High-benefit justifications frame self-interested finance as serving the common good

Evidence

Financiers rely heavily on economic justifications of their business practices. They argue that when it is free from obstructive regulations, the finance industry promotes economic growth by supporting innovations and providing capital for productive industries. Economic growth raises the standard of living and contributes in other ways to the common good. At the height of the global economic meltdown of the financiers own making, Lloyd Blankfein, chief of Goldman Sachs, extolled how the financial industry serves the greater good: “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose.” He described himself as “doing God’s work” (Carney, 2009). Viewing oneself as promoting the common good through holy work obviates the need for self-censure. The missionary claim might be dismissed as spoken in jest. However, given the financial meltdown, one must believe in the goodness of one’s work to preserve a sense of self-respect. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1515

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels how ordinary citizens justify supporting Islamophobic policy as protecting national security rather than harming minorities. — connects to: Financial self-interest is framed as advancing the common good through free-market logic; Human self-interest drives us to invent profit schemes heedless of lasting harm — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 99
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1515