If only Jesus had read Adam Smith, or perhaps Ayn Rand

The Rich and Therefore Blessed Young Man

1. As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before him, and asked, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 2. And Jesus said to him, “What have you done so far?” 3. And he said to Him, “Well I was born into a wealthy family, got into a good school in Galilee because my parents donated a few thousand talents for a building with a nice reed roof, and now I have a high-paying job in the Roman treasury managing risk.” 4. Looking at him, Jesus felt an admiration for him, and said to him, “Blessed are you! For you are not far from being independently wealthy." And the man was happy. Then Jesus said, "But there is one thing you lack: A bigger house in a gated community in Tiberias. Buy that and you will have a treasure indeed. And make sure you get a stone countertop for the kitchen. Those are really nice." The disciples were amazed. 5. Peter asked him, “Lord, shouldn’t he sell all his possessions and give it to the poor?” Jesus grew angry. “Get behind me, Satan! He has earned it!” Peter protested: “Lord,” he said, “Did this man not have an unjust advantage? What about those who are not born into wealthy families, or who do not have the benefit of a good education, or who, despite all their toil, live in the poorer areas of Galilee, like Nazareth, your own home town?” 6. “Well,” said Jesus, “first of all, that’s why I left Nazareth. There were too many poor people always asking me for charity. They were as numerous as the stars in the sky, and they annoyed me. Second, once people start spending again, like this rich young man, the Galilean economy will inevitably rebound, and eventually some of it will trickle down to the poor. Blessed are the patient! But giving the money away, especially if he can’t write it off, is a big fat waste.” The disciples’ amazement knew no bounds. “But Lord," they said, "what about the passages in both the Law and the Prophets that tell us to care for widows and orphans, for the poor, for the sick, for the refugee? What about the many passages in the Scriptures about justice?” 7. “Those are just metaphors,” said Jesus. “Don’t take everything so literally.”

- James Martin, SJ, The Not-so-Social Gospel.

There are a couple more where that came from: The Lazy Paralytic and The Very Poorly Prepared Crowd. Evidently, Jesus needed to take Economics 101.

Technology and the church: an analogy

Following the reflections on technology vs. technologism I posted a week ago, I thought I'd offer an extended analogy to tease out what I think are some of the implications for the church of rejecting such technologism in relation to our ecological predicament.

The AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa is a large and wicked* social problem. Its causes are complex and involve (amongst others) both individual lifestyle choices and broader cultural assumptions. It is a slow-burn problem, with cases multiplying in largely invisible ways (that is, infection is not an experience that a subject is usually aware of at the time) and symptoms only really becoming manifest years later. It is also a problem where the accumulation of individual cases generates further complex social realities (AIDS orphans, child-headed households, a culture of stigmatism and so on). In South Africa, for quite some time, the government held a position of officially denying the link between HIV and AIDS, holding back implementation of various policies that, while being very unlikely to "solve" the problem, nonetheless could have significantly reduced the spread of the disease and hence the resulting human suffering.
*Wicked in the technical sense, that is, a complex and multifaceted problem without a single "solution".

I'm just sketching a little and I'm going to assume that the parallels to a number of ecological problems are more or less obvious to those paying attention to such matters.

The point I'd like to make concerns the role and limitations of technology. In this case, I have in view both the very low tech option of condoms and the considerably higher tech option of antiretroviral drugs. Widespread adoption of safer sex practices would very significantly slow down the spread of the disease. Therefore, government and NGO programmes that promote such harm minimisation are, to my mind, basically a no-brainer. The widespread provision of antiretroviral drugs is slightly more complex, involving various economic implications and calculations, though still clearly a good idea on balance. These do not cure the disease, but they do slow its progression in an infected individual, and so increase his/her life expectancy. Now, in this situation, technology serves to provide real social and personal goods, and any responsible government ought to be implementing such actions amongst their many priorities.

Nonetheless, such provisions, while reducing the pace and severity of the crisis, do not by themselves decisively solve it. Huge damage has already been sustained and more is in the pipeline in the form of millions of carriers whose lives are likely to be shorter than they would otherwise be, and whose future sexual activities will be conducted under a shadow. Grief remains a healthy and appropriate response, not as a replacement for these policies, but simply out of emotional honesty.

