Economics and Values

How should Christians talk about economics?

Values?

We want to talk about the present financial crisis, and we want to do so from a Christian
point of view. We want to talk about the effect of the financial crisis on business and on life
so bring together two things not normally associated, economics and Christianity. Since you
are talking to a mixed audience we decide to begin with ‘values’. We all share values, so isn't
that the obvious starting point? If ‘values’ are the first rung of the ladder, the second rung
could be ‘virtues’, the third ‘good practices’ and the fourth could be ‘community’. If our
audience is still with us at that point perhaps we have found our way to talking about the
contribution of the Christian faith to that community, and so to the environment in which
business operates, and so to the economy as a whole.

But there is a snag. Values will not work as your first step. Values are not a step towards
Christianity, but towards morality, and Christianity and morality are not the same thing. If
you chose to begin with ‘values’, this will not only be your first step, but also your last too,
for your entire talk will be about morality from beginning to end. But if you talk about
morality you would not be able to show your listeners that you had engaged the ‘real
world’. The real world is what engages us during working hours. Morality relates to culture,
which commands our attention only outside the working day. It is as much a voluntary affair
as is going to the opera or Wimbledon or any other cultural pursuit. It is an option, which
you may choose or not choose with no perceptible difference to your career, your
company’s economic performance, or the real world. You may convince others to
appreciate morality as much any other afterhours hobby, but you won't convince them to
dedicate their working hours to it. To start your talk with ‘morality’ is effectively to inflict
your hobby on them. They may listen, but this would only be because they saw the point of
joining the cultural community that you belong to. Talk about values and morality has no
greater purchase than this. Why is this?

‘Value’ is part of a very old double act, called ‘fact and value’. Whenever you bring up values
you inadvertently remind us that, whatever values are, they are not facts. Facts are hard,
values are soft; facts appear in the balance sheet, at best, values serve as decoration for the
front of the annual report. When you refer to values, you remind us that there are two
worlds and no clear path between them. Facts are out there, values are not. So where are
they? They are in there, in our inner world, in our head or in our heart. The values I have are
my values, while the values you are aware of are your values. They are as personal to us as
our tastes. So whenever we appeal to values we are inescapably bringing up this gulf. In
which we invite others to share our preferences, but are faced by the fact that these only
means that they should imagine how we feel about our preferences. There is no way to
demonstrate that our values help them to realise their own values. Values are subjective.
They do not provide what they seem to offer; they are not the way to talk about the
common good, that is, a good that exists independently or your or my views and
preferences.

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If we don't start with values where shall we start? How should we begin this discussion of
economics and Christianity? I am going to offer you two answers. Here is the first.

First answer
We are going to start with the Christian Gospel. Unless you begin with the Christian
distinctive you will never get to it. You don't only do not need a preamble to the Christian
gospel. If you take a run-up to it, you will always be on that run up and never arrive at its
goal.

So are just going to blurt out: ‘Christians say that... the Christian view is this... Christians
believe that...’ Isn’t this too assertive, you ask? Won't that put people off straightaway?

So let us blurt out: ‘Christians suggest that... ‘, and, without anxiety, to say what we think. It
is all right to do this. If you have been invited to talk about economics from the Christian
perspective, that is what you must do. They have invited you to talk in this way because
they know that you are a Christian and want to hear what you have to say in that role. To
speak as a Christian to economists, business people or any other group is no more
problematic than it is for a group of doctors to invite an architect to speak to them as an
architect. These business people are looking for a view that is different from their own
group perspective. Don’t disappoint them. Give them what is distinctively Christian.

You can say that Christians know that God commands them to do act in certain ways, or to
avoid certain forms of action. You can suggest that if they start to follow this path, they may
begin to find that this sort of approach brings its own reward, even discover their joy in it,
for doing what is good and right is gratifying, and is occasionally is even instant gratification.

