Is It Greed?

John Stossel:

"If pursuing profit is greed, economist Walter Williams told me, then greed is good, because it drives us to do many good things. 'Those areas where people are motivated the most by greed are the areas that we're the most satisfied with: supermarkets, computers, FedEx.' By contrast, areas 'where people say we're motivated by 'caring'' -- public education, public housing etc. -- 'are the areas of disaster in our country. . . . How much would get done,' Williams wondered, 'if it all depended on human love and kindness?'

Greed gets people to cooperate. If you want to benefit from other greedy people, you have to make sure they benefit from you. Consider one of the wonders of our age, the supermarket. There are thousands of products on the shelves. How'd they get there?"

I suspect the issue of "greed" often comes up in many political issues, especially issues involving government regulation of economic activities. While I'm in agreement with what Stossel writes here about the meaning of these economic activities, I don't think it fits to talk about these things as "greed." It seems to me simply self-interest that motivates people to behave in all the ways that result in "one of the wonders of our age, the supermarket."

Further I don't think it is "greed" to be self-interested and to make personal efforts to do better for yourself and your family. It seems to me that "greed" must involve an excess in a negative personality trait, and one that leads a person to specifically pursue money as the primary personal goal in life and even at the expense of relationships with others, and perhaps it may even involve explicit efforts to take advantage of others for personal gain.

In general, the economic activities of people benefit many others and not just each person individually. In general, economic activities are not characterized by greed, but by a multitude of ways by which people help themselves while helping others.

America: Rich & Greedy

Gregory Boyd has written a series of short essays on faith and politics in the United States. The essays offer many issues to discuss and I plan to take up a few. Here is something found in one of those essays:

"I love America. I can think of no other country I would want to make my home. I enjoy the freedom to write this comment in this blog. There are, however, things about America that I detest. There are things about America that are quite contrary to the Kingdom of God. America is rich. America is greedy. America is materialistic. America exploits the poor. If Revelation had been written in our day, the city of Babylon would not be Rome; it would be America (among many other nations that oppose Kingdom-values). Washington is the Babylon of Rev. 18 in the same way that Rome was. Many of the values of America are a direct contradiction to the Kingdom of God. Despite George W's claims that America is 'the light of the world,' it is not. The light of the world is Jesus; I serve a King. There is no 'president' on the throne of God's Kingdom."

I think the assertions here about America are simply false. For example, I do not see that "America exploits the poor." There are many reasons to see my conclusion, not the least of which is in the news these days. The policy issues surrounding illegal immigrants involve many who are poor illegally entering this country. It simply would seem odd to me to conclude that "America exploits the poor" while seeing so many poor every day come to America to be "exploited." The poor aren't risking so much to illegally come here just to come be exploited.

I suspect the very idea of "America exploits the poor" is based upon a flawed analysis of how economies, and especially personal economies, work.

I also have difficulty accepting an indictment of our system of political economy in some aggregate sense. It is not the system that is materialistic. Rather, it seems to me that being materialistic is an attribute of an individual. Our system of political economy does not require materialistic attitudes to be successful. Furthermore, there surely are many people in our economy who are not relatively materialistic, and I suspect not just a few of these are Christians. I am always suspicious of claims about groups or aggregates, especially when the claims seem to attribute human attributes of preference and choice to such aggregates.

Note that I am not suggesting in this specific post that the United States is a "Christian nation," whatever that might mean. Rather I am suggesting that the implicit and explicit critique of the United States I've quoted above is at least of little use for understanding, if not simply wrong. Materialistic attitudes come from personal choices, it seems to me, and each individual is ultimately responsible for their personal choices.

Global Warming

Evangelical Climate Initiative:

"While we cannot here review the full range of relevant biblical convictions related to care of the creation, we emphasize the following points:

• Christians must care about climate change because we love God the Creator and Jesus our Lord, through whom and for whom the creation was made. This is God's world, and any damage that we do to God's world is an offense against God Himself (Gen. 1; Ps. 24; Col. 1:16).

• Christians must care about climate change because we are called to love our neighbors, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and to protect and care for the least of these as though each was Jesus Christ himself (Mt. 22:34-40; Mt. 7:12; Mt. 25:31-46).

• Christians, noting the fact that most of the climate change problem is human induced, are reminded that when God made humanity he commissioned us to exercise stewardship over the earth and its creatures. Climate change is the latest evidence of our failure to exercise proper stewardship, and constitutes a critical opportunity for us to do better (Gen. 1:26-28).

Love of God, love of neighbor, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for evangelical Christians to respond to the climate change problem with moral passion and concrete action."

I'm not sure I understand some of this. Consider the idea that Christians MUST care about climate change because we love God. I think I don't react well to this suggestion because it seems to tell me how I am supposed to love God, and I suspect love is a rather personal matter. I wonder if I would react more openly to concern for climate change if the idea was expressed in a different way? What if the idea here sounded like the following: "As Christians, the undersigned express some part of our love for God by a personal commitment to work for government policy that can reduce the extent to which economic activities in our country increase global climate change." Perhaps I would be more open to consider choosing to see such political action as an expression of my love for God. I know I do not react openly to a statement that seems to choose for me how I will love God.

It is suggested that Christians should see sufficient reason to respond with moral passion and concrete action. Perhaps so. But, what concrete action is promoted by this group? Is it concrete action to encourage elected representatives to use government to force others to respond with concrete action? Or is it concrete action to get others to join voluntarily with their own personal and organized efforts to be good stewards of specific parts of this world?

UPDATE: I posted on another site about politics and global warming science. It seems to me that one of the things we should consider when choosing a policy position on global warming is the way in which science interacts with politics. I suspect that when science becomes part of politics, it becomes very difficult for us to know what is true and what is false regarding what science knows. If this is the case, then how should we account for this when choosing a personal policy position regarding global warming?