Furthermore, implementing these policies doesn't remove the moral evaluation (at both personal and cultural levels) of the failures that enabled the problem to spiral to such magnitude. It would be easy to indulge in cheap and simplistic condemnation of the lax sexual ethics of many of those who end up infected (though of course, many spouses and children may contract the condition entirely innocently), and this would be reductionist if that were the extent of one's response. Conversely, not to comment on the sexual sins as a spiritual problem manifest in grave social harms would also be to miss an important component of the situation.

Now the analogy is not perfect and I'm sure there are all kinds of important differences between AIDS and ecological crises, but perhaps this example may illustrate the possibility that technological responses of real social benefit do not render the problem less wicked (in the technical sense) and do not sidestep the need for careful moral evaluation of the situation.

Now, consider the position of a Christian church facing an AIDS epidemic amongst the congregation. There are all kinds of possible responses, and a healthy one will include many facets: caring for the sick and orphaned; seeking honesty and reconciliation in relationships damaged by sexual misdeeds; helping the congregation understand the nature of the disease including causes and its likely effects; calling on governments to implement responsible social policies; planning for a future in which more families are broken and child-headed households increase. Amidst this, I presume that it would be a good idea to lay out sensitively the good news of sexually committed exclusive covenant relationships (within a full-orbed proclamation of the gospel of grace, repentance, forgiveness, freedom and reconciliation). Now, to speak of the goodness of sexual relationships as they were intended may not "cut it" as a social policy, and nor need this proclamation imply ecclesial support is restricted purely to abstinence/chastity programmes. But if the church does not recognise that one of the significant contributing factors to this epidemic is the eclipse of scriptural sexual ethics, then it would only be doing part of its job. Ultimately, the church will be praying and working towards becoming a community within which healthy sexual relationships of trust and commitment are the norm, where failures are handled sensitively and graciously, where reconciliation and stronger relationships are the goal. And even if to some observers it appears foolish, naïve or old-fashioned, it will hold onto the possibility of the partial and provisional healing of desire amidst a sinful world that at times shows little evidence of such a message being effective. It will hold onto the hope of eschatological healing, yet without confusing this with any sort of divine guarantee for miraculous deliverance from the consequence of our actions today.

Similarly, while technology may offer certain paths that reduce the pace and severity of ecological harms, and while governments may well be wise to consider various options carefully and responsibly (rather than the present mix of short term opportunism, denial and misguided or cynical tokenism), nonetheless, the church cannot but notice that behind our ecological woes are certain assumptions and patterns of behaviour: a reckless indifference to the consequences of our pursuit of ever higher levels of consumption; an insatiable acquisitiveness that desperately tries to find meaning in stuff; a foolish arrogance that claims to wield ultimate mastery over matter; a short-sighted willingness to sell our children's inheritance for a quick thrill today coupled with an inordinate unwillingness to let go of luxuries; and an ignorant inattentiveness to the plight of our fellow creatures. Noting these roots needn't remove the possibility that the church will support responsible technological mitigation of our crises, but the church will continue to hold out - despite the apathy and scorn of the surrounding culture - a picture of human communities not based primarily on acquisition, of a good life that is not built primarily around consumption or material wealth, of a heart that is content and generous and which desires neither poverty nor riches. It will speak out against the personal and systemic greed whose manifestation is a destabilised and scarred planet. It will grieve over the damage already done, and the more that is in the pipeline. It will speak of grace, forgiveness, repentance, reconciliation - and of a divine eschatological healing of a groaning world, yet without assuming that this implies we will not face the more or less predictable consequences of our present failures and so not at all neglecting the task of both caring for victims and advocating on behalf of those without a voice in the matter: the global poor, future generations and other species.

In short, the church is not unmindful of the potential benefits of technology, but it is called to be free from the slavish fascination that treats it as our saviour. A world in peril needs more than a renewable clean source of power; it needs a renewed and cleansed heart.

The case against growth, and other stories

The case against growth: Ted Trainer (UNSW) makes the case that very few people are taking seriously the full economic and political implications of the concept of limits to growth: "The growth problem is not just that the economy has grown to be too big, now depleting resources and damaging ecosystems. The more central problem is that growth is integral to the system. Most of the system's basic structures and mechanism are driven by growth and cannot operate without it. It is not that this society has a growth economy; it is that this is a growth society. Growth cannot be removed leaving the rest of the economy more or less as it is. Unfortunately people in the current 'De-growth' movement tend to think growth is like a faulty air conditioning unit on a house, which can be taken away and the house will function the way it did before."

