Paradox of Thrift :: Where's Our Story?

Among the topics at our Tuesday Night Symposium (“symposium” means “drinking together”) of January 27 th was the “paradox of thrift.” How is it that in this time of down-spiraling economy we are bad citizens of the world and country if we be prudently thrifty with our personal resources? I’ll link you to Wikipedia and Paul Krugman to explain why-indeed-it-is and why-we-are. Yes, we are victims of this spiral, victims of those whose avarice, incompetence, and malpractice started the downward spin. Yet, when we respond rationally, protect ourselves, shorten our reach, practice thrift, we accelerate the spin. Our refusal to be as profligate as we were a few months and a few years ago is, collectively, a bad thing. This is true despite our apparent wisdom and virtue. That truth is hard for most of us to believe, no matter our political bent.

Perhaps our fundamental problem is that these negative economic spirals may depend on historic finance; they were of minor importance or non-existent in pre-history. That would explain why we don’t seem to have a countervailing instinct nor myth nor ethic to prepare us to be spenders when self-preservation and traditional virtue would prescribe thrift. We are rich in stories of the ills of profligacy and the virtue of thrift. Surely we must have many stories that urge us to fight the paradox of thrift, but I can only think of one—told as a parable by Jesus of Nazareth. He sided with the father who browbeats the son who puts his money safely under a rock rather than spend it (OK, invest) as did his brother. (In truth, I remember another story. It's the scene from the movie, Animal House, when Delta house has sunk beyond apparent potential for redemption; the beleaguered brothers look at each other and say in unison, "road trip!" Because I believe that only a mere handful of us find this story a call to virtuous action, it remains off the list.)

Are there human and other species examples which tell us how a defense against the paradox of thrift might look or feel? I think so. I’ll cite one example and hope for contributions from others.

I believe scientists call it “reciprocal altruism”. We might often describe it as the “hero instinct.” People knowingly-but-instinctively risk their own well-being in order to help others. It’s not hard to find examples. There’s the guy who jumped under a moving subway train to save a stranger . We call them heroes. We hold them in high esteem. While we generally disdain suicide, we are reverent toward heroic suicide. Also, we love stories of people who irrationally spend their riches or their meager resources to help others.

Beyond my stretch to include the parable uttered two thousand years ago, I don't recall stories that might cause us to revere people who spend profligately on themselves in order to help the larger economy in crisis. Apparently we need such stories. Outlandish? Well, why is it more outlandish to spend most of my savings to go private-goody-shopping in pursuit of common welfare than it is to spend the last breath of my life flinging myself over a grenade to save the lives of a few buddies? Clearly the goody-shopping sounds, to my ear, more outlandish. The reason, however, may be more temporal than eternal. The need for the grenade morality goes back perhaps a million years before there were grenades, whereas the need for my shopping spree has been rare, off-again more than on-again for only a few thousand years—too little time and consistency to embed an outland-ish ethic into instincts and inland-ish stories that drive our culture.

Thanks, NPR, for bringing us (Jan 30, 2009) the story of how Finland is trying to write a new morality tale urging spending over saving: Government officials signed on, and now the evil piggy bank is on posters. Finns see pro-spending commercials on TV.

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However, can this pitch top grandma's traditional lecture on the piggy bank--save, save, save? It can be found in the breeze everywhere, but NPR refers us especially to feedthepig.org.

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