Economics & Christian values

...an occurrence better simply because no person or group decided it should happen...

...Now and then the first firm is out of line and it later alters its price change to match what the other firms are doing...

...All right, reserved...

...Thoughtful believers have long ago ceased ignoring the social or natural sciences simply because they are "secular...

...See, for example the article on "Locke and the Law of the Sea" in Commonweal, June, 1981...

...Although in orthodox economic theory the category of "self-interest" ought to cover altruistic or charitable acts as well as narrowly hedonistic or self-seeking ones, in practice those economists who judge capitalism to be more feasible than socialism on the grounds just stated in the text are making some assumption about the content (and not just the form) of the self-interest of most people...

...Our own society, let alone various third-world ones, is characterized by a great disparity'in yearly income between the rich and poor, and an even more alarming difference in wealth (the dollar value of the property a person owns at the end of the year...

...as social scientists, they want to leave to others the choice about what to value...

...Published by Winston Press...

...These assumptions are so outrageously simplistic that perhaps no one would defend them in this form...

...5. The human person and self-interest The fifth (and last) element we will investigate may not look like an economic category at all...

...At the same time, however, the use in Christian ethics of the From Toward a Chrislian Ethic by Prentiss L. Pumberton and Daniel Rush Finn...

...Does less unemployment cause more inflation or must one of these problems be solved before the other will get better...

...These problems turn not on questions of how much wealth will be ours and what is the most promis- ing way to get it, but of what kind of society we want to be and what kind of world we want to leave to our children...

...The tradition of Christian ethics has consistently rejected the first step of this argument...

...They would like to leave that to philosophers and theologians...

...As we listen to economists from the right, left, and center we can hear different answers to these questions about what is going on in the economy...

...It is no more true today than it has ever been that a decent living for those at the bottom of the social heap must walt on the extravagant self-enrichment of those at the top...

...Which is more "efficient...

...Once such values are incorporated into the list of society's goals, even orthodox economists often concede that only government intervention or activities by other non-market forces can improve on the deficiencies of the market...

...A world fund for developing nations could be established by a tax on all such mining...

...do this, the neighbor can sue in court...

...This particular misuse of the term "efficiency" is most frequent among people in business and financial circles...

...But even though the idea could apply to any goal and could include all costs, in practice both the goals sought and the costs considered are usually limited to those items which have a price tag designated in the market...

...Thus, an ethical assessment of economic arguments will confirm the view that scarcity is a crucial economic problem, but not primarily in the way economists generally mean it...

...A good number of economists --particularly "conserva- live" economists --are caught in a problem here...

...While it may not always be easy tO decide what is the morally best course of action, the careful decision of a deliberative body ought not be dismissed as just the efforts of one more "interest group...

...To be fair to economists here, we must note that the disci- pline of economics does clearly recognize that the negative effects of polluted air are indeed costs of producing steel --even if the steel mill doesn't have to pay those costs...

...Still, it seems clear that the firm ought not be viewed solely or even primarily as an organization of investors or owners who hire employees to perform certain tasks...

...The obvious conclusion from this moral assessment is that although the market mechanism may be employed to achieve certain goals, Christians cannot have a n~iive confidence in market out- comes...

...Scarcity as the gap between unlimited wants and what is available, however, is a sign of human greed, some- thing that the Bible has always referred to as the sin of covetousness...

...But the economist's usual understanding of the relation of economic science and human values runs into difficulties on two levels...

...But the release of toxic gases into the air by the plant is not challenged in the courts on the grounds of violation of ownership rights since no one / person "owns" the atmosphere...

...the details can only be worked out in an actual historical situation...

...In fact, many of the disputes among different "schools" of economists --conservative, liberal, radical --can be traced to different starting assumptions...

...John's University, CoUegeviUe, Minnesota...

...This structure and its foundation are inseparable...

