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Theologians and Economists: Knowing the “Common Good”

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Each Sunday, Christians around the world gather and pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." It is both a request for an outcome and a statement of commitment to that outcome … to give witness to the coming shalom of the new creation.

The previous post affirmed that selfishness is not of the Kingdom of God. Our self-interest is inextricably connected with God, others, and creation. So surely, our mission must be to pursue the common good of all.

My favorite book on theology and work is Miroslav Volf's Work in the Spirit. Volf writes:

… The good of others must be a goal toward which I am consciously striving. The persuasion that the common good will be realized behind my back, so to speak, as I am busying myself exclusively with myself will not do. … (191)

Individual self-interest can be pursued validly, but it must be accompanied by the pursuit of the good of others. These two pursuits are not in principle mutually exclusive but complementary (though in concrete cases they often conflict.)  …

The horizon of individual concern for the common good is the whole of humanity. … But she [the individual] can keep in mind the good of the world community and attune the pursuit of her own self-interest and the interest of her local community to the good of the world community.

As they work, individuals may not limit their perspective only to local communities, but have to seek the good of all human beings. … (192)

Brian McLaren writes in Everything Must Change:

First, Jesus addresses the law of progress through rapid economic growth. In its place, he offers the law of good deeds for the common good. … (206, emphasis original)

Pope Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate:

Another important consideration is the common good. To love someone is to desire that person's good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of "all of us," made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society[4]. … To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. … In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations[5], in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it to some degree an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God. (Paragraph 7, emphasis original)

Wonderful sentiments, but based on previous posts, do you see the insurmountable challenge? With any given decision, how do you or I or any other entity know what the common good is and which choices advance it? Who, exactly, oversees this striving for the common good, and on what knowledge base are they achieving it?

Proximity to others is essential for assessing how decisions will impact their lives. Society is not a family writ large. I can't assess the impact of my decisions on me and seven billion of my closest friends. There is no oikonomos (household manager) managing the household, nor can there be. To effectively manage societies for the optimal common good would require near omniscience. Remember that every major totalitarian leader and regime of the Twentieth Century claimed they possessed this knowledge and would achieve the common good.

Surely limiting income inequality is for the common good. Yet no one argues that everyone should get the same income. On what basis do we have fair inequality, and how do we know what is optimal for the common good? What if it turns out that allowing a lot of inequality makes everyone better off but means there would be a greater distance between the top and bottom of the scale? Is this better for the common good?

Take something as seemingly straightforward as murder. Surely we agree that murder is not for the common good. Yet there are honor and shame societies where preserving honor demands the execution of a family member who has brought dishonor to the family. This practice is said to maintain greater social stability. Who says this isn't better for the common good?

Economists are sometimes accused of creatively assuming things about a problem for their theories to work. A joke says an economist was asked what a man should do who falls into a deep hole. The economist responds, "Well, first we assume a ladder …." The common good is the theological equivalent of the economist's ladder. The common good exhortation assumes there is a universal standard for what the common good is, that it is readily accessible to each of us, and that there is an apparatus for its implementation, none of which is true!

I think four groups of folks believe something approaching the common good can be discerned and implemented.

Totalitarians – The leader claims to know and pursue the common good, whether based on an ideology or personal charisma.

Free Market Fundamentalists – Markets function with near perfection. The common good is best achieved by letting markets run their course.

Economist Managers –Believe they can so thoroughly model the real world that they can manage the economy for the common good.

Mainline Theologians – Carry a presupposition that someone is or should be in charge of economic outcomes … an oikonomos. Tend to lean heavily on the communitarian wing of modern-day American liberalism for substance on achieving the common good.

"Common good," as it often plays out in many discussions, is a rhetorical device to justify interventionist views over against what is characterized as greed, selfishness, and chaos. Those who oppose an intervention oppose the common good in favor of their selfish behavior or ideological enslavement to markets.

Common good as a theological concept conjures up images of the peaceable kingdom and the coming new creation with God, humanity, and all creation living in perfect harmony … in contrast to a world dominated by sin and death. But when the Bible speaks to issues we might consider of economic importance, it speaks in the context of a culture with little economic specialization and little integration with others beyond the local community. Production options were fixed, meaning economic ethics focused on distribution and interaction with people who lived nearby. Ethics discerned by casting a modern specialized and integrated economy as a small community writ large is useless … even dangerous.

