A Community Connecting Practice & Thought Leadership

Is the Market Moral?A Dialogue on Religion, Economics, and Justice.  Rebecca Blank and William McGurn.  Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2004

Blank's Position

• Expansion of markets has brought increased wealth and choice to many, including the ability to use our diverse skills
  
• In almost all nations where poverty rates have fallen permanently, economic expansion has occurred as well.
  
• There is no viable alternative to the market as an organizing principle for an economic system in a complex society.The key question is not "Should there be a market?" but "What are the limits to markets?…"
  
• For competitive markets to work there must be a system of laws and the benefits and costs from exchange must be borne largely by the buyer and the seller.
  
• Government must enhance competition and correct market failure.Government must also explicitly limit the scope of markets and alter market outcomes by redistributing resources among different population groups
  
• The market model assumes self-interest, individual decision making and "more" is better (e.g., more wealth; more choice' more goods)…productivity and efficiency are good because that produces "more"
  
• Christian faith and economics

Christian faith cares about the individual but also calls people into community with each other.In the absence of other individuals, a person cannot express love

For Christians self-interest is not an adequate principle for living.We are called to be other-interested (most obviously manifested in Jesus' life and sacrificial death).Other interest may be blatantly inefficient

For Christians abundance ("more") is measured not in material goods but by the abundance of the Spirit.

Poverty is a social injustice and Christians are called to a concern for the poor

All choices are not morally neutral

The Christian church needs to challenge the opinion that self-interested behavior is always inevitable and market outcomes always preferable

• The market provides those with a predilection toward greed with incentives and opportunities for abusive economic behavior
  
• With economic growth comes change, and change is never costless
  
• There are many ways to increase profits; greater productivity is one, but cutting costs (e.g., lower-wage labor) or quality is another
  
  McGurn's Position
  
  Markets are relationships and networks between and among human beings, not just goods and services transacted
  
• Economists preach a message charged with hope and possibility (growth).Theologians see a fixed pie where everything is a fatalistic zero-sum game.The answer to poverty does not lie in trying to slice the existing pie into ever smaller slices but in baking a bigger pie for all.As average income rises, the incomes of the poor rise proportionately
  
• The keys to economic growth are being open to trade and globalization (e.g., East Asia) and billions have had their lives improved in recent decades
  
• Capitalism is the market economy circumscribed within a strong juridical framework and an ethical and religious culture that values self-restraint, honesty, courage, diligence, the willingness to defer gratification, social trust, duty toward community, reciprocity.Culture matters and Christian faith is central to the "trust" culture (social capital; solidarity).Markets break down when there is not social trust.Free societies depend upon virtue to survive.Healthy capitalism is informed by schools, church, and family, institutions in which virtue is cultivated and beliefs are forged.
  
• Capitalism represents the opportunity that comes from interacting with other human beings.
  
• The fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature.Socialism is antigrowth, antihuman, and antiworker…based on a false understanding of human nature.When a pig is born in China, China is the richer for it, but let a Chinese baby be born and suddenly the nation's wealth is said to have gone down
  
• Break down the structures that prevent the poor from selling the fruits of their labors to all the world—and from being able to take from the world what it can give them.Every first world job kept through protectionism cost 35 jobs in the developing world.
  
• The market can trade in sin and can expand sin by making sinning more efficient than it might otherwise be (e.g., pornography)
  
• There are only two potential checks on the market:a) politics and government; and b) culture, whose most obvious component is religion.The state cannot be relied upon to supply, or even in many cases, to enforce a proper moral code.The idea that laws can be imposed in the absence of a supporting culture is naïve (e.g., William Wilberforce)
  
• The flaw in economic justice generally has to do with the idea that it can be dispensed.As Christians, we need to have confidence that justice will be better served by allowing ordinary men and women to realize their talents in an atmosphere of freedom bounded by laws designed to set boundaries rather than to proscribe every possible instance of undesired behavior.Freedom is in accord with our God-created human nature…Imagio Deo…a co-creator with our Maker.What kind of God would create a world in which our prosperity depended on the worst in our natures rather than the best?