...The assump- tion is that among the elements in this "self-interest," the "selfish" ones outweigh the "altruistic" ones...

...Consumers' value systems determine where the nation puts its time and resources...

...Seeing the firm in this way and understand- ing the limits to private property, there is no reason why the ultimate decisions about the firm should be made by stockhold- ers only...

...Government actions will preserve the economic status quo since they arise from patterns of influence generated by the operation of the economic system...

...Are multinational firms the best hope for development in the third world or do they actually cause underdevelopment...

...That is, every indi- vidual has a set of preferences or values, and some amount of wealth and natural ability...

...What is efficiency and how is it related to moral concern...

...At a number of conferences on a "law of the sea," the vast majority of the nations of the world have been calling for a special status for the oceans so that while they may be mined they cannot be "owned" absolutely...

...And finally, we need critical examination of the likely costs and benefits of different kinds of growth in terms of the world environment...

...So it is particularly difficult for well-meaning people to respond when in response to proposals for humanizing our economy they hear: "That sounds nice but it is quite inefficient...

...One firm announces a price increase to be effective at some future date, and the other firms then generally announce the same price rise effective on the same date...

...The original "owners" (say manufacturers with goods or laborers with their labor power) look for the best offer for their product or service, while the buyers (say consumers or employers) look for the lowest priced source of what they seek...

...But the fact remains that different starting points and conflicting visions of the world need to be weighed against each other...

...Still, in order to think about how people act and react as consumers and producers, economists work with a model of the human person...

...Increasingly aware of the pro- found failures of the Eastern European centrally-directed economies to ensure material well-being, people who should know better draw a crude and desperate conclusion: let us turn our economic affairs over to the most unreconstructed forces of private enterprise...

...In fact, if a decision had to be made about basic economic questions, the discussion and debate about priorities might well change many people's orig- inal personal "preferences" (hopefully for the better...

...They generally work with the un- derstanding of private property deriving from the work of John Locke...

...The "efficient solution" to an economic problem is generally equivalent to "the market solution...

...On the other hand, most mainstream economists believe that the "self-interest" of individuals is so strong that capitalism (which is based on each individual's looking out for his or her own interests) is not only morally better but is more feasible than socialism (which they feel requires that individuals act counter to their narrow self-interest since the government organizes economic activity...

...DANIEL RUSH FINN is an economist at St...

...In the last section we saw the example of air pollution by a steel mill...

...Problems appear as we dig deeper...

...In the language of economics, individuals gain "utility" from actions they choose to undertake, whether those actions iticlude buying heroin for themselves or working as a volunteer at a commun- ity service agency...

...Advocates of the market appreciate, first, its automatic operation (no bureaucracy has to act before market adjust- ments occur) and, second, its impersonal operation (no person or group gets t ~ decide what adjustments are ultimately made...

...If this were true, then a policy decision by Congress or a government agency or a neighborhood council would be just an expression of preferences of the people in that group (and of any others who might be able to have some influence over them...

...Are the major oil companies exacerbating the energy problem for higher profits or is just OPEC to blame...

...Techni- cally speaking, these assumptions are a part of the "neoclassi- cal" school of economics...

...While the human person may, over generations, be shaped into a less competitive, less anxious, and less self-interested being than has been the case under capitalism, the doctrine of original sin recognizes that the human condition shall never be free of a tendency to sinful forms of self-assertion...

...The shortcoming of the economist's definition of scarcity is that all these concerns are grouped together in the same category with a desire for ever- larger stereo speakers and ever-longer boats for recreation...

...The economist wants to use it in a value-free way --to designate achieving any goal with the least effort and use of resources...

...Commonweal: 602...

...If we foster more growth, we will all be better off...

...But this sense of "self-interest" isn't very interesting...

...This adjustment process occurs about four times a year and effectively eliminates much competition (which the firms euphemistically call "cut-throat" competition) where one firm might lower its prices to attract more customers...

