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Soros & Pseudo-Morality...Posts: Joined: 2004-04-01
An interesting anti-Bush article by the financier and speculator George Soros recently appeared on this site. The article is an extract from a commencement address Soros delivered to the Columbia School of International & Public Affairs in New York on 17 May 2004.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=2&debateId=95&articleId=1913
In the article (linked above), Soros rightly addresses the unilateral and unquestioning arrogance of the Bush administration. However, one of the more telling paragraphs was omitted from the version published by Open Democracy. An unedited version of Soros speech can be found here:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18743
On reading the full text, one of Soros most interesting comments is an incidental aside:
Last summer I took an informal poll at a meeting of eminent Wall Street investors to find out whether they would condone the use of torture to prevent a terrorist attack. The consensus was that they hoped somebody would do it without their knowing about it
Now, Im pretty sure this view isnt exactly rare, but it does seem to betray the kind of mindset necessary to be an eminent Wall Street investor or indeed to be George Soros.
This consensus to which Soros refers could plausibly be translated as Im happy for inhuman things to be done in my name, and for my benefit, provided I can pretend they arent happening, and thus appear innocent
This tactic calls to mind Soros own sly argument, made after the Sterling crisis of 1992, that:
"When I sold sterling short
I was taking money out of the pockets of British taxpayers. But if I had taken the social consequences into account, it would have thrown off my risk/reward calculations.... Fortunately, [financial markets] are anonymous, [which] allowed me not to dirty my hands."
Thus, by this curious logic, if no direct evidence of wrongdoing is found, no wrong was apparently done. If those, like Soros, who prey on the financial vulnerability of others, can conceal (or feign ignorance of) their own malign actions, they can go on thinking of themselves as good people. And thus, morality is all about appearance rather than fact.
Surely this is not 'morality' but pure textbook psychosis?
Submitted on Sun, 2004-05-23 12:16
Re: Soros & Pseudo-Morality...
> Thus, by this curious logic, if no direct evidence of
> wrongdoing is found, no wrong was apparently done. If
> those, like Soros, who prey on the financial
> vulnerability of others, can conceal (or feign
> ignorance of) their own malign actions, they can go
> on thinking of themselves as ‘good people.’ And thus,
> morality is all about appearance rather than
> fact.
>
> Surely this is not 'morality' but pure textbook
> psychosis?
Actually David, this may be closer to the real roots of morality than any intellectual constructs. One of the main mechanisms of moral deterrence and enforcement appears to be the "visibility" of actions to others.
It has been convincingly hypothesized that we have such difficulty with crime, detection and punishment because of the ease with which we can now hide in our huge expanded tribe.
It is always worth bearing in mind that there is probably no workable morality that is not based on, and does not conflict with, our evolved instincts.
We are probably all guilty of Soros' tendencies at times, if only we were honest enough about ourselves.
For all our apparent sophistication, we are only animals and would always do well to remember it.
Re: Soros & Pseudo-Morality...
> Actually David, this may be closer to the real roots
> of morality than any intellectual constructs. One of
> the main mechanisms of moral deterrence and
> enforcement appears to be the "visibility" of actions
> to others.
There is a difference between the practicalities of deterrance and enforcement and whether something can be considered to be right or wrong.
If we go down your route, we could argue that murder is not murder of no-one finds out that you've killed.
> It has been convincingly hypothesized that we have
> such difficulty with crime, detection and punishment
> because of the ease with which we can now hide in our
> huge expanded tribe.
Perhaps, but does this change the ethics of any particular criminal act?
> It is always worth bearing in mind that there is
> probably no workable morality that is not based on,
> and does not conflict with, our evolved instincts.
True - but on that ground, David T's view is no more of an 'intellectual construct' than yours, and we can't get very far.
> We are probably all guilty of Soros' tendencies at
> times, if only we were honest enough about
> ourselves.
Again true, but that still doesn't validate those actions.
> For all our apparent sophistication, we are only
> animals and would always do well to remember it.
Yes, but we are also animals who have evolved the capacity for self-judgement and for the comparison of out behaviour to that of others and to internally-developed conceptions. I don't think we should forget our sophistication either, or allow hypocrisy to triumph because 'we are only animals'.
Re: Soros & Pseudo-Morality...
David W & Paul,
What I find interesting about this ‘out of sight, out of mind’ manoeuvre is how it seems to dovetail with Soros’ high-profile philanthropy and with the conspicuously visible piety of many religions.
Soros and his Wall Street associates seem to view the visibility of wrongdoing (and right-doing) as the determining factor of ethical conduct; if a person can conceal his wrongdoing or affect an ignorance of it, then the illusion of innocence can be maintained. And it is the illusion of innocence and virtue that is, apparently, the overriding concern of this perspective.
