Successfully Fighting Poverty

From North, and quoting from his article The Source of All Blessings (and Curses)

Socialists refused to explain the Industrial Revolution in terms of capital markets, freedom of contract, the defense of private property, and free trade. Natural resources: that’s what made the difference. That was why Russia back in 1965 was going to overtake the West, one of these days, Real Soon Now. Or South Africa would, if a man like Nelson Mandela could ever gain political power. Or Rhodesia would, if a man like Robert Mugabe could ever displace Ian Smith.

But there was this nagging problem: Hong Kong, which has no natural resources. Its people got very wealthy after 1945. Hong Kong was a bothersome factor for the socialists of the world. Its success had to be explained in terms of something other than natural resources, which it did not possess. It also had to be explained in terms of something other than socialism, of which there were few traces.

So, the socialists solved this problem by not discussing Hong Kong. “Hong Kong? Never heard of it.”

Socialist are power-seeking ignoramuses.

Yes, even more so than Muslims. Muslims are not so ignorant as to consider it a great victory to rip apart their children in their womb, nor do they insist that men can be women by merely saying that it is so.

There is thick-headed and stubborn… and there is willfully delusional.

Moreover: Islam has been around for 1,400 years, and even I am pretty sure that it can stick around for a few more centuries, even as the Gospel slowly pushes it out of its fortresses and high places.

In contrast, I doubt that politically organized socialism will survive past the 21st century. Islam can survive, even thrive, in a decentralized and chaotic environment: not so the stodgy, rigidly hierarchical, insistently bureaucratic, uber-statist Socialist.

Christians had better be better than either of these roads to hell, though!

FIGHTING POVERTY

Which would be the better policy to fight poverty:

Invest 10% of all profits?
Give 10% of all profits to the poor?

We know the answer: #1. Capital formation is the most powerful force in man’s history for the elimination of poverty.

The Bible, like all other religious books, does not command the reinvestment of profits. It commands charity.

Is there a cognitive disconnect here?

Actually, I don’t think so.

Charity is meant to humble the giver, as well as to provide seed money to the weak. The successful Christian is not innately separate from the unsuccessful Pagan. God showed favour to us – unearned favour – and charity reminds us of that.

I regard John Wesley as the person who did more to relieve poverty than anyone in history. He showed the way to wealth to millions of poor people who had not read Adam Smith. He preached this of money: Earn all you can. Give all you can. Save all you can. (Sermon #50, “The Use of Money” [1744], Part 6.)

Wesley preached to the poorest people in the British Isles. He spent most of his adult life on horseback. He preached sobriety, hard work, and thrift to those poverty-stricken people who came to be called Methodists. He changed the face of England. Within a century of his death, Methodists had become middle class. Then the denomination went theologically liberal. This would not have surprised Wesley. He had warned against the effects of riches in Sermon 126 (1790).

His followers experienced what religious orders and monks did throughout the Middle Ages: they got rich by practicing systematic frugality. That was why, every few centuries, there was a wave of religious reform among the mendicant orders that had sworn vows of poverty. Too much money was rolling in. The monks were enjoying the life style of the rich and famous.

Money is very useful.

But don’t let it kill you with its soft silk cushions and pretty, shallow pleasures.

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Predators, Victims, and the Coming Whirlwind

The Monstrous Regiment recent put out a podcast on Predators and Victims, describing how trash like to detect, manipulate, and use the weaker and more submissive among us: usually women and children.

Women are the most likely audience: but God-fearing men should listen, and understand, so they can detect when someone is abusing their children right before their eyes.

Note that a lot of abusers like to wrap themselves in cloaks of authority: pastors, fathers, teachers, etc. Be watchful, and listen to the small when they complain. Take their word seriously.

This includes determining if the victim are speaking the truth, or lying. Wolves come in all sizes, ages, and come in both sexes: discernment and wisdom is needed here.

(In the Bible, false accusers receive the punishment that the accused would have received: something to think about. Especially as that law has never been rescinded.

The secular courts make it a point to ignore God’s standard of law and justice: Christians may not follow in the diseased footprints of such willful contempt of God’s will.)

If in your judgement, this warrants calling the police, do it. Lots of religious & educational organizations would prefer to close ranks to protect the corrupt, rather than crush that snake’s head. More than one family would prefer that the victim suffer, as well.