...To widen the context even further, we can consider our nation's role in the international discussions about mining the floor of the world's oceans...

...The Christian tradition has never granted ultimate value to the immediate inclination of individuals...

...These dreary conclusions are embodied in a lock-step series of assumptions: 1. That economic growth is of a piece...

...Mainstream economics can say that all actions have some end or goal, and that this end is an interest of the self who takes that action...

...On the contrary, we need to reopen the question of what kind of growth we want and need...

...Fundamentally, then, the word "efficiency" is forced to do double duty and is misused in the pro~:ess...

...The first problem is that wealthy consumers can fulfill far more of their wants than the poor can...

...Even now, after our energy prices have risen dramatically, we Still pay much less for gasoline, heating oil, and other forms of energy than people in Europe and most other places on the globe...

...From the point of view of the individual manager facing a difficult decision, this is most often felt as a clash between his or her "own" values and a responsibility to the stockholders who have a right to a significant return on their investment...

...But where capitalism counts on competition from other self-interested persons to hold self-interest in check, Christianity has always held out two additional pre- scriptions: a personal change of heart, and institutionalized requirements and restrictions...

...If it costs $300 million to reduce a steel mill's pollution to"acceptable" levels, then this amount ought not be seen as a cost imposed on business...

...They mean, of course, not the corner store, but that series of social interactions between people Who have something which others want and those others who are willing to pay in order to get it...

...Many of them, though not all, would argue that any person's values or ethical positions are simply personal subjective preferences...

...Although the steel mill with pollution control devices must pay for them, the mill with no suchdevice need not pay for the privilege of imposing costs on people living downwind...

...Economic growth on the old pattern --growth on any terms, at any cost --is at most a palliative to the most profound hazards and conflicts or our age...

...Proponents of the market often call this "paternalistic" or "totalitarian...

...It is quite clear that the Christian principle of the just entitlement of the poor does in fact require such a redistribution...

...2, The mm-ket Mainstream economists appreciate "the market...

...In fact, Christianity has always denounced any attempt to base social organization on self-interest alone...

...some such attempts (entitled "co-determination") are currently being made in West Germany and elsewhere...

...It is this belief that selfish activity predominates that leads many proponents of capitalism to oppose any significant redistribution of in- come to the poor on the grounds that it would tend to destroy the incentive to work...

...In a careful study entitled Economic Foundations of Political Power (The Free Press, 1973), Randall Bartlett has dem- onstrated how an economic system based on individuals assert- ing their self-interest will, in the modem, uncertain world, subvert any democratic government and will render it a servant of vested economic interests...

...Scarcity as physical poverty is often underrated by economists...

...economy as given and have proceeded to analyze its workings...

...This means taking a hard look at different economic policies in terms of their capacity for generating employment, and the quality of the work and other social relations so generated...

...Most economists in the United States share a set of assump- tions about the human person and economic activity...

...For Christians and others, it is a matter of public morality...

...They consequently come to different recommen- dations for economic policy...

...Nearly everyone sees that "scarcity" is the fundamental problem of economics, but the ordinary person's notion is different from the economist's use of the term...

...Within the discipline of economics it is usually assumed that while economists as ordinary citizens have their own values and convictions, when they act as scientists they are only supposed to describe what is going on in the economy...

...At another level it is important to question the wisdom of relying on the market mechanism to set national economic priorities even if we were first to solve the problems of the deprivation of the poor and the failures of competition among firms...

...Economists are not in the business of developing and proving theories about human nature...

...Alternatively, it can be seen as achieving any particular goal at the least possible cost in effort and resources...

...Many in the United States, however, have objected to this notion and, following John Locke, want to assert an absolute right for the firms who do the mining...

...but like many other examples, it demonstrates the flaw in the usual use of the word "efficiency...

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...The term "effi- cient" here means that the newer process produces steel at a lower cost per ton than does the old one...

