Shaun Groves
Scotland has given a lot to the world. The Baycity Rollers, Sean Connery, Braveheart and Adam Smith.
At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, during the Age of Enlightenment, Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations. It’s earned him the title “father of economics” and it greatly influenced the founders of America with its argument that free market capitalism was the best economic system available for a society prone to selfishness.
Adam Smith wasn’t just an economist. In fact, at the time, economics wasn’t its own field yet. The best I can figure it was a branch of philosophy mixed with sociology and even a little religion. Adam Smith, for instance, was a professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow – not some mathematician or finance guru working as a prof in a business school. That doesn’t discredit him, of course, but it’s something to keep in mind when reading his thoughts: They’re as much a prescription for morality or theology as they are for business practices.
Adam Smith believed, for instance, that in order for a free market society to prosper, individuals must look out for their own self interests foremost. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
The butcher, for instance, wants to stay in business so he can feed his own family, so he works hard, deals fairly, charges a competitive price so that his business and his family will prosper. Doing business this way is best for the customer also, Smith argued, and for the whole of society. It produces the best product at the best price.
Those to the right in American politics sometimes argue for a unregulated less-regulated free-er free market system than the one we currently have, making arguments that have grown out of Adam Smith’s philosophy. But Adam Smith’s examples come from an imaginary world in which butchers have hearts uncorrupted by the Fall. Real people – real butchers – have a dual nature: one half wanting to behave as Christ and the other wanting to have the power, wealth and position of Christ and to do whatever is necessary to obtain it.
If a butcher were to actually look out for his own self interests first, he could do that by paying an unjust wage to his workers, lying about the quality and origins of his products, making promises for immediate gain with no intention to keep them, etc. There is no free market because no one participating in the market is spiritually free.
Adam Smith, like I said earlier, came up with his ideas during the Age of Enlightenment – a period characterized in part by radical optimism about the human spirit, denying that all men are born spiritually powerless and corrupt. Ronald Reagan sounded a lot like a modern day Adam Smith sometimes. He was very inspiring but very wrong when speaking about the inherent goodness and strength of mankind: “A people free to choose will always choose peace” or “I know in my heart that man is good” or “There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. ”
No, sir. A people free to choose will be torn between peace and selfish ambition at all costs. The heart of man is not good but impoverished, wicked, arrogant, untrustworthy. His heart is a barrier to justice and equality.
Rush Limbaugh, in a very Reaganesque way, often contrasts “liberals” with “conservatives” by saying that liberals believe the worst about people and conservatives believe the best. If that were true, neither side would be thinking very biblically. Truth is, every Christian is a mixture of the best of God and the worst of himself.
Adam Smith was wrong. Free market capitalism might just be the best economic system the world has ever seen. I assume so, but what do I know about economics? I’m a musician. But it doesn’t produce the rosy results Smith argued it would either. A society full of Smith’s imaginary butchers will not benefit the whole of society because the butcher is not inherently good and self-regulating. He does not naturally pay a living wage to his workers. He does not naturally keep his promises. He does not naturally tell the truth at all times. He’s just like me. And just like you. If we serve ourselves with no outside restraints placed upon us, we’ll cheat to get more and horde what what we get while the distance between us and the have nots widens.
Folks on the left might think they can use this reality as an argument for increased government regulation. But the regulator is human as well, just as corruptible. He also has a history of cheating to get more (power, money, fame, influence) and hoarding what he gets or using it to do more harm.
Or maybe those on the left could use the sinful nature of the butcher to argue for more government spending and services for the have-nots allegedly left in his wake. But those who are served by government programs have the same heart as the butcher and are just as likely to squander and abuse help as the butcher is his wealth. And then there are those who aren’t in need of help who will cheat and lie a corruptible system to get it anyway. How may of us have known someone able to work who has taken advantage of the social services system, decided not to work and lived off of programs funded by the butcher’s taxes.
If Smith, Reagan and Limbaugh are all wrong, then so are Roosevelt, Obama, and Wallis. This error bites all sides of the isle. Doesn’t it?
Adam Smith’s error may come from his understanding of God. Adam Smith is believed to have been a deist – someone who thinks “The Great Architect” built the universe but then walked away from it, never to return, never getting mixed up in human affairs, never entering the human heart, never putting on skin and becoming a man for man’s sake, never sending Spirit to guide and teach, never to lead his People to be creators of equality and justice and, well, regulation.
