St. Maximos' Hut

A very nice review of Thomas E. Woods, Jr.'s The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy at the Ludwig von Mises Institute web page by Christopher Westley.

In the course I'm currently teaching, we just finished reading Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Robert Frank's Passions Within Reason. The two authors provide similarly optimistic views about the ability of humans to cooperate, but based on very different premises.

Bellamy relies on the idea that humans are basically good, and that if the society is organized correctly this inherent goodness will display itself. He illustates this idea with a parable about a rosebush planted in a swamp, which struggles no matter how much attention is lavished upon it, but only blooms when transplanted to a better setting.

Frank, on the other hand, emphasizes that acting rationally in one's own interest is difficult, especially when there are opportunities to gain short-run advantage by reneging on a cooperative agreement. Paradoxically, the use of irrational emotions can provide a basis for a more rational outcome.

Bellamy's approach seems fundamentally un-Christian to me, as it contradicts the fallen and sinful nature of people. Frank, on the other hand, illustrates how economic analysis can shed light on the ways that self-seeking behavior is transformed in ways that are difficult to understand into behavior that benefits others. Interestingly, my students are less skeptical about the possibility of a better society after discussing Frank than after discussing Bellamy. I will leave to a later time the application of these ideas to various current policy issues, or you can just read Bob Nelson's Reaching for Heaven on Earth if you can't stand the suspense.

From the electronic pages of the Regent Business Review, there is a most interesting piece from Edward Stewart and Milton Bennett adopted from a 1991 book entitled American Cultural Patterns. The article itself is not faith-specific, but the abstract notes:

This article explores fundamental beliefs upon which Americans (even American Christians) base their business dealings—cultural assumptions so ingrained they are almost never questioned. Perhaps they should be. This article, adapted from a secular source about cross-cultural communications, challenges us to examine the “givens” of why we act as we do. It is often impossible to see our own patterns of thinking, until those patterns are contrasted with differing views.

The authors advise us to adopt a “third culture” when straddling two cultures. Concerning the ideas presented, we encourage readers to ask “are my cultural assumptions biblical?” As Christians we live on earth as foreigners, and the “third culture” we espouse should be the culture of the Kingdom.

You can view the article here.

Christianity Today also has run the article on its page www.faithintheworkplace.com which you can find here:
which you can find here.

There is a certain aspect to all of this that brings to mind Joshua on the eve of the disastrous first batle of Ai. We find him imlatient, pacing "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come." Joshua 5:13-14. (KJV) That third culture understanding is necessary for those having to deal with the world,yet retaining an understanding of their ultimate culture.

At a basic level, though, there is currency to this as Christian and secular cultures seem to be increasingly incapable of finding a way of "cross-cultural" communication. Christians seem to work on this in some fairly extreme ways in an effort to evangelize or, worse, to be "relevant".

On the other hand, to the extent the secular world wishes to communicate with Christians, the effort seems cynical and contrived. I think the efforts of Hollywood to come up with "God films" on the heels of The Passion of the Christ is emblematic of this inability of the wholly,and cynically secular part of society to "bridge" into the faith, and, of course, tap market potential.

In Christ,

Fr. C.

The WSJ's Best of the Web Today led me to an excellent post on Harriett Miers, which makes the case that people who went to elite law schools just might not be the right choice for the Supreme Court:

I also think there's some snobbishness involved. Miers is not an Ivy Leaguer, like John Roberts. She didn't clerk for a Supreme Court justice. She hasn't been a law professor. So what. She brings something just as important to the Court, namely, real-world legal experience. She's a practitioner, not a professor or a theorist. Law professors, especially those who have never practiced, tend to take an external view of the law, which inclines them to manipulate it. Practicing attorneys take an internal view of the law, which inclines them to respect it. As for this nomination being a case of cronyism, who cares? President Bush knows and trusts Harriet Miers. Should he have nominated someone he doesn't know or trust?

And also

It occurs to me that many conservatives, especially those with academic credentials, have bought into the Dworkinian idea that the Supreme Court is made up of Herculean philosopher-kings whose task is to make the law the best it can be by some external moral standard. I reject this conception of judging, as should any right-thinking person. The law is not a plaything, to be manipulated by ideologues. It has a life, a logic, and an integrity of its own that must be respected.

The whole thing is here.

