Two Interim Replies from Jack

Note:  After sending my letter today, Jack sent me two replies which I will post here.  However, he recognized that they did (for lack of a better word) interrupt my plan to post again in my series of posts.  But, for you our loyal readers, here they are.  - Greg

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Greg:

Since you plan a continuation of your most recent, I'll just respond to this one thing.  Later I can go back and sift through the whole thing.  I know, that makes me guilty of what I complained about earlier.

On Oct 14, 2013, at 11:08 AM, Greg Coates <gregory.coates@garrett.edu> wrote:

But turning to the New Testament, the guiding principle for Christian practice regarding private property is stewardship, not ownership.  We do not actually own or possess anything.  We, as those who bear the image of God in his good creation, stand as stewards, keepers, and protectors of God's property.  This means that Enlightenment notions of private property are relativized since I no more own what is in my bank account than I own the ocean.  All of it is God's.  What is in my bank account is for me to use to meet my family's needs (since doing so pleases God), but beyond that the use of those resources are up to God. 

I'm with your whole statement here.  Stewardship (oikos) defines our responsibility and our privilege toward the wealth we create or acquire.  Regular scanning of obituaries should remind us of this reality.  And God should guide our use of this wealth, whether we use it to create more wealth (for both sides of any transaction, remember!), or to make our family life more secure and comfortable, or to relieve the needs of those suffering, or help others on a path to their own entrepreneurial opportunities.  As individuals or as the Church, we should seek and respond to God's guidance about these.

BUT (my big point, the heart of most of my arguments)...BUT government is not God.  Basic government, as described in the New Testament, is put in place to keep order and protect us from wrongdoing.  It is not recognized as a redistributive or rationing device.  It's not a corrective of the shortcomings of the market or a substitute for caring by persons.

And in more modern times, as we read the work of Adam Smith and his successors, it still isn't that.  When government intervenes in the marketplace, no matter how noble the motives declared, it still doesn't function as a corrective device.  Democracy or communal plutocracy or monarchy or whatever's in between, government always turns out to be simply an alternative distribution device, and an inferior one.  Instead of distributing by mutual agreement and price adjustments, it confiscates and then distributes by political competition.  Rather than win-win, most of its transactions are win-lose--the kind participants would not agree to voluntarily.  

It grows wasteful and corrupt, but lacks the purging correctives the market has.  These would include the phenomena of price changes, profit and loss, and bankruptcy liquidations.  Government is "ungoverned" by any of these, and has a perpetual life with a growing appetite.  When we try to use its convenient power of coercion to take the place of our voluntary charitable efforts, we get something that is anything but charity, more resembling a livestock feeding trough but less efficient.  And it tends to displace the private donations that would have supported more charities.  We see this in the history of US charities after the onset of the welfare state throughout the 20th century.  The Salvation Army is one of the few such agencies remaining, of hundreds of such that existed in 1900.

Have these government agencies, with their much larger funding, accomplished more than the private organizations would have?  I'll say no.  In addition to their wastefulness, they lack the personal touch the privates had.  They become cold bureaucracies functioning only by rules, applied by people who don't have to care at all.  Only if you think the sheer volume of dollars spent indicates the amount of good being done would you favor the government programs; and I think that would probably contradict your notion that the quality of life does not correlate to its money spent.

I better stop now.  Trying to keep my promise above.

Jack

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Second Post

On Oct 14, 2013, at 11:08 AM, Greg Coates <gregory.coates@garrett.edu> wrote:

There's no doubt that life expectancy in Sena would be way down.  Or that it would involve a great deal of suffering.  And, in so many ways, as you point out, it would be a life seemingly less attractive and considerably less comfortable.  Yet, we might also find among such a "primitive" people a deep sense of community, an appreciation for the earth, a sense of oneness with the Divine (as they are able to understand Him/Her), and an inner peace about who they are and where they belong in this world. 

Greg:

This was your opening passage, and I meant to comment on it.  I would like you to re-read it.  In a society with very low life expectancy, much disease and uncertainty, etc., people would have little time or energy to stop and celebrate their sense of community.  While their children die of unknown causes, they may not feel like appreciating the earth or their sense of oneness with the divine.  They feel their poverty, and they mean material poverty because it hurts so much.