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By the way, you might also want to look into The big double standard on child sex abuse no one is talking about: for some mysterious reason, the media loves scandals relating to priests and Christian institutions, but remain soft spoken or completely silent when child abuse occurs in the public schools.

As Joel McDurmon writes in his article:

There is a tremendous disparity between how the Roman Catholic Church is being treated and how the same offenses on a greater scale are being treated in both the law and the media. This is not only a sad fact, it is a huge immorality and abuse of trust itself.

The media virtually ignore both the offenses and the lobbying on the part of the public schools and teachers’ unions. In the few cases they do mention them, they do not mention the double standards already in the law. If they support a particular piece of legislation, they do not mention how that legislation may appear to target child sex abuse in general, but carves out special exceptions for public agencies—schools, police, etc. When the Roman Catholics object, it is implied they are opposing because they wish to protect the abusing priests, money, etc.

It is implied that they don’t care about the victims. I am not defending them on that charge, but I do wish to point out that it is really the law itself, the teachers’ unions, the bureaucrats, and the media all behind this double standard who really don’t care about the victims.

If they did, they would be pressing every bit as hard—or five times harder—where the problem is even greater. Until they do, they have no greater moral integrity than the pedophile priests or teachers themselves.

I don’t support removing all statutes of limitations. That’s dangerous. When groups as disparate as the Chambers of Commerce and the ACLU oppose that, it ought to make you at least think. I support public executions for convicted rapists, and the privatization of all public schools. But the double standards are not only sickening, they share in the guilt of the abuses they protect.

If we don’t rectify that, statutes of limitations won’t protect us from the forces within us that will devour us.

The big double standard on child sex abuse no one is talking about, by Dr. Joel McDurmon

Our culture have sown the wind, and the devastating whirlwind is building up nicely.

Don’t be there when it strikes.

Don’t be a party to evil… not by commission, and not by silence.

The Free Market as a Godly Institution

Now, with the atheistic dreck hosed off, we can look at the real foundations of the Free Market, (with a nice side order of Liberty).

Again, from North’s Christian Economics: Teacher’s Edition

(Well, first the man quotes Isaiah 45:18-19 as his header. Then….)

Analysis

Point one of the biblical covenant is God’s transcendence, yet also His presence. This is the biblical concept of God’s original sovereignty. It asks: “Who’s in charge here?”

Here, we learn the following facts. First, God looked forward to the world beyond days one through three. He looked to an inhabited earth. In Genesis 1, we learn that on day four, He created the orbs in the sky. They would be used as the basis of calendars: signs, seasons, days, years. This looked forward to the creation of man. God needed no calendar. Man would. On day five, He created animals. On day six, He created man. God showed purposeful action. He had a plan before He began to create. This testifies to the existence of cosmic order. The universe has God-given purpose. It has had this from the beginning.

The West has been in rebellion of God’s standards and God’s purposes for the last two centuries. It is now dying. I assume that my readers have no interest in having their legacy, their children, die along with the System.

The purposeless man and family and culture dries, and blows away, and has no legacy on earth or in heaven. Not so who recognizes their God-given purpose!

The existence of purpose testifies in turn to the existence of design. God designed the universe. Charles Darwin was wrong. So was Immanuel Kant, who offered a theory of the evolved cosmos. The universe was created by a series of sovereign decrees by God. He spoke. The creation responded. He spoke it into existence out of nothing. Before the first day, God had a design for history.

Isaiah said that God revealed this to him: God had not spoken in secret about Jacob, meaning the nation of Israel. He had spoken openly. God then added: “I declare what is right.” is reveals the ethical aspect of God’s decrees, as well as His revelation regarding His decrees. He does not speak secretly. This is the work of imputation: declaring publicly that which conforms to God’s standards. These standards are inherently ethical: right vs. wrong.

There is no escape from Divine Law, Divine Ethics, the Holy Commandments. Even lying to yourself, or getting the Establishment to agree to your lies, merely insures both your death and that of the Establishment.

 The implication of this for economic reasoning, and all other social science, is this: there is no such thing as value-free analysis. But it goes way beyond this. All attempts to formulate a hypothesis of ethical neutrality for social analysis is an affront to God. It is saying this: “Neutrality is possible.” This means, above all, neutrality toward God. This is another way of saying that the creation was originally autonomous: no God-provided design. Yet this passage makes it clear that God’s design was the very foundation of the creation. It preceded the creation.

