Christianity and Libertarianism, Part 2: Service

Another thing that I absolutely love about free markets is that in order to succeed, you have to actually do something for your neighbor that your neighbor wants you to do! Think about that for a moment. If nobody is required by coercion (laws) to buy something from you or hire you to perform a service, guess what you have to do: serve your neighbor!

The word “serve” is often used synonymously with things like “sacrifice” to imply that you cannot receive any reward for whatever act of service you have done. But service is a much broader term. We have departments in companies called “customer service,” and the “service desk” is a place where we can get help at the hardware store. “Quality service” is a mantra that many businesses use because if they live up to it that may mean more revenue (gasp!). My parents and grandparents used to call the place where we refuel our cars “service stations.” Why? Because they paid for a service performed, namely the filling up of a car and/or the checking of oil or washing of a windshield. I can assure you that the men who did this work on my father’s SUV were not doing it for charity. They were doing it because they wanted to earn money. But it did not diminish the quality of the service itself.

A Christian theology of community emphasizes the value and need for social connection and social cooperation. Church life, if it works well at all, is predominantly built upon social values of love and sacrifice. It is only since Western Christianity that we’ve valued individuality at the expense of the community. While individualism is excellent when placed in the context of human rights and boundaries of order, it is only one part of the equation in society. Community is necessary for vibrancy in personhood and the social order. Cooperation in market exchanges represent one method of community. When people are free to exchange as they see fit, they will be required to make decisions about who they will trade with. In short, they will cooperate with some people and ignore others. Whoever serves others’ needs and wants in the most desired way succeeds.

But what does cooperation have to do with service? In order to cooperate with somebody, we must give up something of our own. We all start with different resources available to us, whether we were rich or poor. Most of us have the ability to work and provide labor for somebody else. It all starts here. I willingly offer my labor to a company who will pay me. I’d rather not do it. I’d rather the company just give me the money. I’d rather stay at home and watch TV or read books or play on my iPad. I’d rather go fly a Piper Cub. But in order to do any of those things (all of which, by the way, are luxuries and not necessities), I have to serve somebody who considers what I have to offer worthy of wages. I have to give up something of mine. Once that occurs, I’ve earned my wages, and now I want food. I’d prefer that the grocer just give me food. (By the way, those of you reading who think health care is a human right, why isn’t food a human right? And why not the public outrage that we actually have to pay for the food we eat?) But I can’t just take the food. I have to give up something for it. Indirectly, I’ve had to serve somebody in society for that food.

Service is a broad concept, especially when we think about the way in which we interact with people every day. Our lives are filled with millions of choices, many of which are minor, but many that require us to sacrifice something. Today I went out to eat with some co-workers. I had to decide whether the $5+tip was worth more to me than the food I was potentially going to buy. The restaurant owner(s) had to decide whether or not it was worth it to spend ahead of time—before they had any idea I might want to eat at their restaurant—enough human labor and capital (read: freezers, fridges, food storage, grills, and dinnerware, to name a few), both of which cost them a lot of money. Each on the end of the transaction made a decision to sacrifice something in order to gain what the other had.

I marvel every time I go to Starbucks or the grocery store and the cashier says, “Thank you.” Huh? Why are they thanking me? I’m the one who got the product, right? All they got was a lousy green piece of paper with a dead mans face and a bunch of weird symbols on it. Yet the reality is that we both gained from the transaction. Even if the cashier wasn’t the owner, she has gained because I’ve been a small part of what keeps her employed at a place she apparently has chosen to work (yes, I realize that some people aren’t at their favorite jobs; but nobody is forced to work anywhere specific unless you’re a child under 16 and you must work at the local government school—but that’s another issue!). Both of us are better off after the transaction (or at least we have acted as such).

Cooperation is a beautiful thing. Progressives talk about it all the time, yet they seem to miss the point because they advocate for coercive methods in order to achieve their “social cooperation.” Libertarians advocate for freedom of association and freedom of exchange, which by definition requires people to serve another if they want to get ahead in life. Not only does this facilitate cooperation, it is a huge mechanism to thwart greed, which is a social and personal problem that the anti-capitalists blame on free markets. But that will have to wait for another post.

Ron Paul on the Morality of Markets

One of the biggest lies coming from the progressive movement regarding free market advocates is that we are not very “morality-based” in our economics. Instead of focusing on economic policies that have moral outcomes, they say we focus on the amoral and perhaps immoral economic outcomes, regardless of their moral.

While nothing could be further from the truth, Ron Paul has some great audio from his recent meetings with the Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke. You can sense the moral pleading in his voice, asking the Fed Chairman to reconsider his views that are harming the poor and hurting the nation.

Christianity and Libertarianism, Part 1: Non-Aggression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock

Progressives absolutely love to tell those in power about their expertise in how the world ought to run. Progressive Christians, opportunists they are, jump at offering their better and more enlightened ethics of the kingdom into this political arrangement. Compassionately and with good intentions, they seek to change the world through changing the structures of power to lean their way, so that the goals, outcomes, and real-world arrangements of society look like they believe it ought to look. Justice will reign, they say, when the right legislation is passed, the right regulations are placed on commerce and exchange, and the right leaders are in place. (We need to forget for the moment that, by definition, the “right legislation, regulations, and leaders” would lead to whatever ideal society they are looking for. But such shows the arrogance of progressives.)

What Progressive Christians especially forget is the key ingredient to the outcome of social justice. The idea of freedom, or liberty, is essential to life, and—yes—justice. And here is where I believe libertarianism offers an incredible insight into the ethics of social interaction. This insight is the foundational principle of libertarians, and is quite obviously very compatible with the Christian faith.

