Jack,
The time has finally come for me to reply. It's been a
hectic few weeks.
For the sake of clarity, I'm going to try to summarize your main
points. You can correct me if I'm wrong.
1. Humans CREATE wealth through their own work and effort
and ingenuity.
2. Since an individual creates his own wealth, he or she
alone has the right to that wealth. No one should be allowed to take that
away.
3. A proven method of attaining human happiness is through
"earned success" (i.e. the rewards of hard work). (By the way,
I do not dispute that; I would dispute that it is the only or even the primary
means to happiness).
4. All of the great captains of industry created wealth out of
thin air; they did not steal it from others. Their actions are morally
praiseworthy.
5. A free market system delivers greater justice and greater
happiness to people than any other system.
I realize that I've offered an oversimplification of your
points, but I think that's the basic gist of what you're driving at.
So here are a few of my own thoughts. First, are you
willing to admit that there are some instances in history in which the rich
gain their riches by oppressing others and using them as a means for their own
end (i.e. increasing their wealth)? An obvious example of this is
slavery. If you are willing to admit this, then the obvious follow up is
"Is this still taking place today and what can be done about it?").
If you control the means of production and I do not have any capital of
my own save the strength of my own muscles and the ability of my own mind, then
you have me at a great disadvantage. The starting line is not the same.
The scales are already balanced in your favor. If I'm desperate
enough, I will sell you my labor for a small amount of money in order to feed
my family and, in the meantime, you profit greatly from my willingness to work
for you for very little. Thus, YOU have not CREATED the wealth; I have
created the wealth and you have skimmed off all but a meager hourly wage that
you must pay me -- just enough to keep me coming back. This is, of
course, what happens in Southeast Asia and throughout the world every day.
And, in order to increase your bottom line, you might skimp on
maintaining the factory that I work in and after a few years -- boom -- a roof
collapses and I die. Without labor laws to protect me from you (the
captain of industry), what power do I have? Should not something be done
in the name of justice and fairness to balance the scales?
I stumbled across an interesting statistic the other day:
those who are born in the top 1% have a 99.87% chance of remaining right
there in the top 1%. How would you explain this fact? Are those
born in the top 1% that much more intelligent or beautiful or talented or
strong than the rest? I interpret it as a sign that our common notions of
social mobility are a myth.
If we can agree that people do not all start with equal
opportunity (do you agree with at least that?), then what do you propose ought
to be a way that we even the scales? Or is that even an effort worth
undertaking?
Turning to a more theological argument, I would ask you,
"How are you able to create?" You are right that our human
ability to create is a function of our being made in the image of God.
But you run the risk of sounding like Homer Simpson when he prayed before
a family dinner, "Well, God, I worked hard to make the money to buy this
food so thanks for nothing." We are able to create because we have
brain and brawn. Those are God-given. You are able to be a
professor because God gave you a good mind. Thus, in what sense is the
wealth that you create by using that good mind in any way your own? You
mind is on loan from God. Of course, the implication of this is something
that I think you will agree with: we own nothing. We are merely
stewards of what God has entrusted to us. And this is not mere wordplay
or semantics or holy-church-speak. This has implications for our
understanding of property and what we are to do with our property. I find
in the Bible a God who is particularly concerned with the poor and who demands
that his people care for those poor. In fact, God cared about them so
much that he established laws to ensure that sinful human nature did not forget
or neglect to care for his beloved poor.
Out of curiosity, in your view, if a human is created mentally
handicapped, then how should she or he be cared for? How much money
should they make? Do they CREATE wealth? If not, what is our
societal obligation to them?
I think that the basic, foundational problem I have with your
argument is how it assumes a rigid individualism. In reality, we are all
far more interconnected to one another than your model seems to assume.
The generation of wealth has many sources. Yes, it can be hard
work. But other factors also come into play -- social structures,
geography, inherited socio-economic status, laws, values, moral formation,
social capital, etc.
I also have a host of theological and biblical questions for
you. For example, why does Luke teach us that communal property and
sharing was normative among early church members? How compatible is the
Lockean language of private property ownership with this? What do you
make of Leviticus 25 and the Jubilee laws? There are many others but
those seem most relevant to our current discussion.
For the record, I am not a socialist. I believe in much of
what you believe -- the right to work hard and earn your keep. But I also
believe that society can and ought to take certain measures to curb the
excesses and abuses of the free market. I find the current distribution
of wealth in our country to be morally reprehensible. This is because my
sense of what is right and wrong are rooted in the biblical themes of love,
compassion, equality, fraternity, community, the interconnectedness of human
life, and a concern for the common good. I know that you may not list the
same virtues and themes from your own reading of Scripture, but then we enter
into the world of biblical hermeneutics which is a world I most certainly
welcome us to enter if you so desire.
Your turn. (I actually don't like saying that because I
don't believe we are having a competition here. I'd prefer to think of us
as cooperating with one another in seeking the truth. But perhaps that
emphasis on cooperation over and against competition makes me a liberal
softie).
-
Greg
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