(Link to Part 9)
The Practical Need for Benevolence
So far, we’ve seen how important markets are to a thriving society. They provide a real-time information feedback loop that matches wants and needs with supply. Self-interested people (who may or may not be selfish) bid for goods and services. Businesses compete to be the best at meeting their demands. Markets integrate people into an economic community of win-win transactions. Economic production and exchange, even in the Old Testament biblical context, are integral to stewardship of God’s resources. Markets enhance these qualities.
We’ve also observed that markets don’t operate with pristine perfection. Market transactions sometimes impact (sometimes quite negatively) people who were not a party to the transaction. Complex economies frequently lead to situations where buyers or sellers are at a relative information disadvantage to the other party in the transaction. Since markets function best where people are reasonably well informed and have high expectations that their property rights will be respected by government and others, these issues represent serious challenges. Discussing a truly “free market” without a strong juridical framework that will referee and regulate these problems is impossible.
Furthermore, as Christians, we must acknowledge that whenever fallen, finite people act on what they perceive to be in their best interest, they frequently err. Erroneous decisions are also processed into the market feedback loop. Economic outcomes will reflect these values. A frequent inclination is to propose government solutions that will “even out” the bad market outcomes. But this inclination frequently fails to account for the fact that governments are made up of the same fallen, finite people trying to manage incomprehensibly complex and dynamic markets with insufficient information using a process oriented toward compromise positions between power brokers. It often doesn’t result in the best “common good” either. Our real choice is between fallen finite people with decentralized power participating in markets that efficiently produce good and bad or fallen finite people with centralized coercive power who answer to political (not economic or ethical) pressures. In short, perfect outcomes are not possible.
What is challenging is that we believe human beings have inestimable value beyond their economic capacities. We’re unwilling to leave people completely at the mercy of economic outcomes. We realize that some of us occasionally make imprudent decisions. Some of us are harmed by circumstances that are beyond our control. Others may be (temporarily or permanently) without the physical or mental capacities to produce something for economic exchange. We are morally compelled to devote resources to nurture fundamental capacities in those needing nurture. We must aid those who can’t participate in economic activity at all. The caregivers in both cases frequently need our economic support as well. So how will we provide this care?
And here is a related question: Where does someone learn to practice benevolence and internalize benevolence as a virtue? If we are nothing but a society of individuals engaging each other purely as parties to market transactions, how will we learn to include others in our consideration of what is truly in our self-interest? Where will we learn the virtues of love and compassion that motivate us to devote a portion of our resources toward those in hardship or without the capacity to participate in the economy? I want to suggest that the answer is in small benevolence-oriented communes. You might call them families.
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