Jonathan Sacks—Morals: the one thing markets don’t make

Posted by Kendall Harmon

The continuing disclosures about excessive pensions and payoffs, salaries and bonuses for people at the top stir in us feelings for the oldest of human bloodsports: the search for a scapegoat. But they ought to lead us to think more deeply about the values of our culture as a whole.

Often, these past months, I have found myself going back to one of the most painful conversations I have had. It was with one of Britain's leading industrialists. He had led his company to consistent success for decades. When I met him he had retired and was near the end of his life.

He was not a religious man but he was a deeply moral one. He spoke of the principles that had guided him in business and of the salary he had drawn. It was not negligible, but it was modest. What pained him was that his successor had awarded himself a salary ten times that amount, while systematically destroying the company he had so carefully built.

I recall another conversation with a successful investment banker. He told me that the first thing he had to establish was his character, his reputation for trustworthiness and honesty. Without that, he would have been unable to trade. Nowadays, he said, deals no longer depend on character but on lawyers.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

1 Comments
Posted March 21, 2009 at 4:00 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Jeffersonian wrote:

What a superb column.  I couldn’t agree more.  It’s one of the reasons that, while I might take issue with his politics, I have the utmost respect for one of the world’s richest men who still lives in this house.

While I defend the market and right of individuals to make as much money in free transactions as they can, ultimately I’m troubled by executives who come into a business demanding these compensation packages.  Were I a board member, I’d be very skeptical of approving such a package as it seems the individual appears to be more interested in a quick buck than in operating the enterprise I have been charged with overseeing.  The potential for abuse of the firm’s assets and procedures is too great to risk on some grasping narcissist’s ideas of self-fulfillment.

The market is, really, a conveyor belt for the underlying culture.  It reflects the society’s ethos, much as does its government if it is democratically chosen.  The proliferation of laws and lawyers in America is a symptom of a deeper rot in the culture.  As Tacitus once wrote, “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.”  Just so.  We had best take heed and heal our culture, or we will reap the whirlwind.

March 21, 12:20 pm | [comment link]
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