Continued

I should mention how much free market romanticism is detrimental to sustaining a free market ethic.  The fact that the most direct way to establish property rights is by a prohibition on stealing and one on coveting should indicate that living within the restraints of a free market is not always a satisfying endeavor.  The libertarian impulse to equate the free market with sleeping around is delusional.  It is more like monogamy; you have to stay with what is yours and not wander.  It isn’t an accident that the restriction on stealing in the Ten Commandments is next to the prohibition of adultery.

But I’m not really concerned about an attempt to form a civilization around legalized prostitution.  I’m talking about free-market boosterism that preaches riches for all.

Can’t happen.

Yes, everyone’s standard of living can go up overtime in a free society.

But that is far different and a much less attractive claim.  It is more pleasant to dwell on the less common rags to riches stories and then pretend that what happened was entirely due to personal ability or commitment.

But not everyone can be rich at the same time because “rich” is, by definition, an observation that someone is above the economic average.

It is delusional to use “rags to riches” stories to get around this fact.  People with great ability and commitment do not necessarily find a way to make a fortune.  And many do come into a fortune without such ability or commitment.

So the possibility of “the American Dream” needs to be left out of any explanation of a free market. The false promise of “the American Dream” leads to politically manufactured booms that end in busts and lead to corporate fascism and then socialism.

I was asked this awhile back via email and realize I didn’t reply.  I thought maybe it would be good to answer it here.  The problem is time.  So I’ll do this in installments.  Please feel free to leave questions in the comments so that I can address everything.

No Impatient Rebellion Against the Status Quo

First of all, Christians can live as Christians with all sorts of slavery.  Christian slaves are supposed to serve their masters diligently and cheerfully according to the teaching we find in the New Testament.  That would apply to slaves in the Mediterranean world in the Roman Empire and it would apply to conquered countries that had to serve the Roman Empire.

If I tried to get the story of Joseph made into a movie, Hollywood would want Joseph to acquire a weapon and kill Potiphar, escape back to Canaan and avenge himself on his brothers.  The story in the Bible has Joseph working hard and faithfully so that he rules and saves the world.

(One might ask about Southern culture teaching slaves to obey their masters but not feeling the same quiet piety when they had to submit to a political regime they didn’t like.)

So it doesn’t demand that we be obstinate in a rigged market situation.

Private Property is Fundamental

But the Bible does affirm private property.  The Eighth and Tenth Commandments together clearly spell this out:

You shall not steal…  You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

And consistent with these two basic commands in the Decalogue, there follow other laws about honest weights and measures and impartial justice favoring neither the poor nor the rich.

So that’s the basic “blueprint”: private property, equal justice, honest trade.

Israel & Jubilee

Of course, Israel was a special case.  It didn’t acquire territory through individual homesteading like much of the American West was settled.  Rather, the twelve tribes came into the Land, killed everyone else (or were supposed to) and gave every household unit an equal parcel of usable land, through casting lots as the way of knowing which part of the Land God wanted to give that family forever.

This may have affected wealth differences, but it was not meant to end them.  Some people rented out their land for others to farm.  Some worked it well and made a fortune, while others were reduced to poverty.  The book of Ruth shows some of these dynamics and shows family being the main way that these circumstances, when they arose, were alleviated.  Likewise Paul says that any Christian who has a needy relative needs to take care of them so that the Church is not burdened.  Otherwise, they are worse than unbelievers.

TO BE CONTINUED

Economically, it was naïve. Trying to solve pricing problems on the other side of the world through our shopping choices may make us feel better, but it is unlikely to have much effect, except possibly to make the situation worse. Basic economics tells us that the usual reason prices for a particular commodity are low is that too much of it is being produced: supply and demand. This normally motivates some farmers to move into other crops that are in shorter supply, and thus have a higher price, giving greater return to the farmer. It’s why those nasty free markets tend to promote efficiency and prosperity.

However, artificially propping up the price of a commodity distorts this process and removes the incentive for farmers to diversify. In fact, it does the opposite: it creates an incentive for others to start producing that crop (since it has a guaranteed higher price), thus increasing output and putting an even further downward pressure on price. So there is a reasonable chance that the well-meaning ‘Fairtrade’ movement may actually make things worse in the long run for the majority of third world farmers. The world is very complex place, and solving problems in the world (economic and otherwise) is very difficult. The intuitively obvious action (let’s give some farmers more money for their coffee by buying Fairtrade) may, in fact, end up having larger negative consequences we haven’t stopped to consider.

The same is true for nearly all the practical, secular problems we face. And the larger, more complex and more distant the problem, the more resistant it is to simple, feel-good solutions. It’s why being a politician is such an unenviable task. Even if you’re smart enough to foresee some of the byproducts and consequences of your policies, there will be unforeseen negative results and implications that will only become apparent over time. (We could have the same conversation about global warming, and whether we really have any idea how bad it will be, and whether our proposed solutions will, in fact, make things on the whole better or worse—but let’s leave that for another time!)

This is not just an economic judgement born of observation (although the older you get, the more you observe this phenomenon in action); it is a theological observation as well. It’s the world that Ecclesiastes 3 describes for us so beautifully—a world in which we can see glimpses of order and goodness, and in which we can affirm that everything has its right time, and yet a world which eludes us. We cannot see the whole—neither in all its parts and variety, nor in its future. This is the burden God has laid upon humanity, Ecclesiastes tells us. It is the frustration he has afflicted us with so that we might seek him, who alone sees all and knows the meaning of all.

via The Sola Panel | Smell the coffee.

The local 97.1 right-wing radio personality decided to tell anyone who is not on the street protesting that they should go to hell with the Leftists because they are part of the problem.

Her message was that, if you are too busy making a living, then you are morally compromised.

So the paid activist who makes a living by advertising for companies that sell products and services was condemning the people who made her life possible.

I remember P. J. O’Rourke back in the eighties pointing out that there will always be Leftist because

Trouble is fun.  It will always be more fun to carry a gun around in the hills and sleep with ideology-addled college girls than to spend life behind a water buffalo or rotting in a slum.

And that is why conservatism will always be unromantic, unhip, and uncool.  Living a quiet life is not a glorious quest (except it is, but that requires the eyes to see).

And it is also why the state and the corporations or the corporations and the state–the predator class–will always have the time and energy to increase their control and exploitation of their lives.  Everyone likes power and profit but some people had to earn it.  Others work for it without earning it.  That is politics.

To rip into people for not being political beings is to basically despise conservative life.

In any case, Dana’s panic was largely driven by her confidence that if passed “health care” could never be repealed.  But that underestimates what is going on.  The entire twentieth century was a bubble that is about to pop.  Everything is about to be repealed, especially the “rule” that once enacted it is impossible to repeal a law.

We live in glorious times.  No need to beat up the people living through them.