Money, Greed, and God--Part VI

Personal Property Economics Celebrate Greed, or Not

The next myth tackled by Richards in his book, Money, Greed, and God is that personal property, and legal systems built around personal property protection and rights, represent nothing more than legalized greed, or, as Richards puts it, “the Greed Myth (believing that the essence of capitalism is greed)”. It was the French socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who first asserted that property is theft. To own something is to steal from the collective “everyone else”. This ethical postulate is a bit hard-core for weak-kneed socialists, so it has undergone a dilution. In the popular mindset, personal property—particularly the accumulation of “above average” amounts—has been morphed from an act of theft to an act of greed. (The widespread belief in the Greed Myth helps explain, incidentally, why so many relatively well-off people are racked with guilt, and want the government to “do something” for the poor. They are trying to atone for what they believe to be their sins of greed. These folk have been aptly dubbed chardonnay socialists.)

Either assertion (theft or greed) is deeply troubling to many Christians, because theft and greed are alike condemned and forbidden in the Scriptures.
The Bible excoriates the love of money (I Timothy 6: 9-10); it warns against the dangers of trying to amass riches. But the Bible also excoriates laziness and living for the moment instead of exercising thrift, saving, and storing up for the future. It was the third servant's unwillingness to take up his responsibilities and deal faithfully with what his master had given him that condemned him in our Lord's Parable of the Talents.

Richards points out that there is a difference between selfishness (which is closely related to greed) and self-interest. Self-interest is not self-absorption, but is related more to self-respect, and to taking responsibility for all that is under my sphere of interest. This is a classic ethical distinction which many people are really confused about.

Every second of the day, you act in your own interest. Every time you take a breath, wash your hands, eat your fibre, take your vitamins, clock in at work, look both ways before crossing the street, crawl into bed, take a shower, pay your bills, go to the doctor, hunt for bargains, read a book, and pray for God's forgiveness, you're pursuing your self-interest. That's not just OK. In most cases, you ought to do these things. Only foggy moral pretence confuses legitimate self-interest with selfishness. (Richards, p. 120f)

But, Richards goes further than this.

In fact, proper self-interest is the basis for the Golden Rule, which Jesus called the second-greatest commandment, after the command to love God. “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12). I'm supposed to use my rightful concern for myself as a guide in how I treat others. (Richards, p.121)

Not only that, but the Scriptures make it abundantly clear that we are creatures under covenant—which means that we are bound into other human beings in bonds of mutual obligation, such that their interests and concerns become my responsibility to one degree or other. Higher degrees of mutual responsibility attach to relationships where the bond of covenant is most powerful, such as family, dependants, church, the household of faith, and so on. Beyond this, we have covenantal obligations to our neighbours—who are those whom we encounter in our normal course of life who are in need. All of these form part of our self-interest, because our self is covenanted and bound to them.

Self-interest actually works to restrain greed and selfishness. Imagine a selfish butcher who would like nothing more than to defraud all his customers selling off bad cuts of meat as prime beef, and making his sausages 90 percent sawdust.

. . . even if the butcher is selfish, even if the butcher would love nothing more than to sell you a spoiled chunk of grisly beef in exchange for your worldly goods and leave you homeless, the butcher can't make you buy his meat in a free economy. He has to offer you meat you'll freely buy. The cruel, greedy butcher, in other words, has to look for ways to set up win-win scenarios. Even to satisfy his greed, has has to meet your desires. (Richards, p. 123)

In other words, under the realm of personal property rights and the free exchange of goods and services, even the selfish and greedy are curtailed and forced to act in a more self-interested than selfish manner.

Now to be sure there are plenty of conspicuous consumers who trumpet selfishness and greed. The wicked will always attempt to pervert the good. The fact that these people may extol—even idolize—private enterprise and personal property rights makes many Christians uneasy. But these folk represent nothing more than the syndrome of the embarrassing advocate. Moreover, the fact that some may have an acute self-interest in advocating personal property rights does not represent an argument against personal property.

But the question is begged, How much personal property is enough? Surely, there must come a point in time when someone has “more than enough” and to continue accumulating and gathering must represent gluttony, the love of money, or indulgence. But the question of “enough” begs another—Enough for what? If you are going to start up a new business, you can never have too much capital in reserve. Regardless of how much you think you will need, almost certainly you will under-estimate. If you are going to fund an orphanage, the demands for what you accumulate will be never-ceasing. If you are going to support a thousand missionaries on the field, there will be no limit to the amount of capital you will need. If you are going to fund the education of your grand-children and great-grand-children, how much capital will you need to lay aside? Lots.

Moreover, a fundamental issue is whether you are going to fund in perpetuity or as a one-off contribution. If your concern is to fund in perpetuity, you will need to maintain the capital and fund out of earnings on that capital. You will need far more than you initially think.

So, the issue of “too much” is irrelevant. What Christians must learn is that wealth is a fiduciary obligation—something we work to accumulate, but then have to account to the Lord for our stewardship of the same. The more capital, the more responsibility. That is the essence of what it means to be a faithful steward.