NOVEMBER 18, 2011
\nBy Zachary Treu ’13, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n
On a chilly Thursday night, Jay Richards addressed a crowd of about 50 in the Conservative Students for a Better Tomorrow Cultural Life Program “Can Christians Be Capitalists?”<\/p>\n
Richards, a theologian and Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, sought to prove to his audience that the principles of capitalism and of Christianity do not contradict but rather complement each other.<\/p>\n
Richards\u2019s talk, held in Johns Hall, was calmly and attentively received. He began with an explanation of his development as a Christian capitalist, and then listed and discussed four \u201ceconomic myths\u201d from his 2009 book Money, Greed, and God<\/em>, which, he informed his listeners, had been submitted prior to the debt crisis.<\/p>\n The first was the \u201cpiety myth,\u201d which leads to the \u201cignoring [of] unintended consequences and trade-offs.\u201d The most important question any economist can ask, Richards declared, is,\u00a0\u201cAnd then what will happen?\u201d The action taken must be considered along with the reasons for the action, Richards said. \u201cBoth matter to God.\u201d<\/p>\n He brought up the Child Labor Deterrence Act of the 1990s, which required American-style child labor laws in America\u2019s trade partners. \u201cWhat happens when you impose child labor laws in a country with less development? What happens?\u201d he asked the audience. \u201cIf they\u2019re working in what we think of as sweatshops, it\u2019s probably out of economic necessity.\u201d Richards then cited studies showing that children who left their manufacturing jobs would sometimes turn to prostitution, eliciting quiet gasps from the crowd.<\/p>\n The second economic myth was the belief that the essence of capitalism was greed, which Richards described as the \u201cmost pernicious.\u201d In his response to this idea, he rejected the opinions of Wall Street<\/em> character Gordon Gekko and of philosopher Ayn Rand, instead offering a brief close reading of Adam Smith\u2019s The Wealth of Nations<\/em>, which described the \u201cinvisible hand\u201d of capitalism as guiding business \u201cin spite of avarice.\u201d<\/p>\n Richards supports self-interest as the basis of capitalism, rather than greed: \u201cThere\u2019s a domain of rational self-interest that is morally good,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a part of our creative nature. That self-interest will be channeled in a way beneficial to others.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if people are fallen and sinful and greedy and selfish, in a free economy, they can\u2019t steal their neighbor\u2019s money. They must produce something their neighbors will want to buy.\u201d<\/p>\n The third economic myth was that of the zero-sum game, the idea that for one person to gain wealth, another must lose it. \u201cBy definition, a free trade, if it\u2019s really a free trade, is win-win,\u201d Richards said.<\/p>\n Related was the fourth myth, of materialism: the belief that wealth isn\u2019t created but merely transferred. Richards invoked the concept of imago dei<\/em> \u2013 that man was created in the image of God \u2013 to challenge this myth. \u201cGod freely creates the world. He creates things that weren\u2019t there before,\u201d Richards\u00a0explained. Thus, \u201cWe are free creators ourselves. . . .\u00a0He creates the sand, but gives us the liberty to transform it.\u201d<\/p>\n After wrapping up his lecture, Richards answered a few questions, during which he further emphasized his belief in the capitalistic messages of the Bible. \u201cIn the book of Acts, people are voluntarily<\/em> selling and sharing their stuff,\u201d he explained to one inquisitor. \u201cPeter explicitly articulates the principle of private property,\u201d he said to another. Capitalism is not grab-all-you-can, he clarified, but \u201ccompetition according to very specific rules.\u201d<\/p>\n Richards dismissed his audience with one final commendation of capitalism: \u201cFree market is the best of all viable alternatives,\u201d he said. \u201cNo other economic system can lift entire cultures out of poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NOVEMBER 18, 2011<\/p>\n By Zachary Treu ’13, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n On a chilly Thursday night, Jay Richards addressed a crowd of about 50 in the Conservative Students for a Better Tomorrow Cultural Life Program “Can Christians Be Capitalists?”<\/p>\n Richards, a theologian and Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, sought to prove to his audience that the principles of capitalism and of Christianity do not contradict but rather complement each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-administrative","category-student-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}