The British economy should balance a free market approach to private enterprise with state control of the production of goods and services, the Bishop of Liverpool told the BCSC conference.
The “market is not God” Bishop James Jones told the 2,800 delegates attending the commercial property association meeting at the Liverpool Arena on Nov 11. “A balance between laissez-faire capitalism and the rule of the state is needed,” he said.
Bishop Jones’ questioning of the assumptions of the free market system follows statements made by bishops from across the Anglican Communion in the wake of the global financial collapse while the Archbishops of York and Canterbury have voiced strong critiques of the international financial system.
The [i]state[/i] is not God either, Bishop Jones. Please open your Bible and turn to Psalm 146. There, depending upon translation, it will say some version of the following: “Put not your trust in princes and men of power, for they shall lead you astray unto their own purposes.”
State control of the production of goods and services has failed, every single time it has been attempted. No exceptions. This is not academic — my in-laws are Hungarian.
Capitalism is not a philosophy. It is a [i]description[/i] of one important [i]result[/i] of freedom. Such freedom will most definitely produce unequal distribution of success and wealth, and I can understand your emotional reaction to such a situation, especially given that you haven’t the first clue about economics.
Your proposed alternative, however, has very a long and depressingly deep track record of the more or less equal distribution … of misery. There is one exception — the political elite within such systems.
The story behind the story is that self-appointed elites such as Bishop Jones have no personal expectation of living in such a socialist system. They expect to [i]run[/i] it.
[Edited along with subsequent posts to give the bishop his correct title – Elf]
What Bart said!
Bingo Bart! Your last paragraph is right on the money. I wish everyone in this country would spend a few minutes pondering the implications of it.
Ditto.
Ditto.
Ditto.
Please help the bishop fix his time machine.
Right on, Bart.
Sad how often social activists like Bishop Jones who are spring-loaded in the ‘must do good’ position seem habituated to applying the blunt instrument of government to solve problems that often have their origins in the prior misapplication of that same blunt instrument of government. I guess if the only tool you think you have is a hammer every problem you want to solve looks like a nail that needs a good pounding.
The lesson they never seem to learn is the one taught over and over by the Law of Unintended Consequence. More is not necessarily better.
From Power Blog, Sept 17, 2007
“Here’s a justly famous quote from C. S. Lewis on why the danger posed by a nanny government can be much more oppressive than that posed by the consolidation of economic power:
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
That’s taken from his essay, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,†and it speaks well to the difference between political and economic power.”
This is the Fatal Conceit all over again.
Intellectuals like Bishop Jones sincerely believe that politicians can plan a better economy than the the “wisdom of the crowd”, where millions of tiny transactions create the movement of goods and services.
Intellectuals like Bishop Jones would readily admit that evolution creates better adapted species than any group of humans could come up with, yet reject that same idea when it applies to the economy.
If we haven’t learned from the 20th century that free markets work better than planned economies, we will never learn it.
And it very much is a moral issue. China and India in the 1990’s moved over 200 million people (200,000,000 +) from dire poverty to stability. How did they do this? Was it a great aid program? Did the state redistribute wealth? Was it a UN-related MDG? No. They simply embraced capitalism. (see “The Elephant and the Dragon”, by Robyn Meredith)
And intellectuals like Bishop Jones wants more state control of the economy. Bless his heart. Leave economics to the economists. You don’t see economists telling him the best way to run his religion.
[i]Intellectuals like Bishop Jones sincerely believe that politicians can plan a better economy than the the “wisdom of the crowdâ€, where millions of tiny transactions create the movement of goods and services. [/i]
One common amusement at rural county fairs in the US Midwest is “Guess the weight of the Steer.” Contestants plop down a buck, and the one with the closest guess wins $100, the balance to the local 4-H or some charity.
Several years ago, nearly 1500 people estimated the weight of one such steer weighing 1198 pounds. Those guesses were all over the place — from under 700 pounds to over 1600 pounds — but the [i]average[/i] of those guesses was … 1197 pounds, and the median (for stats wonks) was 1199 pounds.
Q.E.D.
As a spokesman for an organization that cannot pay for the Lambeth Conference, meet pension obligations, or explain what happened to thousands of acres of glebe land that simply vanished from the books, My Lord of Liverpool’s financial credentials seem pretty thin.
[9] [i]DietofWorms[/i],
Your comment about [i]The Fatal Conceit[/i] is spot on. Bishop Jones, although not the first, has apparently discovered how to transform a moderate global financial crisis into a [i]thoroughly soul-crushing[/i] global financial [i]disaster[/i] of historic proportions.
Sometimes I think it a great shame that there do not exist multiple worlds (or multiple realities) to which such as Bishop Jones might be transported as a possible cure for these sorts of [i]idiotic[/i], [i]uninformed[/i] proposals. If there were such a possibility, we could sentence him to be shipped off to his own little experimental earth in order to live there for a term, in order to be educated by having to survive all of the < sarcasm > salutary benefits < /sarcasm > which his benightedly ignorant proposal so richly deserves.
Blessings and regards,
Martial Artist (Keith Toepfer)
To paraphrase a line from a very old Doonesbury strip:
“Of course he’s aware of the plight of the working class. That’s how he avoids belonging to it.”