Capitalism

Why Capitalism Works ~ PragerU (w/Sowell, Freidman & Brooks)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This post is connected with another that is similar in it’s point.

Here, Thomas Sowell writes about the pernicious lie that comes from the Left by speaking about a great book by Arthur C. Brooks from AEI. What prompted me to post this is the indoctrination of our youth in this Facebook post that is horribly wrong in many respects:

Cowboy Shooting

“But seriously, to claim that we live in a post racial era is the epitome of absurdity. Although i’m all about forging unity we can’t do so while ignoring the reality of racial injustice, white supremacy, and national oppression in this country. Malcolm X perhaps said it best when he said you can’t have capitalism without racism. The capitalist system thrives off of racism and the division it creates amongst the masses of people. To fight tooth and nail against this order exploitation requires a relentless struggle against racism,white privilege, and all forms of bigotry.”

BONO on the free markets:

Here is Thomas Sowell’s review of Arthur Brooks book… there is the pencil example by Nobel winning economist Milton Freidman as well as an Artur C. Brooks presentation at the end. Econ class 150 is in session:

More frightening than any particular beliefs or policies is an utter lack of any sense of a need to test those beliefs and policies against hard evidence. Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.

[….]

A new book, titled Who Really Cares by Arthur C. Brooks examines the actual behavior of liberals and conservatives when it comes to donating their own time, money, or blood for the benefit of others. It is remarkable that beliefs on this subject should have become conventional, if not set in concrete, for decades before anyone bothered to check these beliefs against facts.

What are those facts?

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

It is not that conservatives have more money. Liberal families average 6 percent higher incomes than conservative families.

You may recall a flap during the 2000 election campaign when the fact came out that Al Gore donated a smaller percentage of his income to charity than the national average. That was perfectly consistent with his liberalism.

So is the fact that most of the states that voted for John Kerry during the 2004 election donated a lower percentage of their incomes to charity than the states that voted for George W. Bush.

Conservatives not only donate more money to charity than liberals do, conservatives volunteer more time as well. More conservatives than liberals also donate blood.

According to Professor Brooks: “If liberals and moderates gave blood at the same rate as conservatives, the blood supply of the United States would jump about 45 percent.”

Professor Brooks admits that the facts he uncovered were the opposite of what he expected to find — so much so that he went back and checked these facts again, to make sure there was no mistake.

What is the reason why some people are liberals and others are conservatives, if it is not that liberals are more compassionate?

Fundamental differences in ideology go back to fundamental assumptions about human nature. Based on one set of assumptions, it makes perfect sense to be a liberal. Based on a different set of assumptions, it makes perfect sense to be a conservative.

The two visions are not completely symmetrical, however. For at least two centuries, the vision of the left has included a belief that those with that vision are morally superior, more caring and more compassionate.

[….]

The two visions are different in another way. The vision of the left exalts the young especially as idealists while the more conservative vision warns against the narrowness and shallowness of the inexperienced. This study found young liberals to make the least charitable contributions of all, whether in money, time or blood. Idealism in words is not idealism in deeds.

Here is Brooks short presentation

Some Later Additions:

4-Short But Impactful Responses to Criticisms of Capitalism

Published by Papa Giorgio

A great 4-point memorization in order to respond to water-cooler discussions about our economic system, 4 Criticisms & 10 Virtues of Capitalism:

4 Common Criticisms of Capitalism include:

(1)  “It’s all about Greed.” (Capitalism is not about greed.  Greed is fundamentally a matter of the human heart, not of any economic system.  There are greedy socialists and communists too.)

 (2)  “The Rich Get Richer at the Expense of the Poor” (Capitalism is not a zero-sum game.  In market economies, wealth is not static, but is constantly being created.  Though 3 billion worldwide remain in poverty, capitalism has lifted 4 billion out.)

 (3)  “Capitalism leads to overconsumption & materialism” (Materialism is hardly unique to capitalist cultures.  No one is more materialistic than a socialist.)

 (4)   “It makes people unequal.” Said another way, “It creates winners and losers” or “Some have a lot, some have a little.”  In other words, “Capitalism leads to inequalities in wealth” (Having a lot is not wrong.  The possession of wealth is not wrong, but the means of accumulating it may be.  These objections assume there is something fundamentally wrong with inequality.  I’m no Kobe Bryant or Michael Phelps, but I’m okay with our unequalness.  People have different gifts and abilities.  People invest different effort and diligence.  God does not hate inequality, but rather injustice and oppression.)

…read more…

Occupy Strategy to Abolish Capitalism

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via The Blaze

….Breitbart.com, as part of its relaunch, has posted recent video of Lerner and his cohorts celebrating their favorite topics: how to “abolish capitalism,” how to stir worker unrest, and how to advance the alliance of union interests and Occupy fervor.

Breitbart.com has received exclusive tape of an Occupy Strategy Session at New York University, billed as a group talk on “The Abolition of Capitalism.” One of the headline speakers at this session was Stephen Lerner, former leader and International Board Member of the SEIU and frequent Obama White House visitor. Lerner argued in favor of people not paying their mortgages and “occupying” their homes; he spoke in favor of invading annual shareholders meetings to shut them down. But his big goal was to get workers to shut down their workplaces. That’s where the SEIU agenda and the Occupy agenda truly meet: once workers begin to occupy.