Peak stuff? Fred Pearce investigates the claim that consumer societies are becoming post-industrial. Based on various metrics that have actually started to decline in many rich countries (for example, car use is waning in most developed countries), some commentators look forward to the "dematerialisation" of the economy proving the silver bullet that saves us from ourselves. As others note, however, such evidence is patchy, and fails to account for the fact that we've still got decades of massive consumption growth if the developing world is to approach our present consumer lifestyles. Even if there is a point at which such development reaches a natural plateau in per capita consumption, it is not at all clear that reaching that plateau won't involve massively overshooting various planetary boundaries (as outlined effectively in the "case against growth" above).

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Climate Change: Brad Littlejohn offers some dark humour reflecting on our obsession with novelty. Discussion in the comments ponder further about the place of novelty and humour in our ecological deliberations.

Fossil fuel glut: Much noise has been made about developments in the fossil carbon extraction business that ensure these companies are not about to go out of business anytime soon, with claims that "peak oil" is disproved or that the US will lead a fossil fuelled renaissance. The reality is that these non-conventional carbon pools are only now economically available due to a high oil price, and that unless the price stays high, they will not be extracted. So we have indeed very likely seen the end of rising production of cheap, easily accessible conventional oil. That doesn't mean we run out of oil, just that energy gets expensive, which still has all kinds of economic implications. And if we insist on remaining addicted to fossil carbon, pursuing non-conventional sources is leap out of the frying pan of energy insecurity into the fire of climate chaos.

Economic growth and ecological health: It has become popular in certain circles to argue that as countries get richer, they clean up their environmental problems and that therefore the solution to our ecological woes is to grow the global economy as fast as possible (sometimes called an environmental Kuznets curve). This piece is a sustained critique of that idea.

How Money Makes People Less Humane. Some really interesting research on the effects of money (either having it, wanting it, thinking about it or even having it subconsciously suggested) on empathy. The upshot is that, statistically speaking, money functions to disconnect us from those around us, making us less caring, less sensitive, more suspicious and more individualistic. Or, as the scriptures would say: "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6.10).

The sin that dare not speak its name

Guest post by anonymous
I have asked Byron for permission to remain anonymous since I fear the backlash (personal and official) that may occur if I put my name to this post.

There is a grave sin openly celebrated in our nation (perhaps especially in Sydney) that makes me feel queasy. At certain times of year - and this is one of them - its advocates feel they can come out of the closet and proudly flaunt their unfortunate condition. Criticism is difficult to raise in polite company, especially amongst educated people. To speak out is considered ignorant at best, hate-filled at worst. Yet the Bible is clear and so we must be too. It would be cruel to remain silent.

This perversion is aggressively defended by highly organised and well-funded lobby groups. Some political parties treat it as a normal and desirable pattern of life, and most teach it is necessary to at least tolerate it. I know that every political party has strengths and weaknesses and that no party is perfect, but I still struggle to understand how a Christian can in good conscience vote for any party that openly and brazenly supports a sin so roundly and straightforwardly condemned in the Bible.

Advocates want to teach our children to embrace it and indeed in many schools it is put forward as perfectly natural, even necessary for a well-functioning society. I personally know of parents who have had the courage to question the ideology being taught in our classrooms and who, as a result, have subsequently been slandered and ostracised - or perhaps worse, condescendingly patronised as backwards and ignorant.

From my study of history, I realise that this abomination has been tolerated by the elite of some societies, but I am not aware of any civilisation that has embraced it so wholeheartedly as ours.

It was not so long ago that the church's teaching of such things carried more weight and a man would have been ashamed to admit such desires in public. Parents would have warned their children against it with serious and hushed voices. The tables are now turned and it is those of us who still hold to the conservative position embraced by the church for centuries who are shunned. I was sickened to discover that is possible to buy children's books that celebrate what ought to be anathema.

And worst of all, many churches now overlook members who ought to be disciplined - preferring perhaps to avoid controversy - or even teach inclusion of this most egregious wrong, claiming that the cultural conditions of the biblical authors blinkered their vision, that they had not seen the great good that could result from accepting such desires as part of God's blessing upon humanity.

Don't get me wrong; there is such a thing as natural and healthy desire. But not every desire is healthy. Some are simply corruptions in which we mistake our true needs for manufactured false wants. Whether cursed with corrupt genes or seduced by an iniquitous lifestyle I cannot say, but those ensnared in wickedness are not to be despised. They are to be pitied and helped, not attacked. We must try, as the saying goes, to love the sinner while hating the sin. Let us remember that none of us are without fault. I am sure they make all kinds of positive contributions to society in other ways. And they are not beyond repentance. With the help of God's Spirit, they can begin afresh and discover healing.

