God’s Economy: What You Count

GDP on SimpleClearEasy.com

What you count, you get.

As I mentioned last week, if you count varieties of violets, you’ll start to see more varieties of violets.

Count offensive behavior and you’ll see it everywhere.

What we currently count, as indicators of our country’s health, are narrowly focused economic indicators. 

One of my favorite radio voices is Kai Ryssdal, host of NPR’s Marketplace, weekdays at 6:30 p.m, “the most widely heard program on business and the economy – radio or television, commercial or public broadcasting – in the country,” according to the show’s own totally unbiased webpage.

Ryssdal interviews economists, explains terms and trends, and midway through each show, he says, in a cheerfully irreverent tone: “Let’s do the numbers!”

The numbers? 

DOW, NASDAQ, GDP: the numbers that declare the health of our corporations, the  size of our profits, the all important growth in our domestic production.

Our economic construct is devised to feed those particular numbers. 

And those numbers are predicated on consumption: more cars, more burgers, more houses, more gas.

What I enjoy about Ryssdal’s show is that he’s not convinced. He does a great job of explaining the numbers, suggesting connections, describing the way things work.

But he also does a good job of holding those all-important numbers at arms length. Do they matter? Sure, to someone, somewhere. To him? Maybe not so much.

And yet, what you count is what you get.

Publicly owned American corporations, companies that have sold stock to investors through publically traded offerings, focus strongly on the numbers: primarily production and profit. In 1919, Henry Ford found he was paying unexpectedly large dividends to shareholders and created a plan to adjust his economic model to allow  lower prices, better quality, and generous benefits for workers.

The Dodge brothers, key investors who had already enjoyed great returns on their initial investment, took Ford to court. In the ensuing lawsuit, the judge sided with the Dodges. According to that historic decision: 

A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to the nondistribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes.  

As corporate litigation has unfolded across time, it’s become clear that attention to quality is okay as long as it benefits the bottom line, that care of workers is fine if more motivated, healthier workers can produce more and better products.

But there’s one bottom line, easily captured by numbers, and one, all-consuming goal: income up, expenses down, profits maximized. 

According to our current economic model, it’s a moral good to pay as little as possible, even if that means sweatshops in Bangladesh or child slaves on cocoa plantations in West Africa.

The numbers offer no incentive to curb excess consumption, treat employees fairly, shift to sustainable models, provide family friendly benefits.

What you count is what you get.

Jesus offered a memorable parable about profit and the bottomline: 

Johann Christoph Weigel, Germany, 1695

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”   

It’s a jarring story that calls into question much of what we assume about profit and wealth. 

According to Jesus, the rich man didn’t earn the profit himself. It was “the ground” that yielded the harvest. 

And while we might think it’s wise to store up surplus for ourselves, God says, emphatically, “You fool!”

The story challenges the political linkage between the Christian faith and free-market capitalism as it critiques our reliance on a material bottom line, suggesting other metrics are needed.

In the US, a new brand of corporation has been emerging that attempts to broaden the bottom line and apply new metrics to corporate life. Benefit Corporations, orCertified “B” Corps, incorporate with a triple bottom line: accountability not just to shareholders to create profit, but to workers and suppliers for fair, safe, and healthy work environments, and to communities to protect the environment and function in sustainable ways that benefit rather than harm local economies. 

It’s a growing movement. As of today, there are almost 1300 Certified B corporations in 41 countries and 121 industries, and 30 US states have passed legislation recognizing Benefit Corporation contracts. 

That’s a start, but critics of our consumptive economy suggest we need to reject completely an international metric that measures growth in consumption, since growth in GDP is by definition dependent on growth in consumer demand, which is in turn dependent on making consumers want more, newer, bigger, better, to the detriment of happiness, stability, and environmental resources.