And it helps very little to redefine the word "poverty" from its usual meaning.  We have plenty of words to express our alienation from God.  We can better use "poverty," not as a substitute meaning--only as an expansion of what it includes.  When people are in physical suffering and bearing the torment of fear and lost loved ones, it doesn't help to tell them they're not really poor at all since they can always turn their eyes to the sublime.  We might as well say "Be thou filled; be thou clothed and sheltered" while not telling them about ways they could improve their material condition.  Their misery would then continue; but we would be able to say we have left undisturbed their sense of community and their appreciation of the earth.  I think you may over-romanticize those forced to live primitive lives.  I believe they would think so too.

But lest we both get caught stereotyping:  No doubt some poor people find ample reason to rejoice in one another and in their Creator.  No doubt some prosperous people focus on their possessions to the exclusion of persons and higher things.  But I don't buy the idea that hopeless poverty, with its suffering, somehow purifies us and should be sought.  The Bible encourages industry.

The above only came to me after I started to send you a note, and I threw it in.  My real reason for writing again before you've had a chance to react to what I sent earlier:  I want to clear up a word or two that may have been causing us to talk past one another.  What I like to defend, I think in all my emails to you, is human freedom.  What you've been critical of is not really freedom, but rather what I would call "crony capitalism."  I don't have an exotic meaning for freedom; just what I put into a Facebook entry a couple of days ago:  a condition in which no one is allowed to interfere with your choices except where you try to interfere with another's.  

But Crony Capitalism is, I think, what Marx was attacking as Capitalism when he invented the term.  When a person creates much capital and produces much goods, he comes to possess both riches and powerful influence.  He created them, and may feel temptation to waste them or to use them in ways that deprive others of opportunities, to protect his advantages.  (Less prosperous people probably suffer from the same temptations; but they will have only smaller opportunities.)  

This will seem innocent to them at the time.  They may reason that growing their enterprise has been good for everyone touched by it; therefore they ought to grow it more with the cooperation and protection of those who have political power.  Modest changes in the laws will keep pesky competitors from reducing the profits we use so well.  We'll keep out "cut-throat competition" that could put our honest laborers out of their jobs.  And we'll prevent price cutting by those who use "coolie labor" or "Asian sweatshops" so that upright Americans can continue with their high wages.  (Never mind that "coolies" and Asians would like to step on the ladder's lower rungs and progress.)

This happens a great deal, always has, and I think that's what the Campolos and Wallises of the world are attacking.  They think it characterizes most of American business.  It does not; our markets are still free enough that companies doing that still eventually face competition and must get more efficient or collapse.  When you read of once-giant companies sliding into bankruptcy, the most common cause is over-reliance on government maintaining the status quo for them, accompanied by stagnation in their efforts to keep innovating.  Actually you find more of this sustained in Europe; and even more in third world countries.  It's a violation of the freedom that I'm advocating.

The genius of the American Republic was to establish a more perfect union, in which freedom was maximized and impairments of it prevented.  The Framers especially feared impairment of freedom by government, since it had to be entrusted with coercive power to do its duties.  Government faces no direct competitors with equal power; and it needs limits.  The early limits prevented it from favoring any business over another; but over time, business owners have tried to build good cooperative relationships (naturally) with those who govern them.  In doing this, they don't necessarily know when they've crossed over the line into limiting a competitor's freedom; just as a government official doesn't necessarily know when he's using his power to stifle the influence of a political opponent.  Our way of reducing all this encroachment is by constitutionally limiting what a government can do, and exposing officials to voters every so often.  Also we protect our right to write and talk about them.

Greg, I'm observing, here, that we have a great deal of overlap in our viewpoints.  We both like the idea of being free, and at least in principle allowing similar freedom for everyone.  And we both fear the spread of an oligarchy of powerful people who step on others to maintain their position.  I call them Crony Capitalists; you use a less specific term (and less accurate I think), Capitalists.  They misuse their influence with government.  Your solution (and that of prominent liberal Christian folk) seems to be to take resources from successful and prosperous people to spread to those well off.  Mine is to attack the misuse of government power that goes with an enlarged government, and leave people free to use the fruits of their prosperity as they choose.  They may waste some of this (by my or your definition of how they "should" use it), but they can create so much that we can appeal to them to help others, and they will respond.  We know this, because of all those hospitals we've pointed out before.  And also their very process of creating the wealth, through voluntary exchanges, will enrich everyone they employ or deal with.  This is how poverty (at least the material kind) is defeated.

Enough.

Jack