Imagine you were a handyman. There are so many important jobs for you to do. Leaky roof? Clogged toilet? Broken shelf? Fouled spark plug? All the little problems in our lives deserve attention. There are lots of problems, and there are lots of very different types of problems.
Now imagine your tool bag has a crescent wrench in it. That’s a pretty versatile tool. You can tighten pipes with it, loosen bolts, hammer nails in a pinch. But not every job that needs doing needs doing with that one tool. That’s why you have a hammer, screwdrivers, a saw, a level, and several other kinds of wrench in the bag as well.
The interesting thing about semantics is that I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, and I don’t disagree with the messages you laud in these classic pieces of art. And yet, I know that I disagree with you because of the words you use to express yourself.
It kind of reminds me of this other one:
It sounds like you’re struggling to understand why people disagree with you. Maybe I can help.
A saw is a dangerous tool. You could cut yourself. You could lose a finger. You could get a splinter in your eye. That’s why we wear protective gloves and goggles when we use one. And that’s why we all wince when we see someone sawing away without any protection at all.
But I worry when you use words like “predatory capitalism” that you are not recommending gloves and goggles. You are recommending that we try to cut the board in half with a crescent wrench.
Capitalism is a tool that does one job: it generates wealth. That is a job that needs to be done, and capitalism is so much better than any other tool that it is worth the risk, and even the harm. But it is also worth mitigating some of the risks. That is why we all love stories like “It’s A Wonderful Life” and “A Christmas Carol”. These stories are our gloves and goggles.
George Bailey is one good man, living a life of service to his friends and family. He doesn’t hate Henry Potter. He doesn’t fight him, protest him, or go to the government to stop him. George Bailey foils Potter’s evil schemes accidentally, simply by living an honest and hardworking life.
Ebenezer Scrooge is a bad man. He worships money to the detriment of everything else in his life. But, by gaining perspective and having some introspection, he is able to overcome his shortcomings and become a better person.
Each of us must do our part to be honest, upstanding, and hard working. Each of us must learn to balance our lives, to spend time outside of the office, to smell the roses. The more Baileys there are, the more Scrooges learn and grow, the better the world will be. That is a very different argument than putting the government in charge of the entire economy.
And as for the starving poor, as I said, all the problems deserve attention. All I’m saying is that we should use the whole tool bag, not just the crescent wrench.
