Catholic Business

With Phillip Blond, Age-Old 'Distributism' Gains New Traction

From last year, just in case you missed it:

"Can an Anglican theologian from Britain revive an 80-year-old Catholic social justice theory and provide a solution to America's economic woes and political polarization?

Philosopher and political thinker Phillip Blond thinks so, and he's giving it everything he's got.

Blond, who has been a counselor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, just wrapped up a two-week U.S. tour to pitch his retooled version of "distributism," a theory that argues that both capitalism and government are out of control.

In that sense, the thinking goes, both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are right."

More here.

Happiness and the Economy Project

As part of the MGT 301 Business Ethics course, which I am currently teaching here in Rome, we are working on a project to explore what the components of an economy ordered to human happiness might be. This blog post will serve to keep track of what we are reading.

[revised February 20, 2012]

OUTLINE

1. Does the current economic arrangement lead to happiness?

Happiness is the highest good
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2002.htm#article1

Wealth, not happiness, is the purpose of the market economy
http://www.economist.com/node/8450035

Happiness and wealth are only weakly correlated
http://oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#/54353115535

The Easterlin Paradox (increases in income do not correlate with increases in happiness)
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3439

The current happiness and economics debate appears to focus on government policy
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0621_happiness_graham.aspx

The current economic order appears to be leading to greater concentration of wealth and power, and hence towards Belloc's Servile State
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/capitalism-after-the-crisis

 

2. Are there any alternatives?

Other alternatives won't make us any happier
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods136.html

The current state is inevitable
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Liddy.shtml

The Quest for a Third Way (Allan Carlson)
http://www.profam.org/docs/acc/thc.acc.110323.3way.uva.htm

 

3. What principles should underly an economy ordered to happiness?

(In the article above, Carlson proposes several principles for what he calls "The Family Way"):

1. Widespread private property, firmly in family hands as the foundation of a free society
2. Subsidiarity: Decentralize, decentralize, decentralize
3. Responsibility: the central social and political challenge is to keep competition and the quest for efficiency out of the family and other small community; and at the same time to keep family-styled altruism out of central government
4. Defend the natural family economy through appeals to human nature and human history, emphasizing marriage and the generation of children
5. Place primary faith in cultural affirmations, and only secondary trust in state actions
6. Religious motivation: Look to the infusion of religious energy into culture, politics, and economic life as the surest source of renewal. Only homo religiosus, economist Wilhelm Röpke’s name for man created in the image of God, only this ‘religious man’ can stand up to the servile heir of homo economicus, or ‘economic man’
7. Build on small acts. In the end, the Family Way means reconnecting everyday tasks with the great purposes of the Creator. Only then do common deeds bend toward transcendence

We might also add:

1. An extra emphasis on subsidiarity in food production
2. Resistance to Consumerism
3. Free markets, within a framework of solidarity
4. Practical education
5. Environmental and moral sustainability
   
   (Are we talking about Shire Economics?)

4. What examples are there of applications of these principles?

Localism
http://www.ilsr.org/
http://www.newrules.org/retail/
http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/
http://www.livingeconomies.org - Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
http://www.livingeconomies.org/local-first-FAQ
http://www.livingeconomies.org/node/757 - Towns with more smaller businesses have greater physical health

Practical education
http://www.schoolofliving.org/

Local farming
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/familyfarms/
http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

Widespread private property ownership
http://assets.newamerica.net/

Homesteading

http://soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/Brsdi.intrvw/The%20Plowboy-Borsodi%20Interview.htm
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/030204borsodi/030204borsoditoc.html
http://www.mlive.com/living/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2010/05/cooperative_lifestyle_in_pavil.html
http://www.lakevillagehomestead.org/
On the economic tradeoffs of working in vs. outside the home for women, see http://faculty.cua.edu/aguirre/population/childcare.doc

Homemaking
http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/shannon-hayes/live-dangerously-10-easy-steps

Local currencies
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-04-05-scrip_N.htm
http://localcurrencycouncil.org/

Land trusts
http://www.landtrustalliance.org/

Employee ownership
http://www.esopassociation.org/

Economy of Communion
http://www.catholicbusinessethics.org/economy-of-communion/
http://www.focolare.org/en/news/2011/05/30/economia-di-comunione-il-futuro-e-qui/

Home made entertainment
https://www.folkschool.org/
http://www.folkalliance.org/

 

5. What barriers stand in the way of building an economy ordered to happiness?

http://www.upjohninst.org/publications/wp/03-91.pdf Barriers to development of local economies (study)

6. How could these barriers be overcome?

 

Preferential Option for the Poor

A group of academics, some from Catholic University, sent an open letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner, on the occasion of his addressing our 2011 graduating class a couple of weeks ago, accusing him of dissent because the budget cuts he is championing allegedly violate the Church's teaching on the preferential option for the poor.  I did not like the letter, both because of its overtly political intent, and also because of its clear misrepresentation of that teaching.

