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Pope Francis and the U.S. Catholic bishops are openly critical of President Trump’s immigration policies and plans for increased deportation. Compassion for people in difficult circumstances is understandable and entirely consistent with the mission of the Church, but why isn’t there more attention on the political, cultural and social failures that drove those people out of their own country? Why has there never been an encyclical expressly condemning autocracy, tribalism and the perpetual failures of collectivist economics?
Thomas Sowell made the point that Marx and his followers obsess about redistribution of ownership of factories, mines, railroads or machinery but never wonder about the origins of wealth or how the various means of creating value came about in the first place. Similarly, the pope and the bishops focus on the uses and beneficiaries of wealth but do not condemn practices, policies and ideologies that curtail the creation of, and thus deny access to, value and basic needs. The cultural and ideological failures of a number of nominally Catholic countries cause widespread poverty. Where is the moral guidance on that issue?
The pope has made no secret of his general preference for redistributionist economic systems. (Dare I say “socialist”?) But is there any theological or practical reason he could not issue a formal directive that unless and until non-capitalist systems fully provide for their people, it is a moral imperative to imitate political and economic systems that do work, to withdraw popular support for kleptocracy and to reject wealth-killing Marxist ideology? Why isn’t it a serious moral failing to turn your own people into refugees? Is it moral for Mexico to use its own population as an export cash crop? Shouldn't other nations with sizeable Catholic populations launch an intervention (crusade?) to forcibly reform basket cases like Haiti or Honduras?
Wealth is not an inert substance existing in a fixed quantity readily divisible into equal shares. It is roughly the sum of human actions fostered by laws and culture conducive to productivity. You can’t claim that a failure to more broadly share that output is a sin as great or greater than that which prevents its creation. Don't we also need to hear that said in the context of urging material support for the needy?
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I recognize the problem. I don't know how to solve that problem but the direction we have been moving in is making it worse. The result of concentration of productive ownership and wealth accumulation in the marketplace just makes things worse. The unrestrained free enterprise system that fosters concentration and eliminates competition needs a responsible restraint that promotes competition and entry into the market. A look at our federal bureaucracy tells us all we need to know about why organizations that grow and concentrate power without limit don't serve humankind. In other words, BIG is bad. Identifying the problem and what causes it is not difficult, solving the problem is.
I welcome arguments contesting my thesis.
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Some apples and oranges there. The size of big companies is not the same as wealth concentration. And the fundamental problem with government bureaucracy growth is that it is not subject to the kinds of cost-benefit pressures that exist for players in competitive markets.
In theory, the WEF gatherings of international super rich trying to make policy is an enormous threat to democracy and efficient, broad-based economic growth. In practice, it could be merely one big grift, a well-staged kabuki to make the marks feel important. If instead, the super rich fund useful charitable, scientific, educational and public health programs that governments can't do or do well, then income inequality has a happen ending.
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Even big corporations have to face an uncertain future.
William Rodgers published Think: A Biography of the Watsons and IBM in 1969. The last paragraph looks forward.
In 1976, two twenty-somethings set up in a garage in Los Altos, California that would challenge IBM's domination of the world of computing. It turned out that the American dream wasn't dead quite yet.
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The WEF isn't any better at economic central planning than the Politburo was.
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I'm not sure the WEF has a plan for globalization where America is not participating.
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