Generational Wealth: Hesiod versus Aristotle
It is a great irony that prosperity affords posterity the luxury of forgetting its origins. Though not a hard-and-fast rule of societal evolution, generations who grow up wealthy often lack respect for or understanding of the values and ideas that generated the very wealth from which they benefit. Isacc M. Morehouse examines Aristotle and Hesiod' on the topic. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (14)
Do you seriously contend that over the course of human history the ideas of Hesiod have in aggregate had the effect of increasing the productivity--or freedom--of man more than those of Aristotle, the founder of predictive science and teleological inquiry?
Published: January 8, 2009 10:44 AM
This article does point out a key flaw in Aristotle - the denigration of the working man, be he merchant or laborer - common to aristocrats throughout the ages. However, it is incorrect to think Aristotle denigrated productivity or the producer-product relation; to the contrary, he elevated it. Aristotle is not perfect, and if one wishes to directly read a defence of laissez-faire out of the Nichomachean Ethics they do so foolishly (contrast with the works of the likes of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas den Uyl who have carried his work further to offer an Aristotelian defence of laissez-faire.) The EN is addressed to an audience primarily comprised of young aristocrats. Nonetheless, the book has some excellent insights in it. It is unfair to dismiss the musings of Aristotle as those of a pampered aristocrat. He was wrong in his elitism and confusion in economics (hey, some people are more confused than he is now even), but there is so much more to his ethical theory than that.
Published: January 8, 2009 10:48 AM
FWIW, Plato would've served as a better example than Aristotle.
Published: January 8, 2009 10:52 AM
Garrett's novel Harangue is a very entertaining example of what happens when a rich kid decides to save the world.
Buy a mashed-tree version here: http://www.mises.org/store/Product.aspx?ProductId=451
or read the online version here: http://mises.org/books/harangue.pdf
Jeffrey Tucker's comments: http://blog.mises.org/archives/007347.asp
Published: January 8, 2009 11:36 AM
Ah, but hard work leads to wealth only if others do not take the fruits of the labor. The slave's hard work avails him naught. Work and other investment make sense only when the work product belongs to the producer rather than the master, the government, or other "stakeholders" who shoulder no labor or risk, but still assume ownership after production.
Hesiod's ideas aren't relevant to slaves, be they full or only "partial." The motivation for slaves is to avoid even worse conditions -- a negative, not positive motivation. The only change possible for a slave is downward, which may explain why slaves aren't generally as productive as freemen, and why socialist societies aren't as productive or innovative as capitalist societies.
In today's America and under other such socialist regimes, productive investment and work are taxed, and harder work (or more-successful investment) is taxed even more. Aristotle is much more-relevant. Stay in school, and rule! Work is for suckers.
Published: January 8, 2009 11:44 AM
Freude Bud,
Without the individualist efforts to create and acquire capital, where would the affluence of Aristotle and Plato have come from? Like mana from utopian heaven? No, the practical advice of Hesiod is of greater primacy than the later mental pursuits and justifications of this a priori observation. The works of the philosophers have provided a logical superstructure and provided defense for individualism, but clearly the advice of Hesiod is a logical antecedent to these extensions and even the physical process of elucidating these extensions. Even in the case of Hesiod, his ability to write on the topics came about because of his prior individualist hard work and saving, creating a storehouse from which he could purchase non substinence pursuit. It appears that you confuse the branding of ideas with their primacy and importance in praxeology. Surely, I will agree that Aristotle and Plato are more popular than Hesiod, but as outlined in this article, their pursuits were dependent on the virtues expressed by Hesiod, this is of course a time invariant observation.
Published: January 8, 2009 11:44 AM
Friedrich Nietzsche comments insightfully on the proto-Mandevillian aspect of "Works and Days" in an essay called "Homer's Contest." You can find it here:
http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/hc.htm
Published: January 8, 2009 12:14 PM
Tim,
Hard work in a capitalistic society doesn’t lead to wealth and abundance if it doesn’t satisfy the consumers’ most urgent desires on a mass scale. Hard work combined with intelligent work doesn’t necessarily result in accumulating wealth. Mises and Rothbard wrote masterful treatises. I don’t see any indication they accumulated riches from theses endeavors.
Ask any man or woman on the street if they’ve heard of Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek or Henry Hazlitt. I’m sure 999 out of 1000 haven’t. Let’s face it, the masses prefer mystery and horror novels to treatises on philosophy and economics. The only reason Ayn Rand enjoyed any measure of success was that she cleverly placed her stimulating ideas in spellbinding novels.
Published: January 8, 2009 3:33 PM
A note in "The Open Society and its Enemies" makes some sharp comments on the views of Plato and Aristotle about "the depraved state of a man who makes money by means other than the hereditary possession of land."
http://www.the-rathouse.com/OpenSocietyOnLIne/banausic.html
Published: January 8, 2009 8:23 PM
Stanley Pinchak:
Individualist effort, pshaw, you believe your own propaganda.
Our productivity is built upon scientific inquiry and the exponential productivity since pre-Socratic Greece is based almost exclusively upon the endeavors of those who had the leisure time to study nature. Generations upon generations upon generations of them.
Without their efforts there would be nothing to work with, or build upon, and everyone would still be slogging away in heavy agricultural labor ... or stealing the proceeds at the point of a sword. (Which is the reason the Romans didn't tend to deploy any labor saving inventions.)
Shoddy thinking disguised by illustrious names ... and Hesiod lived off the fruit of slaves, too, by the way.
Your moralism is the excuse of the creditor to shackle the laborer in a deflationary regime ... ie, gold.
Published: January 9, 2009 6:16 PM
Freude Bud,
it appears that you, unlike Aristotle and Plato, do not suffer from, "[a] lack respect for or understanding of the values and ideas that generated the very wealth from which [you] benefit." I am glad that you agree with the author.
By the way, gold is not deflationary in the monetary stock sense, its supply grows at roughly 3% per year.
Published: January 9, 2009 8:54 PM
Tim Kern wrote "The only change possible for a slave is downward".
No, slaves in the ancient world had good prospects of getting their freedom, and they often had certain rights as well, e.g. Roman slaves were usually entitled to a small wage.
Published: January 9, 2009 9:02 PM
By your description PML such 'slaves' don't sound as though they would qualify as slaves.
Published: January 9, 2009 10:30 PM
Freude Bud: "Our productivity is built upon scientific inquiry and the exponential productivity since pre-Socratic Greece is based almost exclusively upon the endeavors of those who had the leisure time to study nature."
Not just pre-Socratic Greece, but every empire until and including the Spanish. Modern science didn't begin until around the 16th century, and didn't contribute to economic growth until the 20th century. Almost all of the major improvements in technology before the 20th century came from mechanics and tinkerers, not scientists. And it wasn't until the Dutch Republic of the 16th century that productivity began to grow, and then only because the state enforced property right for all and not just for the nobility.
In fact, many historians claim that China had far more advanced technology than Europe for centuries up until the 16th or 17th centuries. The difference was property rights. In the Dutch Republic, the first European nation to respect property, a tinkerer who improved upon his methods of production kept the extra earnings. In China, the government usually stole the idea and banned its use by anyone other than state officials.
PM Lawrence: "slaves in the ancient world had good prospects of getting their freedom, and they often had certain rights as well..."
That's a very good point. People tend to think that slavery in the American South before the Civil War was the standard for all time. It wasn't. It was the most cruel slavery ever invented. In the Arab world, slaves occasionally became rulers of empires, or very wealthy. The same is true of slavery in the Bible. Slaves had rights and could gain their freedom. They were more like indentured servants.
Published: January 10, 2009 9:07 AM