This cornerstone principle is called the “non-aggression axiom,” which states that no person has the right to aggress the property or person of another person, with exception of self-defense. So unless you have previously been aggressed upon, you should not, under any circumstances, do unto another something they do not wish that you do.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this arrangement sounds very Christian to me. Would Jesus approve of our aggressing another to do what we would have him do? Would Jesus approve of our enforcement upon another a belief with which he did not agree? I doubt it. In fact, I believe Jesus would probably go one step further, and disregard the “defense” exception of the axiom, since he tells us to “turn the other cheek” if someone aggresses us, and to pray for those who persecute us. But that doesn’t exclude the non-aggression principle.

What most people don’t think about is the flip side of this argument. While I’ll address the so-called “selfish” components of libertarianism in another post, I should briefly point out that this principle means we passionately defend other people’s right to not be aggressed upon. It’s definitely easy to say “Don’t bother me,” and point out the inherent selfishness in that statement. But we ought not forget the converse, which means, “Leave them alone, too!” “Them” is our neighbor, the poor person, the downtrodden, the widow and orphan. But that is not, as it might be misconstrued, a call to leave people to fend for themselves. It’s akin to saying, “Don’t harm them!”

So at the start, Christianity is indeed compatible with libertarianism’s foundational principle. Both seek to respect one’s neighbor. Both defend everyone’s right to life and liberty. And both share at least half of Jesus’ principle of peace, though of course Jesus would probably go further.

Does Jesus Negate Economics?

Bob Murphy, an anarcho-capitalist economist who is also a Christian, is a daily blogger who writes about economics from various angles, some of which I can’t even pretend to follow, others which are more philosophical in nature (which is where I’m most interested in human action and economic analysis). On Sundays, however, he writes a single post with a few “spiritual” thoughts unrelated to economics, though once in a while he connects the dots between the Christian worldview (at least from his perspective) and his economics worldview.

Today Bob (I hope I can get away with calling him by his first name since he’s never corrected me in an Email) posted an entry called “Economics, Selfishness, and the Gospel,” which was a follow-up entry to “Does Economics Require Selfishness?” While I didn’t follow the commenters on the first entry, it appears as though the first half of this second entry funnels into a religious comment about following Jesus. This sentence is worth pointing out:

If everyone really followed the commands of Jesus, it’s entirely possible that society would be so incredibly transformed that humans would live on a different plane of existence.

For many Christians disgruntled with what they falsely believe are the inherent dangers of capitalism and the free market, it’s very difficult to read these words coming from a self-profclaimed anarcho-capitalist who has written two essays in market anarchy [PDF] defending a likely success of private law and private defense. Anybody who has listened to the free audiobook of Chaos Theory and not been interested in giving the argument a fair shake would be aghast at his suggestions.

But I don’t find them difficult to swallow in the least because when the imagination is let loose and put to action through ingenuity and determination, there is practically no limit to the benefits in store for those who pursue such ends morally and ethically. Murphy—who has apparently gone out of his way to describe the possibilities of a stateless society (read: no government)—humbly offers that we can barely conceive of a world where everybody would actually follow the teachings of Jesus. Though offering a few suggestions, such as people not knowing what it was like to be last in a game of tag (but somebody would be last, right?), or not knowing what fiat money or the military draft were, I think Murphy in some ways is simply describing what it would be like if the world were perfect. Given that Jesus’ commands were difficult to follow by those who witnessed the miracles and were hugged by the Messiah himself, I’ll give Murphy the benefit of the doubt that he was hypothesizing on this “plane of existence.” I would disagree, however, “that the writings of free-market economists would seem naive or very limited.” No, I believe they would be very helpful in understanding human nature. Even in a world where people mostly followed Jesus’ commands, economics—as the study of human action—would be a vital science for social progress.

As a seminary-trained Christian highly interested in philosophical economics, it seems to me that in a world where people mostly followed Jesus, economists would spend more time describing the actions and interactions of human beings rather than both describing what they observe and prescribing policies for how things ought to be. What irks me the most about Christians who are hell-bent against the free market is that they tend to blame it for all sorts of social ills, but they will never admit that ideally, people ought to be free. “You need to take into account sin nature.” they say. “People are selfish, greedy, and sinful,” is supposedly a “proof” that we need a centralized authority telling people how they ought to behave, as if for some reason defending equal freedom for everyone without exception does not inherently account for a provision for such sinfulness. No, their solution is to put corrupt and sinful people into positions of absolute authority with the power of weaponry behind them. Doesn’t sound very “Christian” to me. But even on other blogs, I’ve had my faith questioned because I’ve defended the ideal of a free society, one without coercion and threat of violence from a monopoly institution.

If everyone agreed that choosing to follow the life and teachings of Jesus would create a better society, and we all agreed that we’d try very hard at doing so, and even if we largely succeeded in doing so, the world would certainly be an utterly different experience from how it is today. But I don’t think that would negate the need to study human action. If anything, it would be a demonstration of and make us appreciate the amazing progress that is made by people cooperating and trading at each other’s benefits.

Is There an Equality Gap?

(This is the seventh in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values.)

Every time I began a chapter of Wallis’s book, Rediscovering Values, I expected to find quite a bit that I disagreed with. Perhaps it was my general experience of being at odds with Wallis’s politics, but so far I’ve been rather impressed with the points he’s been making. While I’ve been rather critical of certain missed opportunities and failed explanations, in general Wallis is preaching a great message of a return to what he calls “the new old values.”

