Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics

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Random House, 1992 - Business & Economics - 236 pages
This book examines the ethical structures that sustain social and economic life. Jacobs argues that human behaviour is governed by two distinct ethical systems. The first is a 'guardian syndrome', which arises from behaviour that we share with other animals -- foraging for food and protecting our territories. Guardians work in the armed forces and police, government ministries and their bureaucracies, legislatures, courts, and organized religions. The second syndrome is 'commercial', arising from trade and the production of goods, a uniquely human activity. From these two modes of survival have come two discrete and contradictory ethical systems. Conflicts occur when the precepts appropriate to one are imposed on the other. For example, when New York's subway transit police applied commercial values to their work by rewarding increased output per officer, the result was a greater number of false arrests by police who expected to be compensated. According to Jacobs, guardians are morally compromised whenever commercial needs compel them to abandon their role as arbiter and enforcer. An understanding of the strengths and limits of these ethical systems gives insight into a number of interesting questions : When is industriousness a vice? Why do government-run businesses consistently bog down in waste and inefficiency? When is it ethical to deceive? Why do the most macho societies have the weakest economies?

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Contents

ONE Armbrusters Summons
3
TWO A Pair of Contradictions
23
SEVEN Anomalies
112
Copyright

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About the author (1992)

Jane Jacobs lives in Toronto.

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