WEBVTT NOTE 39. Why Religious People Struggle with Economics 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.880 Why Religious People Struggle with Economics 2 00:00:04.880 --> 00:00:09.220 For years, I've puzzled over the question of why religious people have such trouble 3 00:00:09.220 --> 00:00:12.120 coming to terms with economics. 4 00:00:12.120 --> 00:00:17.920 This problem applies only to modern religions, for it was Catholics in 15th and 16th century 5 00:00:17.920 --> 00:00:23.240 Spain who systematized the discipline of economics to begin with. 6 00:00:23.240 --> 00:00:25.320 That was long ago. 7 00:00:25.320 --> 00:00:33.040 Today, most of what is written about economics in Catholic circles is painful to read. 8 00:00:33.040 --> 00:00:37.720 The failing extends left and right, as likely to appear in progressive or traditionalist 9 00:00:37.720 --> 00:00:39.900 publications. 10 00:00:39.900 --> 00:00:44.840 In book publishing, the problem is so pervasive that it is difficult to review the newest 11 00:00:44.840 --> 00:00:45.840 batch. 12 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:50.500 It's not just that the writers, as thoughtful as they might otherwise be on all matters 13 00:00:50.500 --> 00:00:55.120 of faith and morals, do not know anything about economic theory. 14 00:00:55.120 --> 00:00:58.480 The problem is even more foundational. 15 00:00:58.480 --> 00:01:04.640 The widespread tendency is to deny the validity of the science itself. 16 00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:10.240 It is treated as some kind of pseudo-science invented to thwart the achievement of social 17 00:01:10.240 --> 00:01:16.420 justice or the realization of the perfectly moral utopia of faith. 18 00:01:16.420 --> 00:01:22.040 They therefore dismiss the entire discipline as forgettable and maybe even evil. 19 00:01:22.040 --> 00:01:27.880 It's almost as if the entire subject is outside their field of intellectual vision. 20 00:01:27.880 --> 00:01:33.800 I have what I think is a new theory about why this situation persists. 21 00:01:33.800 --> 00:01:38.060 People who live and work primarily within the religious milieu are dealing mainly with 22 00:01:38.060 --> 00:01:41.380 goods of an infinite nature. 23 00:01:41.380 --> 00:01:46.960 These are goods like salvation, the intercession of saints, prayers of an infinitely replicable 24 00:01:46.960 --> 00:01:53.680 Nature, Texts, Images and Songs that constitute non-scarce goods, the nature of which requires 25 00:01:53.680 --> 00:01:59.440 no rationing, allocation and choices regarding their distribution. 26 00:01:59.440 --> 00:02:02.420 None of these goods take up physical space. 27 00:02:02.420 --> 00:02:05.860 One can make infinite numbers of copies of them. 28 00:02:05.860 --> 00:02:10.260 They can be used without displacing other instances of the good. 29 00:02:10.260 --> 00:02:13.420 They do not depreciate with time. 30 00:02:13.420 --> 00:02:19.400 Their integrity remains intact no matter how many times they are used, thus they require 31 00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:21.940 no economization. 32 00:02:21.940 --> 00:02:26.280 For that reason, there need to be no property norms concerning their use. 33 00:02:26.280 --> 00:02:28.040 They need not be priced. 34 00:02:28.040 --> 00:02:32.280 There is no problem associated with their rational allocation. 35 00:02:32.280 --> 00:02:36.940 They are what economists call free goods. 36 00:02:36.940 --> 00:02:42.420 If one exists, lives and thinks primarily in the realm of the non-scarce good, then 37 00:02:42.420 --> 00:02:47.160 and the problems associated with scarcity, the realm that concerns economics, will always 38 00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:50.080 be elusive. 39 00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:54.580 To be sure, it might seem strange to think of things such as grace, ideas, prayers and 40 00:02:54.580 --> 00:03:00.820 images as goods, but this term merely describes something that is desired by people. 