The spiritual and the economic

There is a book out by Rabbi Lerner PhD. that addresses a curious political anomaly; namely, the alliance of the poor, those who are not economically incentivized to be Republicans, and the religious right, who are Republican. Why are working people, who traditionally have embraced the leftist values of inclusion, latching on to the religious right who do not reflect their economic interests? His argument claims a cultural reality that causes us to dwell inside of an Instrumentalist paradigm. Such a paradigm allows one critical guiding tenet:"what can you do for me?". Said less crassly, we are driven by the need to maximize personal self-interest in every area of life.

In particular, the workplace is an arena of pure instrumentalism. Employees are judged by the value they produce, and are replaceable by many means when that value can be matched or beaten for less. The phenomenon also exists in ordinary, non-working life, playing a role in the commonplace-ness of serial marriages and dating websites, in the rash of consumerism and the popularity of reality television like Survivor or The Bachelor. Even myspace.com embodies it. In this way all of life gets reduced to an economic exchange and any deeper connection or rationale for relating is lost.

One consequence of this is a profound sense of distrust that people feel toward their associates, peers and employers. The distrust is justifiable, for loyalty, in and of itself, has become largely conditional. That is, your job is safe as long as there isn't a cheaper way to do it, or a cheaper person to do it, or a technological brekathrough that replaces you. Sadly, this is an appropriate stance for a business inside of capitalism insofar as a business is an amoral entity. But the cost to our community, and ultimately, to the business itself can sometimes outweigh the economic gain garnered through this approach.

One way to see this is to compare the relative cost of employee replacement and training when the disloyalty is reciprocal. then, the employee trades the employer at will when a better offer comes along. Depending on the economic cycle we are in, this can be a massive business problem. In our current sellers' market, in which unemployment is relatively low and wages are languishing (so costs are low) the danger is real. In this circumstance, PxP companies fare better.

There are also arguments for the advantage in other cylces of the economy. But the deeper issue that Lerner points out resonates beyond the factory floor or the cubicle. The profound sense of seperateness and isolation--of alienation in a Marxian sense, also creates a context in which morality as we have known it vanishes. The loss of the presumption of basic honesty and loyalty makes basic our ordinary expectations for predictability far less reliable. Employee secrecy, trade secrets, employee poaching, out and out theft, fraudulent resumes, fraudulant invoiving in accounting, and up the ladder to the kind of high-level corporate fraud we have seen lately. Furthermore, the mercenary mode that we end up in when our connectedness is lost leads to the speculative stock market--a condition that urges, indeed demands quarter on quarter returns, rgardless of the real business situation.