Christians, God-fearers, Covenant keepers… we are expected to be who we should be. And not what our “ethically neutral” God-hating enemies want us to be, want us to say, want us to do.

Be who you are!

Naturally, the Establishment will make sure you pay a price for your integrity. Truly understand both the strengths and weakness of your enemies, and act in a way that brings the most crushing victory for God and His Word.

The point is not so much to sacrifice yourself, or to be a martyr… even thought that may be a necessary price to get what God wants.

The point is to win as a soldier of God. Get the biggest victory possible, for a man in your situation, with your strengths and liabilities.

First and foremost for any consideration of the auction process of the free market, there was coherence to the design. All of the pieces fit together. The creation week was both systematic and sequential. At the end of each day except day two, God declared His work as good. These were acts of imputation: evaluating the outcome of His labor in terms of His design. Day by day, God fitted the pieces together into a systematic, coherent system. The week’s final day of creation was day six: the creation of man, and the announcement of the dominion covenant. This established a hierarchy: God >man> creation. I will explore the differences between humanism and creationism in Chapter 51, “Design vs. Darwinism.” At this point, I will say only this: Christian social theory must begin with an assertion of the under-lying coherence of men’s institutions. This is based on the biblical story of the creation week as purposeful, systematic, and coherent. Ultimately, the creation was covenantal. It had to do with ethics. This is why God declared to Isaiah that He speaks the truth regarding what is right.

God speaks the truth: His enemies do not.

(Well, like Satan, they prefer to speak half-truths… but sometimes, they go for the Big Lie tactic. )

God organized the world, visible and invisible, for our benefit. His enemies want this order destroyed, and a life-sapping chaos put in its place.

Officially, it’s to glorify man in place of God…

then you realize that it’s really just the Right Sort of men…

then , at the end, you finally realize that this unproductive, destructive chaos is meant to only impoverish, dis-empower, and finally kill off mankind.

They [free market atheists – AP] deny any element of planning with respect the creation. is leads to a major problem in persuasion. Most people find it difficult to imagine that there is any purpose, system, or coherence in an undesigned institution. is is why defenders of the free market find it almost impossible to persuade people regarding the efficacy of the evolutionary model for identifying how a totally free, undesigned, and unplanned market process is the source of the obvious benefits of the modern economy. Men think that coherence is the outcome of design. They cannot shake this pre-Darwinian outlook.

Free market atheists would rather have atheistic communist rule, rather than admit that the free market reflects the will of God, who designed it to bless and enrich all humanity.

Here is the key argument offered by Progressives and pro-government planning social Darwinists ever since Lester Frank Ward’s book, Dynamic Sociology, was published in 1883. They say that science has now replaced purposeless, impersonal evolution as the source of progress, not simply in the natural sciences, but also in the social sciences, especially economics. They have moved from the model of purposeless, impersonal evolution to the model of scientifically designed and directed evolution. They have replaced the biblical God of creation with a new divinity: scientific man.

Ah… I see that the Right Sort has just stepped into the room.

Christians must deny the Darwinists’ premise: the existence of impersonal evolution, whether cosmic or social. They must begin with this moral and legal premise: the personal responsibility of each individual for the outcomes of his decisions. The process of market competition is not impersonal. It was designed by God. God remains sovereign.

I like that bit the most: the personal responsibility of each individual for the outcomes of his actions.

Success in upholding your responsibilities are rewarded by God. Failure in doing what is required of you results in punishment. This is partially, but increasingly true in this world, and absolutely true in the next.

So, the Bible is necessary to restore covenantal accuracy, i.e., accurate imputation. So is illumination by the Holy Spirit. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:13).

Listen to the Holy Spirit. To recognize His voice, read and absorb your Bible, right into your soul.

Here is the fundamental point with respect to design. The humanly unplanned outcomes of the market’s auction process are legitimate whenever men have obeyed the economic laws of God. These laws are the outcome of God’s mandated authorization of the private ownership of property (Exodus 20:13). God is the economic planner. He provides coherence. He has an integrated plan for the ages. This includes every area of life. Nothing is left to chance. He has mandated institutional arrangements that establish the free market. The market has evolved out of these laws whenever men have obeyed them. The market order has been unplanned by human beings. But it is planned. The market is the outcome of human action, not human design. But the absence of human design does not disprove the existence of an economic plan that is purposeful, systematic, and coherent. This is why people can safely trust the free market in most instances.