Peggy Noonan has some interesting thoughts on the topic too:

I wonder in fact if Harriet Meirs knows what Harriet Meirs will be like on the court. I am referring to more than the fact that if confirmed she will be presented with particular cases with particular facts that spring from a particular context and are governed, or not, by particular precedents. And I'm referring to more than the fact that people change, in spite of the president's odd insistence that she won't. People do, for good and ill. Sometimes they just become more so. But few are static.

No one can know how the experience of the court will affect someone--the detachment from life as lived by the proles, the respect you become used to, the Harvard Law Review clerks from famous families who are only too happy to pick up your dry cleaning and listen to the third recounting of your boring anecdote. Everyone wants you at dinner. You notice that you actually look quite good in black.

And you become used to the idea that unlike everyone else in the country, you have job security. A lifetime appointment. When people have complete professional security they are more likely in time to show a new conceit. I don't know why this is, but I think it's connected to the fact that they're lucky, and it seems somehow hardwired in human nature that when people are lucky they come to think they deserve it: It's not luck, it's virtue. And since it's virtue my decisions are by their nature virtuous. I think I'll decree that local government, if it judges it necessary, can throw grandma out of the house and turn her tired little neighborhood into a box store that will yield higher tax revenues. Thus Kelo v. New London is born. I decree it.

The rest of her's is here.

A great column on Tech Central Station on why economic motivations might produce better outcomes than some of the alternatives, by Arnold Kling.

Here's the punch line about academia:

Professors are fond of speaking of the higher motives of academic life, such as the pursuit of knowledge and truth. Accordingly, they would reject economic approaches such as tuition vouchers or giving credit on the basis of test results rather than institutional status. In reality, academic resistance to such ideas is driven by the basest of motives -- the drive for status. The status-serving myth is that colleges and universities are more "pure" to the extent that they operate on a basis other than economic motivation. However, I believe that the opposite is the case: economic motivation would represent a step up from status-seeking.

Ouch.

Harriet Miers' nomination has sparked a lot of talk about the role of her religious beliefs in her judicial philosophy. The Washington Post story today typifies some of the "tour guide" approach much of the media takes to such issues. Gosh, the article suggests, aren't these people just plain odd? Look at their quaint views!

It seems to me that this is a symptom of a decline in respect for religion that makes it very difficult for public discussion of issues on which religious people are influenced by their faith to take place. That's bad.

Tyler Cowen, always a source of insights in an astounding variety of areas of economics, has an interesting post on the political economy of belief and the work of Daniel Chen on it. Read about it here - any paper of which Tyler says it is one of the most interesting Tyler has read in years is surely worth a lot of attention.

Trackbacks are one of my favorite things about blogs - they lead to interesting places. One to our posts led to Kicking Over My Traces, which I found fascinating.

The world is non-linear and it is a Good Thing.

I was in Illinois to give a talk at the University of Illinois law school (one of the top spots for law and philosophy, law and economics, and lots more - a really impressive school) and spotted a local Orthodox church. I didn't get to visit the church, but did visit their website, which had a nice history of the local church that included the following:

A church is a sacred building, constructed of earthly materials by human hands. Over nearly fifty years since the seed was planted, men and women whose names are too numerous to mention have contributed their time, their talents, their treasure. But even devout men and women create nothing by themselves. The Three Hierarchs Church is a miracle. Its inspiration was divine; the hands and hearts of the men and women who laid its bricks and adorned its interior were guided by the Holy Spirit.

The church website is here. Click info to find the full text from which the above is taken.

And while you are visiting church websites, check out St. Innocent's, created by our own Fr. Michael Butler - an exceptional site (but then I expect no less from him).

And also the very nice OCA website here.

An interesting article by John Dowden, who I recently met and who turns out to have seen our musings here, which was originally in the Bozeman (MT) Chronicle. Here's a sample:

The social “liberation” of the 1960s and ’70s and the moral relativism preached in universities consciously erode this “language of good and evil.” In its place they have fostered an amoral, if not immoral, social environment. One in which moral judgment is taboo. In the name of freedom, anything is permitted and little is condemned -- except, of course, “old-fashioned” values like strong families, self-discipline, and personal responsibility. The “rights” demanded by the politically correct often simply cloak irresponsibility and license.

