Tag: economics

Why Do Christians Struggle with Economics?

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

“Here is a theory (with a debt to Rothbard, Hoppe, Kinsella, et al.) about why this situation persists. People who live and work primarily within the religious milieu are dealing mainly with goods of an infinite nature. These are goods like salvation, the intercession of saints, prayers of an infinitely replicable nature, texts, images, and songs that constitute non-scarce goods, the nature of which requires no rationing, allocation, and choices regarding their distribution.

None of these goods takes up physical space. One can make infinite copies of them. They can be used without displacing other instances of the good. They do not depreciate with time. Their integrity remains intact no matter how many times they are used. Thus they require no economization. For that reason, there need to be no property norms concerning their use. They need not be priced. There is no problem associated with their rational allocation. They are what economists call “free goods.”

If one exists, lives, and thinks primarily in the realm of the non-scarce good, the problems associated with scarcity — the realm that concerns economics — will always be elusive. To be sure, it might seem strange to think of things such as grace, ideas, prayers, and images as goods, but this term merely describes something that is desired by people. (There are also things we might describe as nongoods, which are things that no one wants.) So it is not really a point of controversy to use this term. What really requires explanation

… Read the rest

The Revolution Continues, Aided by Left and Right

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

Few people know this-and fewer care-but it’s a matter of Catholic doctrine that private property rights are sacred. Pope Leo XIII warned of the consequences of ignoring divine law in Rerum Novarum in 1891 when he wrote, “the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies.”

Predictably, the revolutionary mindset he warned about has overtaken all but a few, such that even “conservatives” are horrified that Starbucks would ask someone who a) demands free services and b) refuses to buy anything, to leave. With the criminalization of thought, the war on parental rights, persecution of churches and religious groups and now the open assault on private property rights, we’ve thus passed one more critical milestone on our descent into the tyranny of the mob. If a $20 billion a year corporation and the cops are afraid of the mob, what are your chances at defending your property and lives?

http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2018/04/19/philadelphia-police-commissioner-apologizes-to-2-men-arrested-at-starbucks.html… Read the rest

The Scourge of Protectionism

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

American protectionists all cheered last month when they learned they were going to be able to pay higher prices on steel and everything made with steel-thousands of products.

Will they also cheer now that their employers will sell a lot less of more than 100 different products ranging from food to cars? And why is it that when it comes to economic matters and history, Americans are so willfully ignorant? Prediction: When the market crashes, trade collapses and unemployment skyrockets, will they blame the anti-trade protectionist policies?

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/04/china-new-us-tariffs-including-soy-cars-and-chemicals.html… Read the rest

Celebrating Labor Day? Don’t

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

President Cleveland created Labor Day on June 28, 1894 in an attempt to quell a strike by 150,000 railroad workers that had crippled the country’s economy.  The striking laborers refused to go back to work and eventually clashed with federal troops. Their leader, Eugene Debs, was sent to prison, where he eventually became a Marxist.

The common ideology of the unions and the socialists made for a profitable long-term alliance.  Each sought to overthrow the existing order, each proclaimed an entitlement to the property of others, and each was quick to resort to violence when lawful means were unproductive.  Within two years of the institution of Labor Day, a quarter of a million workers in Chicago walked off their jobs, demanding a shorter work week (but the same pay).  As so many strikes do, this one resulted in violence when police attempting to disperse the crowd at the Haymarket Square were attacked with a dynamite bomb.  Seven police officers were killed.  They would be the first victims of the new century of union, socialist violence.

The unions have long cultivated the myth that their reason for existence is the promotion of workers’ rights, but from their earliest days the opposite has been true.  Shortly after the Civil War, as black Americans flooded northern industrial areas in search of jobs, labor unions such as The Brotherhood of Railroad Firemen and Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen prohibited the admission of black members.  They also banned Catholics.  Consequently, the railroads employed almost exclusively white … Read the rest