What am I talking about? What is the sin that dare not speak its name? I am referring, of course, to the love of money, which is a root of all kinds of evil. Tolerance is cruelty. Repentance is possible. Healing is promised.

Economics and ethics: does everything have a price?

Fox News is not usually considered to be a great source of ethical insight. So when a friend sent me an article titled almost everything we're taught is wrong, I was dubious. The piece argues that child labour, price gouging, ticket scalping, selling kidneys and blackmail are all deemed morally reprehensibly and illegal in many countries, but when we consider them from an economic point of view, we see that each ought to be considered socially beneficial.

Child labour in poorer nations contributes to the economy and keeps children from prostitution. Price gouging during an emergency reduces hoarding and gives an incentive to distant vendors to supply what is missing, even if this means travelling long distances. Ticket scalping provides a service that adds value, namely, allowing those prepared to pay extra to avoid the time they would have spent waiting in a queue. Making the sale of kidneys legal would save lives by increasing the supply. And if blackmail were legal, then there would be more reason for people to behave; in asking for money to not exercise free speech, the blackmailer is engaging in a form of "private law enforcement" by putting a price on not gossiping.

Each of these arguments needs to be addressed on its merits. Child labour: I agree that simply banning it is insufficient, but any ethical analysis worth its salt is not going to be content with mere legislation. The same argument could well be used against the abolition of slavery: what are the slaves going to do once they are freed? It is worth looking more broadly at what forces have created an economic situation in which the alternative to child labour is child prostitution.

Price gouging doesn't mean prices rising when there is shortage, but dramatic and extortionate price rises during a crisis. Should prices rise in an emergency? Yes, but not too much for essentials, since access to the means to stay alive ought not be contingent upon wealth. Far better for essentials to be rationed.

The argument for ticket scalpers I actually have some degree of sympathy for, though where ticket sales are online, then there is no waiting in line.

The sale of bodily tissues is problematic for multiple reasons. First, it commodifies one of the sites that ought to be most resistant to the logic of the market, one's own body. Second, if people are able to sell irreplaceable bodily organs, then why not their freedom? Thus there is a economic justification for slavery here. Third, if there is a legal price for kidneys, then the price is going to be high and this is almost inevitably going to mean that a black market will develop, incentivising criminal and coercive surgery. The antipathy to the sale of human tissue actually arises partly from Edinburgh history, where in the eighteenth century there was a black market in fresh cadavers for the famous medical school, and it lead to a very famous case of serial murder, which, incidentally, occurred just a few metres from where I sleep.

Blackmail has the same problem; making it legal would incentivise further and worse criminal behaviour. We only need to look at what happened to News of the World (and probably other UK tabloids) when gossip became commodified to see the dangers of encouraging breaches of privacy for profit.

The fundamental failure of the article appears in its opening lines. Economics is not a substitute for ethics. Any society that treats them as commensurate is inviting the thoroughgoing colonisation of all human relationships by market forces and the logic of commercial transactions. Christians of all people have the most reason to be suspicious of this, since we are taught that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6.10) and that our lives are ransomed not with silver or gold, but the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1.18). Not everything can be translated into a single numerical language.

Five ways to beat the banks

On Monday, I mentioned the documentary Inside Job, which detailed the ways greed, shortsightedness and ideology caused a partial meltdown of the financial industry in 2008. Despite official reassurances, the radioactive material from these events is not safely secured, but continues to poison an ever wider part of the world.* If you have seen the documentary and share something of my anger, you might also share something of my feelings of frustration and impotence. When the scale of the problem is so large, and the corruption of key institutions so widespread, there is no single silver bullet. Especially for those of us outside the US, the issues in the documentary feel even more distant, as we can't vote for a representative promising change.**
*I realise I haven't written on Fukushima yet. A post on nuclear power is coming, one day...
**And who then does nothing about it. On this, as on many fronts, Obama has been deeply disappointing. I can't say I didn't warn myself.

So what can we do? We may not singlehandedly reform or overthrow the vested interests that created the mess, but we can live lives that point to another way. I have listed a few random suggestions, but would also love to hear more.