Here’s the video:

Larry Elder interviews Tavis Smiley and Cornel West about issues dealing with politics, race, and the black community

Published by Papa Giorgio

I was interested in Cornel West’s description of himself as a socialist Christian. Two quotes/articles that may shed some light on this will be helpful:

A seminary level treatment of the “ownership” topic from the Bible:

And a great article about whether or not Jesus was a socialist:

From a FaceBook discussion:

Acts is a specific instance in time, and place. Richards explains

✦ “What Acts is describing is an unusual moment in the life of the early church, when the church was still very small. Remember this is the beginning of the church in Jerusalem.”

In addition, we know that other early churches had different arrangements. Take, for example, the Thessalonians. Peter taught that people who will not work do not deserve any wealth whatsoever, not even wealth in the form of food.

✦ “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.” (1 Thes. 3.10-12)

(Proverbs 10:4 says, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” Proverbs 14:23 says, “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”)

Let me understand you correctly James. You are saying the Church (universal — all Christians) should privately practice this “helping the poor.” You are not advocating Christian redistribution, but that one should give from his ability, right? Are you agreeing with me that all Scripture teaches that government has no jurisdiction to redistribution of wealth, and Jesus neither compelled people to give accept out of one’s free will. We may agree more than you think?

One last note from a great article on this topic:

✦ “But did not the early Church of Jerusalem in Acts 4:32-36 sell all their goods and “distributed to each as anyone had need”? Yes, they did do this. But we must note again that their participation in this community was voluntary (Acts 5:4). This same communal Church of Jerusalem, incidentally, was unable to withstand the worldwide famine that occurred during the Roman Emperor Claudius’ reign. In fact, Christians in other cities, amidst the same famine, had to provide a “stimulus package” to the communal Jerusalem church (Acts 11:27-30). This is not to assert that communal living was the absolute cause of the Jerusalem Church’s fiscal shortfall. It is merely to say that their socialist structure was found to be insufficient in times of natural disaster.” (christiancapitalism.net/​was-jesus-a-socialist-2/​)

For more clear thinking like this from Larry Elder… I invite you to visit: larryelder.com/​

One may be interested to see also why I left a church of 12-years over similar issues; and my chapter from my book on this. Also this knock-out quote I love! Take note even in this day that Chicago was sort-of an epicenter to liberalism and Christianity:

… As Dr. Carl F. H. Henry pointed out: “The Chicago evangelicals, while seeking to overcome the polarization of concern in terms of personal evangelism or social ethics, also transcended the neo­Protestant nullification of the Great Commission.” “The Chicago Declaration did not leap from a vision of social utopia to legislation specifics, but concentrated first on biblical priorities for social change.” “The Chicago evangelicals did not ignore transcendent aspects of God’s Kingdom, nor did they turn the recognition of these elements into a rationalization of a theology of revolutionary violence or of pacifistic neutrality in the face of blatant militarist aggression.” (Cf. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, “Evangelical Social Concern” Christianity Today, March 1, 1974.) The evangelical social concern is transcendental not merely horizontal.

We must make it clear that the true revolutionaries are different from the frauds who “deal only with surface phenomena. They seek to remove a deep-seated tumor from society by applying a plaster to the surface. The world’s deepest need today is not something that merely dulls the pain, but something that goes deep in order to change the basic unity of society, man himself. Only when men individually have experienced a change and reorientation, can society be redirected in the way it should go. This we cannot accomplish by either violence or legislation” (cf. Reid: op. cit.). Social actions, without a vertical and transcendental relation with God only create horizontal anxieties and perplexities!

Furthermore, the social activists are in fact ignorant of the social issues, they are not experts in the social sciences. They simply demand an immediate change or destruction of the social structures, but provide no blueprint of the new society whatsoever! They can be likened to the fool, as a Chinese story tells, who tried to help the plant grow faster by pulling it higher. Of course such “action” only caused the plant to wither and die. This is exactly what the social radicals are doing now! And the W.C.C. is supporting such a tragic course!

We must challenge them [secular social activists] to discern the difference between the true repentance and “social repentance.” The Bible says: “For the godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret; but worldly grief produces death” (II Cor. 7:10). This was the bitter experiences of many former Russian Marxists, who, after their conversion to Christ came to understand that they had only a sort of “social repentance”—a sense of guilt before the peasant and the proletariat, but not before God. They admitted that “A Russian (Marxist) intellectual as an individual is often a mild and loving creature, but his creed (Marxism) constrains him to hate” (cf. Nicolas Zernov: The Russian Religious Renaissance). “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one…. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10,23). A complete change of a society must come from man himself, for basically man is at enmity with God. All humanistic social, economic and political systems are but “cut flowers,” as Dr. Trueblood put it, even the best are only dim reflections of the Glory of the Kingdom of God. As Benjamin Franklin in his famous address to the Constitutional Convention, said, “Without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.” Without reconciliation with God, there is no reconciliation with man. Social action is not evangelism; political liberation is not salvation. While we shall by all means have deep concern on social issues; nevertheless, social activism shall never be a substitution for the Gospel.

Lit-sen Chang, The True Gospel vs. Social Activism (booklet. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co: 1976), 9.