41 00:03:00.820 --> 00:03:05.420 There are also things we might describe as non-goods, which are things that no one wants. 42 00:03:05.420 --> 00:03:09.440 So it is not really a point of controversy to use this term. 43 00:03:09.440 --> 00:03:16.520 What really requires explanation is the description of prayers, grace, text, images and music 44 00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:21.680 as non-scarce goods that require no economization. 45 00:03:21.680 --> 00:03:28.120 So let us back up and consider the difference between scarce and non-scarce goods. 46 00:03:28.120 --> 00:03:33.440 The term scarcity does not precisely refer to the quantity of goods in existence. 47 00:03:33.440 --> 00:03:38.280 It refers to the relationship between how many of these goods are available relative 48 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:46.440 If the number available at zero price is fewer than people who want them for any reason whatever, 49 00:03:46.440 --> 00:03:50.440 they can be considered scarce goods. 50 00:03:50.440 --> 00:03:54.640 It means that there is a limit on the number that can be distributed, given the number 51 00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:57.520 of people who want them. 52 00:03:57.520 --> 00:04:02.200 Scarcity is the defining characteristic of the material world, the inescapable fact that 53 00:04:02.200 --> 00:04:04.800 gives rise to economics. 54 00:04:04.800 --> 00:04:10.160 So long as we live in this lacrimarum val, there will be no paradise. 55 00:04:10.160 --> 00:04:16.260 There will be less of everything than would be used if all goods were superabundant. 56 00:04:16.260 --> 00:04:20.200 This is true regardless of how prosperous or poor a society is. 57 00:04:20.200 --> 00:04:26.280 In so far as material things are finite, they will need to be distributed through some rational 58 00:04:26.280 --> 00:04:33.200 system, not one designed by anyone, but one that emerges in the course of exchange, production 59 00:04:33.200 --> 00:04:35.440 and Economization. 60 00:04:35.440 --> 00:04:42.760 This is the core of the economic problem that economic science seeks to address. 61 00:04:42.760 --> 00:04:47.900 It is almost impossible to think of a finite good that is non-scarce. 62 00:04:47.900 --> 00:04:51.880 We can come up with a scenario, perhaps, like two people living in paradise surrounded by 63 00:04:51.880 --> 00:04:54.240 an ocean of bananas. 64 00:04:54.240 --> 00:04:57.700 In this case, the bananas would be a non-scarce good. 65 00:04:57.700 --> 00:05:02.800 They could be eaten and eaten forever, provided that the bananas do not spoil. 66 00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:06.760 Another proviso is that there can be no free trade between Paradise and the rest of the 67 00:05:06.760 --> 00:05:11.800 world, else one of the inhabitants might get the bright idea to arbitrage between non-scarce 68 00:05:11.800 --> 00:05:16.000 bananas in Paradise and scarce bananas everywhere else. 69 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:19.720 In this case, the bananas would obtain a price and would therefore have to be called scarce 70 00:05:19.720 --> 00:05:23.880 goods, not non-scarce goods. 71 00:05:23.880 --> 00:05:30.380 In the real world, outside of the banana paradise, non-scarce goods are of a special nature. 72 00:05:30.380 --> 00:05:36.260 One feature is that they are typically replicable without limit, like digital files or the inspiration 73 00:05:36.260 --> 00:05:40.960 one receives from an icon that can be copied without limit. 74 00:05:40.960 --> 00:05:45.940 As an example, consider the case of the loaves and fishes, an incident in the life of Jesus 75 00:05:45.940 --> 00:05:49.140 recorded by all four gospel writers. 76 00:05:49.140 --> 00:05:53.140 Jesus is speaking to the multitudes and the listeners grow hungry. 