"People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy"
About this Quote
Meritocracy’s favorite magic trick is turning luck into morality. Galbraith, the economist who spent a career puncturing the self-flattering myths of affluent societies, nails the psychological reflex that keeps inequality feeling righteous: the comfortable don’t just enjoy their comfort, they sanctify the conditions that produced it.
The intent is diagnostic, not sentimental. “Fortunate position” is a deliberately bloodless phrase, as if wealth and status were merely a seat assignment rather than the output of policy, inheritance, networks, and timing. That understatement sharpens the sting: if fortune is treated as a neutral fact, then the leap to “virtue” looks less like reasoning and more like a reflex. The subtext is that prosperity is rarely permitted to remain morally arbitrary. It gets retrofitted into a character story: I have this because I deserve it; the system works because it worked for me.
Galbraith’s context matters. Writing in the long postwar boom and then watching the rise of market fundamentalism, he understood how economic ideology becomes a defense mechanism. When the winners narrate their outcomes as the reward for discipline and talent, they also convert institutions into mirrors of their self-image. That move doesn’t merely soothe guilt; it builds consent. If success is evidence of goodness, then redistribution looks like theft, regulation like punishment, and critique like envy.
The line works because it exposes a quiet bargain: comfort buys not only security, but a story in which the world is fair enough to justify keeping it.
The intent is diagnostic, not sentimental. “Fortunate position” is a deliberately bloodless phrase, as if wealth and status were merely a seat assignment rather than the output of policy, inheritance, networks, and timing. That understatement sharpens the sting: if fortune is treated as a neutral fact, then the leap to “virtue” looks less like reasoning and more like a reflex. The subtext is that prosperity is rarely permitted to remain morally arbitrary. It gets retrofitted into a character story: I have this because I deserve it; the system works because it worked for me.
Galbraith’s context matters. Writing in the long postwar boom and then watching the rise of market fundamentalism, he understood how economic ideology becomes a defense mechanism. When the winners narrate their outcomes as the reward for discipline and talent, they also convert institutions into mirrors of their self-image. That move doesn’t merely soothe guilt; it builds consent. If success is evidence of goodness, then redistribution looks like theft, regulation like punishment, and critique like envy.
The line works because it exposes a quiet bargain: comfort buys not only security, but a story in which the world is fair enough to justify keeping it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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