You go to the supermarket and stock up a week’s groceries. Steak and roast and chicken and fruits and vegetables. You love those Del Monte canned plums, so you grab a couple of cans of them, too. The can says plums. Therefore, you trust plums, not pickled oriental eggs are in the opaque tin can.
You get to the checkout counter and an absolute stranger notes your cart full of food and allows you to take it from the store to your car. All he asks is an impression of a small plastic card that somehow assures him that eventually he’ll receive payment for the groceries. He has faith that the issuer of the card, for a small fee, will reimburse him for your groceries. You have faith that he will not betray you and sell the secret number that opens your cards to thieves the moment you leave the store.
The owner of the establishment; either an individual or several hundred thousand stockholders, is not even there to observe the transaction or to insure that the checkout clerk has not mistaken your charges. Nor is he concerned that you and the checker have concocted a conspiracy to defraud him and his store. The clerk assumes, without suspicion, that all the labels or bar codes on your items are authentic and unmolested. He is confident that at the end of the day his register balances; i.e., groceries vs charges. Any deficiencies will either get him fired or result in charges against his paycheck.
This faith, these assumptions of cleanheartedness are requisite to this potentially complex transection that allows us to eat without raising vegetables in our backyard and killing, dressing, and preserving the main course of our meal.
All this came about because one inspiring night some greedy soul awoke to the happy realization that one and a half percent is a small number; that one and a half percent of a pie is a crumb, that one and a half percent of a pocketful of silver coins is a thin dime, that one and a half percent of a house is a roof shingle. BUT, one and a half percent of the grocery bill of thousands of families over a protracted period of time is a sum to be reckoned with; big enough even to be divided with others in exchange for work. So, dazzled by dreams of riches, the greedy soul builds a magnificent store the size of a football field, piled high with alluring edibles of all kinds, at all prices. That’s capitalism – an economic alchemy that transforms individual greed into the common good.
{ 5 comments }
Nicely stated, well-done.
In my experience as a checkout clerk (on the occasions I wasn’t pushing carts) it is NOT assumed that the customers haven’t replaced the bar codes. That happens and stores are defrauded out of a considerable amount of money. Cashiers are told to check for that sort of thing, but there’s not always much you can do especially considering that the line is not to be held up.
I know economics has a term for when the costs for one person are low to benefit themselves at the expense of others, but it is costly for others to try to prevent that person from doing so. I forget what it is though.
Mr. Roberts confuses “faith” and “experience.” This doesn’t change the truth in his essay but it irritates me because it is a common error of preachers – especially those who preach against evolution and atheism. The most common example being the statement that one exhibits
faith” when one sits in a chair.
billwald
For once, we agree on something. The most accurate word is “trust”, not “faith”. I do not have faith in the system that reads my credit card, I just trust that most of the time it will work because the people behind such system want happy customers. If Iacted out of pure faith, I would be taken for a ride every time!
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