Doug Wilson Blog Posts
Free Markets and Free Grace 8-21-09 [Link]
…three essential elements of capitalism. They are: 1. Free markets; 2. Secure property rights; and 3. Free labor…
We should therefore want free, untrammeled markets. We should want free, untrammeled property. We should want free, untrammeled labor. And we can’t have any of these three apart from free grace. Societies that do not have the freedom Christ brings cannot have other subsidiary freedoms — because Christ brings them all.
Maybe my problem isn’t with an enlightenment idea of capitalism, maybe it’s with a notion of freedom. If freedom means “free to take advantage of others in the marketplace”, then I’ll have none of it. If freedom means “love constraining to obedience” then maybe. It’s not helpful to say that free markets would work great if everyone loved everyone else – they don’t. Who does what when someone abuses a free market system? Do libertarians believe that if the market was free enough, it would be abuse proof? I don’t have enough faith for a system like that.
The Economics of Sin 7-4-09 [Link]
But the Christian socialists have the same problem — they don’t recognize the presence and reality of sin in all this. They say they do — the sin they are aware of is all that greed and profit-taking over there — but that is not the sin that is actually causing all the problems. The Christian socialists are painfully unaware of the sin of hypocrisy that informs and drives virtually everything they do. Their mouths are full of words like justice, poverty, equity, affordable, and compassion, but the policies they advocate and insist upon (in the name of Jesus) are calculated to make everything worse.
Pastor Wilson is talking about Ron Sider and Tony Campolo, who I haven’t read – I’d rather catch up on Chesterton, Belloc, and the original “Christian Socialists”. But Pastor Wilson’s critique is still maddeningly vague. What’s the real sin that they’re neglecting that’s causing the problems? How can you say that their policies are calculated to make everything worse? No one calculates to make things worse.
Slow That Arrogant Greedhead Down 7-1-09 [Link]
Now, here is the deal. It is not possible for the government to intervene in the market without creating perverse incentives. The nature of these perverse incentives will be immediately obvious to honest men and honest women. But they are not obvious when hearts have been turned over to dishonesty of larcenous intent. The end result of all these interventions is that the government will wind up paying people to do things they ought not to be doing in the first place, and fining and penalizing people for doing the right thing. This is precisely the reverse of what the apostle Paul said the magistrate should be doing — he is supposed to reward the righteous and punish the wrong-doer.
This is all well and good – the point can’t be made too many times that government regulations are actually big-business friendly. But I think if the magistrate were to punish economic wrongs it would look an awful lot like market intervention to plenty of people. Again, we’re operating on just the wrong level of abstraction – halfway between idealistic theory and actual examples. What’s the difference between intervening in the market and punishing wrongdoing?
First Federal MounteBank 6-10-09 [Link]
But trusting the markets is not the same thing. That is not trusting any fallen man; such a trust can only be sustained through trust in God. Trusting free markets is trusting providence. When we try to rig the markets to our own benefit, we are always trying to grab the steering wheel of economic providence. We can no more do that than we can grab and direct any other aspect of providence.
Someone asked for clarification for the phrase ‘free markets’, and Pastor Wilson commented:
Scylding, of course I don’t believe in autonomous markets. All of us are sinners, and a man can’t lie, cheat, steal or murder just because “he is a businessman.” But if God has made no law concerning a financial transaction, then neither should we. And it takes real trust in God to do keep our hands off.
Biographers may look back on the occassion of me reading this blog post as a defining moment in my descent into insanity. It was certainly the first time I can remember agreeing with David Hodges. His best comment of the thread:
Darius T.: “For all those capitalism haters, I would strongly recommend checking out Jay Richards’ new book Money, Greed, and God. He puts to bed all of those myths you all keep regurgitating.”
What myths?You mean like the “myth” that the Law of God forbids usury? The myth that magistrates are to protect private property? Or is it the myth that the Law requires employers to pay a just wage? Maybe he goes after that pernicious myth that all debts are to relieved periodically.
Oh, I’m sure he just decimates those pesky “myths”.
Later Hodges provides this:
I would agree whole-heartedly. A just wage is not about making sure everybody gets paid the same thing (as Michael pointed out). A just wage is what is required to prevent 12-year-olds from working twelve hours for a schilling. (Child labour is one of capitalism’s most precious babies.)
