One of the best books of the late, great Jane Jacobs was Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics (1992).
In it she argued that there were two main systems of thought about political and economic ethics—what she called Guardian morality, which she named for Plato’s philosopher-kings and is the morality of those whose income comes from control of territory, and Commercial morality, which I’ll call Trading morality, the morality of those whose income comes from voluntary exchange.
Guardian morality is concerned with obeying rules and pleasing superiors. Trading morality is concerned with creating value and pleasing a public. A healthy society, for Jacobs, keeps these two systems of morality—or syndromes, in her terminology—in balance and in their proper place.
A Guardian organization, such as a police department, is corrupted when it follows economic incentives, Jacobs wrote. A Trading organization, such as a corporation, is corrupted when it seeks monopoly power instead of creating value.
I claim that what Jacobs called Guardian morality is a conflation of two syndromes. The two are the morality of Plato’s Guardians and the morality of the “spirited” young male warriors that the Guardians used as enforcers.
I’ll call the second syndrome the Warrior syndrome. The Guardian syndrome is an ethic of virtue, and the Warrior syndrome is an ethic of honor. This is a deep division. Neither “Commerce” nor “Trading” is a good word for the third syndrome, because, as I’ll discuss, it is not necessarily about money, but I’ll use it.
The three syndromes roughly correspond to the moral values of the three estates in 18th century France—the feudal lords (warrior), clergy (guardian) and urban merchants (trader). They correspond to prevailing moralities in 17th century colonial America—Puritan Massachusetts (guardian), aristocratic Tidewater Virginia (warrior) and Dutch New Amsterdam (trader).
If you think in terms of three syndromes instead of two, some things become more clear. The Bolsheviks were, as Jacobs wrote, a tyrannical would-be priesthood, an example of a Guardian syndrome gone wrong.
But the Mafia was not, as she said, another example of the same thing. The Mafia is a would-be Warrior aristocracy based on a perverse code of honor.
The problem with certain American police is that they follow a Warrior syndrome when they should be Guardians. They are more concerned with establishing dominance and punishing insults than with preserving order
Below is my revision of Jane Jacobs’ chart. Jacobs’ original words are in italic and my substitutions are in bold-face.