Beneficence: Market Bonds

July 28, 2004

Market Bonds

Our traditional sense of markets are changing largely because of the world wide web, but have we got to the place where markets are actually places where people create bonds?

This question called to mind a book of Frederick Turner's: Shakespeare's Twenty-First Century Economics: The Morality of Love and Money.

In fact, this might be a productive one to read together once Chris finishes The Gift.

Turner opens chapter 1 with this sentence:

"I love your majesty/According to my bond," says Cordelia to her father, King Lear, at the beginning of Shakespeare's great play."

The next paragraph begins:

Bonds, at the most fundamental level, form the essential structure of the universe.

And before we're out of chapter one, we have this:

What we need is a human economics, a capitalism with a human face; that is, a kind of market that fully expresses the moral, spiritual, and aesthetic relationships among persons and things. It is clear that we should revise our earlier mechanistic notion of economics. Must we find a new language for it?
The answer, surprisingly, is no. As Shakespeare shows, buried within our existing language of finance and business are the living meanings that we seek. Such words as "bond," "trust," "goods," "save," "equity," "value," "mean," "redeem," "redemption," "forgive," "dear," "obligation," "interest," "honor," "company," "balance," "credit," "issue," "worth," "due," "duty," "thrift," "use," "will," "partner," "deed," "fair," "owe," "ought," "treasure," "sacrifice," "risk," "royalty," "fortune," "venture," and "grace" preserve within them the values, patterns of action, qualities, abstract entities, and social emotions that characterize the gift and barter exchange systems upon which they are founded. Indeed, these words, whose meanings are inseparable from their economic content, make up a large fraction of our most fundamental ethical vocabulary?

Might it be that what we've been looking for has been with us all the time?

July 28, 2004 in Language of Liberty | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83420f39b53ef00d83422d08d53ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Market Bonds:

» Giving And (or Versus) the Ownership Society from Wealth Bondage
Posted by The Happy Tutor The ownership society, touted by Cato and Bush, suggests that human relations are best mediated by contracts, patents, copyrights, deeds, and markets. What we owe to one another can be looked up in the contracts,... [Read More]

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by: |

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Your comment could not be posted. Error type:

Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.