Do not tell them that you are giving them your ‘own personal view’. You are going to tell
them what Christians say on this subject, and relate to what Christians say and sing in their
worship every time they meet. You will make your apologies and reservations for the limits
of your knowledge of the Christian contribution on any subject. But be sure of one thing and
sure to pass this on, that the Christian contribution to economics is... massive. It is deep and
wide. Your awareness of this contribution may be small, but the Christian tradition of
economics is comprehensive. Christians have deliberated on these issues with deep learning
and intellectual sophistication for centuries, and they continue to do so now. It is too much
for any one individual to read. If you are shame-faced about your ignorance, that is good
too. Nonetheless, in this event you are speaking on behalf of all Christians and the whole
Christian intellectual tradition, and doing so because your audience has asked you to do so.

Second answer
But now we must look at the second answer. I will call this the pragmatic approach. We will
talk about what works, and we will do so by pointing out what has worked, for this country
and for the West, over many generations. This is to offer not moral but pragmatic reasons,
and these will be economic reasons. The logic of the pragmatic-economic approach is that
long-term economic reasons always trump short-term economic reasons. The short-term
must always concede place to the long-term, simply because if something is good we want it
to continue into the future. So one, very simple, argument for Christianity, is that it works.
The result of a history formed by Christianity is that we have had an economy with a long-

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term. Christianity allows an open economy to come into being, and it sustains it. When
Christianity is side-lined the economy does not magically continue as before. It gets into
difficulties, which is what we now see. Christianity produces a culture from which the open
economy has emerged, and that culture, with its virtues and practices, sustains that
economy now.

In Common
We have to presuppose that we share lots of things with our audience. Whenever we speak
to anyone we make the assumption that they share a language with us, and are ready to
take an interest, to talk to us and to help. We share the assumption that we mean each
other no harm, that it is possible for us to meet one another more or less as equals; this is
the shared cultural basis is not only a vast package of assumptions but is made explicit by
institutions, the most fundamental of which is the law. The law names and forbids most of
those things which would make our meeting and discussion difficult – it forbids violence and
coercion without warrant. Each wants the other to offer the behaviour, let us call it
courtesy, and which is framed by the law.

What we have in common is our business environment. It is this working infrastructure of

habits and practices which enables us to reach one another and sell one another goods and
services. We live in the same city so we have the same interests in seeing it remaining a
functioning place. We want the traffic to flow, the rubbish to be collected, advertisements
to be truthful. We want the law to be upheld so that contracts are honoured, and we want
infrastructure to be maintained and a whole range of public services to be carried out, and
do not want the costs of these things to increase. These shared desires are not entirely
different from values, we can see the links to freedom, trust and justice, but there a
significant difference. We can all immediately see that these service are immediately
common to us. We share these services, which is why we call them public services or
utilities. If there is no road and no pavement we cannot reach one another at all, and so will
not be able to meet and discuss anything, even to disagree. None of us can talk if the
phones don't work, or do business if the power goes off. The environment becomes more
difficult for all of us if contracts are regularly defaulted on, trust disappears, and business
confidence lost. When bribes are required to procure public services, when we can't get our
goods delivered on time and cannot get our customers to pay, all communication is in
danger. Regardless of individually-held values, what we all share is the wish not to see
things grind to a halt, for this would damage opportunities for all of us. We share a wish that
the basic means of communication and exchange be maintained. This may not sound much,
but it is vital and it is the real starting point for our discussion of the economy. We all
concede that we do indeed hold it in common, and so it not only can but does function as
the basis on which we come together. We do not need to agree on a set of cultural
intangibles. We are not trying to establish principles on which to make the world a better
place. We are not expecting others to run our business for us or take on more responsibility.
We want things to work. We acknowledge that they have to work so, in order that we can
carry on our various businesses. We see that this is a functioning business environment.
Now we can ask what makes it so, and what are the pressures that might endanger this
business environment. How do we keep things as they are? This is our much more modest
and focused question which allows us to talk about the economic future and the
contribution of Christians to it.

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Social change?
The question then is not how to make this a better place, but how to prevent it becoming a
worse one? How can we discourage those who want to create more rigorous definitions of,
and restraints on, our ability to do business? If we argue about what would make this a
better place, we would have to discuss how to get agreement on what would constitute
‘better’, and what values we should encourage in one another that point us towards that
‘better’. Since that is a set of question without end, it will not bring us to a manageable
discussion of economics.

