This Is Our City

A Hermit and Roger McKinney, it looks like this discussion is headed no where. Feel free to continue in another place but at this point I think it's gone far enough away from the original article that we'll delete further comments in this discussion.

Hermit, you’re engaging in psychological projecting. I respond to all of your points. You ignore most of mine. No one in the US claims to be a socialist any more, but your characterizations of capitalism and you ideas are all pure socialist. In past posts I have defined socialism and communism; you just don’t read them. Jesus endorsed free market capitalism when he endorsed the Torah, from which the Church’s scholars at Salamanca determined that the only just market is a free market. You don’t need money to have capitalism. Capitalism can include barter.

The military may have purchased the first electronic computer, but the principles behind it go back centuries. It was based on mechanical computers. The military always purchases cutting edge technology. So what? That doesn’t mean that without military spending the technology would never develop. The steam engine was far more important to Western development than the computer and the military had nothing to do with it. The computer would have been invented regardless of what the military or the government did. All you can say about military spending is that it might have speeded up the process. The transistor made modern computing possible and Bell Labs, a private company developed it.

Hermit, I don’t believe any of the things you attribute to me. Making those claims just proves once again that you don’t read my posts. You just regurgitate your socialist ideas. Yes, God gave us free markets. Study the Scholars of Salamanca. Free market capitalism is in the New and Old Testaments. The Church did not give us communal ownership of property. That’s a dishonest reading of scripture. Sharing private property is not anything at all like common ownership. Christ said to make your primary goal in life to please God. He did not condemn providing for your family and saving for hard times, which is capitalism. Capitalism did not invent greed; mankind did. Greed is far older than capitalism.

Hermit, current demand and supply also take into account what individual actors think the future price will be, too. If individuals thought that oil would run out next year they would price it much higher today. The current price tells us that most people don't think oil will run out in our lifetimes. The market reflects the opinions of the majority of buyers/sellers. I'm sorry they don't agree with you or have your values. I'm sure you would love to dictate to the market what prices should be, but then we wouldn't have a market. We would have socialism. If you think oil should be priced higher, I'm sure producers will allow you to pay more. But just because the majority of people don't agree with your ideas doesn't mean the market is failing or is wrong.

PS, having the SEC investigate Enron or Madoff for fraud is perfectly consistent with libertarian thinking. Both thrived because the SEC refused to do its job. That gave investors the wrong idea that there was nothing wrong with either. Enron and Madoff were failures of the state to do its God given role of protecting life, liberty and property. They were not market failures.

Carlos, we have never had unregulated markets, so how can you claim they do more harm than good? We have had nothing but increasing regulation since FDR. The Federal Register of new regulations has grown by over 50,000 pages every year since 1970. The problems we face today are the perfect storm of massive, conflicting regulations. Madoff and Enron thrived because the government gave them their stamp of approval. As Smith wrote, government licensing and regulation only provide cover for fraud. Of course, all libertarians in all times have insisted on the rule of law to protect life, liberty and property.

Hermit, markets do not “inadequately reflect the future value of the goods …” Greer only advertises his ignorance of price theory. He attempts to set economics back 150 years by advocating cost of production price theory. Economic science advanced only after economists discovered the principles of subjective pricing and marginal pricing. Greer denies both. And Greer promotes Marx’s nonsense that markets naturally lead to monopolies. Markets destroy monopolies; governments create them.

To politely disagree with McKinney, our modern interpretation of Smith as an "unrestrained Free Market" Libertarian is a far stretch from reality. Smith advocated free trade with respect to British Mercantilism, which was an economic reality that limited entrepreneurship. The difference is that free trade for Smith doesn't mean "no regulation" trade. For Smith the driving force behind capitalism was the individual desire to exercise an ambition that in the process of satisfying personal interests, also met the needs of society. Our current experience, however, is that unregulated markets result in more harm than good. So, a good market system is one that allows and provides the opportunities for individuals to be creative, while protecting the interests of the rest of society. Madoff, Enron, and corporate greed must be controlled and only the government can do that with a minimum harm to society, national security, and financial stability. Capitalism also has its limits.

The choice between self regulation and government regulation is a false dichotomy. Adam Smith proposed a third option: market regulation. Smith was professor of ethics. His economics is his ethics applied to the market. He invented nothing. Everything he learned about market regulation of ethics came from studying the Dutch Republic. He discovered that competition in the market does a far better job of regulating greed than anything the government can do. Of course, he recognized the need of the state to prosecute crimes against life, liberty and property. We don’t have to rely solely on self-regulation. The Dutch Republic proved Smith’s point for 200 years.

"Bailey suggests that our government would be more faithful to our God and to our Founders if it would protect this character in the people against corrosive economic, cultural, and political influences, and promote it where it was lacking." Wow! That is one terrifying sentence! Can you imagine bitter bureaucrats determining what is economically, culturally and politically best for the character of the people?!!!! Wait a minute! That's what the OWS and Tea Partiers are attempting! That's what the socialists and conservatives are all about - mind control.

Insightful comments and good evaluation of the film! History reveals that sometimes our ultra-emotional Christian sensitivity to the needs of others impedes our ability to focus on the reality of the necessity of the Cross. While some emphasize right living (legalism), others stress good deeds (social gospel), ignoring or finding it difficult to accept that people either can’t do what is right of their own volition or can’t save the world through the improvement of social conditions. God created with one purpose in mind, the Cross. And the reason the Cross is pivotal is because through the Cross God purposed to eliminate, eradicate, and emancipate all of creation from the potential inevitability, certain probability, and existential reality of corruption (sin, evil, pain, and suffering). Clearly order, discipline, compassion, and responsibility play an indispensable role in the Christian life. However, when put in perspective, there is no Scriptural support for either the extremes of legalism or indiscriminate pity in the Christian Gospel. Just as Christ achieved a balance between condemnation and compassion, we too must strike that balance in recognition of the fact that the Cross is the ultimate and only dispensation for corruption and hope of redemption.

"the revival in the church for which she had been praying might actually come outside the church, when non-Christians hunger for justice. This is a strikingly political notion of revival and thus of the gospel. As she presents it, revival is something non-Christians are capable of experiencing while remaining strangers to Christ." That is a very common sentiment in Portland among Post-Modern evangelical Christians who want to "de-construct" (Derrida and Brueggeman) and "un-pack" the Bible. Tattoos on women, occupy Wall Street, social justice, the usual suspects. My concern is that what George Fox College, Multnomah and Western Seminary (Portland Christian schools) all call Post-Modern evangelical is actually a road stop on the way to apostasy. Again, we're leaders. As they say, Keep Portland weird.

Nice sunny outlook Mr/Ms D.C. Innes. Wish I could have a similar hope that the Kingdom is possible now, in our government, in the human heart/character, without or before the second coming of Christ. I think the "documentary" proposed with two sincere and fine people was way too short to take much of anything substantial from it. Nice flash but a way too deep and serious topic for the time it was given. It didn't serve either view well...and may have even been unfair.