But we’re not deists. Are we?
Ben says:
The way is straight and narrow, and few there will be that find it. Me: and those few will be radically different.
Mike Raburn says:
Unfortunately, I think the average American Christian is all too deistic. Your insights are right on target. Have you read Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day? They have constructive, alternative ideas.
Emily says:
Brilliant post. Makes me wish I had found your blog before you came to Chattanooga (Ridgedale). We would have had SO much more to talk about at lunch!
Carole Turner says:
Great stuff, but what is the solution then?
Kacie says:
I love Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s social commentaries against both socialism and the West and our rabid capitalism. He said that we shouldn’t pursue happiness as our cultural goal, because it would corrupt the soul of society by acheiving the things we want while stripping us of love and morality, which is the true good of society.
He said this:
Solzhenitsyn: In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as “we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology”. The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point.
Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive. “
You can find it here: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0172.html
Veretax says:
Actually, Shaun I disagree, we on the right do not argue for a completely unfettered and unregulated Free market. In fact we haven’t had such a market, since sometime just before or around the end of WW I if memory serves. What we argue for is a reduction in the red tape, and simplifying the laws so that they are able to complied with without spending millions in overhead expenses.
About the Butcher doing low wages. Yes he could do that and get away with it for a while, but at some point, if people cannot live on that wage, he won’t have anyone to work for him. Therefore the market will eventually dictate what a reasonable wage is for that market.
Now I agree, that politicians in particular seem to forget that man has a fallen sinful nature, and this is something that either Jefferson or Adams warned us about when this country was founded. I do agree that human nature plays a part. However, given that, a person who pays an unjust wage will not keep his workers for wrong, and while he may for a while be able to fill his roster with new people, eventually he will run out of “Suckers”
Susan Charest says:
Shaun, if you get a free minute – go to this URL:
http://mypigeon2001.blogspot.com/2009/05/obamas-commencement-speech-at-asu.html
Obama’s commencement speech at ASU – I was inspired by some one in politics.
Abel says:
Shaun,
I confess to not having read The Wealth of Nations (or The Theory of Moral Sentiments for that matter), but I think you’re confusing description with prescription. From what I understand, Smith didn’t think the butcher should be self-interested, but that he was self-interested. To Smith, the question was not, “how should people behave so that society can prosper?” Rather, the question was, “given that people are basically self-interested, what system of economic organization will lead to the best outcomes?” The system that Smith advocated was (more or less) free markets.
I should note that many in the modern economics profession take a similar view as Smith, but there is still plenty of debate. However, almost no one invokes Smith in that debate, since his work is more than two centuries old.
Abel
Kenyon says:
The free market system proposed by Adam Smith and the free market system employed by the United States are not necessarily the same things, and I believe that debate is best left to scholars. The heart of your observations seem to question the validity and the results of Smith. Basically his theory was premised upon free humans making free choices. And certainly just as there is room for “good” (benevolence) choices to be made within that system there is also the capacity for “bad” (excess) choices. It is very easy to find examples of excess in our economic system. The governor of NY spends tens of thousands of dollars arranging meetings with prostitutes. And it gets worse. But I would also argue that our system of free enterprise has brought about unprecedented acts of benevolence. Like Compassion International serving over 1 million children around the world. The bottom line, humanity has to be allowed to act like humans in order for good decisions to be made…even in the absence of a personal relationship with Christ. I would also say that the book of Revelation speaks to a general presence of God’s grace that evidences itself in humans (born with a sinful nature) making choices that are benevolent and just.
benstewart says:
It sounds like Smith believed that a self-interested butcher will do things to elevate himself which will in turn benefit consumers. But often I find it is easier to ‘lower’ people around me instead of working harder to ‘elevate’ myself. This principle applies both in business and in personal life. It is when the butcher decides to lower others by doing things like paying unfair wages, outsourcing to other countries where there are more “Suckers” (as Veretax put it), driving out competition, or making false promises that Smith’s ideal free market system seems to break down. But is there any system that can withstand such things?
Shaun Groves says:
All of you who are debating the validity of Smith’s theories and of free markets are missing the point of the post. All of you who are arguing with whether or not I summarized the man’s thousands of pages of writings into a few paragraphs completely enough are also missing the point. Of course I didn’t.
