Transcribed: I Believe There's A Problem With These Bootstraps

A lot of podcasts are hopping on to the financial crisis bandwagon, looking at ways that (theoretically) non-economic topics may actually help us understand the current crisis. A relatively new podcast, On Economic Virtue, (produced by the folks responsible for public radio's Speaking of Faith) melds economic and religious thought. I'm not yet sold on the podcast overall, but I was intrigued by the thoughts of one guest, religion historian Martin Marty, on the separation he saw between economics and ethics.

If the schools of economics would revisit the human venture—its religious dimensions, its ethical dimensions, few of which came into play—we could have produced a generation of achievers. We don't want to limit the impulse to initiate. But I always think when someone's initiating [a new venture], she wouldn't be executive if someone weren't paying taxes for the university she went to, if somebody weren't running the electricity off which she powers her device. So the whole self-made image, I think, is the root of immorality.

I once heard someone say, 'He's a self-made man, and he worships his creator.'

—Martin Marty, a religion historian, on On Economic Virtue, 11.26.08