In 1971, the Buddhist nation of Bhutan rejected the GDP as the way to measure progress and created in its place measurable indicators of gross national happiness (GNH) based on equitable social development, cultural preservation, conservation of the environment and promotion of good governance. Since then, despite low per capita income and stagnant GDP, key indicators like levels of clean drinking water, literacy, and life expectancy have been on the rise. 

In 2010, Maryland became the first state to explore an alternate metric, adopting the GPI: theGross Progress Indicator. The 26 indicators address issues like pollution, wetland health, college completion rates, employment, housing, cost of ozone depletion. 

Vermont and Oregon have since implemented the same GPI and together those states have found that during the decades their GDPs were rising, their citizens saw little benefit: “Their workers have longer commutes, they have depleted natural resources, volunteerism and free time have declined and income gains have been unequal."

from Questioning Economic Growth, Peter Victor
Nature, 18 November 2010

What you count is what you get. 

Reading through the Maryland indicators, I find myself wondering what measurements would point us toward an economic model more like what God had in mind. 

Acreage set aside as food for the poor?

Single mothers and children well cared for?

Less homes lost to extortive debt?

A slowing of the mass extinction of species?

I’ve been posting for the last few weeks on God’s Economy. Next week my goal is to highlight indicators that would be worth measuring in a new economic model.

What would it be called? What would be the most important things to measure?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Check back next week for the final installment. 

This post is part of a series on God's Economy. Other posts:

Fruit that Will Last April 19, 2015
God’s Economy: Subtract or Multiply?  April 26, 2015
God’s Economy: Inescapable Network of Mutuality  May 3, 2015
God's Economy: Generational Investment May 10, 2015
God's Economy: Managing Anger Assets  May 17, 2015
God’s Economy: Muchness and Delight May 24, 2015

Seeking Justice

What matters?

The prophet Micah’s words on that have echoed through three thousand years: 

 "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." 

As we pause to observe Martin Luther King’s birthday, I’ve been reading his less-known final speech, a summary of his last book by the same title: Where Do We Go From Here.

While it talks about racial justice, it focuses even more on economic justice, and the call to act justly, and to love mercy: 

"What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love." 

I’m not sold on the specifics of King’s economic vision, but his questions resonate deeply. He dared to challenge the orthodoxy of capitalism, the belief that free markets will solve all our problems, that unfettered commerce is the answer to our ills. 

"[O]ne day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the oil?' You begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?' These are questions that must be asked. " 

In questioning the most firmly held belief of his day, and ours, King knew he would be branded a communist or socialist, as is the case today with anyone who dares to question the orthodoxy of free market capitalism.  He answered that accusation in the course of his speech:

"Now, don't think that you have me in a 'bind' today. I'm not talking about Communism. 

"What I'm saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

"If you will let me be a preacher just a little bit - One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn't get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn't do. Jesus didn't say, 'Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.' He didn't say, 'Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that.' He didn't say, 'Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery.' He didn't say, 'Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.' He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic - that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, 'Nicodemus, you must be born again.'

He said, in other words, 'Your whole structure must be changed.' A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will 'thingify' them - make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, 'America, you must be born again!' 

To use King's term, we have “thingified” not just people of color, but all people. In unexamined capitalism, a person’s value is measured in productivity, contributions to the GDP. Children, full-time moms, retired elderly, have no inherent value, no dollar contribution.

As Wendell Berry lamented in an essay on “Home Economics,” 

"The industrial economy . . . reduces the value of a thing to its market price, and it sets the market price in accordance with the capacity of a thing to be made into another kind of thing. Thus a farm is valued only for its ability to produce marketable livestock and/or crops; livestock and crops are valued only insofar as they can be manufactured into groceries; groceries are valued only to the extent that they can be sold to consumers. An absolute division is thus made at every stage of the industrial process between 'raw materials,' to which, as such, we accord no respect at all, and 'finished products,' which we respect only to the extent of their market value. . . .

"But when nothing is valued for what it is, everything is destined to be wasted. Once the values of things refer only to their future usefulness, then an infinite withdrawal of value from the living present is begun. Nothing (and nobody) can then exist that is not theoretically replaceable by something (or somebody) more valuable. Things of value begin to be devalued. . . .