Or maybe I just didn’t make the point clear enough. Even bloggers are flawed ; )
Shaun Groves says:
Benstewart, no, there’s not.
Noelle says:
Shaun, what you bring up, as I see it, is a frustrating point about the church.
My mother works at the Department of Human Services as a social worker helping people receive financial benefits. I work as a waitress at a more expensive restaraunt. Every day I see the inequality that exists between neighbors. One person will spend $200 on a bottle of wine whereas another person will be forced out of their house because they can’t pay the rent. But, I shouldn’t have my job and neither should my mother. There should be no need for a more up-town restaurant or for a social worker.
Yet, from those who are a part of the church, I hear gasps when people talk about sacrifice, especially financially. I hear people talk about how the first church, in how it existed and worked together, isn’t possible today… and this from leaders of the church!
I wouldn’t say that Christians are deists, but sometimes… we sure act like it.
Shaun Groves says:
Thanks, Noelle. I was starting to wonder if I wrote what I thought I wrote.
Noelle says:
What can we do though to get the church to BE the church? I know we can’t change people’s hearts, but I also feel that God has put this holy discontent in people’s heart for a reason. Those are ideas I would love to hear! (Thanks for bringing up this subject, btw. It’s been on my heart for a while.)
Shaun Groves says:
I’m through trying to get “them” to be more whatever. It’s arrogant. I wind up thinking incredible self-righteous thoughts: Why can’t they do what I’M doing?
I’m just doing what I can do where I am and with what I have. And writing about why and talking through all the complications and questions with people like you all helps me feel a lot less alone and cynical along the way.
Kristie Wooten says:
I so love this! Quite thought-provoking…and as far as your FB question re: a “Kingdom” book….our pastor has read this one, and he says it really challenged him in some areas (one of those “read a few pages, then ponder for a few days” books)…anyway, it’s: http://www.bookschristian.com/se/product/books/Peter_Parris/The_Truth_of_the_Gospel/553436/The_Truth_of_the_Gospel_Paperback.html
and if you want a copy, I think I can get it cheaper than this for you and have it on Saturday.
Benjamin says:
First, capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.
According to your quote:
>> it greatly influenced the founders of America with its argument that free market capitalism was the best economic system available for a society prone to selfishness.
I see no basis in your arguments for your headline that Adam Smith was wrong. Quite the contrary, it is the acknowledgment that men ARE selfish by nature that makes him both right and in line with Scripture. Our natural inclination is to cheat, steal, and hoard. However, in a truly free market no one is under obligation to work for what the miserly butcher is paying. The self-governed butcher a few blocks away is paying a competitive wage, or even the miserly butcher will be forced to raise his wages if he can not find workers at his current rate. The beauty of a free market is that it takes in to account the sin nature better than any other system.
Further, it is well established that conservatives—those more likely to side with Smith—are more generous (calculated as a percentage of income) when it comes to personal charitable contributions than those who label themselves liberal.
Capitalism—the protection of private property, and the freedom to conduct business with whomever we choose, not under duress—that system has provided a higher standard of living for more people than any other system this side of eternity. Unless there is some kind of artificially established monopoly or scarcity through external intervention, it is the business of a business man to pursue the happiness of his customers. Any other plan will not be a long-term success.
Do wicked capitalist still manage to pursue their own selfish gratification by defrauding others—you betcha! As you pointed out, the politicians and regulators are just as susceptible. The real difference is that in a free economy I can make an individual choice on where I buy my beef to what kind of car I buy. When it comes to politics in a Democracy, majority rules, and it is easy to become the target of legalized theft. Frankly, I am content with capitalism until I am subject only to the laws of a perfect law giver.
One last thing—I don’t Reagan believed to strongly that men are basically good. It is possible, but your quotes could be balanced with other statements he made like “Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.” That seems to indicate that he was not ignorant of wickedness. Also, if you have ever heard Limbaugh talk about the Clintons or liberals in general, you know he believes that evil is a force we must resist. <grin>
Thanks for provoking thought.
Loren says:
Morality is the missing ingredient, it might make communism work? Trouble is you can’t legislate it and it is hard to enforce.
free markets without morality = anarchy
Even the Israelites couldn’t help themselves from taking too much manna.
