THE PURITAN'S GIFT -- A RESPONSE TO A MISSIVE

THE PURITAN’S GIFT – A RESPONSE TO A MISSIVE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 27, 2009

“Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”

Shakespeare

REFERENCE:

This cryptic response is to my answer to another’s question: Was Protestantism A Good or Bad Thing? (April 24, 2009)

A WRITER WRITES:

The Puritan Gift: Triumph, Collapse and Revival of an American Dream: Ken Hopper, Will Hopper: is a pretty big hit just now. A romantic view of the reformation, Puritanism and capitalism without an analysis of how it has also led to our degrading our environment.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

You couldn’t provide a better foil to my argument than the Hopper brothers’ new book. You are correct they fail to look at the moral consequences to our culture, and instead examine it from the perspective of the Protestant work ethic, where it came from, and how it in turn proved the dominance of America.

I should alert the reader it is a management book, and quotes W. Edwards Deming no less as its quintessential guru. The Hopper brothers argue, and I think correctly, the energy, social mobility, competitiveness and capacity for innovation, all of which lie at the heart of the American culture, have their origins in the discipline and the Calvinistic spirit of America’s first European immigrants, the Puritans.

My problem, and I can tell by the absence of responses, is that we don’t like to think that as great as this culture has been in one sense, it could possibly lead to our downfall in the broader sense.

Progress is a romantic concept in our culture, whereas I see it increasingly in the pejorative sense. I am an idea guy, and nothing under the sun is sacred or beyond my purview.

That said I believe this book will reassure many because it confirms their bias.

* * *

Today, the Charlie Rose show on PBS had a panel of reporters (2), hedge fund manager (1), and the 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics discussing the current economic crisis. It was followed by an interview with Lionel Barber, managing editor of the London Financial Times.

I mention this because both the Hoppers’ book, and the sentiment it projects, and my view are on an apparent collision course. This is also true of these most civil pundits.

The hedge fund manager, who used metaphor to illustrate his point, was most understandable. He talked about holding companies being shell companies and banks being where the money is.

Imagine a bridge between them has a capacity to handle only 10,000 pounds crossing it, and a truck of that capacity attempts to cross and goes down with scores of people with it. That is the current situation.

What he sees the government trying to do with its tarp funds and stress tests is to build another bridge with a slightly greater capacity to withstand the traffic or 10,000+ pounds when he thinks it should build a bridge of 40,000 pounds doing all the things that would require.

He then went into an explanation of bondholder debt to assets, claiming that for every dollar of debt written as an asset it doubles the value. So that $50billion of debt converted to assets would represent a net change of $100billion.

The panel all agreed that this was possible, but with one glitch. The bondholders would resist preferring to have the bailout money from the government, letting the taxpayer carry the burden then to devalue their bonds.

Bondholders, the entire panel agreed, are a powerful political lobby in Washington, and essentially dictate the current government policy.

The sentiments of the Hopper brothers I would imagine favor the bondholders. I do not. Just as I think capitalism, or the dominance of the Christian Judaic culture as we know it, is doomed for radical correction.

What do I know? Well, that is the beauty of ideas. You can take them or leave them.

Be Always well,

Jim