Ethical Egoism and Inside Job

The 2010 documentary Inside Job analyzes the reasons behind the 2008 financial crisis. Incorporating television news footage alongside interviews from a number of high-profile financial experts, the film presents the complicated events leading up to the crisis in a way almost anyone can understand. It also suggests that a number of powerful people were aware of the coming crisis and should ultimately be held responsible.

The filmmakers behind Inside Job believe government officials and financial executives who profited as they created an unsustainable economic environment were wrong to do so. However, many of the people they interview claim the opposite. The interviewees who stand behind the events that took place are apparently adhering to a doctrine of Ethical Egoism.

Ethical Egoism is a system of ethics that encourages a focus on what’s best for one’s self. It is the idea that “there is only one ultimate principle of conduct, the principle of self-interest, and this principle sums up all of one’s natural duties and obligations” (Rachels 78). Two of many examples of implied Ethical Egoism in Inside Job include C-SPAN footage of congressional trials where those questioned about encouraging people to purchase “junk” investments disavow any responsibility to do what is best for their clients, and the common practice of rating agencies assigning good credit ratings to bundles of sub-prime mortgages that clearly carried considerable risk so they might become an easily marketed investment. In both cases, the financial agents in question become richer by misleading clients into making decisions that cost the client money. Inside Job informs the viewer that this has been happening for years. As narrator Matt Damon states, “since deregulation began, the world’s biggest financial firms have been caught laundering money, defrauding customers, and cooking their books, again and again and again.” An Ethical Egoist would argue that this self-interest is the right way to behave because we know our own interests best and might misunderstand the desires of another were we to attempt to fulfill them, or that doing something to help another might be construed as charity and considered degrading (Rachels 79). In other words, if money laundering gets me what I want and there is no one to catch me or stop me, then I should launder money. I can’t assume there is any other better way for that money to be spent or invested.

Inside Job explains how the actions of a very few well-placed individuals affected people around the globe. It shows how money travels from a potential homeowner’s pocket, through lenders, investment firms, and insurance companies. It juxtaposes shots of boarded up, foreclosed homes with statistics about America’s declining wealth and power. It casts the net farther, connecting the collapse of America’s economy with other economies around the world, including China, Singapore, and France. James Rachels writes, “Ethical Egoism does not imply that in pursuing one’s interests one ought always to do what one wants to do, or what gives one the most pleasure in the short run” (78). Inside Job disagrees with the notion that rich people got away with engineering a recession but makes certain to suggest that things could have been different. Industry regulations could have held these individuals responsible, sent them to jail, or fined them heavily. Had the government not bailed out AIG, the world economy may have entirely collapsed. Rachels continues, “Ethical Egoism says that a person ought to do what really is in his or her own best interests, over the long run. It endorses selfishness, but it doesn’t endorse foolishness” (78). By emphasizing the potential negative consequences its subjects could have incurred, Inside Job implies their actions are foolish risks and therefore unsound decisions for a pure Ethical Egoist to make.

Inside Job does not endorse Ethical Egoism. It advocates government regulation of the financial industry as a means of ensuring what is best for everyone, not what is best for those in power. It is especially striking, therefore, that it manages to assert its own ethical ideas while simultaneously disproving the logic behind the apparent ethical practices of those it documents.

Works Cited

Inside Job. Dir. Charles H. Ferguson. Sony Pictures Classics, 2010. Amazon Instant Video.

Rachels, James. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. New York: McGraw Hill, 1986.