The Line I cross many times a day is: Have I really been transformed(christian) if I worry about tomorrow (bills etc) and don’t trust God for my daily bread and give away whats left? But then I believe in overwhelming, undeserved grace…conundrum it is
Loren says:
I read this today and it opened my eyes a bit:
James 4:3
3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
The first 2 verses also speak to this.
God can change the world if we can get past ourselves and let God through. Down with Deismatic Christianity
Benjamin says:
Loren,
Morality, or self government, is key. I still maintain that among a sinful people, capitalism has the best checks—and accordingly has the best track record.
-Benjamin
Loren says:
I don’t think morality is synonymous with self government.
My morality is to love God and others with everything (easy to say, hard to live) my goal is to not have much “self” in it at all.
Debating which economic system is better is like debating which engine is better, they have their pro’s and con’s but without gas they are just pieces of metal.
The economy I dream about, with both fantasy and horror is towards the end of my bible.
MamasBoy says:
Wow, well put. I think you dinged all sides pretty well for the biggest drain on productivity in any economy, corruption and sinfulness in the human heart.
MB
Stretch Mark Mama says:
“Real people – real butchers – have a dual nature: one half wanting to behave as Christ and the other wanting to have the power, wealth and position of Christ and to do whatever is necessary to obtain it.”
That was a nice sentence/thought/idea. Just thought I’d mentioned that.
And that’s interesting what Rush Limbaugh says about conservatives and liberals–I would say just the opposite. I mean, honestly—I wonder how many hundreds of times I’ve heard the phrase “sin nature” over the past 35 years? And consistently, the “liberals” I meet are some of the more optimistic people I know. Hmmmph.
(And I realize that wasn’t the point of the post. I just have nothing more to say.)
Benjamin Johnson says:
By self-government I do not mean democracy. What I do mean is the ability to discipline oneself so that external constraints are less necessary. Isn’t that what morality provides us?
Veretax says:
Benjamin,
I disagree. Morality is not what provides us the ability to ‘self-govern’ on what is right from wrong. Conscience does, and conscience is a thing all mankind has at birth, as it was given to us by God himself.
Benjamin Johnson says:
I think we are mincing words at this point. Technically conscience doesn’t give you the ability to self-govern—not since the fall anyway. Our consciences are twisted and seared from birth and it is only regeneration through the Holy Spirit that allows us to self-govern. Further, Paul stated that if it were not for the LAW he would not have known it was a sin to covet. Morality is too loose a term, because it can be good or bad, but morality shaped by the Law of God and by the Holy Spirit is a benchmark for self-governance.
Veretax says:
I disagree, slightly conscience is what gives us the ability to know right from wrong (that’s what the tree in the garden’s fruit was all about.) So we have that ability. Now true Sin does corrupt us and distort our perception of it, but to say that man has no conscience or morality is IMO not entirely factual.
John Galt says:
“Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.”
…..
“If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money’. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.”
-Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged; Francisco D’Aconia money speech)
Money is not evil. Capitalism is not evil. Parasites who cheat, lie steal and demand the wealth of others by law, guilt, or force are the truly evil ones. No one is entitled to any wealth created by another any more than I can demand that God give me what I think I deserve from him. He is the creator and I have no right to demand anything from him.
Gavin Kennedy says:
Interesting article, but its ideas about what Adam Smith actually wrote are quite different from his books.
Smith had no illusions about the misbehaviours exhibited by people. He didn’t prescribe them to be moral; he advised those seeking their dinner to ‘address the self-interests’ of those who supplied it (and likewise for those supplying it to potential customers).
Given the strength of monopoly practices in 18th-century Britain, legally enforced by the Traders’ Guilds in each town, he recommended these Acts, and related ones, be repealed, and that competition by allowed.
Britain (and its colonies) were riddled with state-licensed monopolies, which oppressed consumers.
I discuss these points in more detail on my blog: http://www.adamsmithslostlegacy.com
Shauns’ image of Smith is an invention of modern economists since the 1950s and has little in common with the Adam Smith born in Kirkcaldy in 1723.
Shaun Groves says:
Gavin, I don’t claim to know the “real” Adam Smith. I even said I’m not an economist so I just don’t know all that much. All I claim to know about him is what some folks cite of his philosophy in defense of our own economic system or their political position…starting with my economics teacher in college ; )
Thank you for the link to your site. I’m actually geeky enough to want to learn more about what the guy actually wrote and the day and age in which he wrote it. Thanks for that education.