...In practice, that word generally includes only those costs of production which are measured in dollars and cents in the market...

...There is no reason to accept the stultifying either-or vision of growth presented above...

...This concern over scarcity is represented in fears about whether the food and housing bills can be paid, whether a Social Security pension will be sufficient, whether the unemployed worker can find a job, whether 'the malnourished child of the third world will live past the age of twelve...

...For nearly everyone else, it is untrue to say that a~well-to-do family that wishes it could afford a yacht is experiencing the same kind of scarcity as the poor family that wishes it could afford a balanced diet...

...The "free market" --unencumbered by government restric- tions --is viewed as a marvelous mecha/fism for setting national econolnic priorities without the need for national debate...

...Self-interest" is an important part of this understanding of the human person, but it is not always defined or understood clearly by either economists or their critics...

...The Judeo-Christian vision of the human person is more communal than all this...

...The second -- the imperson- airy of the market --raises a very important question for Christian ethics: is...

...Not only does Christian ethics have greater respect for group decisions about the common good than do proponents of the market, the Christian,tradition has analogously put less confi- dence in the initial preferences of individuals than do those same market advocates...

...the concessions just cited, many advocates of the market oppose programs of income redistribution on the grounds that only poverty (euphemistically called "market forces") will provide enough incentive for the poor to exert themselves...

...Copyright 1985, Prentiss L. Pemberton and Daniel Rush Finn...

...A significant example of such behavior is "price lead- ership," a procedure described even in introductory economics textbooks as prevalent in the American steel indus- try...

...Once, however, we realize that ownership entails not only rights but also the duty to use possessions responsibly, the manager could be allowed as great a discretion in fulfilling the moral responsibilities of the firm as he or she has in creatively seeking a profit...

...Differing schools of economic thought look at the same world, but see it differently...

...the most the rest of us can hope for is to share --however modestly --in their gains...

...However, there is a serious problem in taking this definition of scarcity as a starting point for economic science...

...Pollution is seen as piracy of the good...

...Justice here would imply not only a redistribution of wealth but a realignment of the production system so that, for example, the best agricultural land in the third world would be used to produce basic food for domestic consumption and not the more profitable cash crops grown for export to the industrialized world...

...This is not to deny that multitudes live in destitution but rather to point out that there is enough to go round if justice prevails...

...Scarcity as the excess of wants over available goods is important but not important enough to render it the starting point of the study of economic life...

...Rather, the firm is an organization of persons of many sorts who have come together to produce goods or services for the benefit of themselves and the rest of society...

...This particular case is a good example of the economic problem of "externalities" which we will examine further on...

...insights of economics is not so simple and straightforward as most economists believe...

...At a sort of common sense level, this is quite straightforward...

...No.one is allowed to dump refuse on a neighbor's property, and if someone tries to "I'm okay . . . it's only a momentary attack of corporate guilt...

...FAITH & ECONOMICS- GETTING BEHIND THE CONCEPTS Economics & Chri s ti an v alu e s [TISS L. PEMBERTON NIEL RUSH FINN I T IS QUITE natural that in dealing with economic problems Christians should depend heavily on the discipline of economics for a description of the situation...

...At the same time, however, orthodox economic Science has had significant negative effects -- effects which economists them- selves often overlook...

...Yet, if we really do believe the Judeo-Christian vision of all things as created for the good of humanity, then the atmos- phere (like the rivers, lakes, and oceans) is not presumed to be a cost-free dumping ground...

...Still, most economists do periodically lapse from a careful use of the term --as the next example shows...

...When we step back and look at the larger issues in the economy, we find that this notion of a more limited ownership has equally important implications...

...We will return to this notion later, but let us here note that this position can be well described as "psychological egoism," the belief that while not all behavior is consciously "selfish" in the narrow sense, all behavior is ultimately "self-interested...

...To answer this question it is important to see why proponents of the market respond by saying "Yes...

