08.29.10
Templeton and capitalist ideology
The Templeton Foundation has two major goals, promoting capitalism and blurring the line between science and faith.
Shermer here is too much even for the strict Darwinist Coyne who also usefully points out the ideological orientation of the Templeton gang. Coyne’s critique is good. I have a hard time with Shermer who is so confused I tend to start sputtering in speechless gasping when confronted with Shermer on markets and evolution.
So it’s hardly a surprise that their Big Questions online magazine would publish an article claiming that capitalism is really an important source of human morality. And it’s not that surprising that they’d also claim an evolutionary basis for this wonderfully fortuitous and Gekko-ish conjunction of greed and ethics.
What is surprising is that the argument is made by Michael Shermer.
We have critiqued Shermer on this blog many times, as briefly here.
It is almost incredible how the nexus of Darwinism, Social Darwinism, market economics, and classical liberalism merge in the minds of often intelligent people to produce this ideological ‘mud’, as with Shermer. I have a bad feeling Shermer has never read any Karl Marx. (HaHa funny joke)
Sorting out the confusion requires seeing the problem with Darwinism, how natural selection can generate Social Darwinism, distinguishing historical dynamics from economic, especially market, dynamics, and some detachment as to the dangerous shibboleeths of Adam Smith on self-interest, and morality.
Shermer, sadly, seems to flunk all tests here. To say that capitalism is a source of morality is entirely the wrong approach (there are some ways to argue something related to this, e.g. the ‘Protestant ethic’ approach (which is actually the reverse argument: markets need ethical meta-behaviors), with some understanding that markets presupposes honest men, apparently so that dishonest men can score a bundle.
But in general it won’t work. In fairness, the mix of Dawinism and market delusion is not a final judgment against capitalism. A non-Social Darwinist capitalism that isn’t confused by Darwinism is a possibility never tried, save in the spectacular successes of Social Democratic Sweden type experiments.
That the Templeton gang should be promoting capitalism is a warning that their religious garbage is worse than the Darwinian brand.
The dangerous reality is that entire populations are becoming sick psychologically from this mixture of poisons. To inculcate innocent publics with limited intelligence that ‘greed is good’ as a spin off of Adam Smith (whose views were much more complicated) is close to a crime against humanity, and Bolshevik experience shows one outcome.
Templeton, capitalist ideology, and Shermer on markets said,
August 29, 2010 at 12:48 pm
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