‘Any Real True Believer’ Will Support Trump in November, John MacArthur Says

[JohnS]

josh p - exactly right. EconTallk is a great podcast and Russ Roberts is one of the coolest (mentally and emotionally keeps his cool) interviewers out there. Lots of folks in the U.S. of A. would do well to study economics. Money and a better economy do not offer salvation, but does explain a lot of how people are motivated and act.

Yeah he really is fantastic and I have got a lot of book recommendations just from listening to his interviews. For those interested in learning the very basics about Econ:

Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics”

Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson”

Fredrick Bastiat- almost anything but especially “Sophisms of the Protectionists” if you want to learn about tariffs beyond the nonsense that the right media espouses (that used to be against tariffs, back when they made a pretense of being conservative).

Wow! I come back and alot of assumptions are being made. That somehow I think banks are intentionally keeping loans from minorities! Did I say that? No. I have a CEO of a local bank that sits on our board. His bank and others are more than willing to provide loans for black folks. My point has been that people who are selling their homes in our community are selling to very rich investors who can pay for it in cash on the spot, rather than someone who has struggled for several years to save several thousand $ for the first home that they are trying to own. Or that somehow real estate speculators and investors are intentionally trying to force out black folks out of our community. Did I say that? No. All I said was that they are gentrifying my neighborhood to cater it towards white progressive hipsters and college students. Some of these investors are also investors of certain businesses that have been started in our neighborhood. And why I bring up that they are white is because Black folks in GR don’t patronize craft breweries, like the one that was started 5 blocks from my house 7 years ago with the help of these investors. All I’m making is an observation of what I see in my community.

There can be certain positive aspects of gentrification. I will benefit quite well when I retire because our homes are worth 3x what they were when we bought them. Also, some of the drug and trap houses are gone. Those are positive aspects. But the fact of the matter is that the urban poor are being forced out of their homes and many are becoming homeless. Yet people on this thread seem fine with the unintented negative consequence of the actions of investors and real estate speculators (if that is what the market creates) as if it has absolutely nothing to do with ethics. Adam Smith didn’t think so. He wrote a book that explained the nature of morality and how it manifested itself in different societies, different circumstances (including business), and different people, called A Theory of Moral Sentiments. His ethics in accompanying capitalism was not consequentialist (where an act is only morally right based on the consequences) like Hayek, Friedman and Rand-although Rand is technically more teleological)-which I find quite dangerous, (although the folks at the Hoover institution seem to think Smith was a consequentialist) but rather a type of virtue ethics that relied on a balance of sympathy (what we would call empathy nowadays) and propriety. He centered his ethics around putting himself into another one’s shoes.

By the way, to fix these problems, I am not advocating some centralized government plan to control the market and to keep gentrification from happening. I would much rather trust the business person to make decisions about his business and what it takes to make a profit, both short-term and long-term than government bureaucrats that don’t understand how economics work. Or maybe what Bob Lupton has termed, Gentrification with Justice. Lupton is a leader in the Christian Community Development movement (and a free-market capitalist) that wrote the books, “Toxic Charity” and “Charity-Detox.” He recognized the inevitability of gentrifying neighborhoods and realized that it could be done without necessarily displacing the poor. But it takes investors and business developers to buy into the concept that displacement of the poor isn’t the only option in response to the market forces of gentrification. As an organization, we are attempting to follow some of Lupton’s ideas. http://sites.silaspartners.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0„PTID323422_CHID664014_CIID2235910,00.html

My little soapbox for bringing all of this up is to expose those on this thread to realities of the urban poor that they wouldn’t otherwise know and that Christian ethics needs to be applied in all areas of life, including economics.

Regarding gentrification, it strikes me that urban initiatives to revitalize neighborhoods tend to follow two basic patterns. First, you have the good money chasing bad model, as in Gary’s Genesis Center, where a large and “gilded” edifice is put in the center of a blighted neighborhood. This is also shown with New London, CT’s efforts at a pharmaceutical park (now a weedy lot) made infamous by the Kelo decision.

Second, you’ve got things like happen in Grand Rapids, where government creates a strong incentive for young and prosperous people to consider a neighborhood as a place to live. The gap here, from how Joel describes it, is that the city seems to have created a huge number of jobs for which the local residents are mostly not trained—and hence those that come tend to push the older residents out. Not a problem with capitalism, but with misguided government action, really.

In either case, the old English proverb “it takes three generations to make a gentleman” comes to mind—the import of that being that it simply takes time to develop the thought patterns and habits of certain stations in life. Some people—e.g. Ben Carson—seem to shortcut this, but for the majority, it seems that developing middle class thought patterns and habits simply doesn’t happen overnight. This was a key part of Booker T. Washington’s initial structuring of Tuskegee—where lessons were often things like masonry, cooking, and carpentry, basic skills that would elevate his target population into the lower middle class, really. The lessons in classical literature recommended by W.E.B Dubois and others were left for when the initial thought and behavior patterns were created.