...Economists define efficiency as getting the greatest possible production out of any given amount of resources available...

...Therefore, the market choices of consumers with money to spend may not be the best basis on which to determine what the economy should produce...

...It would seem reasonable, for example, for the board of directors of a firm to be elected not just by the 2-16 November 1984:601 stockholders but by blue-collar workers and lower-level man- agers as well as upper management...

...Consider two alternate procedures for, say, making steel: an older process and a more recently developed one which is more "efficient...

...Thus it is that many have complained about government pollution regulations because they reduce the "efficiency" of American firms...

...In addition, some rep- resentation of consumers and of society as a whole would be very important since in spite of the best of intentions, there will always be a tendency for the common self-interest of employees and investors to overshadow the rights and needs of persons outside the firm...

...can gain their own ends, and can legitimate this by showing how' 'just" it is since they are not breaking any laws...

...The first of these claims involves the notion of' "efficiency" to which we shall return presently...

...In short, we need to reject both the blanket scorn of growth and consumption of the sixties, and the mean-spirited, crudely materialistic thinking prevailing in the last few years...

...From the point of view of the Judeo-Chrisfian tradition, scarcity as deprivation, as the lack of what it takes to live a full life, is an evil which all in the community have the responsibility to eliminate...

...This stance bespeaks some important and questionable as- sumptions about the human person and self-interest which we will examine later...

...Jnst as opponents of a more generous society have sought to convince us that gov- ernment programs to assist the poor have always been foredoomed, they would have us believe that only capitulation to the declared needs of big business can ensure economic well-being...

...The economist is right in pointing out that people's wants exceed what is available, but this conceals an even more important insight...

...In its critique of every social and economic system, Christian ethics points out the way those persons with power (i.e., "wealth" under capitalism) can subvert the usual checks and balances...

...While the latter have no standard by which to judge consumers' wants, Christian ethics has always held that some values --like food and shelter --are more basic and more important than others --like luxury consump- tion...

...This is by no means to say that Christian ethics endorses the excesses of bureaucracy that occur in totalitarian forms of socialism, but rather to assert that major questions of economic priority should be carefully weighed, debated, and decided upon in the light of fundamental moral values...

...At the most obvious level, a problem is posed by the fact that on a large number of important issues economists as scientists debate among themselves as to what is going on in the economic realm...

...In case of a shortage of gasoline, for example, rather than allowing a government agency to ration gas "arbitrarily," proponents of 7. I~ A/~vP~hpr lORd, 4;00 the market would advocate allowing the price of gas to rise to whatever price would induce consumers to reduce the amount they demand so there would be enough gas to go round...

...We will simply refer to this as "mainstream" or "orthodox" economic theory...

...Any time ,human values are involved which are not adequately represented in the market place --human dignity, the rights of future generations, the interests of the poor, etc...

...It is our conten- tion that the basic insights of the Christian tradition must be employed in assessing the adequacy of those assumptions which operate below the surface of economic description...

...if not, we will lose ground...

...The usual presump- tion in our competitive society is that one person's rights will act as a limit on the excesses of others...

...The individual can be exhorted to a less selfish way of living, and the structures of the com- munity can be molded so that the basic needs of all persons are met and the self-interest of individuals corresponds more closely with the common good...

...business...

...We do need to choose among alternative ends ~in the allocation of scarce resources but the most real sense of scarcity is missed if we treat all wants as equally significant...

...Al- though the action of the free market might at times achieve the best outcome, it does not necessarily do so...

...Explicit collusion and outfight price-fixing by firms is, of course, illegal in the United States, but there are more subtle ways to" administer" prices...

...Of course, economists do Commonweal: 598 ultimately make a distinction between different kinds of "wants": some are backed up by expenditures of money and are fulfilled while others are not...

...The Christian vision of property points toward some sort of communal possession of these extra-national resources...

...No one thinks inefficiency is a good idea...

