hive contains the grubbing poor, unintelligent “wretches” who slave for a living, only want small pleasures and who are easy to exploit. And a higher class, the more intelligent, who manipulate appearances, flatter, and know how to use vanity and deception to become opulent. The rich browbeat the poor into making them believe their poverty is sinful.

Paradoxes are everywhere. There is a great show of Christian goodness which is never practiced. Observe the Bishop who pontificates on Christian humility. His own humility must be very ponderous if it needs that big coach and six horses to pull it around. Or the nanny who pretends to love a child she despises so she can keep her job. Thieves were even useful because they kept locksmiths employed.

Mandeville said, it is not civic commitment nor social pleasures that welds a community together, but vices. Civilized man has need for esteem, power and carnal satisfaction, and he covets what others have. It is as much envy and competition that keeps people together - and keeps them busy.

And what about the final arbiter, Justice?

Justice herself, fam’d for fair Dealing,
By blindness had not lost her Feeling;
Her left hand, which the scales should hold,
Had often dropt ‘em, bribed with gold.

In sum, a vibrant economy is driven by sin. Vice is given a social place.The poem fits quite comfortably over modern times. What if we were a community of people so well behaved on the streets there were no accidents? – the auto insurance industry would fall apart. What if everybody got along without quarreling? – lawyers would go unemployed. A harmonious community is not a driven community. Its economy would falter and wilt.



In other words corruption is what makes the market grow.


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