Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
6 Quotes: John C. Bogle on capitalism, values, and virtue
6 Quotes: John C. Bogle on capitalism, values, and virtue
Nov 12, 2024 11:53 PM

John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group of Investment Companies, died yesterday at the age of 89.

Bogle popularized the practice of indexing, the practice of structuring an investment portfolio to mirror the performance of a market yardstick, like the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index. Bogle was a frugal man who championed virtues such as trust and thrift. He was also a philanthropist who gave half his salary to charity. “My only regret about money,” he once said, “is that I don’t have more to give away.”

In honor of his passing, here are six quotes by Bogle on capitalism, values, and virtue:

On why free enterprise matters: “Let’s start with why you should—indeed must—care about our system of free-market capitalism. I argue that it is the job of every concerned citizen to ‘uphold the values that once made our corporate and financial enterprises so successful, fairly providing the rewards of investing to those who put up the capital and assume the risks involved. To win the battle to restore the soul of capitalism, it is these values that must prevail.’ Why? Because, as I explain, ‘we require a powerful and equitable system of capital formation if our nation is to e the infinite, often seemingly intractable, challenges of our risk-fraught modern world. Our economic might, political freedom, military strength, social welfare, and even free religious values depend upon it.’”

On misplaced priorities: “In medieval times, when a traveler approached the city, his eye was captured by the cathedral. Today, his eye is taken by the towers merce. It’s business, business, business, a bottom-line society in which we measure the wrong bottom line, form over substance, prestige over virtue, money over achievement, charisma over character, the ephemeral over the enduring, even Mammon over God.”

On the material and the spiritual: “Our so-called ‘bottom line society’ has not proved hospitable to our religious institutions. Few of those early universities that were formed with a strong sectarian heritage remain closely linked to churches. As our older generations go to their rewards and our younger generations seem to revel more in the seen than the unseen, more in the material things of life than in the spiritual, and, yes, more in the ephemeral than the eternal, church membership is falling. Surely it is no coincidence that our ethical standards too are ebbing.”

On ethical standards: “It is not so much that too many of our principals, our business leaders, seen less ethical, it is that our principles seem less ethical, somehow diluted. There seem to be far fewer absolute standards in the conduct of our affairs—the things that one just doesn’t do. Rather, we rely too heavily on relative standards—“Everyone else is doing it, so I can do it, too”—a concept that would have appalled the Reverends Makemie, Edwards, and Witherspoon, as well as our founding fathers. Such a formula for the perpetuation of selfish behavior is light-years away from the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. . .”

On the virtue of trust: “[Quoting Adam Smith: “(but) by directing his industry in such a manner as to its produce may be of the greatest value, he is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”] This is the classic formulation of how a virtuous society is produced by the invisible hand of self-interest. But it has somehow gone awry. Trusting and being trusted were essential elements explaining why the invisible hand worked for society, but today we seem to rely far less on these essentials. Despite the vital role of self-interest in providing the plenty of modern society, we need something more. We need to restore trust and we need to raise our society’s expectations of the proper conduct of our citizens, and especially of our leaders.”

On the primacy of spiritual values: “[T]hose fundamental values of yore—spiritual rather than temporal, religious rather than sectarian—must remain our highest aspiration. If we understand our history, and learn from our great religious and political leaders and from history’s lessons of virtue mitment, that goal need not be utopian. Perhaps now is the time for another ‘Great Awakening.’ It is hardly a moment too soon.”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Spending the stimulus
Last week the Providence Journal ran a piece by me on the ing “rebate” checks from the government intended to be an economic stimulus, “The mandate is to ‘spend all you can’.” I take issue with the idea that the government gives us money that is our own in the first place, and then tells us how we ought to spend it: on consumables and retail goods to spur growth in the economy. Instead, I propose that people “should use...
Mea culpa (or, how I got pwned by public radio)
Last night as I was driving to an appointment, I was listening to our local NPR affiliate here in Grand Rapids, and specifically to the show Marketplace. I happened to hear a story about how the government and economists were concerned that the money given to taxpayers via the “economic stimulus package” may actually be used for purposes other than retail spending, thereby not causing the intended “stimulus.” Not the first story of this sort that I’ve heard over the...
Population control update
Ted Turner in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today: (via) One way bat global warming, Turner said, is to stabilize the population. “We’re too many people; that’s why we have global warming,” he said. “Too many people are using too much stuff.” Turner suggested that “on a voluntary basis, everybody in the world’s got to pledge to themselves that one or two children is it.” Admitting that he’s “always suffered from foot-in-the-mouth disease,” Turner added, “I’ve gotten a lot better, though. It’s...
Rev. Robert A. Sirico at the University Club of Chicago
Rev. Robert A. Sirico in Chicago This afternoon, Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico took his most recent address from the 2008 Acton Lecture Series on the road to Chicago, Illinois. Sirico addressed an audience at the University Club of Chicago on The Rise and Eventual Downfall of the New Religious Left. If you were in attendance and would like to listen again, or weren’t able to attend today either today or at last month’s ALS event, you can listen...
Humans and hybrids
In recent years the UK has emerged as a key player in both genetic experimentation and in corresponding legal battles over the extent to which the government ought to regulate such research. The latest ing from across the pond involves passage of a bill legalizing the creation of human-animal hybrids with certain restrictions (regarding type and length of survival). Three members of the governing cabinet were “reportedly considering resignation if forced to back the Bill.” Controversy arose over the call...
CAGW names names
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has released their “Pig Book” for 2008, which is an pilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. The 2008 Pig Book identified 11,610 projects at a cost of $17.2 billion in the 12 Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2008. A ‘pork’ project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures.” According to CAGW, “despite last year’s ethics and lobbying ‘reform,’ pork-barrel...
New Deal for April Fools
Last month marked the 75th anniversary of the beginning of FDR’s “New Deal”. The Great Depression is the most famous event in U.S. macro-economic history. Most or all of my students know that it happened in the first half of the 20th century. They have no sense of what caused it– except perhaps to lay blame on the 1929 stock market crash. And they have a vague sense that the New Deal policies of FDR were helpful in ending it....
Global Warming Consensus alert: I hope your earth hour party was as crazy as mine!
It’s been a while since we’ve seen pletely meaningless gesture on behalf of the unsinkable global warming consensus. As such, it’s my pleasure to announce that the next meaningless gesture will occur… last Saturday? Oops. Yes, Saturday evening saw the arrival of Earth Hour, an 8-9 pm extravaganza of switching off lights that apparently not many people knew about. For example, here’s the local reaction from the Grand Rapids Press: …some of Grand Rapids’ most prominent environmentalists, including Mayor George...
An impoverished culture
Rod Dreher links to a piece by Cato’s Brink Lindsey, “Culture of Success.” The conclusion of Lindsey’s piece is that familial culture is more important to child success in school and economic achievement than external assistance, in the form of tuition grants or otherwise: If more money isn’t the answer, what does have an impact? In a word: culture. Everything we know about high performance in all fields of endeavor tells us that, while natural talent is a plus, there...
The burden of Italian red tape
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Europe, Alberto Mingardi of Istituto Bruno Leoni (and long-time Acton friend) lists some of the reforms Italy needs to boost economic growth, which is forecast at a measly 0.6 – 0.8 percent for 2008. Mingardi advocates a number of tax cuts and a more determined privatization of state assets. Some of these issues are being discussed – timidly – in the current election campaign; Mingardi also focuses on de-regulation and de-bureaucratization, issues heretofore neglected by...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved