Is the Vatican more OWS than OWS?
Maybe Rome is ahead of the U.S. bishops when it comes to the economy.
Catholic News Service reports:
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican has prepared a document on reform of the global financial system and the potential role of a public regulatory authority.
The document, prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, was to be released Oct. 24 in four languages, and presented the same day at a Vatican news conference by Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the council.
The Vatican said the document would address “reform of the international financial system with a view toward a general public authority.”
This could give Catholic conservatives palpitations.
On the other hand, the CNS story notes that Pope Benedict’s powerful 2009 social justice encyclical, “Charity in Truth” (“Caritas in Veritate”), is an inspiration for the forthcoming document and is also a touchstone for the neo-distributists I wrote about this week.
Pontifex maximus?
Office of Surface Water? Official Scrabble Words?
And here’s where the old “prudential judgement” cop-out comes in.
Seriously, a world authority is about the worst idea ever. Look up public choice theory and Stigler’s economic theory of regulation. All that a world authority would do is create a corrupt one-stop-shop for the most moneyed elites in the world to buy their preferred policies.
Oh, Stu. You with the comedy. Fixed.
Grant, you beat me to it. Thanks. But glad Stuart has dotComm on his refresh queue.
Not at all; it’s just a coincidence that the first time I’ve visited in a few days was right after you posted something.
Stu,
Glad to see you express some concern about the influence of moneyed elites. (Or is it only foreign moneyed elites that worry you? I notice that when you use the word “world,” it’s always with a scowl.) In any case, your argument doesn’t make a lot of sense. If the moneyed elites can buy off one big regulatory authority, they can also buy off a few smaller ones; and a few is all they really need. The point of a transnational regulatory authority is that, until you have one, the owners of capital are free to play one government off another: if nation A won’t give a corporation what it wants, it can threaten to move to nation B. Financial regulation is a classic collective-action problem. Unless every country works together it doesn’t work very well.
“Pope Benedict’s powerful 2009 social justice encyclical, “Charity in Truth” (”Caritas in Veritate”), is an inspiration for the forthcoming document and is also a touchstone for the neo-distributists I wrote about this week.”
I definitely agree about the encyclical and would say we need more consensus around the great leadership and ideas of Pope Benedict and less from the Catholic fringe — say Acton Institute on the right or NCR types on the left.
Matthew — rather than purporting to describe my facial expressions (and doing so incorrectly), how about sticking to substance?
Financial regulation isn’t a collective action problem. If Nation A so desires, it can block any such corporation from doing business within that nation any more.
“If the moneyed elites can buy off one big regulatory authority, they can also buy off a few smaller ones; and a few is all they really need.”
Not true at all. If moneyed elites want to do business in the US, the EU, and China, they now have to exert lobbying efforts in several places. But give them a one-world authority to control, and it’s one-stop-shopping.
Why would you want to give elites that you dislike a greater opportunity to exert influence over more people?
Honestly, some of these “one world authority” pronouncements have all the naivety of an 8-year-old announcing that he’s going to solve the world’s problems by abolishing money and having everyone just give everyone else whatever they need. It’s cute, but anyone with a little more knowledge about how the world works will be a little more cynical.
“Seriously, a world authority is about the worst idea ever”
Really? The word idea, ever?
Isn’t the Pope, in a way, seen as a world authority? Isn’t this exactly what the traditional right thought of the Pope? Even if the Church has seen that the Pope might not be the best figure to represent this position, the position still holds an important place in traditional Catholic political theory. But it’s the “worst idea ever.” Even the idea that Bush is the Antichrist is a better idea? Really?
Agree with Stu on this one. We have world authority in the church ending up with some of the worst management. Even worse with the bishops, clergy and religious living comfortably while the 99% worry about their paychecks or lack of it.
Thanks, Henry, for such a close reading. Here’s an alternative that would hopefully satisfy you: “one of the worst and most-likely-to-backfire-completely ideas for addressing the problem of overly-powerful elites.”
Well, Stu, your views on the nature of government are nothing if not cynical. I’ll leave it to others to decide whether that fact indicates that you have a little more knowledge than the rest of us. (I say this with a smile.)
Yes, nation A is free to pass regulations that protect the workers of nation A. If the corporations in nation A therefore decide to move their operations to nation B, which does not protect workers, nation A’s economy suffers. It is economically self-destructive for nation A to impose decent limitations on employers if other nations don’t. This is called a collective-action problem.
I said that if moneyed elites can buy off one big regulatory authority, they can also buy off a few smaller ones, and that a few is all they need. You reply that if moneyed elites want to do business in the US, the EU, and China, they have to “exert lobbying efforts in several places.” To which I say: sounds like a few to me. And why do you assume that the only way to do business in a country is to lobby its government for maximal leeway?
The larger point is that a global regulatory authority would not be subject to some of the pressures that make it difficult for national governments to impose adequate checks on capital. Again, if the EU establishes more robust restrictions on, say, derivatives trading and the U.S. does not, some financial firms may decide to head West. If those same firms didn’t like regulations proposed by a world regulatory agency, they would threaten to do what? Head to the moon?
“If those same firms didn’t like regulations proposed by a world regulatory agency, they would threaten to do what? ”
What’s naive is assuming that this situation is likely to arise in the first place. Go back to my 4:19 pm comment, read up on the topics mentioned there, and then explain why a world regulatory authority would be less, rather than more, susceptible to those problems.
I thought the Vatican consisted of nothing but an incompetent, corrupted bunch of old men covering up for their crimes against humanity and aiding and abetting the abuse of children while pretending the Baroque period had never ended by parading around in their fiddleback chausables and lace?
I am going to make a prediction: that progressives will be more disappointed by this Vatican statement than conservatives.
Not that I’m always, or even usually, right.
David Gibson, who blogs at dotCommonweal, expresses benign curiosity about a new Vatican document on global financial reform. Bill Mazzella, who comments on dotCommonweal posts, regularly expresses his disdain for the Vatican. Obviously Bill Gibson has contradicted himself. Good eye, Jeff.
I am going to make a prediction: that Jim Pauwels’s prediction will turn out to be wrong (despite the fact that Jim Pauwels is often right). In his last encyclical the pope already evinced an openness to global regulation of the market, something no self-described conservative I know supports.
Matthew, if I’m wrong, and you’re right, then if you drink, and if I am ever in New York again, I will buy you one.
Granted, that’s a lot of ifs to navigate, but given our respective geographic positions, it’s the best I can do :-)
It’s a deal, Jim.
It’s worth noting that the world is not entirely devoid of global financial … I’m not certain that “regulation” is the right word, but the IMF, which non-wacko conservatives would concede, on their more mature days, is pretty much essential to the functioning of the world economy, does “regulate” economic activity, if we use a broad, liberal-arts definition of what it means to regulate something, e.g. ‘provide for the regular, stable functioning of its object’
The EU, which does impose international if not global regulation, has managed to imperil its justification for existence while simultaneously justifying its existence, by contributing to the crisis in Greece and also providing the mechanism for Germany to bail out Greece A crude but effective way to prevent the weakest man from being tossed out of the lifeboat when food runs short is to tether him to the strongest man in the lifeboat.
We’ve learned that the Fed, without any formal international controlling entity besides the judgment of its governors and managers, has been propping up overseas financial institutions. That’s some sort of non-institutional internationalism, or something like that.
Hello David (and All),
Thanks for this post and for your Washington Post article, which have altered me to the revival of interest in distributivism. Do you recommend any particular source to turn to for learning some of the substance of Philip Blond’s ideas on distributivism? (After a quick search I found a number of web sites either claiming Blond’s ideas are terrific or stupid, but I didn’t find any that point to the main’s own writings on distributivism. I admittedly haven’t tried too hard to find it, but Blond’s own home page does not come up on a cursory web search, which I find quite unusual for a professor.)
I have to admit I have not given distributivism much attention in the past, mainly because I’ve been unable to find a precise analysis of distributivism. My impression (which could be off the mark) is that “distributivism” is one of those nice sounding terms some Catholics like to use without clear definition. (“Common good” in the applied ethics literature and “openness to life” in the family planning literature are others — it took me some years before I could find a detailed analysis of common good (in John Finnis’ Natural Law and Natural Rights) even though I had previously heard and read many Catholics use the term quite freely and, in my opinion, much like a “trump card” in discussion, in the sense that presumably no one could be opposed to “the common good”.)
I am going to make a prediction that Matthew Boudway’s prediction that Jim Pauwels’s prediction will turn out to be wrong, will turn out to be wrong.
Peter V: My piece on distributism was of necessity a quick gloss, but there are many other places to read more in depth. The Tablet had a good package on Blond and others in August 2009, I believe, but good luck accessing their archives.
Like you, I’m not sure what it really is, though it seems attractive in principle, like Radical orthodoxy, or what I think that might be.
It is very controversial, it goes without saying.
Some links:
David Brooks (hearts) Blond:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/opinion/19brooks.html
David Mills provides a bunch of good links:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/10/10/blond-on-broken-vs-big/
The Acton Institute goes snarky:
http://blog.acton.org/archives/26611-10-signs-you-may-be-a-distributist.html
Dreher:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2011/10/11/catholic-capitalist-vs-catholic-distributists/
And this:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/08/29/miller-medaille-on-the-economy/
Miller & Medaille on the Economy
Monday, August 29, 2011, 2:38 PM
David Mills
A very interesting exchange between Robert Miller, a contributor to “First Thoughts” and to the magazine, and the Distributist writer John Medaille, published by the online magazine Dappled Things: On Truth and Trade: Economics and the Catholic Vision of the Good Life. Miller defends the “modest proposition . . . that, for people like us in a society like ours, capitalism is the most reasonable choice among the various economic systems we might adopt.” Medaille argues that “the standard model of economics has failed us. Not only has it failed to bring a stable economic order, but it has destabilized the family and the community as well, and grown the government past any reasonable bounds.”
Just what is the Pope proposing? A regulatory “agency” but an agency of what? The U. N.? An independent agency? If the latter, how would it enforce its decisions? Who would be represented, and how? Would it be a sort of parliament with proportional representation? And who would police *it*? And how???
Too many unanswered questions at this poin?
Peter –
See the Wikipedia article on Philip Blond. It gives some a references to his works and stuff about him, including a good profile in The Guardian which mentions a few of his works.. Don’t search Wiki for Blond. For some reason it doesn’t work. Go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Blond
Chesterton and Belloc pushed distributivism (a second name for it) as representing Catholic social teaching. They emphasized the principe of subsidiarity. Neither was an economists, of course. My big problem with it is that it is incredibly naive.
It seems to assume that most families would have farms, and the farms would produce everything the family needs. However, it doesn’t explain how a farmer would make , e.g., his own ploughs, especially if there were no iron deposits on his three acres to make his ploughs with. Not to mention the fact that there isn’t enough arable land in the whole world to give every family 3 acres of its own. Not to mention that if those Catholic farmers had lots of children as the Church thinks is a good idea, in a few generations each kid would end up with a plot of land just big enough for a house. (On second thought, I’m probably over-simplified what the contemporary distributists are saying.)
But the principle of subsidiarity does sound promising as an economic principle. And the theory also requires fair prices, whatever that means. In other words, the theory has huge lacunae,
What in heaven’s name makes them think they’re competent to do that? I can see them philosophizing on various moral problems arising from a too-wide disparity in the distribution of wealth, but preaching economics to economists? Well, I guess that is kind of French – everybody with a keyboard’s an expert – but I thought he was German. Well, it’ll give Catholic intellectuals something else to argue about. Who else will read it?
I had the foolish hope that we’d read the document before we had brilliant comentary.
I see Jeff has a wonderful strawman to knock down -again and I’m sorry to say I find David S/’s comment meaningless.
Oh well….
Btw, John Medaille is a good guy and Catholic. He may be open to joining our little seminar here and talking to us about distributivist economics.
Philip Blond has an interesting article in Prospect about how the current English Prime Minister could “recapitalize the poor” and save the English economy. His proposed method would combine the best of both the left and the right. His plan involves breaking up the monopolies, with banks becoming truly local, i.e., banks that lend locally to non-large businesses.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/02/riseoftheredtories/
Started to read it, Ann, and may finish it. But he pontificates a lot, and that’s offputting. Life isn’t as simple as one academic theory. He’s certainly got bits of part of a truth – I particularly like the observation that freeing the individual from all external restraint leads directly to his enslavement (my paraphrase) – but that’s probably as far as it goes. What’s real is what’s real – not what someone imagines is real. Humans embody too many contradictions for any theory to encompass realistically. We live best in chaos, not in closed systems.
Not Blond nor Cameron nor Brown nor Obama nor the dirty little children in the park have got it right, though, of course, in a sense they all do.
It is very encouraging that the Vatican is urging us to do the right thing in all kinds of areas of social and economic justice. I think they’re in front of the line on environmental stewardship, the rights of workers, access to health care; the list goes on. These are all huge issues here in the US, I’m very glad the Vatican speaks out, I hope it provides some helpful guidance to our local church.
Pope John XXIII on Distributism in Mater et Magistra, 1961:
“As for the State, its whole raison d’etre is the realization of the common good in the temporal order. It cannot, therefore, hold aloof from economic matters. On the contrary, it must do all in its power to promote the production of a sufficient supply of material goods, ‘the use of which is necessary for the practice of virtue.’ It has also the duty to
protect the rights of all its people, and particularly of its weaker members, the workers, women and children. It can never be right for the State to shirk its obligation of working actively for the betterment of the condition of the workingman.
“It is furthermore the duty of the State to ensure that terms of employment are regulated in accordance with justice and equity, and to safeguard the human dignity of workers by making sure that they are not required to work in an environment which may prove harmful to their material and spiritual interests. It was for this reason that the Leonine
encyclical enunciated those general principles of rightness and equity which have been assimilated into the social legislation of many a modern State….”
Pope John considered each aspect of how economics works, locally, nationally and internationally, and laid out general principles of social justice.
In paragraphs 69-71 he wrote:
“Nevertheless, in some of these lands the enormous wealth, the unbridled luxury, of the privileged few stands in violent, offensive contrast to the utter poverty of the vast majority. In some parts of the world men are being subjected to inhuman privations so that the output of the national economy can be increased at a rate of acceleration beyond
what would be possible if regard were had to social justice and equity. And in other countries a notable percentage of income is absorbed in building up an ill-conceived national prestige, and vast sums are spent on armaments.
“In economically developed countries, relatively unimportant services, and services of doubtful value, frequently carry a disproportionately high rate of remuneration, while the diligent and profitable work of whole classes of honest, hard-working men gets scant reward. Their rate of pay is quite inadequate to meet the basic needs of life. It in no way
corresponds to the contribution they make to the good of the community, to the profits of the company for which they work, and to the general national economy.
“We therefore consider it Our duty to reaffirm that the remuneration of work is not something that can be left to the laws of the marketplace; nor should it be a decision left to the will of the more powerful. It must be determined in accordance with justice and equity; which means that workers must be paid a wage which allows them to live a truly human life and to fulfill their family obligations in a worthy manner. Other factors too
enter into the assessment of a just wage: namely, the effective contribution which each individual makes to the economic effort, the financial state of the company for which he works, the requirements of the general good of the particular country—having regard especially to the repercussions on the overall employment of the working force in the
country as a whole—and finally the requirements of the common good of the universal family of nations of every kind, both large and small.
“The above principles are valid always and everywhere,” he declared.
In paragraph 74, John XXIII wrote: “As Our Predecessor Pius XII observed with evident justification: ‘Likewise the national economy, as it is the product of the men who work
together in the community of the State, has no other end than to secure without interruption the material conditions in which the individual life of the citizens may fully develop. Where this is secured in a permanent way, a people will be, in a true sense, economically rich, because the general well-being, and consequently the personal right of all to the use of worldly goods, is thus actuated in conformity with the purpose willed
by the Creator.’ From this it follows that the economic prosperity of a nation is not so much its total assets in terms of wealth and property, as the equitable division and distribution of this wealth. This it is which guarantees the personal development of the members of society, which is the true goal of a nation’s economy.”
Under the heading, “ The Effective Distribution of Property,” John XXIII wrote:
“[I]t is not enough to assert that the right to own private property and the means of production is inherent in human nature. We must also insist on the extension of this right in practice to all classes of citizens.
“As Our Predecessor Pius XII so rightly affirmed: The dignity of the human person ‘normally demands the right to the use of the goods of the earth, to which corresponds the fundamental obligation of granting an opportunity to possess property to all if possible.’ This demand arises from the moral dignity of work. It also guarantees ‘the
conservation and perfection of a social order which makes possible a secure, even if modest, property to all classes of people.’
“Now, if ever, is the time to insist on a more widespread distribution of property, in view of the rapid economic development of an increasing number of States. It will not be difficult for the body politic, by the adoption of various techniques of proved efficiency, to pursue an economic and social policy which facilitates the widest possible distribution of private property in terms of durable consumer goods, houses, land, tools and equipment (in the case of craftsmen and owners of family farms), and shares in medium and large business concerns.”
Craftsmen and owners of family farms. Sigh.
There are some unresolved tensions in this debate, to my ear.
First, political. Matthew Boudway (shockingly) knocks “self-described” conservatives over the head for opposing “global regulation.” But it was under Pres. Bush that the SEC, led by Republican Chris Cox, began to push for the implementation of IFRS – the International Financial Reporting Standards – over U.S. GAAP (perhaps a large reason why Obama raised tons of cash among the Big 4 Accounting firms last cycle who generally opposed IFRS). I’m not sure whether Bush or Cox are “self-described,” but they are generally described by others as conservatives.
Not only this, but I know of few liberals, self-described or otherwise, who support such a global regulatory agency. They are right to point, of course, to the complexities with regulating our own financial markets as a cautionary tale to designing “comprehensive” global reforms. I can’t imagine Bob Rubin, Bill Daley, or even Bill Galston championing such a global approach.
Second, is the role of elites. A quote on the other post about TNR’s response to OWS is telling. Bill Galston is quoted as saying we need a renewed emphasis on the responsibility elites in society have towards other classes. Yet a commentator quotes a Chinese economist saying the elites are the problem, and no reform is possible as long as elites run the show (a view I think closer to the OWS protestors’ feelings). As the Atlantic reported this morning, Wall St. has contributed more to Pres. Obama & the Democrats so far than it has to the Republicans (Obama even got more money from Romney’s own former firm Bain), so where is this reform to come from?
Third, is related to the question of source of reform & scale. A global solution, in addition to being massively complex, would also seem to imply a concentration of power into another group of elites’ hands – perhaps their HQ could be at Davos, where the greats gather to gab (I shudder at the thought). Yet Blond’s solution (like any conservative, self-described or otherwise) is not to concentrate power, but to fracture it, diversify it, and spread it out among various entities (Michael Sandel – a leading critic of Rawlsian liberalism – has essentially the same critique). Yet does that mean Blond, who generally opposed large concentrations of power in regulatory agencies, is opposing what we presume to be Benedict’s view? Does that make him just another pro-market neo-con? Hardly.
So, to my reading, there are a lot of moving pieces, unanswered and unasked questions, that complicate things beyond the usual good conservative – bad liberal (and vice versa) analysis. I appreciate that Blond reflects this muddled reality.
(And, yes, Mr. Nunz – my comment re: the Vatican was a strawman designed to raise an ecclesial tension. When the Vatican does something we disapprove of – say reforming the Missal – we get a lot of stuff about how out of touch they are, bunch of incompetent hacks, yadda yadda, but when they say something we like, we cheer and think it’s the greatest thing – especially if they put the heat on our political opponents. Again, it’s a muddy mess).
We don’t need very active imaginations to see what global economic regulation would look like. Global environmental regulation is surely modeling it for us already.
Jeff,
Let me address your points in reverse order.
First, Commonweal is a big tent. Its contributors — not to speak of its readers and blog commenters — don’t agree about everything. Its editors don’t even agree about everything. For this reason, if you are going to complain of hypocrisy or self-contradiction, you will have to focus your complaint on a self and not the whole magazine or its blog. You will have no trouble finding Commonweal contributors who are wary of the Vatican, or of this particular pontificate. And you will have no trouble finding contributors who are paying close, sympathetic attention to what Rome has to say about financial regulation. What you may have more trouble finding is a Commonweal writer who is routinely scornful of the Vatican but nevertheless recommends that we celebrate and defer to the pope’s pronouncements on questions of political economy.
More generally, you have a habit of implying guilt by association. Because Commonweal has published articles, editorials, and blog posts endorsing policies of the Obama administration, for example, you take it for granted that we are in the bag for Obama and must answer for all his faults. If a Commonweal contributor agrees with the president about issues A-M, you seem to think it fair to assume that the contributor also agrees with the president about issues N-Z. If a Commonweal contributor castigates Republicans for their views about, say, financial regulation, you think it fair to assume that the contributor endorses Obama’s views on that same topic without reservation. You are forever complaining that conservatives are unfairly pigeonholed as enthusiastic defenders of Wall Street, but you do not hesitate to pigeonhole all those to your left as unreflective disciples of the DNC. Your rule seems to be: Once a Commonweal contributor argues in favor of any policy supported by the Democratic Party or President Obama, that person has a responsibility to inform readers of every point on which he disagrees with the president or his party; otherwise, it is fair to assume general agreement. Your rule is not our rule.
So, speaking only for myself, I will say again what I have said before: the president could and should have done more in the early days of his administration to crack down on those responsible for the financial crisis in 2008. It is likely that even then Blue Dog Democrats in the Senate would have made it difficult for the president to do everything that should have been done, but he made a serious error in choosing Timothy Geithner as his Treasury Secretary and Lawrence Summers as his chief economic adviser. Both of these men had been in favor of policies that caused or exacerbated the credit crisis. Neither was likely to do anything that would upset the financial industry too much.
That said, your perseveration on Wall Street’s campaign donations to the Obama campaign is puzzling. The main reason bankers were so generous to the Obama campaign in 2008 was that they thought he might win and wanted access to the White House if he did. It is simplistic to regard campaign donations as a straightforward indication of ideological support. I haven’t seen the Atlantic piece you mention, but this recent item in the New York Times seems to tell a very different story. Headline: “Romney Beating Obama in Fight for Wall Street Cash.”
Finally, it’s true I might have been more precise when I said that I don’t know any self-described conservatives who are open to global regulation. By that I didn’t mean that no conservatives support any kind of global standards for national regulatory agencies; I meant real regulation, which means real regulators. To suggest that the accounting firms gave so much money to the Obama campaign because they regarded Bush or Chris Cox as unfriendly to their industry is risible. They, like the rest of the financial industry, knew there would be some kind of reckoning after the meltdown they helped bring about, and they wanted to have some say in what it looked like.
“The main reason bankers were so generous to the Obama campaign in 2008 was that they thought he might win and wanted access to the White House if he did. It is simplistic to campaign donations as a straightforward indication of ideological support.”
This really does get to the heart of campaign-finance corruption, doesn’t it? Our recent abortion discussion here triggered a similar reflection: when someone holds up a sack containing a million dollars to a group of candidates and says, “Who wants it?” the odds are good that *someone* is going to raise his hand.
Paul Likoudis, thank you for those quotes from Mater et Magistra, which I haven’t read in quite a long time. This part is prophetic and challenging:
“In economically developed countries, relatively unimportant services, and services of doubtful value, frequently carry a disproportionately high rate of remuneration, while the diligent and profitable work of whole classes of honest, hard-working men gets scant reward. Their rate of pay is quite inadequate to meet the basic needs of life. It in no way
corresponds to the contribution they make to the good of the community, to the profits of the company for which they work, and to the general national economy.
“We therefore consider it Our duty to reaffirm that the remuneration of work is not something that can be left to the laws of the marketplace; nor should it be a decision left to the will of the more powerful. It must be determined in accordance with justice and equity; which means that workers must be paid a wage which allows them to live a truly human life and to fulfill their family obligations in a worthy manner. Other factors too
enter into the assessment of a just wage: namely, the effective contribution which each individual makes to the economic effort, the financial state of the company for which he works, the requirements of the general good of the particular country—having regard especially to the repercussions on the overall employment of the working force in the
country as a whole—and finally the requirements of the common good of the universal family of nations of every kind, both large and small.”
If we take this seriously, it raises many questions. Who determines the effective contribution each individual makes? Who gets to assess the financial state of the company? Who gets to pronounce on the repercussions on overall employment and the general good of the particular country? And so on.
One Catholic approach to answering these questions, I’d think, would be to apply the principle of subsidiarity. Thus, the worker (or the union or workers’ organization) and the employer would be in the best position to determine the worker’s effective contribution; the owners would be in the best position to assess the financial state of the company; the national government would be authorized to say what is good for the particular country; perhaps the national government’s central bank or ministry of finance/treasury would be able to determine the repercussions on overall employment.
What I’ve just described is the status quo (at least the status quo in the developed world). The worker or workers’ organization negotiating wages with the employer is the labor market. The owner determining the company’s financial health is corporate governance. The national government seeking to maximize the economic good of the country is fiscal and regulatory policies. The bank or treasury working to minimize unemployment is monetary policy.