To whom it may concern, this post isn’t my attempt to say Adam Smith is a bad guy or that democracy or America, capitalism or free markets are bad either. It’s to say that because human beings are spiritually busted and terrible self-regulators 1) every philosophy, political party, economic system or country has the potential to yield both good and evil and 2) Christians (people with the most potential to know and yield good) play a critical role in society as both self-regulators of their own desires and non-participants in societal evil.
I’ll write a more detailed post soon explaining exactly how that works out.
Amy Beth says:
Check out Shane Claiborne’s books The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President. He proposes a way for Christians to be set apart, not buying into what the world has to offer but what Jesus has always offered.
MamasBoy says:
John Galt,
While Ayn Rand has some good things to say, ultimately she is fundamentally opposed to love and the teachings of Christ. For her, subjugating selfish desires for the good of others is nonsense. I don’t see how anybody who has had children can give much credence to her views on altruism, and I suppose it is not surprising that she never had children herself. Anyway, I’d be careful about using quotes from Atlas Shrugged and a philosopher/novelist whose ideas of the ideal economic system are based exclusively on selfishness and the ego.
MB
Benjamin Johnson says:
I agree that Ayn Rand got a lot of things wrong, but she did have some interesting insights. In some ways, the love Ayn talks about in her books is like God’s motivation toward creation is described in the Bible—all done for His own good pleasure. I don’t think she understood that, because as you point out she thought Christianity was nonsense. When we talk about the impetus for salvation, we say “For God so loved” not “because man so needed.”
I was thinking about this thread this weekend, and I think my real problem with this blog post is the tendency toward moral equivalence. There is a right and wrong, and even more Biblical types of economies and it doesn’t do us any good to group the successful systems with the failed systems.
John Galt says:
If American capitalism is so bad, then how come we have the fattest poor people in the world? Our poor are the envy of the world, living indoors with an X-box and satellite TV. Our poor do not suffer from disease and hunger like other nations. Yes, some go hungry here. Yes some die of disease here. But, there are lots of poor in this country that are poor as a result of choices made (drug use, teen pregnancy, laziness), not the system. You can succeed or fail as you wish in this great nation unlike in any other. And as a result of our prosperity, we give more than any other nation. We bankroll many charities and feed hungry folks who would not get the money from a socialist paradise, but a capitalist paradise. We feed the world yet we are blamed for all its ills.
MamasBoy says:
First off, great discussion everyone. It has been civil and thought provoking.
John Galt,
I think you may be misunderstanding where others are coming from, so please, hear me out. I do think that American capitalism is probably the best economic system for this country. Also, when it comes to how the poor in America, it is tough to find a country with more opportunities for advancement. Short of imbecility or chronic health problems, about the only reason to remain poor in this country is laziness and family dissolution (i.e., character issues). Opportunities abound for those who get their arses off the couch and away from the TV, as almost any intact immigrant family can show you. My own dad was born in a tent, without running water, a toilet or creature comforts like electricity. His first tortilla was straight off the skillet of a Mexican immigrant in the migrant camp where he was living at the time, yet he was able to provide a middle class lifestyle for his family and a decent educational foundation so that all of his kids could go to college. My family is living proof that you can do just about anything in America if you work hard and get a good education… and the greatest advances were made before the advent of the modern welfare state.
But that doesn’t mean that left to their own devices people will create a utopia where the poor are treated justly. Original sin and concupiscence have a huge effect on the human heart. We are a sinful, prideful, selfish species. All the good that American charities do can’t magically negate the evil that happens because Americans and American companies turn their eyes away from the injustice that they help to create. For instance, there is a decent chance that some of the sugar you ate today was harvested by a slave. Today, in the 21st century, slaves still work in the Dominican Republic on sugar plantations, while American companies and consumers do little, if anything, to stop it. From reading this blog, I know that Shaun has visited the Dominican Republic and suspect that he has seen this slavery first-hand, so I suppose he can be forgiven for being a little more cynical about our economic system than the rest of us. We Americans do have faults, based on our human traits of selfishness and pride. Perhaps these sinful traits would have worse manifestations under a different economic system than capitalism. I strongly suspect they would. Shaun may agree or disagree. I personally find his post too ambiguous to tell, but I’m also not sure that was the point. Capitalism may be the best system overall for encouraging mutual cooperation and negating the effects of selfishness and indifference to injustice, but it doesn’t mean that capitalism is a perfect system or leads to an idyllic society. It is good now and then to pause and question how to remedy the injustice we see in the world, even if it means asking uncomfortable questions, like, “What am I going to do about the slave trade in the Dominican Republic?” or “Do I care how my sugar is produced, as long as it is cheap?” or…
http://www.iabolish.org/slavery_today/country_reports/do.html
MB
MamasBoy says:
““When we talk about the impetus for salvation, we say “For God so loved” not “because man so needed.””
