A Swiftly Tilting Economics

Thursday, March 2, 2006
A Wit Exceeded Only By His Coiffure
I was waiting for the shuttle this morning when it struck me--an idea, I mean, not the shuttle. We talk a lot here at the Acton Institute about how economics needs morality and morality needs economics; or, as Fr. Sirico phrased it in his NRO salute to Ed Opitz, “Christianity qua Christianity [offers] no specific economic model any more than economics qua economics has any specific moral model to proffer—which is precisely why they both need each other.” I’ve thought of a powerful illustration of this idea--though I am sure I’m not the first to make the connection--and it has been sitting unassumingly on my bookshelf at home, an essay in almost every freshman literature textbook: Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. This work offers a very efficient, well-planned, and minutely-detailed cure for the hunger of the Irish: let them eat their young. And as I am sure most of our readers know well this work as a prime example of the power of satire, I think it also a great (and gruesome) primer to the idea of economics without the guiding hand of morality. Just a thought. Off to lunch.
This entry was posted by David Michael Phelps on Thursday, March 2, 2006 at 15:25. and is filed under General. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog. All new comments are subject to moderation before being displayed.
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