I agree that Cumberbatch is good; how is one meant to pull of "top of the genetic pile" without a crisp English accent?

I didn't like their failure to prevent the killing half of San Francisco without consequence. In my understanding of psychology, people get more upset about having tens of thousands killed than pleased by having many more survive.

I think that this is true. You have to keep in mind that pre-revolution Judea was an unbelievably angry place, with multiple sects of what the Romans considered to be Jews keen to annihilate each other; being  considered a fellow Jew didn't imply friendship, merely that you were a monotheist in the area, and a racial tie, with the latter becoming ever weaker.

Still, "early" Christianity was definitely considered "Jewish" by some; as late as the closing of the Jewish canon (maybe 135AD), when Jews tried to write up the anti-Christian canon that Luther later adopted as more Christian than the Christian canon, there was still a sense of overlap. The error was extending "early" to Constantine. It's like saying "early Canadians until Trudeau believed that the First Nations were descended from the lost tribes of Israel".

Just to be clear, that bit was accurate, but the reason for the gap is that the rich are getting richer faster than the rest. The lie is that the income of the non-rich is "crumbling".

If you heretically believe that inequality qua inequality is a Christian wrong, that would be as good a reason for Francis' words as profound ignorance or a desire to throw ought red meat in the style of the  Argentinian politicians he grew up under.

If he had said "for those purposes, it's just a speech", would you have been fine with it?

I think that Joseph's right that it's just a speech within the narrow limits of that comment. He was responding to charges of church involvement in politics. Saying that Francis was not violating establishment clause like issues seems very much true. Like Nazis in Skokie, you can inflict harm without crossing First Amendment lines.

I agree. I think that Joseph goes too far in minimizing the impact of the Pope claiming that poverty and violence are increasing because of our overly free market; that seems important and unfortunate. Still, our disagreement there seems to be one of substance. I never got the impression that he was claiming authority without knowledge or that he was saying things that strained credulity or good manners.

I agree that Joseph's record is impeccable.

Right. Sorry, that was intended to be a dry reference to the Lawler article Katievs linked to and others quoted saying that Lawler looked forward to hearing more details. I, too, hope and anticipate that he avoids giving more details.

We don't have newer global data of quality than that World Bank report; the only country the World Bank has data on that was attending the talk was Kyrgyzstan, where poverty has definitely fallen.

While obviously you wouldn't be doing the pope's reputation for competency any favors if you showed that he was calling for an end to recessions through government controls, the GFC, while called "global" is really just the West. If you look at this IMF chart you can see that the picture didn't change much in the developing world, where most poor people live. Of those he was addressing, the only countries hit by the GFC were Antigua and Barbuda (which was hit very hard by the sort of regulation that the Pope was advocating, as it had been a popular tax haven) and Luxembourg, which has essentially no one below global poverty rates.

Well, yes, I do think that that statement is unfortunate, but maybe that's just because I spend more time reading leftist literature.

Still, that wasn't the bit I was referring to when I suggested debt forgiveness for states. As an Argentine, talking about the dictatorship of the market to be defeated and condemning the terrible debt that countries suffer from (and tax evasion) carries a pretty strong implication. Unlike his manifestly untrue statements about wealth and about violence, though, this was just an impression. We still await the detailed program.

Zombies, taken literally, goes too far, but there was a serious problem and it was mostly resolved through prohibition. I suspect that Duane did not intend to use the term literally, although I agree that hyperbole rarely improves ricochet conversations.

I really did think that there was an element of Catholic teaching that said that laymen took the lead on economics, business, and political science. Even in this thread we've had Catholics saying (in defense of the Pope) that this was not an area of faith and morals.

Are you saying that the regulation of international finance including, as I understand the Pope, a greater ability for states to default on their debt, is in fact within the faith and morals jurisdiction of the clergy?

The first stage of that involves your admitting that the Pope's claim that the poor are getting poorer (and, for that matter, that the world is getting more violent, but I'll table that) is false; we have no shared basis for discussion if you reject the available statistics. If you come up with contrary statistics, I guess, we can discuss those.

Separately, no, combining the false statement that the non-rich are getting poorer with the eccentric statement that poverty is becoming more apparent leaves no doubt about whether he is claiming poverty is increasing.

I did sigh when I saw that you were commenting around the time I posted that. To be clear, I'm not asking for the US government not to be parochial, I'm asking if KC believes that Catholic doctrine teaches that it should be.

Just to be clear, do you believe that international oil companies should be forced to sell in the US at favorable prices in order to support the poor? My instinct was that KC's support for interventionism exceeded essentially all of Ricochet's, and you generally stand as my marker for how protectionist reasonable opinion on Ricochet can be.

It wasn't the Pope's example. It was your example. You suggested that sending the oil to its most economically efficient use (in this case China) was the sort of thing that the US government should prevent if by taking control of the means of production it could direct resources towards the American poor. Obviously, there are many reasons why this would be an immoral act, an economically and geopolitically foolish act, and one likely to work only in the short term (unless you essentially fully nationalize the IOCs).

Nonetheless, your proposal makes sense if one removes the markets assumption that the needs of the Chinese poor are important and focus only on the good done by redistribution. I was wondering if you intended to demonstrate this anti-foreign bias.

"The Irish" are not all so ignorant as you suggest; there was more food that entered Ireland than left. The exports (much of them sales by Irish families selling meat/ livestock to buy cheaper food) didn't help, to put it mildly, but given the fact that trade (including aid) was a net positive, and that millions of Irish people starved, it seems clear that there was not, in fact, sufficient domestic production following the blight.

I have indeed heard of the famine before. Do you think it likely that I would have challenged your statement regarding it if I had not heard of it? Indeed, if you read the article you link to, you will note that the charges against the British under "genocide" were about reducing production, not about distribution.

KC, in #158, you accused me of being deceitful, as you said that the Pope did not suggest that the poor were getting poorer.

In #177 I produced two instances of his doing so, and asked you to retract your libel against me.

You have repeatedly commented since then without addressing the issue.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would either retract the libel or explicitly double down (ideally with some kind of source other than your voluminous personal knowledge).