As I’ve said, this view is most likely fairly common; it is, nonetheless, a dishonest and pathological position. It also raises questions of other conspicuous displays of virtue and of how misleading they might be.
Soros makes much of his recent philanthropic work (some of which is indeed to be commended), yet Soros fails to address an obvious question. How can this philanthropy undo the damage done to others by the predatory speculation that generated Soros’ fortune in the first place? Given how Soros will never donate more than he ‘earned’ by his currency speculation, the overall ‘virtue balance’ will remain a negative one.
In an Observer interview, Soros rationalised his philanthropy thus: “Having made enough money to keep the wolf from the door, I’m concerned with making the world a better place… I realised that it’s money that makes the world go round, so I might as well make money if I want to have influence over the world. Making money came first and I was pretty single-minded about it. But having made it, I could then indulge my social concerns…”
Setting aside the notion of social concerns as ‘indulgences’ rather than imperatives, one might still wonder whether the phrase “single-minded” is a euphemistic substitute for “uninhibited by the prospect of causing injury to others.”
Yet it seems unlikely that George has ever paused to reflect on how his fortune was made and at whose expense. Nor does he seem concerned with asking himself whether the acquisition of his fortune has in fact done more social damage than could ever be undone by his philanthropic ventures. This causal autism (and improbable failure of basic arithmetic) is obviously all too convenient.
Funds may be diverted (from, say, the violently dispossessed Malaysians to Colombian education projects and anti-Bush campaigns), but Soros will not give away more than he took, and so more harm has been done than could ever be undone by this method. Yet Soros can demonstrate his philanthropy, and thus appear benign, albeit in a rather superficial way.
One might also, for instance, wonder why so many socially proscriptive religions resort to dress codes and social protocols which, in themselves, serve no obvious ethical purpose, yet which are used to symbolise virtue and some higher motive. Again the visible social ritual or conspicuous ‘religious’ clothing seems charged with an importance that invites questioning…
Re: Soros & Pseudo-Morality...
> What I find interesting about this ‘out of sight, out
> of mind’ manoeuvre is how it seems to dovetail with
> Soros’ high-profile philanthropy and with the
> conspicuously visible piety of many religions.
Well, yes, you could argue that this has a great deal in common with the Mediaeval practice of 'indulgence' where sin could be 'bought off'.
> Funds may be diverted (from, say, the violently
> dispossessed Malaysians to Colombian education
> projects and anti-Bush campaigns), but Soros will not
> give away more than he took, and so more harm has
> been done than could ever be undone by this method.
> Yet Soros can demonstrate his philanthropy, and thus
> appear benign, albeit in a rather superficial way.
Yes, but...
Much as I am suspicious of Soros' motivations, you cannot necessarily simply compare the amount of money made and the amount of money given away, and argue that therefore less goog as been done than harm. The quantitative amounts of capital do not equate to either quantitative or qualitative amounts of good or bad that result from the transactions. That is the kind of very simplistic assumption that welfare economists make, which social psychological work has shown not to be true. The relationship between money and happiness is not linear, or to put it bluntly money does not equal happiness. Okay, sure you might say, that is true for the individual, but we are talking about large scale capital movements and there effects on huge numbers of people, macro-effects. Well, the larger scale you get, the more non-linear, the more complex are the relationships.
Of course this could works either way - i.e.: Soros' wheeler-dealing could have had effects that were so catastrophic that they vastly outweigh anything philanthropic he now does, or, on the other hand, certain of his philanthropic actions (and they are many and varied and not all under his direct control) could have effects far beyond the simple capital movements involved. A student in Hungary who gets an Open Society scholarship may end up being the UN leader who finally cracks the problem of global governance... how much would that be worth? Bush may be brought down because of the difference that Soros' funding and fundraising makes whcih could lead to more onstructive relations in the Middle East... how can that be valued against the Asian financial crash?
Difficult, eh?
Soros has certainly got much to be ashamed of, and he certainly has quite confused personal ethics - I mean, as Paul W. implied, which one of us can claim that their every action is justifiable and consistent to an ethical standard? But does that mean, that a balance-sheet can be drawn up saying, 'he did more harm than good'? I don't know.
Re: Soros & Pseudo-Morality...
David W,
I take your point about the shortcomings of estimating benefit in simple quantitative terms.
However, what I'm most interested in is the curiously acausal rationale that Soros and others employ. The means by which Soros' fortune was made (and by which his largesse was made possible) escapes consideration. Yet it has great bearing on any claims to virtue.
How does Soros (or any of his peers) reconcile a claim to “making the world a better place” with the routine dispossession and social destruction the acquisition of his fortune has entailed?
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