"In such an economy, no farm or any other usable property can safely be regarded by anyone as a home. No home is ultimately worthy of our loyalty. Nothing is ultimately worth doing. No place or task or person is worth a lifetime's devotion. That 'waste,' in such an economy, should include several categories of humans--the unborn, the old, 'disinvested' farmers, the unemployed, the unemployable--is simply inevitable. Once our homeland, our source, is regarded as a "resource,' we are all sliding downward toward the ashheap or the dump."

King looked toward a new economy, something beyond either capitalism or communism, an economy rooted in work for the common good, with dignity, security, and opportunity for all. Berry describes something similar:

"We face a choice that is starkly simple: we must change or be changed. If we fail to change for the better, then we will be changed for the worse. We cannot blunder our way into health by the same sad and foolish hopes by which we have blundered into disease. We must see that the standardless aims of industrial communism and industrial capitalism equally have failed. The aims of productivity, profitability, efficiency, limitless growth, limitless wealth, limitless power, limitless mechanization and automation can enrich and empower the few (for a while), but they will sooner or later ruin us all. The gross national product and the corporate bottom line are utterly meaningless as measures of the prosperity or health of the country.

"If we want to succeed in our dearest aims and hopes as a people  . . we must see that it is foolish, sinful, and suicidal to destroy the health of nature for the sake of an economy that is really not an economy at all but merely a financial system, one that is unnatural, undemocratic, sacrilegious, and ephemeral." 

What would King’s, or Berry’s, new economy look like? We've been led to believe there are only two approaches: capitalism, as unregulated as possible, or "godless" communism. But that binary approach misses the point, and also misses the alternative example described in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, an economic system based on periodic redistribution of wealth and regular reallocation of the means of production, shared understanding of resources as God's, not man's, emphatic condemnation of usury (profit through lending), insistence on margin and moderation in the use of land, time, seed, water, and the labor of both workers and creatures. 

Men and women around the globe, economists, lawyers, business owners, workers, farmers, and dreamers, are looking for ways to shift our unjust economy toward something more sustainable, less consumptive, more wise, more just. They speak of a "triple bottom line" economy, where human good, environmental wisdom, and financial profit are held in careful balance. 

Click here to access the Fair World Project's interactive site

Hints of a new economy surround us: B corporations, local economy initiatives, transition towns, worker cooperatives, fair trade networks, socially responsible investments. 

Gar Asperov, a spokesman for new economy initiatives, summarized possibilities, opportunities, and challenges in a discussion of the new economy movement in The Nation. His New Economics Institute, Herman Daly’s CASSE (Center forthe Advancement of the Solid State Economy), the new Coalition for the New Economy  and others offer academic frameworks, practical examples, and encouragement to professionals working toward the kind of just economy King dreamed of. And Byron Borger, of Hearts and Minds bookstore and book blog, just posted a reading list of books and videos challenging the church to explore the call of justice more deeply. 

I’m not an economist or policy wonk, but I can still participate in the movement toward a new, more just economy.

I can buy local, buy fair trade, avoid companies known for their unjust practices, take care when buying products associated with the modern slave trade, invest in funds that throw their weight toward a new economic vision. The prices may be higher, the stock gains lower, but if justice has a cost, am I willing to pay it? 

I can do my best to understand the issues,  think about where my money goes, refuse to be valued for what I spend rather than who I am or what I do for love, not money. Understanding the system may take time and thought and effort, but "seeking justice" has never been simple. 

I can advocate, inform, pray, look for ways, in every transaction, to “act justly.” 

And I can object – sometimes gently, sometimes strongly – when friends suggest that faith in capitalism as we know it is a corollary to faith in the one who more than once said “leave it, sell it, give it to the poor, and come, follow me.”