77 00:05:53.140 --> 00:05:56.920 The apostles only have five loaves and two fishes. 78 00:05:56.920 --> 00:05:59.380 These are scarce goods. 79 00:05:59.380 --> 00:06:04.300 They could have thrown them into the air and created a food riot over who got what. 80 00:06:04.300 --> 00:06:08.640 They could have opened a market and sold them food at a very high price, rationing them 81 00:06:08.640 --> 00:06:10.640 by economic means. 82 00:06:10.640 --> 00:06:14.220 Both solutions would produce outrageous results. 83 00:06:14.220 --> 00:06:18.100 Instead, Jesus had a different idea. 84 00:06:18.100 --> 00:06:23.560 He turned the scarce bits of food into non-scarce goods by making copies of the scarce food. 85 00:06:23.560 --> 00:06:27.120 The multitudes ate and were full. 86 00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:31.120 Then the food evidently turned back into scarce goods because the story ends with Jesus instructing 87 00:06:31.120 --> 00:06:34.600 his disciples to collect what is left. 88 00:06:34.600 --> 00:06:37.720 Why collect what is non-scarce? 89 00:06:37.720 --> 00:06:41.880 Clearly the miracle had a beginning and an end. 90 00:06:41.880 --> 00:06:46.920 The story nicely illustrates the difference between a scarce and non-scarce good. 91 00:06:46.920 --> 00:06:51.040 Jesus often used this distinction in his parables, which are mostly stories about the scarce 92 00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:57.040 world told in order to draw attention to the truths about the non-scarce world. 93 00:06:57.040 --> 00:07:02.040 Think of the merchant who bought pearls at a low price and sold them at a high price. 94 00:07:02.040 --> 00:07:07.080 One day he found the pearl of the highest possible value, and he sold all he had just 95 00:07:07.080 --> 00:07:09.640 to buy and hold it. 96 00:07:09.640 --> 00:07:15.040 The pearl, of course, represents salvation and the love of God, non-scarce goods, because 97 00:07:15.040 --> 00:07:18.920 there is enough for everyone who desires them. 98 00:07:18.920 --> 00:07:23.840 We are, in fact, surrounded every day by non-scarce goods, exactly like the loaves and fishes. 99 00:07:23.840 --> 00:07:26.520 All ideas are of this nature. 100 00:07:26.520 --> 00:07:31.520 I can come up with an idea and share it with you. You can possess it, but in so doing you 101 00:07:31.520 --> 00:07:37.400 do not take that idea away from me. Instead you hold a replica of it, just as real and 102 00:07:37.400 --> 00:07:43.320 intact as the original version. Words are this way, I do not need to parse them out 103 00:07:43.320 --> 00:07:49.080 in order to save some for myself. Tunes in music are this way too. I can sing a tune 104 00:07:49.080 --> 00:07:54.880 to you and you can repeat it, but this action does not remove the tune from me. A perfect 105 00:07:54.880 --> 00:08:01.640 Copy is made, and can be made and made again, unto infinity. 106 00:08:01.640 --> 00:08:05.760 This is completely different from the way things work in the realm of scarce goods. 107 00:08:05.760 --> 00:08:08.880 Let's say that you like my shoes and want them. 108 00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:12.800 If you take them from me, I do not have them anymore. 109 00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:15.920 If I want them again, I have to take them back from you. 110 00:08:15.920 --> 00:08:19.320 There is a zero-sum rivalry between the goods. 111 00:08:19.320 --> 00:08:24.580 That means there must be some kind of system for deciding who can own them. 112 00:08:24.580 --> 00:08:28.220 It means absolutely nothing to declare that there should be something called socialism 113 00:08:28.220 --> 00:08:32.220 for my shoes so that the whole of society can somehow own them. 114 00:08:32.220 --> 00:08:37.580 It is factually impossible for this to happen, because shoes are a scarce good. 115 00:08:37.580 --> 00:08:44.860 This is why socialism is sheer fantasy, a meaningless dreamland as regards scarce goods. 