"All reasonable, but it’s still striking that even Calvin Coolidge elevates the sporadic side effects of business over its central function. If businesses never gave to charity, they would still continue to deliver over 99% of their social value by stocking our stores with cornucopian abundance."
Bryan I love your work but honestly you sometimes have a blind spot for the psychological aspect of things. I think he is trying to point out the tensions and strike balance between the life of material progress and other forms of fulfillment. He is also talking about public-spiritedness (maybe you could debate its value but it shouldn't be dismissed). I think there is much more than this to think over in his speech, and I would not be so quick to dismiss some of it as you have. He also goes some of the way towards answering your question, I think—later in the speech he says:
"We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization."
In the open versus closed borders debate, it is somewhat surprising that we don’t opt for a reasonable third option employed by everyone for their own homes: by invitation only.
>Of course, the accumulation of wealth can not be justified as the chief end of existence.
A great line, could be from Adam Smith's "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." Part of the reason I respect Russ Roberts - he's focused on what it means to live a good life, not just "how can we be better at being greedy." (I don't agree with Russ on what it means to live a good life -- see this https://www.losingmyreligions.net/ for my take -- but I appreciate that he has a grown-up view of the world.)
"All reasonable, but it’s still striking that even Calvin Coolidge elevates the sporadic side effects of business over its central function. If businesses never gave to charity, they would still continue to deliver over 99% of their social value by stocking our stores with cornucopian abundance."
Bryan I love your work but honestly you sometimes have a blind spot for the psychological aspect of things. I think he is trying to point out the tensions and strike balance between the life of material progress and other forms of fulfillment. He is also talking about public-spiritedness (maybe you could debate its value but it shouldn't be dismissed). I think there is much more than this to think over in his speech, and I would not be so quick to dismiss some of it as you have. He also goes some of the way towards answering your question, I think—later in the speech he says:
"We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization."
In the open versus closed borders debate, it is somewhat surprising that we don’t opt for a reasonable third option employed by everyone for their own homes: by invitation only.
>Of course, the accumulation of wealth can not be justified as the chief end of existence.
A great line, could be from Adam Smith's "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." Part of the reason I respect Russ Roberts - he's focused on what it means to live a good life, not just "how can we be better at being greedy." (I don't agree with Russ on what it means to live a good life -- see this https://www.losingmyreligions.net/ for my take -- but I appreciate that he has a grown-up view of the world.)
Possibly Coolidge influenced Hayek who went on to conclude that: “strictly speaking, there are no economic ends”.
Coolidge was a skunk on Prohibition, and did nothing to roll back the burgeoning paternalistic state.
http://www.stateoftheunionhistory.com/2015/09/1926-calvin-coolidge-prohibition.html
When is Build, Baby, Build going to be published?
Richard Hanania would agree with that Pangloassian take on the American mainstream media:
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-the-media-is-honest-and-good