...M. Douglas Meeks has argued (in the November 10, 1980 issue of Christianity and Crisis) that the economist's preoccu- pation with scarcity contradicts a truly Trinitarian conception of economics because it overlooks what the New Testament calls the "pleroma" or fullness of God's gifts in the Spirit...

...Rather, it is a measure, to put it kindly, of the subsidy the firm had previously been receiving from the public in allowing the pollution to go on...

...This is what the economist means technically by scarcity...

...Some values are better than others, and sincere discussion in a group can improve a decision...

...They are supposed to leave to others the use of that description in judging whether what is happening ought to go on...

...The advan- tages of lower pollution levels get lost in this casual use of the term...

...The Christian tradition has always recognized the ex- cesses of sin...

...Although a more limited sense of private property is not sufficient to spell out new institutional forms precisely, it does indicate the direction in which to move...

...One of the moral problems arising most frequently within current American economic institutions is the clash between moral principles and the charter of the firm to produce a profit...

...At the same time as it challenges the foundations of capitalism, the Christian tradition also chides that miivet~ of those Marxists who would hope to eliminate human sinfulness simply by restructuring the economy...

...Used with permission...

...Competition (with other sellers) keeps owners from charging too much, while competition (with other buyers) keeps each buyer from being able to force sellers to lower their prices unduly...

...4. Property In an effort to describe the economic situation without making a moral judgment about whether it is good or bad, orthodox economists have generally taken the institutional framework of the U.S...

...If things really were this simple, life would be a lot easier...

...There are other ways that competition can be and is reduced, but the point here is that to the extent that competition is reduced, economists themselves admit that the operation of the market will produce less than optimal results...

...To be sure each of these many descriptions of economic life has some degree of truth to it, an empirical investigation is always crucial...

...The person is recognized to be consti- tuted in a social setting...

...We can even hear assertions that government has" imposed" hundreds of billions of dollars in costs on U.S...

...Christianity has, rather carefully, made the commonsense distinction between actions where the intended beneficiary is the self (self-interested in the sense of" selfish") and actions where the intended beneficiary is another person or group...

...Most of us are already familiar with the conflict'between the assertion of nearly absolute authority of the owner over the thing owned and the Jude.o-Christian insight into possession as stewardship...

...When the system of competing rights breaks down incases like this, only direct action by government can alleviate pollution...

...The orthodox definition of economic science is "the study of the allocation of scarce resources to achieve alterna- tive ends...

...Various arrangements would have to be tried and tested...

...The "law of the sea" raises questions about economic structures of ownership in a situation where they are yet to be designed for the first time...

...In addition, the hope of profits entices produc- ers to make new products which consumers would like to have...

...Mainstream economists think of the person as a "rational maximizer...

...For example, with limits on the amount of iron ore and labor available for making steel, we must choose between more tractors or more autos, between more military tanks or PREN~SS L. PEMBERTOH iS Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Religion and Social Ethics at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School...

...Thus, relying on the market to determine what goods the nation will produce allows the wealthy a far greater voice in setting national economic priorities...

...Yet from the tenor of public debate, one might conclude that all these propositions were received wisdom...

...A second problem raised by relying heavily on the market is the implicit assumption that the firms in the marketplace actu- ally do compete with each other...

...For economists, the problem of scarcity applies to commodities: the inability of a family to buy food is treated in economics in the same manner as the inability of a family to purchase a yacht...

...In order to understand this difference, we need to examine the economist's notion of the market...

...more steel girders for buildings...

...either we have it, or we don't...

...Some individuals value charitable actions, the economist ex- plains, and thus those individuals get a kind of psychological "return" for activity which assists others...

...The idea of self-interest is treated more subtly...

...Now, however, consider two alternatives for a steel plant where the only difference between them is that one has a series of complex devices costing $300 million in its smokestacks to reduce pollution by 90 percent while the other simply releases un- treated smoke into the air...