Then I read the chapter about income gaps. Citing the prophets and biblical archeological finds that report that when wealth equality in ancient Israel existed, prophets did not, and when inequality existed, the prophets were calling Israel back to equality. Wallis is unclear about what kind of inequality he’s talking about, but it is clear that he doesn’t like the “gap” between the rich and the poor. When the gap becomes greater (again, we must ask, by what measure?), economic turmoil is on the horizon.

The rest of the chapter is a diatribe about how back in the “good ole’ days” when Wallis grew up, the income gap between CEOs and the average worker was much less than it is today, and how today the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Citing various statistics that supposedly prove his point, he uses large numbers like the billion dollar salaries of employees to arouse our emotional anger. And if that were not enough to arouse our anger, he cites Reagan tax cut revolution, as if they were the source of the income inequality that has occurred over the past 30 years! (He ignores the fact that the government taxing wealth actually squelches productivity, wages, and social progress, not to mention its ethical considerations.)

I’m not economist, but I have learned a few things that Wallis would be better off knowing:

• In a market economy free from coercion (and when people are protected from it), wealth is not “distributed,” but is created
• The categories of “rich” and “poor” are not only relative categories, they are fluid; in other words, the same people who qualify as “poor” are by and large not poor given a certain amount of time, nor are the rich
• Anybody can cite a statistic and say, “Aha!” to prove their point
• A free market does not create “winners” and “losers” in the same way the government does

William Anderson, a Christian economist who has written about economic inequality, points out that inequality can be and is often created by the government more often than from a free market.

If there are dark economic clouds on the horizon, they have been placed there by the state. Violent government intervention into peaceful exchange and production can never result in production of more wealth. Instead, government creates winners and losers and changes the system of incentives. Where once people had to be inventive and creative in order to create products that others wished to purchase, now they must pay off their respective politician who will then attempt to change the structure of property rights in order to transfer wealth from productive to non-productive people….

Then there is the Federal Reserve System, which inflates the currency and creates its own set of winners and losers. Of course, as the Austrian Economists have demonstrated, an economic boom fed by currency expansion cannot sustain itself for long, and when the inevitable bust occurs, many economic opportunities are lost.

Art Carden, another Christian economist, deals with the question of how to measure inequality, and that many measurements are misleading and used only to supposedly “prove” a particular political side of the argument. He says that “[o]ur measurements of income and income inequality don’t account for the true differences, or lack thereof, between the sets of goods that the rich and the poor are able to consume. While income figures suggest that the gap between the rich and the poor is expanding, these figures may be misleading.” He argues that it may be better “to think of ‘inequality’ in terms of our ability to substitute the goods available to the poor for the goods available to the rich.”

There are many articles that deal with the eagerness by many political pundits to use the arguments about inequality to support agendas of wealth redistribution (though distribution may be the more accurate term). Walter Williams ponders the question, “Are the poor getting poorer?” here.  Thomas Sowell deals with inequality here and here.

Do I fault Wallis for railing against inequality? Not really. He’s merely pointing out something that may be harmful. And while he does write that “the gap was the deliberate result of public policy and political decisions made to benefit one group over another” (pg. 87), he is content to blame the Reagan revolution for such deliberateness, rather than explain the economics of central banking and its very own creation of winners and losers through its wealth distribution program for the politically well-connected.

“It’s All About Me”

(This is the fifth in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values.)

As I’ve said before in other places, Jim Wallis has a prophetic ability to point out what adjustments ought to be made by those who are otherwise behaving in ways that are dangerous and self-defeating. This chapter, titled, “It’s All About Me,” named after one of the three things that “got us here” [into the Great Recession], is an insightful yet critical assessment of the attitudes that pervaded the American people, from the Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, to Wall Street, and to Main Street.

Jim Wallis doesn’t like the idea of a free market self-regulating because it doesn’t result in the kind of things he wishes for society. He never uses the term “free market” because he cannot get away with calling it “free” (though why he is prevented from doing so begs the question, “What is keeping it from being free?”). While acknowledging that self-interest “often does do its job” (pg. 54), he warns that basic self-interst can turn into self-obsession, narcissism, and dangerous pride.

The rest of the chapter is essentially examples of how our society has become narcissistic and now leans toward extreme individualism, and providing the antidotes of humility and community. Wallis calls Greenspan the “high priest” of the economy in recent years, who said that the principles of self-interest would govern the economy and keep it from faltering. Wallis would do well in his prophetic and critical role to point out in more depth than merely calling Greenspan the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. It is a perfect opportunity to explain the fatal conceit of believing that a central banking institution whose sole purpose is to cushion the blow of excessive self-interest and greed could actually purport to keep the economy in check.

If you are looking for a great examination of the attitudes that caused our recession, Wallis provides great insight into the dangerous and deceptive path of excessive greed and self-interest. But Wallis does not go far enough in his criticism of the Fed. It appears as though if he were to advocate anything (though this section of the book is about the causes and not the cures), he would explain how it is important that in a free market, self-interest is inherently limited by a natural standard of wealth that cannot be artificially manipulated by a central banking cartel approved by the federal government.

Is Greed Good?

(This is the fourth in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values.)