They can more safely trust the free market than regulation by state bureaucrats.

Amen, and amen!

A buyer is part of God’s plan for the ages.

[…]

As someone made in God’s image, the buyer has purposes, just as God did in the creation week.

[…]

As an owner, he has a God-given right to bid. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” (Matthew 20:5a). He may choose to bid for goods that he will consume. He may choose to purchase investments for future income. He may choose to give money away. The point is this: he has the ability to bid because he owns money. If he gained this money legally, no one should complain that he owns it. at is the distribution of income that God has planned. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew6:45b). More ominously:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God,for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head” (Romans 12:19–20).

To earn their heavenly – and earthly! – rewards, Christians must do what’s right.

The moral validity (point three) of market outcomes (point four) is assured by God’s design (point one) of the market. It is an extension of a series of biblical requirements: the principle of private property, the right of con-tract, the rule of law, future-orientation, capital investment, and accounting techniques. The morality of the market is derived from the morality of God’s Bible-revealed law.

And that is why the free market exists, so far as God is concerned.

Math, Design, and Life

From Why the Conclusion that Life Is Designed Really Is Inescapable

My recent book, Undeniable, makes the case not just that life is designed but also that this is obvious — you need no special training to see it. And yet, as with other obvious truths, some people prefer to deny this one than to fully embrace the attending implications.

For atheists to be in denial here isn’t surprising. Short of recanting, they have no option. For theists to eschew the claim that life is designed is much more puzzling, though, because nothing seems to force them to adopt that counterintuitive stance.

Most people in this second group are fairly described as theistic evolutionists, in that they accept the standard evolutionary explanation for how Earth came to be home to all the living things we see around us. But considering the magnitude of the difficulties that confront this standard view, why do they stand by it? Why do they prefer an oblique version of God’s creative action — where the created order created us — when the more direct alternative ought to sit well with them?

How on earth are atheists supposed to operate, if they don’t get a helping hand from apostates from within the Church? Rest assured: the day Christians get serious about exalting God and upholding His Laws, is the day the (official) number of atheists in the West (and probably throughout the world!) crashes back to the sub 1% range.

The approach I’m advocating is much simpler than the one you’re critiquing, Hans. Without worrying about how the thing in question came to be, we merely consider what must be in place in order for it to do what it does. No detailed answer is needed. All we have to do is imagine the list of requirements that would constitute a complete specification — details of overall shape, material or chemical composition, internal structure, chemical or mechanical processes, connectivity, and so on. By recognizing that these conditions are too restrictive to be met by accident, we establish that accidental causes cannot have brought the thing into existence.

And that is made easy by the fact that it takes only a modest list of modestly improbable requirements for success to be beyond the reach of chance. Once again, the reasoning here is that small fractions multiplied by the dozens always result in exceedingly small fractions.

With respect to the hypothetical human statue, the only escape from this conclusion is to argue that a rugged outcrop of marble would have to be altered by weather in only a few reasonably probable respects in order to convert it into a sculpted masterpiece. But this is so clearly and demonstrably untrue as to close off that escape decisively.

Likewise, with respect to the claim that blind natural causes converted primitive bacterial life into oaks and ostriches and orangutans, the only escape is to argue that conversions of this kind require only a few reasonably probable alterations. But, again, this is so clearly and demonstrably untrue as to close off that escape decisively.

And as we all know, the random creation of a masterpiece statue is so low as to be either flat-out impossible or a miracle.

And if it’s a miracle, it’s no longer random.

Earning Hatred for the Free Market

And now, we see even more clearly how the morality-free godlessness of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” (and those who followed him) gave strength to the moralizing godlessness of today’s collectivists.

From North’s Christian Economics: Teacher’s Edition. (The bold is mine)

Here is a key philosophical problem faced by humanistic defenders of the free market. They begin with individuals who make choices. This is methodological individualism.