For every business person has a family, and wonders how sympathetic the country will be
for their children. Will it be a country in which their children will want to live? Will this
remain a good place to do business? Or will we have created such an unemployed under-
class, that it is violent, and such a bureaucracy to control that violence and restrain that
underclass that it is no longer possible for people to be prosperous and enjoy the security of
property?

What Christians have to offer is a concept of man in which the two concepts of love and
freedom are fundamental. There are no short-cuts around these two. There are essential to
well-being and prosperity on any definition.

The Pragmatic approach

We can approach one another with pragmatic arguments. We can talk about what will make
ours a better society. We do not have to say that this or that policy is morally wrong or that
it has economic benefits but social costs. We can stay in the idiom of business or economics,
and say that this or that policy is economically inefficient. We can say that the present way
we do things is counter-productive from a business point of view, because, for instance it is
likely to reduce the amount of money our customers will have available to spend. We can
point out that its economic inefficiency does not appear immediately. Our short-term
calculation is based on our ability to externalise many of our costs. But we cannot
externalise our costs in the long-run, because we all want to go on doing business seen this
economy and living in this country in which such costs remain un-paid. We might be
tempted to call these social costs – high levels of unemployment with a disenfranchised and
angry youth – but there is no particular reason why we should call these ‘social’ rather than
‘economic’ costs. They are simply medium- rather than short-term costs. Social costs by
definition are not liabilities that appear on the balance sheet of any one firm. But there are
nonetheless liabilities which will affect the climate in which that firm has to operate. With
large amounts of unemployment there will be fewer people able to buy your firm’s services
products, so the present decisions of that firm, represented by this year’s dividend, may be
at the expense of next year’s business opportunities. It is really a lot easier to make money
where you have a optimistic and motivated population.

When we employ the concept of values we have placed ourselves in a contest between
values and economic results. We can say that such and such a policy is wrong (we don't
have to say that is morally wrong, for the word ‘morally’ adds nothing). It is tempting to talk
about the social costs of this policy, as though it works economically but not socially, as
though we lived in separate compartments of economy and society. But the social and

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cultural spheres are simply the economic sphere considered over the long-term. So we
could do something very simple. We could say that it works in the short-term but not in the
long-term. It appears to work economically now, but it doesn't work in the long-term.

For here we must make clear that the dual citizenship of the Christian, it is his or her
Christian discipleship is always their first loyalty and that to their society is their second
loyalty. For they work for this firm because it is a particular way in which to serve the
common good, the good we may identify with this people, the British people, who together
form this unity we call a nation. Christian are not intending to be non-partisan. The best way
to serve the common good, and the common-wealth of the nation is almost always by
serving some specific project, community, set of interests and so one particular firm.

Christians may be awkward colleagues because they occasionally ask questions that who
wants to hear. Their senior colleagues may decide to get rid of them, and those Christians
will have to put up with that. But it is for the best for the firm that those Christian are
Christians first, then members of this nation (this common-wealth of citizens) and that they
place their firm third in their priorities. After all it may not be necessary or the best thing for
any of its employees, shareholders or customers that that firm continues. It may not
damage, it may even be beneficial in the long run that it goes out of business. Whistle-
blowing may be the right thing to do. Nonetheless every Christian will place the interests of
his firm before those any of its competitors.

For as things stand we only have these two terms, ‘results’ on one hand and ‘values’ on the
other. Results translates to economic efficiency; ‘values’ translates to culture. We are trying
to measure the measurable against the immeasurable. We have ‘getting the best results’
versus the question ‘what do we mean by ‘best’?’. What do we mean by ‘getting the best
results’? Best for us? Who is this ‘us’? Our group, or the firm as a whole? Or for me, in terms
of my winning a bigger bonus than anyone else within the group? Or do we mean best not
only for the firm but for the industry, or for the City as a whole, or for the economy as a
whole, or for UK plc? Then in terms of ‘what’? Financial results? Before or after tax, or
before or after whatever particular measures are required to keep us in business through
this difficult time? Or in terms of the economy as a whole – GDP? Or some more vague
measure of well-being? Then over what period are we going to decide this result. Best this
quarter? Over the last twelve months? Coming decade? All depends on our being able to
widen our definition of ourselves so that it embraces our entire life-span, and perhaps even
concedes something to the generation that succeeds us.

