Okay, I'm not saying this is necessarily wrong, but how is this a major issue for Catholics in the world? It just seems rather than teaching the Catholic Faith, Pope Francis is more concerned with promulgating his socialist economic theories. As mentioned before, these issues may be indirectly linked to Catholic teaching, but they are not the core of what the Church is about. All I ever hear from this pope is social justice commentary.
If Bergoglio wasn't the pope and said the same things, he'd be viewed a modern-day social justice warrior. Perhaps an idealistic, pie-in-the-sky activist who just makes random pronouncements about "making the world a better place".
He uses what Patrick Coffin calls "weaponized ambiguity". He continually talks in terms of solidarity, fraternity, community, etc. It's a very vague emotion-based approach. People can attach to whatever he says any meaning they want.
A quote from the news article:
The meeting is an event that “challenges every person of good will to rethink, even more today, the relationship between man, nature and the Creator as a factor of profound balance and communion,” the pope said, “in the search not for the logic of profit, but of service, not of the exploitation of resources, but of care and attention for nature as a welcoming home for all.”
What is the "logic of profit"? Can that be explained? Or are we to simply assume and attach our own ideas?
He says in search, not of exploitation of resources, but of care and attention for nature as a welcoming home for all. Again, what does this mean?
Think about it. What is exploitation? It has a negative connotation, meaning to just take advantage of someone or something for our own personal gain without considering the other person. Okay, so how does this apply to agriculture?
Imagine a farmer who grows carrots on many acres of land. He listens to the pope speaking on this subject. How does he implement what the pope is saying? How does he plant and harvest his carrots so that he is not "exploiting" the resource of carrots but instead he is searching for care and attention for nature as a welcoming home for all?
Does he go into his carrot field and shout out, "This carrot field is here for the care and attention for nature as a welcoming home for all!"
My point is what he is saying is meaningless. Does he think profits are bad? I would say he probably does. He has never spoken positively about them. So why not just come out and say he believes in a planned economy in which prices are determined and workers are compensated based on planned wages. At least then we'd know what he is saying. But he speaks in code. Half of what he says barely makes any sense. By and large, it just seems completely meaningless.
To be fair, I guess he is criticizing his impression of how agriculture works. In his mind, a farm owner goes to a place and takes over massive amounts of land. Probably in the process of doing so, he uproots many poor people who have nowhere to turn. In fact, the land is probably currently providing a sustainable life for hundreds of small farmers, who although not rich, have plenty to eat and can enjoy a good life.
So the rich man just kicks them all off the land. You see, rich people can do whatever they want and poor people are forced to comply. Once this rich person owns hundreds of acres of land, he employs people to work the land. Many of the workers he hires used to own the land themselves but now they work for very little. On top of this, hundreds of other poor people with no other choice but to work for him start doing the extremely difficult tasks while the rich landowner sits back in comfort in his huge mansion.
He pays everyone almost nothing, since the wages he pays are just based on a whim. Is he feeling stingy and paying them ten cents per hour or is he feeling generous and giving them a whole twenty cents an hour? It doesn't matter what he decides, workers have no other choice but to accept this wage.
The owner then has a massive harvest in which he sells his carrots or whatever else at a huge profit, again to very poor people who can barely afford what he is offering. For example, they make $20 per week, but he charges them $1 for a single carrot. What else can they do? The farmer incurred total expenses of a million dollars, but he will now sell his products for $100 million. He gets $99 million for himself. Meanwhile his workers are on the brink of starvation.
Eventually after several decades of making hundreds of millions of dollars and paying no taxes (because the rich never do), the rich man fires everyone and retires. Of course, he abandons the land and stops tending to it. In his thinking, he owns it, he can do whatever he wants with it! Soon after, the land dries up and everything dies. It becomes a sort of desert, devoid of all life.
In this cartoon world, as Tom Woods might call it, it's pretty simple. Maybe in this context the words of Pope Francis could have some discernible meaning? Hard to say really. But this isn't reality. In reality, capitalism is far more complex than this, and has benefitted people more than any other economic system by far.
A few points:
- Rich people pay way more taxes, as an amount and a percentage, than anyone else.
- Owners can't pay whatever wages they want. They must pay the prevailing wage or they won't get enough workers. A small percentage of people actually receive minimum wage.
- Having one's own business is far riskier than receiving wages. Most businesses fail. It's false to think that every business owner is wealthy and every worker is poor.
- Profits are far from guaranteed. Some people spend their life savings on a business and spend years working on it until they make any money. Sometimes they sadly never earn back their spending.
- If farmers can own their own land, they are incentivized to reduce waste, improve efficiency, and maintain the value of the land. Socialism encourages the opposite as there is no personal ownership.
- Many agencies, such as some in the UN, encourage small-time farming which is inherently risky to the farmers and far less efficient. It just sounds good.
- Profits are good. They are signals in the market that new companies should enter. Profits mean there is money to be made and eventually prices are reduced because of this.
How can anyone see the world and truly believe that capitalism makes people worse off? In communist countries you have bread lines. In capitalist countries you have lines and lines of various breads.
The pope's duty and mission is to spread the Gospel, to spread the Church and the message of Jesus Christ. Our Lord came for our salvation, not to tell us profit is a bad thing.
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