Greediness is a social sin that is likely akin to smoking—everyone knows it’s bad. We avoid people who are greedy. We stop patronizing a business that feels as though greed is what drives it. And we more often than not do not praise greedy ambitions. Yet as Tim Keller points out (in a sermon I don’t have the link to), greed is a sin that nobody realizes they have, and easily explain it away. Unlike adultery, where you don’t just find yourself naked in the arms of your non-spouse, and think, “How did I get here!?” greediness sneaks up on us from within. We don’t wake up and decide to be greedy. Somewhere in our minds, we justify greedy behavior by calling it by another name—ambition, passion, self-interest. Yet somehow it is something we all tend to battle. It’s all about us, we want things our way, and we want it now.

Critics of a free market often chastise the concept of markets as “based on greed,” claiming that since its foundations are immoral and suspect, the progress delivered by the results of a free market are also dubious. Yet this criticism is unfounded and unfair, in part because no serious free marketeer believes that “greed is good,” and even the oft-quoted “greed is good” from the film Wall Street, in context, leads us to admit that greed isn’t exactly the best word to describe how markets work. Whatever the definitions we choose for the words “greed” and “self-interest” (which is often equated with the greed), its connotations lead us to the understanding that greediness is an attitude by which somebody seeks self-gain at the expense of somebody else, and doesn’t concern themselves with the ramifications of the nature of such exchanges.

To be sure, everyone becomes greedy at some point and in some fashion. As human beings, we are selfish creatures, looking for pleasures wherever they are to be found. It is natural (and not inherently immoral) that we seek our own interest. Indeed, it is the only way which we are able to act, for the very definition of “acting” means we are consciously acting in ways that benefit us in either an intrinsic or extrinsic way.

If we act out of our self-interest, and if this is not an inherently immoral notion, what is it about greed that makes it immoral? It is the “at others’ expense” part of the definition of greed that sets it apart from the notion of self-interest. The person acting out of self-interest is doing that which is natural (even a “selfless act” is done at the intrinsic gain by the one acting for somebody else’s gain). The greedy person is doing it with no regard for what it may cost others. Note that this doesn’t necessarily have to cost somebody something at the greedy man’s expense, it’s his attitude toward whether or not it could.

So what does this have to do with Jim Wallis’s chapter, “Greed is Good”? Jim blames greediness, but he doesn’t just blame Wall Street, though there is plenty of blame to place there.  He tells stories of the uber-wealthy and their 100-foot yachts that feel like dinghies to the owners to point out that there is always something more to covet, something greater to buy. And he even blames “normal people”  who were willing to finance a “second mortgage” to get things they don’t need. Society has devolved into a “you are what you own” sort of culture, and we all tend to buy into it as “normal.” But as Dave Ramsey says just about every day, “normal is broke. We want to be oddballs.”

Wallis writes, “Without a clear sense of self, a strong identity, and a community of purpose, it seems our default mode is to identify ourselves by the things we own” (pg. 50). In a society where affluence is the norm (compared to most of the rest of the world), we tend to take for granted that we work less than our ancestors did and can afford leisure because we are more productive! We are so far removed from what “basic needs” are that we easily fall into the trap of identifying ourselves by what we own. We find identity in brand names, our cars, our homes, our kids, our electronics, our clothes, and our music. When asked “who are you?” we typically identify with various aspects of our favorite forms of consumption, rather than with something that reflects our self-understanding and inner awareness.

So when it comes to greediness, it is an important sin to purge, especially when such “social sins” can be so systemic they disrupt the economy as a whole. But blaming greed itself is like blaming alcohol for drunkenness. Not only must there be a provider of the alcohol, there has to be incentive to consume the alcohol in excess. So it merely begs the question: how did we become so greedy? What in our society permitted greed to run rampant? If the rule of law was meant to restrain people from doing things at the expense of others, what happened?

This is where Jim Wallis fails to go. I’d like to believe that he simply doesn’t know about this, but it is more than likely that he doesn’t want to admit the source of the greed-enabling because it would undermine his belief in a “good government” with power to manipulate the economy for “social justice.” So far in this book (and I’ve skimmed the rest of it) there has been no mention of the Federal Reserve, no mention of government intervening in the marketplace, and no mention of legislation that encourages excessively risky lending. As Thomas E. Woods points out in his book Meltdown, “the Federal Reserve System is for all intents and purposes an arm of the federal government” (pg. 8). Critics will point out that the Fed is independent, and though they are technically right, it is an institution with federally-granted powers, and is entrenched so deeply with the federal government it appears as if there is not much “independence” in reality.

One of the most discredited ideas of the 20th century is central planning, the notion that the best and brightest minds in society, if in power, can direct resources throughout an economy in order to best appropriate them and put them to effective use. F.A. Hayek called this the “fatal conceit,” an arrogance that in hindsight is actually quite laughable. But instead of controlling the production of manufacturing of steel, or the extraction of oil, like the Soviet Union did, the Federal Reserve manipulates and controls the supply of money, making high-level decisions that ought to be left up to the market. Instead of letting the market set the price of borrowing and lending (i.e. the “interest rate”), the Fed controls that rate. When rates are lower than what the market would set, the result is an artificial boom. Stated another way, it is the appearance of wealth without the creation of wealth. Imagine attempting to build a home, and calculating you had 10 million bricks with which to build it, and so you plan a big house. But then you realize after using about 3 million bricks that you really only have another million left. You’ve got the same result as an artificial interest rate: less wealth (which can only be produced, not printed) than truly exists.

For a sermon, Jim Wallis’s chapter on greed works fairly well. But as a response to what he calls the “Great Recession,” it fails miserably by either refusing to ignoring the importance of putting his finger on a major source of the pain: the Federal Reserve.

Is the Market an American Idol?

(This is the third in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values.)