That is, they start with the will of Man, not the will of God. “Strictly in the name of an objective standard, which we can all agree on” said the atheistic snake with a smile…

They attempt to build the intellectual case for a coherent social order as the outcome of these decisions. e problem always arises with the question of ethics: right vs. wrong. It also comes with the question of political economic policy: good vs. bad, which is ultimately an ethical issue, but may seem to be merely pragmatic. There is no way logically to get from a multitude of opinions and decisions to a unified program of action. There is no way logically to get from microeconomic evaluations to macroeconomic policy. The policy decisions are at bottom ethical. Free market economists feign ethical neutrality. Defenders of economic planning by unelected state bureaucrats then announce that they come in the name of justice. Justice is based on morality. They get a hearing by the public and by politicians.

Trusting in Right-wing Enlightenment man-worshipers (who inevitably become State/Power worshipers, in time) is a fool’s game.

Free market economists attempt to counter this criticism of value-free economic theory by appealing to efficiency: reduced waste. Supposedly, everyone is in favor of reduced waste. Supposedly, this shared opinion is value-free. But it isn’t. There is no agreement on which waste should be eliminated. There is no agreement on what constitutes waste. The economist’s concept of efficiency always has a hidden component: an appeal to better and a rejection of worse.

Establishment Men prefer to slip in their beliefs (and covert, but intense, hostility to Christ) by appealing to objectivity and reality and science and reason.

“But who gets to decide what is objective, what is reality,
what is scientific, what is reasonable?”
“The Right Sort, of course!”

Critics of the free market respond: “Better for whom? Worse for whom?” They invoke social justice for the common man. They claim that state bureaucrats must intervene into the auction process in order to create new economic incentives that will motivate capitalists to change their scheduled output. Here is their argument. “The free market favors the strong, the rich,and the well educated. It discriminates against the weak, the poor, and the poorly educated. Good men must therefore intervene by means of state power on behalf of these people.” Defenders of the so-called social gospel then invoke the Bible’s trio of victims of injustice: the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Critics of the free market claim the moral high ground. This is a politically powerful line of reasoning. The vast majority of voters want to think of themselves as people of high moral ideals.

Because of their devotion to atheism and their hatred of Christian ethics and law — remember Adam Smith’s refusal to ground the free market in the fact that God owns the world,  and He commands us not to steal! — the solid majority of Right-wing Enlightenment God-hating free market academics have no way to challenge Left-wing Enlightenment God-hating collectivists… who are still quite able to moralize at will, in the name of the People and the Leader.

That’s why von Mises – despite his intelligence and his bravery – was unable to break the hold of the collectivists. Rothbard, with his Aristotelian Natural Law beliefs, was a great deal better than von Mises’ Kantian atheism: but still, Rothbard was fundamentally Humanist, not Christian.

It will be up to Christians to bring liberty, and prosperity, and peace to the world. Great ideas are worthless if they don’t change reality, for the better.

The free market’s secular defenders counter the critics by arguing that the market really does not discriminate against the weak, the poor, and the poorly educated, but the voters rarely believe this line of reasoning. Why not? Because the free market’s defenders are explicit deniers of the morality of any kind in economic reasoning.

Battles are best won when the other side unilateral disarms. Like the libertarian free marketeer who hates the command, “Thou shall not steal.”

(Not because they object to the command itself: they just hate the One who gave it. They would prefer that the law be grounded in the power of the state, so the Right Sort — the Aristocracy, the Party, whatever — can carve out “select, reasonable, limited exceptions” for themselves. “For Reason of State/the People/the Race/the Church,” as always.)

Or when lazy, faithless, cowardly Christians point-blank refuse to expand the Kingdom of God to cover all things, sure that Satan will win every battle (Such faith in the power of the snake!), hoping that Jesus Christ will let them flee the Fight for the Light with some escapist Rapture belief system.

They are trying to counter critics who take what the critics claim is the moral high ground. Economists do not claim for themselves the high moral ground. In fact, they explicitly deny that there is any such thing as moral ground in economic analysis.

Such dedication to their hatred of God and His Commandments! Now, if there were only some victory-minded Christians who were dedicated in the love of God and all of His Commandments.

Regardless of the worthless, diseased opposition of some childless, craven, walking-dead, pointedly anti-Christian elite.

Economic analysis is value-free, they say. They usually lose this argument in the court of public opinion. They should lose it.

That’s North’s italics there, and rightly so.  “They should lose it.”

It is an illogical argument. From the moment that an economist recommends any public policy, he is smuggling value-laden criteria back into economic analysis. So, there is no level playing field between the free market’s advocates and the free market’s critics. The defenders of supposedly value-free economic reasoning are at a huge disadvantage from the outset.