It is only when we insist that we are asking about the economy as a whole and about the
next ten years or longer that we have a discussion in which these two terms, ‘results’ and
‘values’ begin to make sense. The discussion begins when we get traders to consider the
question of what is good for their children. What sort of society would they like their
children to grow up in, and do business in? What sort of virtues or values or social capital is
required that this country remains a good place to do business in, so that UK plc remains in
business? It is only when we stretch the time-frame wide over more than one generation.

Things get interesting only when we turn the conversation to the long-term. We do this by
asking people about how long they intend to work for and what they intend to do when

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they retire. Then we are aware that we each have a span of time, that is both far longer the
period over which we normally assess our financial results, but which is also not very long.
And if we have children, the thought that we will one day be replaced has already occurred
to us. We shall be gone, our children will be here. We spend so much effort on our children,
trying to set them up and make them secure. What can we do now that will make them
more secure then? What do we do now that prepares them for our absence? That is the
beginning of the question.

But here we should not imagine that we have the hard discourse of economics, with its
question of what can be shown on the balance sheet, and preoccupation with business
efficiency (or financial wizardry) that secures these result, and the soft discourse of morality.
We want to translate the question of values, morality and culture into economic terms. For
we have to say that it is massively economic inefficient to spend social capital without
replacing it. If we fritter it, it won't be there. And if it is not merely metaphorical capital, but
really capital considered over the long-term, we can ask whether we have been making best
use of the social capital we have inherited and whether we have got enough return on the
social capital we have spent.

We can suggest that the economy of the future is not just an information economy but a
motivation economy. It is not just what you know, but whether you have a strong enough
reason for going to work at all. Then we can ask whether we have been robbing large
sections of our society of reasons for going to work, and for actually working when they are
at work. Have we been replacing demanding industrial work with undemanding drone work
of the call centre?

We have to win the admission that economic results that appear good, may do so only in
the short-term. Over the long time they may turn out to be disastrous. After all it is never
the case that the short-term is right and the long-term is wrong. But if we are wrong over
the long-term, we are wrong, full stop. Long-term reverses make short-term gains of little
value and raise the question of whether we have enjoyed short term gains at the expense of
long term ones, or even of whether we have enjoyed apparent gains short-term by
consuming all our seed corn now, thereby guaranteeing a crisis for those who come after us.
We have to put a price on loss of motivation, on loss of trust and of respect for the law, loss
of economic freedom.

Remember an economy that is carved up by the existing big beasts is who effect to prevent
new businesses emerging so there are monopolies that can act to stifle the opportunities for
new enterprises and economic stagnation. Recessions are good. It is only when some of the
biggest trees come crashing down that there is space for young growth. But in recent years
we have not allowed recessions to occur. We have continually pumped up the money supply
in order to sustain demand and sell our product. By attempting to prevent recessions by
creating with asset bubbles we have made the financial system as a whole unstable. The
consequence of preventing regular minor corrections is that we are vulnerable to a massive
correction which may permanently destroy demand, that is reduce the morale, the
motivation and ability of a population. The financial system is regarded by the government
not only as the mediator and (by the government also as) the motor of the economy.
Governments imagine that the financial industry is the key to the economy as a whole, and

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to put money (to put more credit into the credit industry) is to speed credit into every other
industry faster and wider. But there is no credit that is not simultaneously debt. This vast
debt ensures that money is attracted (even siphoned) out of the real economy into the
financial sector during the bubble and withheld from the economy by the financial sector
during the bust. But

We have been drawing value out of the main economy into the. We have been drawing
value. We have been radically re-defining value. We have defined it as solely short-term. We
have re-defined it from a combination of short-term with medium-and long-term, to short-
term and therefore not medium or long-terms. This re-definition is a function of our panic
about the very prospect of a long-term, of the time when we stop work and there is nothing
– or more precisely no one – between us and death. There are no children and family
around us. there is no medium-term, because we dissolved the family (as we both went
back to work, putting the children into day care) and there is certainly no long-term, since
by having a smaller than replacement number of children, we have ensured that the
population – that there are not enough people to remember us – not only to care for us, but
in any way to care about us. we have made a future generation which will not only be
smaller, more burdened but which will not have even as much motivation as ourselves and
which will not know how to care – about us, or about the small number of their own
offspring.