One of the most critical insights that Jim Wallis has for Christians is to open our eyes to those things that we are ignoring, neglecting, or wrongfully participating in, calling us to a higher calling and a more virtuous ethic. In large part that is what his book is about. When I got to this chapter, “When the Market Became God,” I was a bit upset at the accusation, primarily because Wallis tends to have a naive view of economics. But as I read, I consistently found myself agreeing with Wallis on the general points. It’s some of the ambiguous details that leaves one wanting more (which Wallis may provide later on).

This chapter serves as an introductory chapter to the proceeding three by pointing out the three flawed attitudes in our thinking: greed is good, it’s all about me, and I want it now. While I’ll leave a more detailed commentary when I analyze each of these chapters, for now it is necessary to say that the general complaints about these three things are valid. I’m sure I’ll have trouble with his “greed is good” commentary, but we’ll see.

His first major point was that society has bought into the value that greed is good: society was too eager to let the “invisible hand” become the god of our age because it gave us the illusion of quick wealth and easy earnings. Coupled with the other two attitudes—it’s all about me and I want it now—this is the fatal presumption that we made. “The market,” he writes, “has trumped all else and replaced much of the moral space of society, even questioning the value of having ‘moral space’ where the market does not reach” (pg. 28). Describing the market as “an invasive space,” he says that our identities have been wrapped up in being consumers rather than being citizens.

A serious concern about these accusations is not that they are untrue about society in general, but that “the market” is not well-defined. Is it the stock market? Is it the “free market”? It is unclear because there are so many “markets” of which to speak. If Wallis intends to mean the market in general, there are major ethical implications for vilifying a society where free exchange is permitted amongst consenting adults. If Wallis is speaking of the stock market—i.e. Wall Street and the financial institutions surrounding it—he may indeed have a case, because more often than not Americans have a vague trust and messianic hopefulness toward “the market,” where interest and returns on investment yield untold promises, especially if one is cunning or aggressive enough.

Wallis points out that the market became an idol to Americans like the golden calf became to Israel after Moses came down from Mt. Sinai. The statue was not merely a nice sculpture, but was hailed as the “savior” of Israel. Even Moses brother Aaron was in on the deal! So like Israel, according to Wallis we have in our minds replaced God with the market god, an idolatry of unspeakable ramifications.

Wallis writes that “this did not happen as a result of conscious choices. It happened because we weren’t paying enough attention” (pg. 29). Even the most rabid free marketeer on the planet would admit that blind faith in any immaterial entity—no matter how material it is in reality—can produce the results of our richest fantasies. What’s most unfortunate is that when the market yields in part the results that we want, or for a limited time, we are even more seduced into believing in its snare.

But this is where Wallis fails to go deeper. By using the collective term “we,” he can get away with blaming society as a whole, rather than placing blame squarely where much of the blame can be laid (if not all of it). In a book about examining values, perhaps it isn’t part of the tenor to point out specific entities that are at fault (though he doesn’t have trouble with it elsewhere). Or perhaps Wallis is naive enough to believe that the collective “we” is indeed an entity, and so the blame must rest upon all of us. Wallis is a believer in democracy, so any systemic phenomena is presumed to be indicative of the actions of the collective “we.” Since the market was allowed to act as God in our society, “we” let it happen, so we are all at fault. To some degree, there’s no real issue with this, and Wallis is keen to point out certain faults. But since the almighty “we” is assumed to be represented by the State, Wallis will not very likely lay blame where it ought to be placed: on the federal government and the Federal Reserve System.

The free market doesn’t allow central banking, but competing currencies. The free market is a threat against Big Business, not a support. The free market does not artificially set prices, nor does it expand its monetary supply because money is based on real commodities like gold or other previous metals. But when the market in the United States is manipulated by a federal government, infused with money by an all-powerful central banking system (authorized by the federal government), the invisible hand will indeed “let go of the common good,” as Wallis recently said on The Daily Show. The invisible hand does not exist with such intervention. Indeed, the invisible hand has been cut off, and is twitching on the floor at the feet of the false god of regulation and more central government power.

Wallis’s concern (it seems to me) is that when the market is presumed to reside over our well-being, we put all of our eggs in one basket, hoping for a golden egg if we wait long enough (how many times are we promised prosperity if we just “hold on long enough” to our stock portfolios?). It’s not that we cannot use the market for our benefit; indeed, Wallis agrees that markets are the best way humans have learned how to distribute goods and services. But the problem is when we treat the market in such a way as to provide everything for us, without working or without producing something. As Jon Stewart said to Jim Cramer, “our work is our wealth.” Wallis quoted this in an earlier chapter, and surely agrees.

Wallis wants limits placed on the market, something he believes we have not permitted ourselves as a society to ask. But the unanswered question is to ask who is to place these limits on markets? Is it to be the federal government? Is it the state governments? Are we to preach a more value-based society to the country and expect things to change from within? Whatever his internal musings are regarding how to implement such limits, something that is easily and willingly overlooked is a return to free market principles, where limits are created by the drive to make things better for people rather than take advantage of them. For instance, banks could not and would not have loaned to risky buyers with no credit history, no proof of income, and no down payments, without a central bank backing up such asinine decisions. A free market bank wouldn’t make those loans. A free housing market could not have been distorted by the Federal Reserve’s printing of money via low interest rates, and thus would not have given people the illusion of wealth in equity, permitting such “market as god” attitude throughout the country.