...In a system such as we have described, the actions of self-interested, rational agents operating in an uncertain world will -rightly or wrongly --cause the structure of political power to rise from a firm economic foundation...

...Examine, if you will, five basic economic categories of mainstream economics, and you will see how the Christian tradition requires a critique and expan- sion of each concept...

...At a deeper level, however, we find that in the very process of trying to describe what is (and trying to avoid the question of what ought to be), the economist starts with some basic as- sumptions which are value-laden and not value-free...

...More strikingly, it is a measure of legalized theft as real as if the firm had, through a loophole in the law, been allowed to dump solid waste on a neighbor's land...

...The economist will define efficiency in energy consumption with respect to the market price of energy even though from an ethical point of view other concerns, like the availability of resources to future generations, may loom large in the assessment...

...In everyday terms, ~carcity refers to not having enough to live a fully human life...

...2. The only way of raising the economic level of the worst- off groups in society is by steps which make the best-off still better-off...

...The assumptions implicit in such confidence in the market have been criticized from both secular and religious points of view...

...When Christians reflect on the possibilities for an economic ethic in the modern world, they must keep "efficiency" in perspective...

...As a result, economists operate with the same assumptions about property as do most people in modern industrial society...

...Scarcity Mainstream economists today universally take "scarcity" as the fundamental problem with which economics is con- cerned...

...The differences in wealth and earnings between the most and least privileged Americans --extreme by the standards of many Western democracies --deserve critical public debate, no less than the national debt or policies for reducing interest rates...

...3. Efficiency Economists --and just about all other human beings --value efficiency...

...Economists will admit that if the current distribution of income between the rich and the poor is judged to be a bad one from the moral point of view, then the national economic priorities set in the free market will also be wrong until a redistribution of wealth and income is achieved...

...The Christian economic ethic should also have a transforming impact on existing institutions of property ownership...

...On the one hand, the economists' official conception of"se!f-interest" does not mean that the individual engages in only "selfish" behavior...

...We must not simply assume that to have better pre-natal care we must accept acid rain, or that to find ways for the third world to feed itself we must accept the unlimited domination of agribusiness...

...then an efficient attainment of those goals may look remarkably inefficient from the point of view of the market...

...Clearly the second plant will appear to produce a ton of steel at a lower "cost" since from the point of view of the firm the costs paid by citizens who must breathe polluted air are not part of the firm's calculation of the "cost" of a ton of steel...

...Employing this approach, economists have made highly valuable con- tributions to the well-being of people here and abroad...

...What people would like to have always exceeds what is available...

...We need not deal with the technical economic definition of "perfect competition" here, but let us note that most economists do recognize that in many industries, the few very large firms which dominate the indus- try often do not fully compete with each other in spite of the ideal of competition of the free market...

...This, in turn, will affect behavior on an individual and on an institutional level...

...In addi- tion, since these assumptions are starting points, they are unproved and, at least within the science of economics, are unprovable...

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...3. Hence the only important question is what policies will make the rich richer...

...We should note that from the point of view of the steel company --operating with Locke's notion of property --the government's action appears to be an external and arbitrary limit on its rights...

...Using these financial and personal resources, the individual tries to fulfill those preferences to the greatest extent possible...

...Behind this stance is an appreciation for the power of human sinfulness...

...Today we can see that the gas guzzlers of the 1950s and 1960s were very inefficient in their use of gasoline, although they were nonetheless "efficient" economically since gas was so cheap at that time...

...It means looking critically at the distribution of benefits of economic growth throughout society...

...We must again have growth --do what it takes, no questions asked...

...Christianity has always denied the assumption that values are just personal preferences...

...The Christian tradition on its own does not provide ahead of time any exact definition of how a particular institution like the firm should be structured...

...This disparity requires a rethinking of some of the usual rights and claims of ownership...

...Most economists see themselves as providing descrip- tion, not prescription...