Money is a chronic short-termism. It is a short-termism that does not always serve the long-
term, but which sometimes become an obstacle to the long-term. It is for us to ask one
another whether our earnings – whether our own individual salaries or company dividends
and share-price – are transparent to a long-term. Or is the way we take our profits now
going to make it very difficult for us or our successors to make profits in the future. Are we
consuming like there is no tomorrow and so ensuring that there will be very little tomorrow.
Once again, this is an entirely economic question.

We have to put ‘values’-talk into economic terms. We can do so by talking about social
capital. Social capital is two things. It is fixed capital, which is the country’s infrastructure,
and it is the source and engine of our motivation, from which comes the initiative and
enterprise. Infrastructure is not only a transport network but also the national legal system
which encourages contracts and compliance. We do not only depend on the intangible
assets of our firm – by which we mean the character of the people who work here, but we
have to ask about the people that this firm is able to recruit in the future. Then we have to
ask whether there will be enough people out in the economy as a whole who both want to
buy our services and are in a position to do so. We have to ask about the motivation of the
economy because they are our future customers. Have we been ensuring that the supply of
customers who want our product and can afford it will continue? This firm needs a future
supply of customers with a certain sets of desires and motivation that translate them into
real demand. A supply of desire and motivation is what a culture is. This firm needs the
continuity of this culture to ensure a supply of customers. Now we have to ask this
question: have we been undermining the production and supply of our own future
customers?

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Motivation comes from some medium and long-term considerations. The future calls us to
bring it into existence. It gives us an incentive to go to work and so to accumulate the pieces
that will come together to be this future. The future is the source and motor of our
motivation. The more you cut out medium and long-term, the less motivation you will be
left with.

It is not a coincidence, you can suggest, that Europe, the continent infused with Christian
witness over many centuries, is also, which had the energy to investigate the rest of the
world, to be moved by scientific curiosity.

Those ‘other religions’ tend to come from other societies, where the civil society and
infrastructure are much poorer than here – which is why they are here. They may be more
appreciative than the rest of us of the failures of civil society and of the institutions and
infrastructure of public services. Since they do not take them for granted as we do who
were born here, they are not so impatient about such failures and are not so oriented to
change, but instead hope that our public circumstances do not suffer any deterioration.
They are more conservative than the majority of us, because they just hope that things will
stay as they are, believing that this will enable them to make the most of themselves
individually.

The first culture is the culture of public real. It is secular, which means that we do not notice
the religious affiliation of anyone before we do business with them or supply them with any
public service.

We are not brought together by our ‘beliefs’, or religions, but because we are people who
live together in one country. Britain is what we have in common. We seek the good of the
city, and of the society, as the prophet Jeremiah tells us. Our interest is to see this nation
continue as a functioning economic entity. It is no one’s wish that such large numbers of
people fall into such poverty that they can never aspire to be our customers. The point we
share is simply how may this country continue as it is? How may it continue to be a place of
opportunity for you and for me? When talented people have fewer opportunities, and this
becomes a more difficult place in which to do business. Never mind trying to make it a
better place. Let us be content with how it is and be aware of the possibility that things may
deteriorate as easily as improve, and state-led attempts to improve the economy can push it
into an even weaker position.

We can agree on this basic common ground, which we can call openness or secularity, with
all sorts of people. They don't have to be religious, and if they are, they are not just
Christians but Jews and Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. But they may be of minority religions
like Mormons or even fictional ones like Jedi Knights. But secularity does not mean that we
must assume that all religions are the same, that they are all latently coercive and must be
kept under control in the public realm.

Christians have dual nationality. They really do seek the good of British society, if this is
where they live, and they say that it is their citizen of the communion of God that enables
them to be good citizens of Britain, or whichever other country they live in. Christianity
shapes us to be good citizens, and does so by not taking any citizenship for granted. This

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account of the dual citizenship of Christians was articulated by Saint Augustine. So we have
reached an intermediate answer to the question of how to start talking about economics
and Christianity. We don't have to concoct a set of ‘values’ because we share a place in an
actual economy and actual political settlement.