A few of the books reviewed by Borger at Hearts and Minds Booknotes

This is the fourth of a series for the new year: "What Matters"

• What Matters
• Learning Compassion
• Traveling Toward Hope and Freedom
• Seeking Justice
• Choosing Life
• Embracing "Conversatio"

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome.
Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Advent One: How Do I Know?

This is the season when our secular script calls us to account. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday: consumer capitalism is taking attendance and counting the collection. Get your money in motion. It’s your patriotic duty.

I find myself agnostic on free market fundamentalism, and non-compliant on the call to dutiful consumption. I don’t believe our future depends on ever-increasing production. Instead, I’m intrigued by thinkers like EF Shumacher, Herman Daly, Gar Alperovitz, Marjorie Kelly, and their exploration of a commons-based economy less dependent on measures like market shares and GDP and more open to alternative systems of value.

Every year, as Advent collides with our annual consumer celebrations, I find myself thinking about belief systems, identity issues, where we put our hope for the future. Am I of value because I spend? Is my contribution dependent on the size of my paycheck? Is my hope for the future tied to the health of my pension? If I question our economic model, will I be tried for heresy?

We all have beliefs we hold firmly, creeds we confess. Some of those are so deeply embedded we no longer see them for what they are, some so foundational to who we are we’re surprised when someone calls them into question. We hold narratives we assume are normative: Treat the world well. Watch out for your own. Go to a good school, get a good job, make as much as you can.

Somehow we believe our own constructs are the right ones, while simultaneously endorsing the idea that all faiths are equal and your truth is as good as mine.  If everything is equal, then Romney’s version of reality is equivalent to Obama’s, Rush Limbaugh’s rants as reasonable as Jon Stewart’s sly reflections. Are some things true, and others false? Are some valuations right, and others wrong?

Here’s a simple one: do you believe that what we see is what we get? That the material world is the measure of value, that life proceeds according to easily duplicated models, that there are natural laws that nothing can change?

Or are there realities beyond the physical realm? Does my value rest in something you can’t count? Are there times when natural laws are set aside by forces we can’t see?

Maybe not so simple.

Ideas have premises as well as consequences, and each plank in our platforms, each item of our creeds, rests on others, some explicitly affirmed, some studiously suppressed. For most of us, if we make the effort to clarify, we find contradictions, confusions, items of faith held in unacknowledged tension.

My goal in this blog has been to dig around in what I believe, to examine premises as well as consequences, to try to hear the half-heard words that form and inform who I am, what I do.

Advent lands me back at the foundation of that, as the narrative of a baby born two thousand years ago collides with the narrative of power, profit, personal value playing out in the stress and strain of an American December.

So I’ll start here: why would anyone care about the story of that provincial baby, nobody child of nobody, born in an occupied country, in a dusty nowhere town, in a stinking animal stall?

And what halfway intelligent modern person would believe, for even a millisecond, that that baby was the product of a deity’s word, spoken to an unmarried teenage girl, or that mythical creatures no one can document showed up in force to sing to some smelly shepherds?

Approach this as a scientist, and the narrative crumbles quickly.  No one can “prove” the facts of an individual’s conception, immaculate or otherwise, and what scientific evidence would support the songs of angels: undoctored photographs? Phonograph recordings?

The story of Jesus, like many stories of scripture, sits outside the realm of science, which is not to say that scientists can’t be Christians; many are.  But for those who insist on scientific naturalism, on a reality that conforms, is explained, can be proved, by the laws of science, the Christmas narrative is a fairy tale, a silly myth, of no more weight, and maybe less interest, than Seuss’s Grinch, or Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin.

But if science is the measure of meaning – we live in a very flat world indeed.

Philosopher Peter Kreeft speaks of “the radical insufficiency of what is finite and limited”, the “cramped and constricted horizon” encountered when “our best and most honest reflection on the nature of things led us to see the material universe as self-sufficient and uncaused; to see its form as the result of random motions, devoid of any plan or purpose.”