116 00:08:44.860 --> 00:08:49.100 The difference between scarce and non-scarce goods has long been noted within the Christian 117 00:08:49.100 --> 00:08:50.100 milieu. 118 00:08:50.100 --> 00:08:55.540 St. Augustine was once challenged to explain how it is that Jesus can speak for the Father 119 00:08:55.540 --> 00:08:59.340 in heaven, though the Father is separate. 120 00:08:59.340 --> 00:09:03.700 He responded that there is a special non-scarce nature associated with words, so that the 121 00:09:03.700 --> 00:09:08.780 Son can speak the same words and possess the same thoughts of the Father. 122 00:09:08.780 --> 00:09:13.220 This is true on earth too, Augustine continued. 123 00:09:13.220 --> 00:09:18.620 The words I am uttering penetrate your senses, so that every hearer holds them, yet withholds 124 00:09:18.620 --> 00:09:24.780 I have no worry that by giving all to one, the others are deprived. 125 00:09:24.780 --> 00:09:29.420 I hope instead that everyone will consume everything, so that denying no other ear or 126 00:09:29.420 --> 00:09:35.220 mind, you take all to yourselves, yet leave all to all others. 127 00:09:35.220 --> 00:09:39.720 But for the individual failures of memory, everyone who came to hear what I say can take 128 00:09:39.720 --> 00:09:44.360 it all off, each on one separate way. 129 00:09:44.360 --> 00:09:48.680 In saying these things, Augustine was both establishing and following up on a tradition 130 00:09:48.680 --> 00:09:52.840 that prohibited the buying and selling of non-scarce things. 131 00:09:52.840 --> 00:09:57.540 Jewish halachic code prohibits a rabbi or teacher to profit from the dissemination of 132 00:09:57.540 --> 00:09:59.240 Torah knowledge. 133 00:09:59.240 --> 00:10:04.160 He can charge for time the use of a building, the books and so on, but not the knowledge 134 00:10:04.160 --> 00:10:05.160 itself. 135 00:10:05.160 --> 00:10:10.400 The Torah is supposed to be a free good and accessible to all. 136 00:10:10.400 --> 00:10:15.600 From this idea also comes the prohibition on simony within Christianity. 137 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:19.180 The moral norm is that non-scarce goods should be free. 138 00:10:19.180 --> 00:10:22.080 There is no physical limit on their distribution. 139 00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:23.400 There is no conflict over ownership. 140 00:10:23.400 --> 00:10:25.540 They would not be subject to rationing. 141 00:10:25.540 --> 00:10:29.760 This is not true with regard to material goods. 142 00:10:29.760 --> 00:10:33.640 To further understand this, let's try an alternative scenario in which a non-scarce 143 00:10:33.640 --> 00:10:39.960 good like salvation, non-scarce because it is infinitely replicable, is actually a scarce 144 00:10:39.960 --> 00:10:47.120 Let's say that Jesus had not offered salvation to all, but instead had restricted the number 145 00:10:47.120 --> 00:10:51.260 of units of salvation to exactly one thousand. 146 00:10:51.260 --> 00:10:54.400 He then put his apostles in charge of allocating them. 147 00:10:54.400 --> 00:10:58.760 When I mentioned this to a non-believing friend of mine, he said, you mean like tickets to 148 00:10:58.760 --> 00:10:59.760 paradise? 149 00:10:59.760 --> 00:11:03.320 I bought five of those in a mosque in Istanbul. 150 00:11:03.320 --> 00:11:06.680 The apostles would have immediately confronted a serious problem. 151 00:11:06.680 --> 00:11:10.920 Would they give them all out immediately, or dispense them over the course of a year, 152 00:11:10.920 --> 00:11:12.960 or ten years? 153 00:11:12.960 --> 00:11:15.800 Perhaps they suspected that the world would last another hundred years. 154 00:11:15.800 --> 00:11:21.000 They might limit the distribution of salvations to only ten per year, or perhaps they needed 155 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:24.040 to reserve them to last a thousand years. 