1. Repent of the love of money. Delight yourself in the goodness of God and open your eyes to the false promises made by wealth. Reject the idea that gaining more is at the heart of your identity or life, or ought to be at the heart of our political vision of life together. This one is foundational to all the others.

2. Reduce your debt. The apostle Paul tells us to "owe nothing to anyone" (Romans 13.8). The power of the banks is debt-fuelled, and never more so than in the last couple of decades. Perhaps there may be times when certain kinds of debt can be justified; but not when debt is used to fuel needless consumption, or goes beyond one's likely means to repay, or results in driving major life decisions ("I need to work long hours to pay off my mortgage"). For us, this has meant deliberately stepping off the property ladder and not using credit cards - almost everything is now paid in cash or, if we have to, then with a debit card.

3. Join the global movement calling for a Robin Hood Tax - also known as a Tobin tax, after the Nobel laureate who first suggested it forty years ago - that would place a tiny tax on financial transactions in order to make short-term speculative transactions less attractive. The money raised would ideally be earmarked for development aid and climate action, but the existence of the tax as a disincentive to rampart speculation is a distinct question and doesn't depend on where the money would be spent. This campaign is gaining significant traction in Europe, though relatively little in the US. The UK response is key as to whether it grows (and would likely pull in the US, if the previous link is correct) or stagnates. This point can be expanded to include supporting any other genuine attempts to reform the financial system.

4. Take your money from a big multinational bank and put it somewhere else, such as a local credit union or co-op bank. In the UK, try The Co-op Bank. I'd love to hear any recommendations in Australia, since we'd like to switch banks there too. Of course, not all banks are equally bad, but it is difficult to find a large multinational bank where your money won't be financing the arms trade, fossil fuel expansion, environmental degradation and so on.

5. As a church, let us not neglect to encourage, disciple and discipline our members who work in major financial institutions. I asked a while back whether Christians can be bankers, and my tongue was only slightly in cheek. Usury is condemned in scripture and throughout Christian tradition (until the last couple of centuries, when it has been redefined as lending at extortionate interest, rather than simply lending at interest). This is a large topic (and the subject of an upcoming post), but the church needs to ask these questions once more today, particularly in the context of the systemic abuses found in such enormous concentrations of power. When tax collectors asked John the Baptist "Teacher, what should we do?", he didn't tell them to quit their job, but gave the radical advice, "Collect no more than the amount proscribed for you" (Luke 3.12-23). What is the radical advice the church is to give our present day "tax collectors", that is, bankers?

Corporate failure: more than a few bad apples

With all the current discussion about News International and its parent company News Corp, many pixels are being devoted to a discussion of just how things went so wrong. After a string of recent revelations, the claim, maintained by News executives for years, that it was one (or then a few) bad apple(s) in an otherwise honest company now appears as either deluded, deceitful or the result of seriously deficient oversight. Since it is nearly always better to assume incompetence rather than conspiracy, at best Tuesday's parliamentary inquiry revealed a string of failed leaders - spanning media editors, senior corporate executives, police and politicians - who remained dangerously out of touch with what was going on around them. At worst, collusion, corruption and cover up on an industrial scale dwarf the significance of the original criminal data acquisition. Whatever the true nature of the rot, it goes beyond a couple of apples, whether at the top or bottom of the pile.

When confronted with misdeeds on this scale, a common reaction (which I notice in my own instincts) is to seek to put a face on the problem, a single individual who can be held ultimately responsible. We want the buck to stop somewhere. The legal pursuit of the questions of who knew what when is important and such investigations are likely to take some time. In the meantime, an impatient public desires visible signs of justice. If we cannot get convictions just yet, we will settle for resignations.

We so desperately want to be able to find someone to blame, some focus for our fury at the damage caused by a system of corruption in which media, police and politicians were too close and saw their own good in terms of a small circle than the national interest they claimed to be representing. We want to know that our violated trust is being taken seriously. Resignations serve as symbolic steps in this direction; they speak to a collective desire to start again and are a metaphor of what it looks like for an organisation to repent.

But there are deeper questions at stake. Individuals did indeed commit crimes and moral failures (either of commission or omission). Many participated in looking the other way, being willfully blind to what was going on because it was more convenient to maintain deniability (or perhaps they continue to mislead political authorities). But to leave the analysis at the level of individuals fails to take account of the dynamics that can exist at a supra-individual level. The whole can often be greater than the sum of the parts. If the only lessons we take away from this saga involve the need for greater personal integrity, we miss the opportunity to ask how the very structures might have served to sideline, subvert or dilute integrity.