The historian Lord Acton argued that true liberty is not “the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.” Liberty without responsibility leads to decadence and decline. And when we abuse our freedom, we will lose it. In order to remain free we must each govern ourselves.

The whole thing is here.

Peggy Noonan had a really good column last week on the topic of responsibility and authority.

Here's a little bit of it:

Governments always start out saying they're going to help, and always wind up pushing you around. They cannot help it. They say they want to help us live healthily and they mean it, but it ends with a guy in Queens getting arrested for trying to have a Marlboro Light with his Bud at the neighborhood bar. We're hauling the parents of obese children into court. The government has increasing authority over our health, and these children are not healthy. Smokers, the fat, drinkers of more than two drinks per night, insane swimmers in high seas . . .

We are losing the balance between the rights of the individual and the needs and demands of the state. Again, this is not new. It's a long slide that's been going on for a long time. But Katrina and Rita seemed to make the slide deeper.

It is hard for governments to be responsible, and take responsibility. It takes real talent, and guts. But authority? That's easier. Pass the law and get the cuffs.

Individual responsibility, the flip side of individual freedom, seems to be rarely recognized today. The erosion of moral constraints on behavior is producing a substitution of legal constraints. That's a problem about which I want to think more and on which I would like to invite thoughts from the rest of the group and readers.

My earlier request for comments on the question of government funding flowing to religious charities drew some strong language in emails and phone calls (but not yet postings - where are you guys?)

Here are a couple of thoughts:
1) Should the government cut a check to a church to deliver charitable aid? There are some strong arguments for the "no" position and one of the strongest is that government certification, inspection, requirements for toleration that contradict tenets of some churches (the concerns about Canadian government action against churches that oppose gay marriage, for example, spring to mind) and so on all tend to follow money. Taking money today is likely to lead to such mandates.
2. Churches (and other charities) already indirectly get government money through charitable coontributions that qualify for tax deductions (and do so by complying with some government mandates - those needed to be recognized as charitable organizations under the Internal Revenue Code). Perhaps this proves point #1.
3. There is a distinction between taking a check to do a particular action (feed X homeless people per night at a shelter) and taking money indirectly via tax deductions. In the latter case, individuals are able to direct (and redirect when misuse of money is discovered) their contributions to those delivering aid in a manner most consistent with the donors' priorities. So #2 is different from #1 - and perhaps expanding #2 is the best way to provide additional funding.
4. This suggests that there ought to be a funding mechanism that allows individuals to divert some proportion of their tax bill to charitable organizations, not in the form of tax deductions but in the form of tax credits. Here's a first draft of how to do this. Amend the Internal Revenue Code to allow the following:

I. In 2006, calculate your income tax bill, including taking normal charitable deductions for 2005.
II. Multiply the taxes due by 20%. The greater of this amount or $1,000 is available as a refundable tax credit if you make a contribution of this amount or $1,000, whichever is greater, to a charity qualified under IRC sec. 501(c)(3). The amount donated is not available on the 2006 income tax return as a charitable deduction.

* Making it a refundable credit allows the poor to divert more than their tax bill (up to $1,000 or whatever amount is chosen) to a charity, protecting the proposal against claims that it allows the rich to promote opera foundations instead of funding affordable housing.
* making it limited to 20% or $1,000, whichever is greater, means that Congress still gets allocate a bit less than 80% (because of the refundable credits for the poor) of the budget, more than enough to cover the kinds of things the rest of wouldn't think of to fund but which are worthy of funding (I suspect 5% would be enough for that but let's give the political process the benefit of the doubt at first).

This would likely produce a large shift of income to various charities. Because of the agency-problem-solving advantages of churches, I suspect a lot of it would end up in the hands of local churches. Moreover, while some people would likely fall for flim-flam schemes from rip-off charities, governments seem to regularly fall for flim-flam schemes too and I don't see any reason to believe that millions of individual decisions would be more likely to be flim-flammed than a small number of bureaucratic decisions. And there would be learning over time, so that the distribution of the money 10 years from now would likely be better than it is in the first year.

I think such a scheme, building on the existing tax deduction program, would avoid most of the problems of certification, etc. that my correspondents have raised because we don't see too many of those now. And it would be immune to cutting tax rates since it would be a tax credit against the total tax bill not a deduction (the advantage of which is reduced by cutting marginal tax rates).

Thoughts?