Just as it should be. But they don’t mind: these value-free market economics don’t mind losing, so long as the victor agrees that God Should Just Shut Up.

The critics assert that the auction is inherently immoral. It is rigged in favor of the powerful, the rich, and the well educated. It is therefore unfair to the downtrodden. The market is actually a means of “trodding” them down. The market is not neutral, they say. It is downright immoral.

The defenders remain silent on this argument. They deny that morality has anything to do with economic analysis. en they appeal to economic efficiency. They appeal to comparative rates of national economic growth. They pretend that the statistical indexes used to calculate this are in some way morally neutral rather than expressions of ethics-laced opinions regarding what is to be counted as economic growth and what is not, such as the value of women’s unsalaried labor in their homes. The voters refuse to believe in either the possibility or the desirability of value-free economic analysis. They want justice for the downtrodden, especially when the politicians promise to force the rich to pay for this, leaving most voters unscathed.

Always the foul stench of theft, when these collectivists start speaking of money.

Christian economics denies the possibility of value-free analysis of anything, let alone the central economic institution of the modern world, the market. The defender of the free market says: “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” The Christian economist adds this: “There ain’t no such thing as value-free economic analysis.” This assertion places a huge responsibility on him. He must do two things. First, he must show how the market process is at bottom moral. Second, he must show that all economic analysis is at bottom religious. In Part 2, I attempt the first task. In Part 6, I attempt the second.

Go get ’em, North!

Why Free-Market Atheism is Loathed

The very first field in the West to completely cut God off was not mathematics, but economics. “For Mammon is a jealous god…”

Yet, even though Right-Wing Enlightenment flavours freedom under atheistic-secularist cover delivers the goods, it lacks any moral foundations, and so the general population rightly doesn’t trust it.

While the Left-Wing Enlightenment has no more time for God than the Right-Wing, they are much more willing to use moralizing language to justify their power-grab… and the public, eager for some moral justice, laps it up.

To quote extensive from Gary North, in his book Christian Economics: Teacher’s Edition:

Christian economics denies that the economy is autonomous. It also denies that economic laws are autonomous. Everything is providential.

Humanistic economists see the economy as autonomous. They see all law as autonomous: economic law and natural law. Law is not created by God. Economic laws are not really laws, they insist. They are patterns imposed by scarcity and men’s interactions with scarcity, including civil laws. These explanations are not convincing to most people. Most people want to believe that the world is governed by ethical cause and effect. They want to believe that there are moral laws, not just statistical patterns. They want to believe in God, not an autonomous universe. is is why they are attracted to humanistic statist economists who preach that the economic world should be operate in terms of moral purpose. Humanistic free market economists deny all this.

They find that most people do not believe them.

[…]

Here are the covenantal questions.
1. Who’s in charge here? God, autonomous individuals, or the state?

2. To whom do I report? The free market or the state?

3. What are the rules? Private property rights or central plan targets?

4. What do I get if I obey? Profits or a medal?

5. Does this outfit have a future? On what basis?

There is no agreement on the answers to these questions. The answers are a matter of worldview. They are a matter of faith.

The Lord and God of the actual universe rewards those who obey Him, in truth and love and an unshakable faith.

Other Lords and other Gods claim to do the same. They may even succeed, for a time. (Even North Korea outperformed South Korea until the early 70s!)

And then the long-term, inescapable consequences of their idolatry kicks in. At the end of the day, the State simply doesn’t have the cash or the power to hold back God’s Law-Word for all time.

And in the meantime, the prices of their earlier mistakes — mistakes the prideful leaders of the nation don’t like to repent of, or even admit they were mistakes — keep on piling up.

All debts incur interest, financial or otherwise. And all debts will be paid in full, financially or otherwise.

I have built a case for economic coherence in terms of an analogy: an auction. But I have argued more than this. I argue that a local auction is a microcosm of the international auction known as the free market. Put differently, the microeconomics of a local auction is the macroeconomics of the free market. The reason why microeconomics is a valid representation of macroeconomics is because there is only one system of economics. It applies locally and internationally because its organizing principles are the same: private property, open entry, and the legal right to make a bid. The fundamental operational principle of an auction is this: high bid wins.