Which I thought was ridiculous, until I talked to someone that very week who said they would have opposed child labor laws at their inception. Looks like I’m in danger of “muddy thinking”!
Why Cause Trouble?
G. K. Chesterton Dedicating a Book to a Skeptical Friend [Link]
Why then should I trouble you with a book which, even if it achieves its object (which is monstrously unlikely) can only be a thundering gallop of theory?
Well, I do it partly because I think you politicians are none the worse for a few inconvenient ideals; but more because you will recognise the many arguments we have had, those arguments which the most wonderful ladies in the world can never endure for very long. And, perhaps, you will agree with me that the thread of comradeship and conversation must be protected because it is so frivolous. It must be held sacred, it must not be snapped, because it is not worth tying together again. It is exactly because argument is idle that men (I mean males) must take it seriously; for when (we feel), until the crack of doom, shall we have so delightful a difference again? But most of all I offer it to you because there exists not only comradeship, but a very different thing, called friendship; an agreement under all the arguments and a thread which, please God, will never break.
Dr. Peter Leithart on Truth-Telling [Link]
Truth-telling has come to be seen as mean-spirited, bigoted, nasty. Truth-telling is hateful, we have come to believe. Soothing lies are often preferred.
Solomon sees things different. ”A lying tongue hates those it crushes” (Proverbs 26:27). That carries two implications, each of which has a converse.
First, it indicates that lies are hateful; when we lie, we treat another as an enemy (and this is why lying to enemies is condoned in the Bible). Conversely, truth-telling is an act of love. Second, Solomon is saying that lies crush, oppression, and beat down. Conversely, truth liberates.
Our media, our government, our educational system, our scholars, our pastors and priests, tell us lies on a regular basis. And it is the calling of the church to expose those lies and to tell the truth, for the sake of the oppressed.
Luther Explains Why I Still Take Everyone at Face Value:
Faith…honors him whom it trusts with the most reverent and highest regard since it considers him truthful and trustworthy. There is no other honor equal to the estimate of truthfulness and righteousness with which we honor him whom we trust. … On the other hand, there is no way in which we can show greater contempt for a man than to regard him as false and wicked and to be suspicious of him, as we do when we do not trust him. (Selections, p. 59)
Capitalist Heroes I Don’t Respect
F. A. von Hayek on the Golden Rule [Source]
“An order in which everyone treated his neighbor as himself would be one where comparatively few could be fruitful and multiply.”
I guess Christianity doesn’t work, then. Bummer.
Milton Friedman on Drugs [Source]
“I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.”
This is obviously whack, and a common blatantly un-Christian libertarian sentiment. According to my ‘values system’, no one has the right to kill themselves. Whether you think the war on drugs has been right or effective, the idol of ‘individual freedom’ or ‘individual rights’ must be toppled.
Bible Stuff I Don’t Understand
Job 31 [Link]
In this passage Job asserts his integrity, and in the process gives us his idea of justice. First sexual integrity, which we’re all familiar with (“I have made a covenant with my eyes…”), but then he goes off the map. He claims he’s upright because he’s listened to the complaints of his employees and makes an egalitarian argument for doing so (v13-15):
‘If I have despised the cause of my male or female servant
When they complained against me,
What then shall I do when God rises up?
When He punishes, how shall I answer Him?
Did not He who made me in the womb make them?
Did not the same One fashion us in the womb?’
He then says he’s never eaten alone while the orphan and widow went hungry, in fact he seems to be a fan of adoption: “But from my youth I reared him [the orphan] as a father…”
He’s never trusted in money (v25,28):
‘ If I have rejoiced because my wealth was great,
And because my hand had gained much…
This also would be an iniquity deserving of judgment,
For I would have denied God who is above.’
Then he says one more thing I don’t understand: that he’s never rejoiced when evil befalls his enemies.
And he ends with the real kicker (v38-40):
‘If my land cries out against me,
And its furrows weep together;
If I have eaten its fruit without money,
Or caused its owners to lose their lives;
Then let thistles grow instead of wheat,
And weeds instead of barley.’
Not only is his last claim about economics, it suggests that the land would cry out against him if he exploited his workers. We may dismiss this, but I think there’s something going on here.
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