We know that simply pursuing selfish desires, even in our modern context, is not Kingdom building, and we know that none of us can discern the optimal common good with certainty. That is the paradox in which we live.

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(For an excellent book demonstrating the challenges of discerning the common good, see Good Intentions: Nine Hot-Button Issues View Through the Eyes of Faith by Charles North and Bob Smietana. For an excellent journal article that addresses the problem of personal versus impersonal systems in making ethical decisions, see Markets and Morality: Things Ethicists Should Consider When Evaluating Market Exchange, by Peter J. Hill and John Lunn.)

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Comments

7 responses to “Theologians and Economists: Knowing the “Common Good””

  1. Chuck North Avatar
    Chuck North

    Good comments, and thanks for the book plug.
    Adam Smith wrote a lot about this topic in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He emphasizes the importance of empathy in discerning what is in other people’s interest. Without empathy, one cannot decide what is best for another. At best, empathy allows us to understand the other person’s needs from THEIR perspective, and take actions based on that. Even at less than its best, we can understand their situation and assess their needs based on what WE would want in THEIR position.
    Empirically though, the least effective way to help someone is to decide what they need based upon YOUR own preferences. This is commonly done by people of all political stripes.

    Reply
  2. Travis Greene Avatar
    Travis Greene

    Surely there’s lots we can know about our economic actions and their impact on others. And though we may not know everything, we have a responsibility to act on what we do know.

    Reply
  3. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Yes. We can’t sit and do nothing because we don’t know everything.
    What I’m building toward is that we make our decisions in an environment of risk, not certainty. And there is an old joke that says to err is human, but it requires a computer to really mess things up. The more extensive and more complex the action to be taken, the greater the chance for big payoff or big disaster.
    Passively trusting markets and uncritically embracing interventions to achieve a common good are imprudent. So how do we act with prudence? Are there grids through which we can process decisions? That is my question.

    Reply
  4. Travis Greene Avatar
    Travis Greene

    Speaking of interventions, it seems to me that the economic story you’ve been telling has left out politics–the rise of the modern nation-state and the rule of law (vs. divine right of kings) took place during this same period. How do we know what’s really responsible for prosperity?
    I think that’s why I am skeptical of this particular economic metanarrative. Even if partly or even largely true, I think it is at the least overly simplistic, missing out on the political dimensions. Not to mention the theo-philosophical.
    Which, of course, is the reason for the need for dialogue in the first place, and the need for respect on both sides.

    Reply
  5. Chuck North Avatar
    Chuck North

    I’m a big believer in the importance of institutions in fostering the economic system we now have. Defined broadly, as Douglass North has done, “institutions” includes not only legal/political structures but also cultural norms and values. All of these play a role in generating the kind of system that can generate surplus wealth.
    My point on empathy is that we can’t simply impose our preferences on others and expect results from it. The best example of this is the repeated failure of foreign aid to help developing countries get better. Instead, it works better to make decisions based on the needs of others as they perceive them – for example, by investing at the micro level in things that people in Africa know that they need rather than trusting corrupt governments to spend aid money wisely.
    (Of course, there are limits to this argument. An addict would be happiest if you gave him his next fix. That doesn’t mean it is best to give it to him.)

    Reply
  6. Jesse Avatar
    Jesse

    I think you may have left out a category above:
    Free Market Pragmatist: Free Markets are the worst form of Economic System except all of the other Economic Systems. I’ve also heard it phrased “Markets Fail. Use Markets.”
    On Travis’ comment: Free(er) markets only work if the rule of law is in place, as well as low corruption and the enforcement of private contracts. But so long as those exist (as the do, somewhat, in China – not a democracy) then you see a trend toward prosperity. I’ve seen lots of work on differing institutions effect on economic outcomes, and they do matter, but only via their impact on economics.

    Reply
  7. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Jesse, I think the difference I was going for between these four and the Free Market Pragmatist is the pragmatism part. These four have a unwavering faith commitment that their solution is using the laws of nature or is ordained by God.
    I see the Free Market Pragmatist doing a risk assessment but I can also see interventionist pragmatists operating on risk assessment versus, not ideology, as well.

    Reply

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