True, but both God’s love and human need were necessary but insufficient reasons for the incarnation. It took the union of those two realities to cause the God who created the world for his own good pleasure to also came as a man and submit himself to a cruel death at the hands of his creatures. This God made man further told His disciples to serve others and to follow in His example. Ayn Rand thought this altruism to be contradictory and in fact opposed to societal good. The economic system she proposed is irreconcilable with Christianity, because she doesn’t acknowledge the need for love and self-sacrifice.
MB
Benjamin Johnson says:
MamasBoy,
I started out by saying that Ayn Rand gets a lot of things wrong. If no one minds if I throw out a perhaps heretical question, I would like to see what others think.
If God creates and saves us for His own good pleasure, it is hard for me to imagine fallen men ever actually being totally selfless. Whether it is a fulfillment of a sense of duty or moral obligation, even the most selfless acts are done at some level for our own pleasure. Perhaps our pleasure is derived from pleasing God and being obedient to Him, but aren’t we still ultimately serving our own desires? Did God make the greatest of all sacrifices for us—absolutely! But He did it for his own good pleasure, His great desire was to show us love, because that is who He is.
It’s a mystery to me.
Veretax says:
Ben I would counter with the following:
Mt 7:7-11 (NKJV)
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
Matthew 7:7-11 (NKJV)
Men do have a conscience and they do know right from wrong, provided they haven’t done so many wicked things that they are already blinded to the truth. Now we can debate whether the good gifts of the fallen are really considered good or not in God’s eyes or not, but Jesus uses this analogy that even a Father knows to give his son bread to eat when he is hungry.
Some things I think are natural despite the spiritual condition.
Peter (GoGod) says:
I’m not sure of the answers — except this one: society/community needs to be populated with hearts regenerated by God’s Holy Spirit. While these new hearts for God may be in the minority, we are still called to be salt and light in the world, and so we make all the difference.
I believe that one of the problems, as shown in the blog entry is this — a free market finds its balance with one group holding power over the other. And of course, such a free-market balance is seen as fair and reasonable when tested against free-market values.
Take the British situation of supermarkets and the farmers who supply them: the supermarkets carry great power over the farmers by increasing financial/auxiliary demands while threatening a “take it or leave it” offer of contract. The farms may have spent years fitting themselves to the supermarkets’ whims and fancies only to be told, “We’re sorry, we’re dropping you like a stone and going for someone else who can subsidise the deal another 10% below cost while they get into favour.
I believe that denial of the inherent value of good relationship in work and business is widespread, all in the name of the free market. This is hurting souls and the community we share.
Benjamin Johnson says:
It’s a tough one… it is clear that men have a conscience, but if all men know all right and wrong from birth, why are we having this discussion? What is the use of the law? Why will 70% of people torture another person if they are told to? (http://nationalexpositor.com/News/1543.html)
I’m not outright disagreeing with you, and you make some good points, but I think it is not as black and white as you are portraying.
As to “take it or leave it” offer of contract, we all do that. Very few, if any, markets are inelastic. You will buy a certain number of apples at a certain price, but at a higher price you will buy something else or take your money elsewhere. What a supermarket is willing to pay for produce is directly linked to what you and I are willing to pay. What’s to stop the farmer from selling his produce directly, cutting out the middleman? Extra work? Well, then the supermarket is providing a valuable service to the farmer. Is the temporary 10% below cost enough for a supermarket to ditch a trusted business associate? Maybe, maybe not. There could be any other number of factors involved. Maybe the other farm is a better provider and they are willing to risk a temporary loss to prove that.
Taking sides in a business transaction is dangerous. We just don’t have all the facts. In a free market, the people with the best information are the ones directly making the transactions—that is why central planning never performs as well.