Faith & Economics Issue 76 – Fall 2020

This paper is part of a symposium organized in cooperation with the AEI Initiative on Faith and Public Life titled: “In the Contemporary United States What Would a Truly Humane Economy Look Like?“

Abstract: The negative outcomes of industrial capitalism and neoliberalism continue to grow in the twenty-first century, causing many social scientists to look for solutions and alternatives to the status quo. Major ideologies gravitate towards collectivization and statism on the one hand, and anarcho-capitalism and the “commodification of everything” on the other. There is, however, a growing movement towards decentralization by democratization. This article examines worker’s cooperatives and the framework behind the cooperative movement (distributism and anarcho-socialism) as a robust solution to the central problems of our economy. Worker’s cooperatives, while still not common in many industries, are both theoretically sound and have been concretely tested.

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Whose Community? Market Economics and the Concept of Solidarity – Koch

FAITH & ECONOMICS
NUMBER 76, Fall 2020

Whose Community? Market Economics and the Concept of Solidarity

Paul R. Koch
Olivet Nazarene University

Abstract: The debate over the relationship between market processes and community values has intensified in recent years, due to the pace of economic change, as well as the respective impacts of the global financial crisis and the pandemic. This essay explores various conceptions of community, raising the question of whether or not a genuine sense of social solidarity requires that those who participate in those interactions live in physical proximity to one another. The implications of this discussion for economic policy are also examined, including the possibility that the composition of what has been historically regarded as “conservative” economics might be altered in a way that would be designed to benefit communities that are defined in local or national terms. Given the negative economic consequences of those actions that might be characterized as “building walls,” attention is devoted to potential policies that are intended to “build bridges” to the future for those who have been dislocated by new patterns of market activity. These explorations seek to advance the goal of assisting certain definitions of community without assuming that they have a higher moral standing than other conceptions of social solidarity, while also avoiding the conclusion that existing jobs and industries are more important than those which have not yet come into existence.

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Human Flourishing and the Subjective Dimension of Work – Friesen

FAITH & ECONOMICS
NUMBER 76, Fall 2020

Human Flourishing and the Subjective Dimension of Work

Geoffrey C. Friesen
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract: Because economic models affect economic decisions, and these decisions affect our social reality, the models have spillover effects and their assumptions can actually manifest in reality. The Biblical account of the human person in the book of Genesis reveals that human work takes on both exterior (objective) and interior (subjective) meaning. This article highlights how models in economics and finance have assumed away the subjective dimension of work, and explores the consequences of this self-limiting assumption. Existing models limit our understanding of human work to the objective dimension characterized by trade-off logic, where actions benefiting a principal come at the expense of the agent (or other stakeholder). Compensation must be paid to the agent to induce the effort/action that leads to the loss in utility. The subjective dimension of human work, grounded both in science and scripture, introduces a fundamentally new type of economic logic, which stands alongside the “logic of costly effort.” Under this new type of “logic of interior meaning and engagement,” actions that benefit the agent can in fact also benefit the
principal. Dropping the assumption that such situations cannot exist is an important preliminary step towards a more humane economy.

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The Association of Christian Economists

An Academic Society for Christians in the Economics Profession

Faith & Economics Issue 76 – Fall 2020

Review of The Shrewd Samaritan

Review of The Economics of Religion in India

Review of The Captured Economy

Review of The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

Review of Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

Review of Why Culture Matters

Owning Up to It: Why Cooperatives Create the Humane Economy our World Needs – Hübner

Whose Community? Market Economics and the Concept of Solidarity – Koch

Human Flourishing and the Subjective Dimension of Work – Friesen

Review of A Sacred Journey: Faithful Presence in the Secular Academy

Review of Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society

Review of Political Economy as Natural Theology: Smith, Malthus, and Their Followers

Review of Capital and Ideology

Review of Causal Inference: The Mixtape

The Lost Sheep, God’s Body and Housing – Renewing Hearts and Minds into Renewed Communities

Economic and Environmental Religion: The Work of Robert H. Nelson

Liberation Theology and Development Economics: Unlikely Allies?