Limits are indeed necessary on the market—however that is defined. But what’s forgotten is that the limits ought to be placed on those who are in control of the strings of power, because those are the truly dangerous. Wallis likes to chide the idea of letting the market “control”  all of our public services (as if a non-breathing entity can “control” something). Forgetting that markets, and especially the free market, is the complex action and interactions of millions of human beings freely exchanging, Wallis reduces the definition to fit his theory that “public services” are somehow beyond the scope of what “the market” can provide. He anecdotally says that a private control over an amusement park is fine, but not over Yellowstone National Park, which is not exactly a great example of superior government oversight.

The market is not some magic black box that can provide us untold riches if we just do what it wants us to do. No, markets are here for us to manage, and when we permit things through governmental coercion and mandates that would otherwise not occur on its own, we see the result not of poor management but of the arrogance of presuming we are able to control an economy to suit our selfish ends. What Wallis won’t recognize is that more regulation is simply replacing another driver (or set of drivers) behind the wheel of a destructive vehicle that should be destroyed at first chance.

Sunday School with Jon Stewart

(This is the second in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values. Click here the introduction to this series, or read my analysis of the Introduction.)

When the new White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said that the Obama Administration won’t let “a good crisis go to waste,” it is very unlikely he was praying that Americans would refocus on their moral values. But when Jim Wallis opens his first chapter with, “Crisis is a good time to clarify the meaning of many things—including our economics, our values, and our religion,” he is reflecting a sentiment of regret that society has forgotten what it means to live and grow together properly.

Like Wallis, I’m a fan of Jon Stewart because he communicates his insightfulness in ways that are creative, humorous, and oftentimes biting. So when Wallis titles his chapter based on a segment from the Daily Show, I’m excited to read what Wallis says about Stewart’s insight.

Wallis begins his chapter with an endorsement of Jon Stewart’s angered chastisement of Jim Cramer, particularly focusing on what Stewart says near the end:

“…isn’t that part of the problem? Selling this idea that you don’t have to do anything. Anytime you sell people the idea that, sit back and you’ll get 10 to 20 percent on your money, don’t you always know that that’s going to be a lie? When are we going to realize in this country that our wealth is work. That we’re workers and by selling this idea that of, “Hey man, I’ll teach you how to be rich.” How is that any different than an infomercial?”

Wallis then compares Stewart’s succinct criticism of what happened to Jesus’ overthrowing the money changers in the temple. By pointing out that it wasn’t commerce per se that Jesus was upset about, but that it was a marketplace that frequently cheated others and profited in unethical ways. “The challenge for our country today,” Wallis says, “is not only to overturn the tables of the money changers, buta lso to rebuild on the values we have lost. If all we do is flip over a few tables and fail to replace them with what should be there, we can be sure that tables will be uprighted and business as usual will begin again in no time” (pg. 20).

Jesus is a character in history that is easy to view as empathetic, charismatic, wise, and welcoming to children. It is far more difficult to picture an enraged Jesus demanding justice and confronting exploitative behaviors. But this is the role Jesus took with the money changers, and it is the role Jon Stewart took with Wall Street. According to Wallis, there are three primary things that deserve our anger:

1. We were sold a lie – The American dream became an illusion because we were told that we did not need to work to become wealthy, merely place our money in the hands of so-called experts that would help our money grow for us.

2. The rules of the game failed – It is unclear what “rules” Wallis believes have failed, since there was no mention of them here, though of course there are plenty of “rules” that Wallis could point to (and probably will in future chapters).

3. Our good was supposed to trickle down – Wallis loves to use phrases that ridicule free market ideas. “Trickle down” is an oft-used phrase used by conservatives to describe the idea that when the wealthy create jobs, everyone benefits to some degree.

The easy part for Wallis is to cry out regarding lies we were sold, complain about the rules of the economy, and mock certain economic theories as if they have failed. What comes difficult to him, however, is to describe in more detail the mechanism that permitted these lies to prevail, the rules to go on unchecked, and how “trickle down economics” is supposed to work not how it didn’t. Playing the role of chief complainer of demoralized economic values is an easy position to take. Offering solutions is what we need, and Wallis does not fail to provide some:

1. Relationships matter – The relationships that tie us together, such as employer-employee relations, where contracts are mutually beneficial, have eroded to “whatever you can get away with.”

2. “Social sins” also matter – By comparing the 1920s to what led to the Great Recession, Wallis briefly describes how wealth created without adding value to the economy is a “social sin,” that the increasing gap between rich and poor is an injustice, and that a culture that spends money even if we don’t need it is inviting disaster.

3. Our own good is indeed tied up in the common good – When we care for the poor (“the least of these”—Jesus’ words), we are caring for the common good, and we are all made better for it

Wallis concludes: “The goal is not to destroy the market but to understand its proper place. It is not to get rid of commerce but to build it upon a foundation of values” (pg. 24). I agree, and I hope Wallis will continue to lead us in the right direction of values. It is indeed important that our financial system is built upon principle values and foundational ethics that ensure that each person is respected equally, social sins are thwarted, and relationships are genuinely beneficial to all parties in the relationship.

This chapter is somewhat of an introduction to the things to come. While it is yet unclear some of the things Wallis is criticizing, it will become clearer in future chapters, given their titles. With the title of the next chapter being “When the Market Became God,” it is pretty obvious the content that will be brought up. Critiquing Wallis’s brief statements in the present chapter would amount to nothing less than speculative ridicule on my part. I’m sure there’s much to analyze in the next chapter. Suffice it to say that Wallis is continuing to ask the right questions. I simply hope he knows how to answer them.

Rediscovering Values: Analysis Part 1 (Introduction)

(This is the first in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values. For the introduction to this series, please see this post.)

