“One of the subtle forms of violence today is the tyranny of accumulation. Modern culture, based on productivity, greater profits, and pounding advertisements, keeps giving us false needs. To live well, we must have more and more. And while we have more, we must make sure that those around us don’t have more than we do.”

“Living this way makes life very complicated . . . [This] way of life . . . makes us relate to people as possessions. Just as we cling to our clothes, perfumes and handbags, we also become possessive about our relationships. Once someone has offered us friendship, affection, love or care in some way, we want more and more of the same thing. So we cling to the person who gave it to us, forgetting that they too are human with deep similar needs. When they share their goodness with others, or are unable to give us more of what we need, we become himsa people — attacking, accusing, abusing and discarding them.”

from

http://www.thehindu.com/mag/2008/11/16/stories/2008111650100400.htm

Jeff: I did understand that you were mocking the idea that the “loose morals” attacked by evangelicals led to the financial crisis. I shouldn’t have assumed that you thought there was some role for religion in moralizing market participants (just not Henninger’s kind of blunt and silly finger-pointing). I am in complete agreement with you on the problems with Henninger…and even with reviews like this:

http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6325

which seem obsessed with the motes in the eyes of lower and lower-middle class individuals while ignoring the planks of campaign finance corruption, vast fortunes at the top, and shy-high inequality which were the main contributors to the current collapse.

But this just has me puzzled – Sex has been commodified in much more blatant forms than what you are describing with the housing meltdown/mortgage mess, and sexual harassment (and sexism) are likely to have been prevalent in other areas.

Is there a link perhaps between bad management or incentive alignment and sexism? That might be the more interesting question lurking here.

I think morality operates independently of physical cause and effect, either because it really is independent (transcendental?) or because the process of judgment-making is so complex that it might as well be independent. Or, in other words, judgment is either irreducible, or if reducible only in such esoteric theory that it might as well be irreducible. No algorithm can substitute for judgment in any circumstance where good judgment actually means something.

The post to which you link actually was a sarcastic take on Daniel Henninger’s column in the Wall Street Journal in which he took my point to a ridiculous extreme, suggesting that Southern evangelical religion was appropriate ballast to market opportunism.

I said this:

“The challenge in 2008 is not to save boardrooms and management suites by fundamentalist appeals to Jesus before taking each decision. I’m not aware of anything in the Sermon on the Mount directly on point when I’m trying to figure out an optimal debt level. And why Southern evangelicals? My daughter and son-in-law were married at the Society for Ethical Culture on the Upper West Side of New York City, no doubt within shouting distance of a couple Northerners and atheists. Amazingly enough, there are a few of us (even here in Cambridge) who know that Adam Smith wrote both The Wealth of Nations and A Theory of Moral Sentiments.

“No, the real challenge is demonstrating the practice of wisdom, which is something different either than adherence to a risk algorithm, davening each morning and afternoon, or singing on Sunday mornings in the choir. There’s no doubt that religion can provide the source of a moral code, but I’m troubled by one that might say that God caused the Dow to fall 4,000 points to punish atheists, homosexuals, and East Coast liberals.”

For more on my views on judgment, see the following:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1163256

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1033441

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=886741