156 00:11:24.040 --> 00:11:29.440 Regardless there would have had to be rules and norms governing how they were distributed. 157 00:11:29.440 --> 00:11:34.580 Perhaps this would be based on personal displays of virtue, of monetary payment, of family 158 00:11:34.580 --> 00:11:40.380 No matter what the results, the history of Christianity would have been very different 159 00:11:40.380 --> 00:11:45.300 if Jesus had not made salvation a non-scarce good, but instead had limited the supply and 160 00:11:45.300 --> 00:11:48.020 charged the Church with allocation. 161 00:11:48.020 --> 00:11:52.220 There would have been no liberality in spreading the Gospel. 162 00:11:52.220 --> 00:11:56.740 Forget the whole business of going to the ends of the earth or becoming fishers of men. 163 00:11:56.740 --> 00:12:01.460 Under a limited supply, the salvation could not be replicated. 164 00:12:01.460 --> 00:12:07.300 If, for example, the apostles had chosen a 1000th and first person to be saved, eternal 165 00:12:07.300 --> 00:12:12.000 life would have been taken away from the first person to receive it. 166 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:17.300 This might sound preposterous and even frightening, but this is precisely the situation that persists 167 00:12:17.300 --> 00:12:20.580 with all material goods in the real world. 168 00:12:20.580 --> 00:12:26.180 All scarce things are fixed, and all things must be allocated. 169 00:12:26.180 --> 00:12:30.860 Even under conditions of high economic growth and rapid technological progress, all goods 170 00:12:30.860 --> 00:12:37.300 in existence at any one time are finite and cannot be distributed without norms or property 171 00:12:37.300 --> 00:12:41.860 rights lest there be a war of all against all. 172 00:12:41.860 --> 00:12:46.500 Another factor of production that is scarce is time, and this too must be allocated by 173 00:12:46.500 --> 00:12:48.900 some means. 174 00:12:48.900 --> 00:12:54.180 As it happens, salvation is indeed a non-scarce good available to all who seek it. 175 00:12:54.180 --> 00:12:56.340 So are the intercessions of saints. 176 00:12:56.340 --> 00:13:00.780 No one fails to ask for the intercession of a saint, but no one knows for a fact whether 177 00:13:00.780 --> 00:13:07.900 No, we rightly assume that saints have no limits on their time for prayer. 178 00:13:07.900 --> 00:13:12.180 Indeed, the limitlessness of salvation is the prototype for all norms of non-scarce 179 00:13:12.180 --> 00:13:17.420 goods like music, texts, images and teachings. 180 00:13:17.420 --> 00:13:21.060 But consider the people who have dedicated their life to the work of these non-scarce 181 00:13:21.060 --> 00:13:22.100 goods. 182 00:13:22.100 --> 00:13:26.740 One can easily imagine that they find immense power and glory in these goods. 183 00:13:26.740 --> 00:13:28.900 I certainly do. 184 00:13:28.900 --> 00:13:32.900 They are the things to which all religious people have devoted their lives. 185 00:13:32.900 --> 00:13:37.700 This is a fantastic thing, and truly without non-scarce goods, the whole of civilization 186 00:13:37.700 --> 00:13:41.620 would come crashing down to the level of the animals. 187 00:13:41.620 --> 00:13:46.340 At the same time, the world does not only consist of non-scarce goods. 188 00:13:46.340 --> 00:13:51.860 The economic problem deals with the issue of scarce goods, and this is just as important 189 00:13:51.860 --> 00:13:53.860 to the flourishing of life on earth. 190 00:13:53.860 --> 00:13:57.420 All things finite are subject to economic laws. 191 00:13:57.420 --> 00:14:02.060 We dare not ignore them nor ignore the systems of thought seeking to explain their production 192 00:14:02.060 --> 00:14:04.180 and distribution. 193 00:14:04.180 --> 00:14:08.060 Note that Jesus' parables deal with both realms. 194 00:14:08.060 --> 00:14:09.500 So should we all.