Jim Wallis has a knack for critiquing the Christian community for ignoring or shirking its responsibility for social engagement. Most Christians tend to be concerned about their private lives, the lives of those closely surrounding them, and perhaps their church community, but many are largely unaware of and passive about the social context in which they live. In a relatively free country such as the United States, with remnants of a Christianized society, we often take for granted the pleasures of such freedom permit us. We live in a world where things tend to be hunky-dorey, and what qualifies as “bad things happening to good people” is a dent in our new car or the neighbor’s dog who makes its business our business. We simply are unaware of greater and deeper problems in society, both in our communities, in our country, and globally. Social awareness does not come easy to the affluent; and if you have a job and a home in the United States, you are affluent from a global perspective.

In January 2009, Wallis was invited to participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Since this was about the time markets were beginning to collapse, and everyone around the globe was wondering, “When will this crisis be over?” (read: “When can we get back to business as usual?”), Wallis was asking the most important question: “How will this crisis change us?”

Wallis points out how we as a society misplaced our trust in something called “the invisible hand,” a phrase from economist Adam Smith. If you’ve ever read Jim Wallis before, he is often making snide remarks about the invisible hand, sarcastically dismissing it as a superstitious thing to believe in (what he believes is really going on is not clear). More on that will come from an analysis of Chapter Two, “When the Market Became God.” For now suffice it to say that Wallis is too naive to understand that there is no invisible hand because there is a very ever-present and very obvious hand manipulating the economy. But this is not obvious to Wallis. Either he is unwilling to acknowledge the existence of an evil hand at play, acting very much against the “invisible hand,” or he is too naive to understand the very basics of economics.

Whatever one’s beliefs about economics, the source of the crisis we’re in (Wallis calls it the Great Recession), or our way out, Wallis’ fundamental question is not only valid for us now, but for anybody facing hardship or trials. It is a critical part of faith and trust in God, for events and circumstances in our lives are not what shapes us, but how we respond to the things that happen to us and all around us. How we serve each other, how we love each other, and how we look inward to evaluate and modify our inner lives, are all indicators that we are ever-changing people in the face of crisis.

In normal times, we often don’t spend the time wondering what our values are, what we will stand for, and how we will react to threats against our well-being. As Wallis puts it, this crisis “provides the rare opportunity to ask some fundamental questions about our most basic values” (pg. 7).

Wallis writes, “The twentieth century saw the creation and distribution of goods, services, and ideas with unprecedented efficiency and volume. But wit these great advances, the moral weight of our decisions becomes greater than ever before. We need to determine whether the purpose of business and the vocation of our business leaders is restricted to turning a profit or if it can become something more” (pg. 8, emphasis mine). Here is where Wallis tends to present either/or scenarios with regards to profit. On the surface, it appears as if he is saying that business can legitimately pursue profit, but wonders if “common good” results can come of businesses. But deeper reflection might reveal that if businesses are profiting ethically and legitimately, is not the “goods, services, and ideas with unprecedented efficiency and volume” produced in society itself a common good? Are we not all better off because of such high productivity? It is a common fallacy to divorce “common good” with the idea of “profit,” especially when the idea of profit is used to connote exploitation. Wallis tends to fall into this fallacy, using phrases (in other areas such as health care) “profits before people,” but he is correct when he concludes, “the key will be whether the right questions are asked and whether the common good is part of the answer” (pg. 8). Pursuing the “common good” is an elusive phrase used by most collectivists who see individual interests as subservient to the interests of society. When there is a confusion of the ownership and control over property, notions such as “common good” become metaphorical bludgeons to control the behavior of individuals and circumvent human rights. But true common good would benefit everyone, rather than putting some people’s individual rights as secondary. Indeed, we must have what is called “the common good,” but there need not be a sacrifice of individual rights in order to achieve it, since individuals comprise “the common,” and if it is good for all, it need be good for the individual.

When things go sour in an economy, it takes only a little media coverage to call to surface the fears that we all have inside, and many people let that fear take over their lives. Worry becomes normal, and we simply want things to go back to “business as usual.” Wallis rejects this desire, saying we cannot go back to business as usual, because business as usual is what got us to this place. While I’m completely in agreement with the sentiment here, Wallis has never demonstrated economic knowledge in what exactly “got us here,” but rather blames things such as the “invisible hand” and free markets (even though neither exist). But people of faith are to begin a new conversation, addressing the values and actions that answer the question, “How will this crisis change us?”

The bigger questions are articulated here:

“What does our theology tell us about money and possessions, wealth and power, credit and responsible financial choices, economic values vs. family values, lifestyle and stewardship, generosity and justice, and both personal and social responsibility? What can economists… tell us about economic philosophy, the role of the market, the role of government, the place of social regulation, the spiritual consequences of economic disparities, the moral health of an economy, and the criteria of the common good?” (pg. 10).

While I’m not yet into the next few chapters, my initial hunches about what answers Wallis will likely provide are not very promising. The values he will share and promote will no doubt be biblical, ethical, and moral. Indeed, they will very likely be modeled after the Way of Jesus. And it will not be in those values that I will likely be in disagreement. As I’ve already pointed out, Wallis seems confused about social ethics, creating false dichotomies such as “personal vs. social responsibility,” or promoting fascist ideas such as “social regulation” (which is a friendly way of saying “behavior control”), and commits many economic fallacies.

An important facet of this book is that Wallis’s states purpose is to get a conversation going about our values. Whether one agrees with his prescription for action, his theology, or his politics, Wallis is doing us an incredible favor by asking us to reflect and evaluate who we are, what we value, and how we are living those values in our world.

