In
an earlier blog I found a research paper done at Yale Law School that
contrasted one group of outcomes in a survey as pro commerce and the
other anti- group as egalitarian-communitarian.
While the distinction may have been valid in the particular study, to me the opposite of pro-commerce is not egalitarian or communitarian. One can have egalitarian values and feelings about a wide range of subjects and still be comfortable with the astronomic inequalities in wealth that are produced by commerce.
For example, one can feel that each of one's children and grandchildren should be treated as equally as possible and definitely believe that everyone is equally entitled to emergency health care, education, fire protection, access to travel, free speech, trial by jury, fair trial and much more and still be pro commerce.
Similarly with communitarian values. One can feel intense comfort when surrounded by loving, caring committed friends and allies...even the same people over a lifetime, and still be pro commerce. A person can want to retire among longtime friends or sympathetic professional peers, one can be intensely involved with their sports team, community or specialized cohort and still be pro commerce.
To me, the anti-thesis of pro commerce is wishful
thinking. Wishful thinking is my polite term for ideology. People who
look at the world and believe it would be better with a revolution,
with a return to some older society are doing wishful thinking.
Nothing in the history of human beings has created what commerce has created thus far. Commerce has vastly extended our lifespan, reduced infant mortality and death at child birth, but more importantly it has create hundreds of thousands of jobs, occupations, professions and life paths to take advantage of the diversity of human beings. Commerce is the first and only human institution to reward meritocracy as broadly as possible in the population.
Commerce is bringing into existence the pragmatic messianic age. To seek some other world is wishful thinking.
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