Philosophy Club Meeting: Losing Social Capital by Not Spending It
Please join us in Auerbach 320 or online this Wednesday, Sept. 13, from 1 p.m. – 2 p.m., for our next meeting of the University of Hartford Philosophy Club as Brian Skelly presents for discussion: Losing Social Capital By Not Spending It — Improving our Management of Informal Economic Resources.
To join the meeting online, click here. If you have trouble joining, call Brian Skelly at 413.273.2273.
This essay is about our economic wastefulness, though in a sense so indirect we may fail to see it as part of the economy at all. Still, we should not let its indirectness fool us with regard to the negative impact such wastefulness has on our economy in the direct, more obvious sense – and on our politics as well. Whereas typically and in the more direct senses, wastefulness occurs by overspending or overconsuming, the kind of wastefulness I am addressing here occurs by not spending. I am not referring to the failure to invest money or materials assets, which, strictly speaking, would not count as spending, since the wealth is retained and, if the investment is successful, grown. I am speaking about the failure to suspend our “social capital”. In contrast to all the planning we do to spend our material wealth wisely and to invest and grow it by carefully considered investment, we do too little – and by the accounts of researchers, less and less, to spend the social capital we have both to strengthen the social bonds of trust that already exist between us and to create bridges of trust and community between groups previously isolated from one another.
It has been commonly remarked that social capital, unlike material assets, increases by being spent, while it shrinks and degrades by not being spent. Money in a bank account with no interest does not grow, but will not degrade either, at least in the absence of punitive fees. Social capital, on the other hand, degrades with non-use. Although no one completely lacks social capital, some are more deprived than others. Yet it is not so much individually owned as contained socially in joint accounts”, the exercise of which reliably causes an increase. Each of us has some share in such accounts, and each of us is always in a position to “spend” from them. In doing so, we build, increase, and improve the community, both by strengthening the bonds of goodwill between us and bridging over to create new bonds where they had been lacking, improving the quality of our own lives while in a manner largely inadvertent laying the grounds for a more prosperous and more connected economy, where high tides actually do lift all boats and wealth is more equitably distributed. (See full document).
Brian Skelly’s publications include Introduction to Philosophy - Themes for Classroom and Reflection, Third Edition, Cognella, 2022. ISBN: 978-1-7935-2686-1; and Logic Between the Lines - Making Philosophical Sense of Logic and Logical Sense of Philosophy, Cognella, First Edition Coming out by the end of 2023.
An ongoing weekly tradition at the University since 2001, the University of Hartford Philosophy Club is a place where students, professors, and people from the community at large meet as peers. Sometimes presentations are given, followed by discussion. Other times, topics are hashed out by the whole group.
Presenters may be students, professors, or people from the community. Anyone can offer to present a topic. The mode of presentation may be as formal or informal as the presenter chooses.
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