The heart of the auction process in the free market is the profit-and-loss system. There is a system of bidding: buyers vs. buyers, sellers vs. sellers. Out of this system comes an array of money prices. These prices reveal the limits of human action. Everyone asks himself: “What can I afford to pay?” People have subjective preferences. People order these hierarchically: first,second, third. People’s subjective preferences are limited by objective prices.

People look ahead. They plan for the future. They buy and sell in the present as a way to deal with the future. Out of these plans come profits and losses. For the buyer, a profit is found when he pays less than what he was prepared to pay: consumer’s surplus. For the seller, profit is a net return after all expenses have been paid: seller’s residual. The quest for profit drives the free market economy. Profits are positive sanctions. Losses are negatives sanctions. These sanctions determine winners and losers. This system of sanctions is inherent in the free market. They are endogenous. They are not applied from any institution outside the free market. They appear to be autonomous. They are not autonomous, as I showed in Chapter 12 of the student’s edition.

Christian economics shows that a higher morality undergirds the market process. The market does not rest on autonomous and non-moral patterns. It rests on the laws of God against theft.

Conclusion

If you want to understand the differences separating the rival schools of economic opinion, start with this premise: “ e high bid should win . . .most of the time.” Pay attention to the qualification: “most of the time.”Why not all of the time? Here is where self-professed ethically neutral economists sneak ethics into their analyses.

The wise Christian will make a special note of this paragraph, which is worthy of bolding:

Christian economics shows that a higher morality undergirds the market process. The market does not rest on autonomous and non-moral patterns. It rests on the laws of God against theft.

The Divine laws against theft are in force, always.

(Adam Smith — as a good Right-Wing Enlightenment Man —  grew to increasingly avoid Divine Law: that’s why the Wealth of Nations is grounded in the division of labour, and not the real foundation of economics, property & ownership rights and the laws against theft.

“The better to avoid the question, Whose the Original Owner? and Who Created the LAws Against Theft?”

This misdirection immediately led the Left-Wing God-haters to declare “A bureaucracy of well-trained professionals can better allocate resources than the free market!”

And thus, the rise of Communism, the Welfare State, and all the rest of the lies, oppression, and murder Adam’s Smith’s wilful error led to.

Straight from the time Eve (and then Adam) stole the fruit from a certain tree… up through the time the Aristocracy rewrote the laws of the country to legalize their crimes of theft, murder, perversity, and corruption… right up to today’s “theft by majority vote” Collectivists (both left and right wing).

The Laws of God are in full effect.

And how do I know this?

They are, slowly or quickly, enforced.

Christians today must prepare for the day their nations are bankrupted, as they refuse to pay the enormous debts they promised, and renegade from fulfilling their promises and obligations one way or another.

• A few may openly default, but most will just eliminate their welfare payments. The truly poor will be cut off first, then the military, and then the middle class. The corporate welfare programs will be very last to go.

Christians must retain their liberty, and avoid the slave chains of long-term debt.

(Except, if with careful consideration, productive business debt. And maybe housing debt, if ti can be fully paid off in a short time, say seven years.)

Also, Christians must avoid being ensnared by welfare paychecks: those paychecks are based on lies and theft, and they will be cut off when you most need them. If the government offers you a pension, take it, but don’t trust it.

Success and Failure

I had the pleasure of reading Chapter 20 of North’s Christian Economics: Teacher’s Edition, and modify the lessons for an aristocratic sci-fi fictional culture here.

But for this blog post, I just want to cut out and mention  few of the highlights of the chapter.

Quoting from the Teacher’s Edition, Chapter 20:

Why should the rich get richer? Because of their superior service, as manifested by the most successful steward’s high rate of return. Why should the poor man lose whatever he had? Because of his inferior service. His attitude regarding the nobleman was the same as the attitude of the citizenry. He said as much: “Lord, here is your mina, which I kept laid away in a hand-kerchief; for I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man. You take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow” (vv. 20–21). He accused the nobleman of being the recipient of unearned wealth, reaping what he did not sow. The nobleman recognized the underlying attitude: envy. The steward was under his authority, yet he decided to do nothing of value with the coin. He was unwilling to serve faithfully, just as the citizens in general were unwilling to serve faithfully. They were in rebellion against lawful authority. So was he. As a result, he lost whatever he possessed. The coin, which had been entrusted to him, went to the most profitable of all the nobleman’s servants. He was cast out of the office of steward to join the masses of losers, who were about to lose all that they had enjoyed. They were all covenantally fit for the slaughter. They were all unprofitable servants.

