Contexts for Contemporary Business Paper
Private Vices Lead to Public Destruction in Global Economies
In Bernard Mandeville’s poem, “The Grumbling Hive; Or Knaves Turned Honest” Mandeville describes a community of bees in which the hive is flourishing until the bees are suddenly made honest and virtuous. He draws a comparison between bees and humans in a societal framework and advocates the idea that each person in society is afflicted with their own “vices”. He purports that vices and corruption are advantageous to society because they act as a form of lubrication that assists the society to operate more smoothly which helps produce public benefits. It is by helping to produce these public benefits that vices ultimately lead to good. Mandeville writes, “Private vices may be made public benefits through skillful management by a wise politician “(ibid., volume 1, p. 169). Certainly one could argue that the very nature of the human condition is that we all are afflicted by sin; and it is through this sin that things like greed, avarice, and insatiability arise and manifest themselves in the form of “vices”. Are there any differences in the degrees to which vice and greed that occurred during Mandeville’s generation were committed versus vice and greed committed by members of present day societies? Does Mandeville’s vision regarding the concept of vice and the way it helped to produce public benefits at the turn of the 17th century in England, still hold true in our modern-day, globally oriented society? I propose that “societal vice” in the context of a modern-day, global scale economy is actually much more harmful and detrimental to societies, and to world economies as a whole, than it is advantageous. I also propose that present day vice, greed, and corruption executed in the financial world by politicians, stockbrokers, bankers, and other important members of society in positions of power are now able to be performed and executed on a much larger and more poisonous level than Mandeville
In Bernard Mandeville’s poem, “The Grumbling Hive; Or Knaves Turned Honest” Mandeville describes a community of bees in which the hive is flourishing until the bees are suddenly made honest and virtuous. He draws a comparison between bees and humans in a societal framework and advocates the idea that each person in society is afflicted with their own “vices”. He purports that vices and corruption are advantageous to society because they act as a form of lubrication that assists the society to operate more smoothly which helps produce public benefits. It is by helping to produce these public benefits that vices ultimately lead to good. Mandeville writes, “Private vices may be made public benefits through skillful management by a wise politician “(ibid., volume 1, p. 169). Certainly one could argue that the very nature of the human condition is that we all are afflicted by sin; and it is through this sin that things like greed, avarice, and insatiability arise and manifest themselves in the form of “vices”. Are there any differences in the degrees to which vice and greed that occurred during Mandeville’s generation were committed versus vice and greed committed by members of present day societies? Does Mandeville’s vision regarding the concept of vice and the way it helped to produce public benefits at the turn of the 17th century in England, still hold true in our modern-day, globally oriented society? I propose that “societal vice” in the context of a modern-day, global scale economy is actually much more harmful and detrimental to societies, and to world economies as a whole, than it is advantageous. I also propose that present day vice, greed, and corruption executed in the financial world by politicians, stockbrokers, bankers, and other important members of society in positions of power are now able to be performed and executed on a much larger and more poisonous level than Mandeville