When it comes to Sowell, I actually like him alot and see him as an economic thought genius. And several of his views (at least on the surface) seems to correspond with a Christian worldview, even though he is an atheist. However, some of his social thinking does not correspond with Scripture and oftentimes conservative Christians, who are so enamored by his genius, forget that in the grand meta-narrative of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration, Sowell is lacking on some key areas that affect his views of economics and politics.

Because he’s an atheist, Sowell doesn’t ground ontological anthropology in Imago Dei, but rather more as a materialist, which affects his views on economics. And because Sowell’s views of economics are void of the Transcendence, as they relate to the human person and to God’s Creation mandate to use the material world for the good of the human community, the moral grounding is deficient. I’d have to write a much longer post that I don’t have time to do right now to explain what I mean.

Second, while I admire Sowell for his understanding of the limitations of humans—an understanding that sees human nature and each human having both moral limitations and certain limiting natural characteristics (a more pessimistic view of humanity) he does not share the Christian view of humankind that is inclined to do evil because of our sin nature. He doesn’t hold to original sin or Total Depravity. He doesn’t see an inherited sin nature from Adam and that all of nature is cursed. And while Sowell lays out a vision of how to function socially, economically, and politically in a dysfunctional world, it lacks the Biblical idea that people perform acts of evil towards each other because they are inclined towards evil. Those who are Christians can offer a deeper and better analysis than Sowell to critique Free-Market Capitalism in order to improve it because we are diagnosing it better with our understanding of Total Depravity in humans-affecting every person and every system, including economic systems.

Third, I get the impression that the solutions for socio-economic-political issues for Sowell is more based on incentives and trade-offs. Whereas Biblical Christianity again goes much deeper with its solution because of the Redemption we have in Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and what this gospel of Christ offers to all of humanity. And It provides a better framework and ethical system for Free-Market Capitalism. Although I’ve read a few of his books, several articles, and watched several of his videos, I don’t feel confident enough to go into much more detail on his ethics than what I’ve described from the Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative. And much of the reading that I did was 20 years ago, where I wasn’t reading as critically as I do now. For example to see if Sowell’s ethics lean Deontologist (which I feel is more Biblical) or whether he is a consequentialist. Anyway, Larry, those are my initial thoughts.

[Joel Shaffer]

By the way, to fix these problems, I am not advocating some centralized government plan to control the market and to keep gentrification from happening. I would much rather trust the business person to make decisions about his business and what it takes to make a profit, both short-term and long-term than government bureaucrats that don’t understand how economics work. Or maybe what Bob Lupton has termed, Gentrification with Justice. Lupton is a leader in the Christian Community Development movement (and a free-market capitalist) that wrote the books, “Toxic Charity” and “Charity-Detox.” He recognized the inevitability of gentrifying neighborhoods and realized that it could be done without necessarily displacing the poor. But it takes investors and business developers to buy into the concept that displacement of the poor isn’t the only option in response to the market forces of gentrification. As an organization, we are attempting to follow some of Lupton’s ideas. http://sites.silaspartners.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0„PTID323422_CHID664014_CIID2235910,00.html

My little soapbox for bringing all of this up is to expose those on this thread to realities of the urban poor that they wouldn’t otherwise know and that Christian ethics needs to be applied in all areas of life, including economics.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I appreciate you exposing us to the realities of urban ministry. You see things a lot of us do not in our local environments. What I fail to see is a sure-fire way to solve the problem of housing and the poor. Even in the Sowell video you posted earlier, he was talking about zoning meaning the difference between the same house worth $1,000,000 in one area and $150,000 in another. Someone who is struggling to put together several thousand is going to have trouble affording even the $150,000 home, not to mention maintenance, taxes, transportation, etc. I don’t know how it would be possible to put together cheap enough housing at enough of a profit so that someone will build it to cover all the needs for such housing. But even if that is solved, it doesn’t take into account the large numbers of poor and homeless who either should be institutionalized or have no interest in doing what it takes to make it to the next step. Putting people who can’t give up drugs or other addictions in their life in nice housing without a change of heart and mind on their part will not result in building up a good neighborhood.

I also read the Lupton article you posted. I thought some of his ideas were interesting, but even he mentioned that to support creating or fixing up housing for several hundred people took several thousand volunteers, not to mention financial support from other churches and/or individuals. With this kind of ratio, while it may work in some situations, or as a particular ministry, it’s not ultimately sustainable. I’m not saying that doesn’t make it worth doing, but it does mean it’s not by itself going to solve the greater issues.