ȃȆȁ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophyless entitled to have their views or interests considered in the forming of
public policy.
We should not exalt materialism, but neither should we despise it.
Just as a healthy society needs statesmen, humanitarians, esthetes, and
eggheads, so it also needs money-minded Philistines. It takes all kinds
of (decent) people to make a world. Each person’s freedom to choose the
niche in life that best accords with his own talents and inclinations gains
from the willingness of other people to fill other niches.
Erosion of monetary incentives unleashes pressures toward confor-
mity. One of the individual’s best protections against the arbitrary whims
of the business firm employing him is the fact that his employer and other
employers are seeking profit in a competitive market. Policy that weakens
the profit motive or the competitiveness of markets is likely to reduce the
cost to employers of tyrannizing over employees. (Ļis fact, in the aca-
demic world, leads teachers to demand other forms of protection.) Fur-
thermore, to the extent that the tax structure leads companies to compen-
sate their executives in kind rather than in freely spendable money—stock
options, club memberships, pleasure travel in the guise of business travel,
use of company cars, planes, apartments, vacation lodges, and expense
accounts—to this extent business and private lives become intermingled.
We see the rise of the Organization Man. From the liberal point of view,
this state of affairs seems questionable not only or not even especially
for the Organization Men themselves but also for members of society in
general.
I offer as a mere conjecture one more doubt about egalitarianism. Espe-
cially if it is dignified by serving as a basis for public policy, the philosophy
that encourages people to brood about whether wealthier people “deserve”
their material abundance, and whether they themselves are not “entitled”
to a larger share, may well have something to do with crime. Even rela-
tively poor people are likely to suffer in the long run from the far-reaching
consequences of a philosophy that undermines respect for personal safety
and property rights.
Ļe postponed topic of equality of opportunity serves as a transition
to the concluding sections of this paper. Ideally, everyone should have
a decent start in life, free from the cumulative disadvantages of initial
poverty. But should the State go so far as to try to deprive fortunate
young people of whatever advantages they might enjoy from bodily or
mental or financial inheritance or from family background and contacts?
Much could be done, after all, towards offsetting even the nonfinancial