Please note that I am not claiming that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. But I am saying that the status quo is, if not perfect, at least defensible by these papal principles, and of course many powerful people and institutions have an interest in defending the status quo. And to those who aren’t motivated by self-interest, the record of the US is mixed at worst in conforming to these principles.
Perhaps this forthcoming document would build on what John XXIII wrote, extending it into the global economy by giving some global principles and suggesting some global governance and oversight. In a previous comment in this topic, I gave some examples of international institutions that already exist, and of course others could be named.
Relatively few people, I’d think, would want to blow up existing structures and rebuild sectors of the economy from scratch. So in fact, we *should* use as our starting point what is already in place. I don’t expect that much in the way of radical change will be called for.
Matthew -
I appreciate your addressing what you think my concerns are – except I’m not sure what you’re talking about. You say (among a lot of other things): “If a Commonweal contributor castigates Republicans for their views about, say, financial regulation, you think it fair to assume that the contributor endorses Obama’s views on that same topic without reservation. You are forever complaining that conservatives are unfairly pigeonholed as enthusiastic defenders of Wall Street, but you do not hesitate to pigeonhole all those to your left as unreflective disciples of the DNC.” But I don’t believe that at all. I have no illusions that all those affiliated with Commonweal are of one accord with respect to Obama; you’ve trotted out that fact before. But you see it’s not their opinion about Obama that I was addressing, but the consistently one-sided, short-circuited views of conservative opinion that are consistently castigated, criticized, ridiculed, and pigeon-holed that confuses me. I appreciate that there is a facility of thought with respect to Obama; perhaps it’d be nice to see some of that applied across the aisle.
Secondly, I’m not sure what all this “hypocrisy” talk is about. I didn’t accuse anyone of hypocrisy; my wholly tongue-in-cheek comment was addressed at how quickly opinion of Vatican policies shifts among some commentators. That’s not the same as saying they’re hypocrites. I suggested two or three tensions in these commentaries that I picked up on in an effort to contribute to the dialogue, not in some attempt to accuse one or another of being a hypocrite.
“Who determines the effective contribution each individual makes?”
Jim P. –
Indeed, the classic problem: what is a fair wage? The economists have given up on answering the question. Keynes tried, but even he gave up.
Because different workers contribute different kinds of value to the product I suspect that the problem the way it is usually framed is a problem of comparing the relative values of apples and oranges. Put another way, what is the relative value of the work of, say, a mechanic, an electrician and an unskilled worker? Some would say that the former two require skills the latter does not, and also the skilled worker is called on to make judgments as to what must be done while unskilled workers just do as they are told.
But you’re still left with the question: how should electricians and mechanics be paid relative to each other? And what should be the minimum wage for the unskilled worker? (If there is such a thing as a fair minimum wage?)
Jeff–
Might i suggest that when you use the terms “liberals”, “the liberals” or just “them” that you try to make it clearer just *which* liberals you’re talking about? We’re not a monolith any more than all conservatives are exactly alike.
In fact, it seems to me that most people don’t fit into any political stereotype — that is, they are “liberal” in some ways but “conservative” in other ways. And there is the added complication that different people give those two words different meanings. Still, it is *generally* fair to say that liberals and conservative will have some basically different opinions.
Given that we differ, it is no wonder that discussions between liberals and conservatives *usually* find liberals saying that they (the conservatives) are mistaken about many things. Given that we disagree about so many things to begin with it’s to be expected that we “pick on each other”, that is, criticize each other. The only question should be: are our criticisms true or not? That they are generally negative is irrelevant.
Matthew —
Your latest comment points out that 1) rich bankers gave lots of money to Obama because they wanted to influence policy, and 2) they were in fact successful in doing so in several ways (you name more than one appointment, etc.).
Why wouldn’t it bother you that the same phenomenon, except on a larger and more secretive scale, would take place with regard to any “global” financial authority? Why do you want to give moneyed elites a greater opportunity to exercise more power over more people’s lives?
I wrote about Cardinal Turkson in Commonweal a while back, when I reported on his installation of a new bishop in Ghana. In his homily before a crowd of some 10,000 people, he stressed how important it is for a bishop to emphasize social justice as a kind of Moses figure. At the same time, Cardinal Turkson also spoke about the need for subsidiarity – in the church. Very impressive. I’ll look forward to hearing what he has to say on the 24th.