Poverty and the Imagination

“How is poverty to be addressed without legislation?”

This is the question often posed to me when discussing a Christian ethic of helping the poor and serving others. Legislation is also quickly brought into the swath of solutions to social injustice. Without legislation, so the argument goes, social justice cannot and will not be realized in our lifetime, or in any generation soon.

But legislation (which has its rightful place) needs to be used sparingly due to its mechanism for providing incentives: weapons. The would-be murderer refrains not due to a inner realization that the hated person is actually made in God’s image and deserves to live, but because there is a violent consequence at the end of the road. The would-be tax evader pays his taxes not out of a charitable spirit, but out of compulsion: if he continues to refrain from paying taxes, and resists the series of consequences for not doing so, he will find himself staring at the barrel of a gun.

This isn’t to say that there is no place at all for some assistance for the destitute. It simply means that legislating something has an ethical and moral component to it that most people do not consider. It’s one thing to protect everyone by protecting their right and will to freely exchange and pursue their own ends. It’s quite another to impose upon some—at the point of a gun—a presumptuous program for the poor as if a bureaucrat (or group of them) knew exactly what was better for the poor than the poor themselves.

Christians who favor legislating justice seem to ignore this component, which is entirely absent the gospel of the Kingdom as presented by Jesus, and espoused by the Apostles and by Paul. Jesus came into the world not to wield a sword and build a Kingdom, but to establish peace through servanthood and sacrificial love. The power of the gospel of peace will not need a sword. If you have no alternatives to seeking peace in society than legislation, perhaps your gospel and your Jesus isn’t as powerful as you believe him to be.

The other problem with legislation is that it is often assumed to be the all-encompassing solution to a social problem. Such a conceited approach to solutions not only lacks imagination, it lacks the knowledge and is ultimately unable to adapt creatively to the ever-changing factors of social conditions. Living under the assumption that legislation will solve all of that is neither imaginative nor Christian.

Those of us who don’t advocate legislation to end poverty do not live as though our specific ideas to alleviate it are the solution to poverty. Our ideas about compassion, justice, and morality are merely single ways to address some of the problems within society. Contrary to popular belief, no serious libertarians believes that complete economic freedom will “solve everything” because libertarians don’t believe any single solution will “solve everything.”

We live in a world where our ideal future is pursued under the banner of hope and liberty. That doesn’t negate the need for laws and boundaries of moral order; rather, it gives meaning to rules and regulations: free people to do that which they believe is best for their own lives, and prevent people from aggressing one’s neighbor (or punish them for doing it). Eventually, in a perfect world (which we hope we will have someday), legislation will fade as people naturally do that which is right. But we’re a long way from that, of course.

As followers of Jesus, the Prince of peace, we are to seek and utilize peaceful and nonviolent means of establishing justice and eradicating things such as poverty. As I have written earlier, ”Our passion for creativity is the pathway to social justice.”

Reflections on Economics, Social Justice, and the Imago Dei

When debating about social justice and economics, most philosophical opponents don’t quite agree on the way things work in life, let alone the solutions for making life a better place. When holding to one set of beliefs, it is often assumed that opposing set of beliefs must be incompatible with currently held ones. If one believes in a free society, then social justice must not matter. Or if one fights for social justice, the free market must be unjust.

The more I’ve pondered why this may be, the more I realize that there is a central theme to the debate: the nature of mankind. Opponents of a free market criticize its defenders by saying they don’t take into account man’s depravity. Defenders of a free society (who are also Christians) believe that their vision not only accounts for sinfulness, but furthermore channels it into productive uses. Whatever we do with depravity and sinfulness, not least of which accounts for evil and injustice, we are fallen humans seeking to understand life, and working very hard to preserve it and make it thrive. It is a crucial matter that we understand who we are, what we were made for, and how to best thrive in life so as to make it better for ourselves and for those around us. As I wrote about earlier, we were made to be part of a story, an Epic: The Story God Is Tellingepic story, a “Sacred Romance” that gives us identity and moves us forward each day.

It all starts with believing that human beings are made in the image of God— the “imago dei.” In ancient times, an image, or statue, was a representation of a far-away emperor or caesar, created to represent the king and remind subjects of that kingdom that there was a ruler, and this is what he looked like. So human beings were made to represent God, and the first command we were given was to “tend and keep” the garden. Inherent in this command is the ability to carry out the task, which requires two things: stewardship and creativity. Stewardship because even in Eden we were unable to do everything we needed because of time constraints and geographical constraints (Adam and Eve were not omniscient). Creativity because it wasn’t just a job, it was a calling to work with and through the creation to keep it flourishing as it was intended to be.

A post-Edenic world does not change the game, but merely requires more vigilance for the task ahead of us. We live in a world of scarce resources, where one item can be used for multiple purposes, and cannot (usually) be used for all of them at once. So it is incumbent upon us to steward wisely that which has been given to us. As individuals, we have been given something, whether little or big, and we are to steward that. As social creatures, we are required to cooperate in such a way as to make optimum use of those resources with as little waste as possible. But even beyond mere stewardship, we were designed to create, bring order to disorder, and enliven that which is dying.

Our task of stewardship is our economic vocation. Our passion for creativity is the pathway to social justice. However we feel about the task of man, our hope for the future, and the way we find ourselves structuring society, we cannot escape our economic calling to stewardship or ignore our creativity in our passion for social justice. And both must be present for true justice to prevail. Poor stewardship isn’t negated by ostensible justice, nor can proper stewardship exist where injustice is found.