There are individual failures, but also failures of structure, failures of collective imagination. They are failures of systems that are based on seeking the wrong kinds of inclusion, systems that punish those who speak up while rewarding those who conform without questioning the quality of what is shared. Whether a for-profit corporation can simulatenously claim to be serving its shareholders and the common good is an interesting question, as is whether a political system in which an MP is required to win more votes than any other candidate every five years encourages a myopic and image-driven politics.

When a corporation is accountable to its shareholders' interests and those interests are understood in narrow financial terms (as they usually are), then the only place that ethical considerations enter into it is the impulse to avoid anything unethical insofar as it hurts the bottom line. Therefore, the recent fall in News Corp shares is the real crime Rupert and his various officers have committed.

But of course that way madness lies, and the reaction of the public to this scandal is partly media-driven hysteria (the very same hysteria that News have used to successfully to drive sales) and partly genuine moral outrage that speaks to a standard other than the bottom line. There is more to living well than making a profit and there is more to a flourishing nation (or world) than a growing GDP. Therefore, there must be more to a healthy company than a rising share price. Let us resist the colonisation of our ethical thought by cost-benefit risk analysis that seeks to put a price on everything. The language of money cannot adequately translate the full complexity and richness of our moral existence and to rely on it to do so is to abdicate our responsibility for pursuing good and shunning evil.

Amidst the repeated failure of not just scattered individuals but of our most trusted social institutions - of corporations and parliaments, banks and police, sensationalist newspapers and a reading public that buys them - it may be worth considering again the apostle Paul's exhortation to his readers in Rome, who were at the heart of a vast empire with powerful cultural incentives to fit in: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds (Romans 12.2 NRSV). This is addressed not simply to the individual believers, but to the church as a whole. It is an invitation to a way of corporate existence based on the good news of God's mercies (verse 1). The church, of course, is not immune from moral failure. Yet the good news here is an invitation to discover anew a source of belonging that does not require us to narrow our moral vision lest we stick out, but which gives us permission to find fresh ways of thinking and seeing amidst a culture that has lost its way. The church has no monopoly on wisdom, has not cornered the market in corporate governance or collective integrity. Yet in its practices of humility, confession, forgiveness and love of neighbour to the glory of God, in its memory of Jesus accepting the outcast and breaking bread with the traitor, in its grasp of the promise of a Spirit who leads into both honesty and new begingings, it has something that is genuinely different and worth rediscovering and sharing by each generation.

Inequality and the promise of growth

Economic growth promotes social stability by keeping the lid on revolution through the promise of wealth: one day, if only you keep working hard, you too can be rich.

Growth as the price of stability has enabled the pressing question of justice and equity to be deferred, since even if the rich are getting obscenely rich, at least all have the promise of betterment in a rising economy. But take away the expectation of growth, and the disparities of wealth become more pressingly obvious.

The same effect is realised when growth is confined to the rich. When Hosni Mubarak become Egyptian president in 1981, about twenty percent of the population lived on less than US$2 per day. After three decades during which Egypt experienced annual economic growth rates of seven per cent or more, at the time of the revolution, about forty percent lived on less than US$2 per day. There had been extraordinary growth, but the benefits went to the elite without "trickling down".

During those same three decades, the income of the bottom 90% of US workers has remained flat while that of the top 10% has skyrocketed. At the same time, the rich have successfully shifted the tax burden onto the rest. Again, the benefits of growth have not been a larger pie to be shared amongst all, but have increasingly lined the pockets of the most powerful, multiplying their power.

But not everywhere has the same story. China's boom has seen hundreds of millions move out of absolute poverty. Indeed, never before have so many escaped the burdens of grinding need in such a short space of time. Nonetheless, it has again been the richest who have benefitted the most and inequality in China is higher than anytime since the revolution. And political stability may well require this growth to continue.

If the prospect of growth becomes dim (as I think it is over the next few decades), then the question of justice must come to the fore. Whether this occurs through violent and unpredictable revolution or through reform is largely the choice of each society. Few seem to be choosing the latter, however. Indeed, globally, the rich are getting richer and only seem more intent than ever to remain in control of the reins of power. That is the path of violence, not that I am advocating or condoning it.