Advent is a reminder that we all, whatever we profess to believe, find ourselves constrained by the constricted horizon of "what is." Surrounded by broken systems, broken institutions, broken people, we surrender to the self-protective stance so deeply encouraged by an impatient, uncaring world. Even those of us who say we believe in an active God surrender to the finite, limited vision of reality, measuring our worth in taxable dollars. We fall into compliance with superficial valuations. We become complicit in the competitive enterprise. Our voices are silenced. Our hope for change is dulled.

At first, (as young adults, or willful dreamers) we rebel at the “radical insufficiency” of the current regime: we try to be generous, even though generosity looks foolish. We try to be honest, even when honesty is rarely rewarded. But slowly we cave. We blend. We realize that those ideals we held have no place in a material world.

Then God grabs our world and shakes it – like a child shaking a snow globe – and the scenery changes.

Yesterday I started rereading the gospel of Luke. Luke, the only Gentile writer represented in the Bible, was also one of the most educated: an upper-class Greek doctor, Paul’s “beloved physician”, and a careful historian.

He starts his account of Christ’s life with a promise to share only what he's researched himself and is convinced is true:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us . .  With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account . . .  so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

After his quick introduction, Luke plunges headlong into the story of Zechariah, John the Baptist's father: names, dates, simple history. But in verse eleven, the narrative takes a turn: "Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear."

I love the detail. Not just an angel, but “standing on the right side of the altar.”

The angel explains what is about to happen:  Zechariah’s aging wife will become pregnant with a longed for baby. The child, a son, will be part of God’s plan of intervention for his people, and the world.

I identify deeply with Zechariah’s response: “How do I know this is true?” Religious leader though he is, he's asking for proof: Will you give me some kind of unassailable documentation? Will you come tell my neighbors, so they know I’m not crazy? Could you make this announcement in church next Sunday? So everyone else hears you too?

How do I know?

I love the angel’s response. Polite, but sharp. Let me paraphrase: “Seriously? You’re a priest, here we are in the inner sanctum of the temple, I’m standing here in front of you, straight from God’s throne, me, Gabriel, still God's messenger, the same one who spoke to Daniel, centuries ago. I'm here telling you what God has planned, and you’re wondering if you can believe me, even while you're shaking with fear. You still need proof? Really?”

I’ve never had an encounter with Gabriel, but I’ve seen God intervene in my life. And in the lives of others. I’ve seen the intervention that brings forgiveness, freedom, joy, healing, laughter in the place of pain, a deep sense of belonging for those who felt abandoned.

And still, five minutes later, or five weeks later, five years later, we ask: “How do I know that was true?” “Why should I believe in miracles?” "Where's the proof?"

There are some great discussions of miracles available: a quick overview by Peter Kreeft, CS Lewis’ book “Miracles,” chapter seven of Tim Keller’s Reasons for God, Two interesting websites, Christians in Science in the UK, and American Science Affiliation in the US, offer extensive resources on the compatability of  science and faith. The Biologos Foundation, founded by Human Genome Project geneticist and physician Francis Collins, offers a helpful mix of articles about miracles and science, and a new book by Collins and Karl Giberson, The Language of Science and Faith.

But, for most of us, questions of miracles aren't really the point. We have other things on our minds. We have our own un-examined premises, and that's good enough for now.

In those dark days of the Roman occupation, some of God’s people, like Simeon and Anna in the temple, waited for God’s intervention, and celebrated at the first hint of his appearance. Some, like Zechariah, went about the motions of religion, no longer convinced that God might show up.

My guess is that then, like now, most didn't give it much thought. Life is far too busy. There are Christmas presents to buy.

Earlier Advent posts:

Advent Two: John the Baptist,  Dec. 12, 2010 

Marys' Song,  Dec. 19, 2010 

Christmas Hope,  Dec. 24, 2010 

Metanoia,  Dec 4, 2011 

Voice in the Wilderness,  Dec. 11, 2011 

Common Miracles,  Dec. 18, 2011 

The Christmas Miracle, Dec. 24, 2011