Covenant breakers are in rebellion against God. They see God as an unfair monarch who reaps where He has not sown—an exploiter, in other words. He expects obedience. He gets rebellion. He expects production. He gets nothing. In contrast, faithful stewards multiply God’s wealth. They understand the nature of the hierarchical relationship between God and men. They understand that whatever they possess is a gift from God (James 1:17). They serve as trustees, not as autonomous owners.

I want Christians to get rich, and not whine and bleat that life (really, God) is not fair.

Much better to compare your character to what God demands, figure out where you don’t measure up (from pornography to anger, pride to laziness) and dump into hell what doesn’t measure up in God’s eyes.

But it isn’t enough to ditch what is evil: you need to bring in the Holy Spirit, and do what is good and right. Any successful man needs the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and the drive to offer excellent service at the right price.

(A low price if your target is the mass market, high if you want to be the best of the best.
“The labourer is worthy of his wages.”)

“I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” There is a modern phrase that expresses this thought: “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.” Jesus made it plain that this summary of economic cause and effect in God’s kingdom is covenantally mandatory. This is the process of inheritance, which necessarily involves disinheritance. “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.” The nobleman minced no words. Neither did Jesus. This ending made it clear that this version of the parable is also about the final judgment.

This isn’t just about “The rich getting richer.”

It’s also about Gore Vidal’s saying: “It isn’t enough to succeed. Others must fail.”

The Liberals, the Establishment, Academia, the Muslims… they all know exactly who must fail.

And in agreement with God’s enemies many Christians… including the solid majority of Our Glorious Church Leadership.

“Oh, the Kingdom of God must retreat into our ever-shrinking ghettos, where we can moan and whine and complain and vote Republican — to get the right man in the Supreme Court, of course! — until the cattle cars are finally sent to pick us up the Rapture happens to rescue us from our laziness, faithlessness, and slackness.”

God has a different idea on who gets to succeed, and who gets to fail. Who inherits the earth, and who gets disinherited – not just eternally, but right here and right now, in time and on earth.

I’m with God, who is going to win.

And not with the treasonous, worthless servants who spout nice words about God, and do nothing… risk nothing… say nothing that would seriously challenge powerful, wealthy, and connected God-haters.

(Powerless, quiet whimpering is permitted at the moment… but discouraged.)

The nobleman understood that he could gain an above-average rate of return for himself by letting these two stewards retain authority over his capital. He gave the coin of the rebel to the steward who had made ten to one. is was rational. Why turn it over to the steward who had made only five to one? The owner wants to maximize his rate of profit. This way, he will possess even more capital to invest.

[…]

The enforcers of the nobleman’s laws viewed this as unfair. After all, the steward who had made ten to one did not need the money. Their assessment rested on an assumption: the stewards who had produced nothing deserved the unproductive steward’s coin. They assumed that a wealthy man ought to use his money to subsidize men who had shown no ability to produce a positive rate of return. These people deserved another chance. is is the mentality of defenders of the welfare state. It assumes that high productivity is over-rated. It assumes that nonperformance deserves to be rewarded by those with money to invest.

God has set up His kingdom on a very different foundation. In His kingdom, the most productive stewards receive even greater wealth and authority. A comparable practice in the world of competitive sports is the jockey who wins horse races. Owners of fast horses pay high wages to hire these jockeys, who then win even more races. The owners of fast horses are not interested in giving career opportunities to untried, inexperienced, or losing jockeys. They want their horses to win. The best way to do this is to hire winning jockeys. The fast get faster, and the slow get slower, whether horses or jockeys. The only way to rise to the top is for a jockey to win over horses that are regarded as faster. If a jockey can win with slower horses, he must be a superior jockey. He will then experience increased demand for his services.

A Master is known by the number, quality, and effectiveness of His servants.

Why should the servants of Satan rule, and the servants of Christ always cringe and fail and moan, sure of defeat?

(And exactly why did we Christians give the culture and nations and wealth that Christ owned over to Satan? In the name of our sexual pleasure and the power of our kings and states and race? Those worthless idols?)

I believe that God is tired of excuses. And faithlessness.

Let’s get serious about our obedience… and gain the VICTORY over Satan and his loathsome minions – regardless of what babble they choose to hide behind – in the name of  CHRIST!