Of course, the absolutely poor deserve the right to develop their basic economy to a level required for the possibility of living a humane life. This is nowhere near present levels of western consumption, and nations that are well above this level have a moral duty to pursue justice through planned de-growth, or rather, pursuing things that are better than growth. It is quite possible to live a more human life while (indeed often through) embracing less. A simpler lifestyle is a gift to oneself as well as one's global neighbour.

Finally, it bears repetition: the pursuit of endless growth is increasingly terrible for ecology, which after all, owns the global economy. Growth as we currently know it likely cannot continue for more than a few more decades (at best) without so severely undermining the ecological health of the planet that the economic costs of ecological degradation overwhelm any further growth. If we want to live in a stable society, let us throw off the love of money, that poisonous stimulant slowly killing us all.

The best democracy money can buy

After JFK made elections more about style than substance, the need for aspiring US politicians to be wealthy to afford to run for office has been increasing. According to this report, 261 of the members of US Congress are millionaires. That's almost 50%, whereas millionaires are less than 1% of the US population. The effects of big money on the democratic process are generally not healthy.

I don't wish to particularly pick on the USA, since the distorting effects on democracy of hyper-capitalism's concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is not confined to politics of the land of the free very expensive. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. One of the kinds of evil that grows from the way we have set up our society is plutocracy.

Jeremy Kidwell on the purpose of fear

[W]e may also grant [our fears] overriding control over our moral lives. Thus, if I fear the financial crisis, i.e. my own financial ruin, at the root of this fear is my own love of money and the economy which secures my wealth. Similarly, fears of environmental destruction may reflect an underlying worship of the patterns I am familiar with, such as a ready supply of tropical fruits or an abundance of consumer products without any indication of their source or true cost. In short, my fear may reflect an underlying reluctance to see change, whatever the source.

A Christian response to such fear, I think, is the act of repentance. In this, we identify the underlying idolatries (or distorted loves) that generate our fears and express regret for the destructiveness these misguided attachments have caused. Next, we detach our loyalties from them, and place our trust instead in the only thing which can correspond to our highest aspirations: the personal God who created us. This redirection offers an entirely new orientation by which we can respond to bad news and conceive of our life within changed circumstances.

- Jeremy Kidwell, "The purpose of fear".

This post by my friend and New College colleague Jeremy makes some very good points about the ways that our fears can reveal our distorted loves. By reflecting on what it is that we fear losing, what we love comes into focus.

Yet not all the loves that are thereby revealed are necessarily distorted. Sometimes, we may discover a new love through becoming aware of a threat. For instance, it is only fairly recently that I have learned how much I love phytoplankton. While some of our fears may uncover the shallowness of our loves, some of the things under threat are not so obviously trivial: the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, the existence of myriad species and scores of ecosystems, the social fabric of trust and co-operation, a functioning healthcare system (and more importantly a functioning sewerage and garbage system), the rule of law, and so on. Of course these too can be loved inordinately, but simply to ignore the fact that these more significant goods are also threatened is (or may be) to once again allow fear to set the parameters of my moral vision, since I may be refusing to see the full extent of the threat lest it disrupt not just my convenient idolatries, but things of real (though still secondary) worth.

Spend less. Earn less. Work less.

“Sooner or later we spend what we earn. So if want to consume less we must earn less, and if we want to earn less we must work less. At least, we must perform less paid work. If that sounds shocking today, it is nothing more than a call to resume the great historical trend of declining working hours. Until the trend was disrupted in the 1980s, falling working hours were regarded as the surest sign of social progress. A return to the downward trend would mean a social choice to take less of the gain from productivity growth in money income and more in free time.”

- Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: why we resist the truth about climate change (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2010), 86-87.

A while back, I suggested we make wealth history. This is more or less what I meant. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. And that is true both personally and as a society.

The goal is not simply less. The goal is more of the things that count: like time building and enjoying relationships of trust, time for reflection, time for rest, time to heal and dream and worship.

Of course, Hamilton has neglected two possibilities in this brief paragraph. The first is earning less through voluntary pay cuts. However, perhaps this can be regarded as agreeing to perform some of your paid work voluntarily. The second is generosity, in which money earned is not spent but rather given away to those in need. While this may increase the consumption levels of the recipient, this is a good thing if it means their basic needs are now met. However, if it simply means someone else consuming unnecessary luxuries, then while it may have other worthy beneficial outcomes, ecologically it just pushes down one lump in the carpet only for it to reappear elsewhere.

The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil

After my recent post, have a look at this article on greed.