Fr. Sirico from the Acton Institute provided an early and thorough response. Kathryn Jean Lopez, a CUA alumna, wrote on the issue in the National Catholic Register, quoting a couple of other CUA faculty who had some incisive things to say about the letter.  

But perhaps the best closure on the issue is the recent exchange between Congressman Paul Ryan and Archbishop Dolan, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, also covered by Lopez, which demonstrates that Catholic Social Teaching is far more rich and insightful than the academics' letter held it out to be.  

Perhaps we can now return to studying Catholic Social Teaching as a source of great and timeless insight, instead of trying to force fit it into supporting our political preferences of the moment.  

 

The Signpost at the Crossroads

Joseph Bottum has an excellent piece on the politics of abortion in First Things: 

We should not accept a truce on abortion because the pro-life position is, in fact, winning. With horrifying slowness, yes, but each graduating class of young people is more opposed to abortion than the last, and in the long run the great task of persuasion and argument will prevail.

Read the whole article here.

Steve Jobs Says iPad Revolution Means ‘Freedom from Porn’

From LifeSiteNews:

By Peter J. Smith

CUPERTINO, California, May 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers, says his company will not be a party to the pornography industry and hopes that the iPad and iPhone revolution will help lead to a porn-free world.

Jobs reiterated his position in a heated e-mail exchange with Ryan Tate, a writer for Gawker.com, which follows news and gossip in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Tate, who admitted that he was home alone and slightly inebriated at the time, took issue with a television ad calling the iPad a “revolution” and fired off an e-mail to Jobs.

Read the rest here.

Goldman Sachs doing God's Work

In an interview with the UK Sunday Times, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, claimed that he is doing God's work.  An article on the AOL DailyFinance site questions this claim.  I was quoted in the latter article, saying,

"The question of whether the CEO of Goldman Sachs is doing God's work is at one level a very complex one," says Dr. Andrew Abela, chairman of the Department of Business & Economics at the Catholic University of America. Abela, who is working on a book, Catechism for Business, says, "The vast size of the bank and its extensive influence on markets and on government policy, means that it is operating at all times in a moral minefield."

Unfortunately the rest of my quote didn't make it in:

"But at another level, the issue is a simple one: If you want to serve God in business then you need to have the intention to do so, and you need to act in ways that serve society. If your intention is instead to make lots of money, and you happen to do some social good along the way, there is not much honor or spiritual benefit there.  Similarly, if you intend to serve God and society, but the kinds of things you do actually harm people (government regulation often falls into this trap) then neither God nor society are served.  You need both the right intention and the right actions."

Finance and ethics...

Pope Benedict, in Caritas in Veritate, wrote: 

What should be avoided is a speculative use of financial resources that yields to the temptation of seeking only short-term profit, without regard for the long-term sustainability of the enterprise, its benefit to the real economy and attention to the advancement, in suitable and appropriate ways, of further economic initiatives in countries in need of development (#40).

Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers. Right intention, transparency, and the search for positive results are mutually compatible and must never be detached from one another (#65).

David P. Goldman, in First Things' Spengler blog, writes today:

A close look at the circumstances of the bank bailout of the past year, particularly the government’s decision to pay out AIG’s guarantees of other banks’ subprime derivative at 100 cents on the dollar, might reveal embezzlement on the grand scale. ... [more]

Subsidiarity and Healthcare

Here are two interesting takes on how the principle of subsidiarity should guide us in the current US health care debate.

Dr. Stephen Schneck of the Catholic University of America wrote Subsidiarity 101: A Lesson for the Health Care Debate, and Kansas City, Kansas Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann and Kansas City – St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn issued their pastoral letter Principles of Catholic Social Teaching and Health Care Reform.