Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries tagged as greed

Entries tagged as greed

Hearts and Minds of the Governed

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

If a handful of friends and I were able to bang our heads against the wall for years by speaking the truth about Communist totalitarianism while surrounded by an ocean of apathy, there is no reason why I shouldn’t go on banging my head against the wall by speaking ad nauseam, despite the condescending smiles, about responsibility and morality in the face of our present social marasmus. There is no reason to think that this struggle is a lost cause. The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle. -- Václav Havel

The above quote is from “Politics, Morality & Civility,” an essay by Czech playwright and former President Václav Havel, published in his 1992 book Summer Meditations. The book was written soon after the former dissident took office following the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia.

Doing some post-election reading, I came across the quote in an article by Al Sikes titled “Overwhelmed by Culture” on the Trinity Forum site. Sikes, whose career has spanned law, business, and government, currently divides his time between business consulting for the Hearst Corporation and board work. He also chairs the Board of Trustees of The Trinity Forum.

Although “Overwhelmed by Culture” is on the surface about the financial crisis, it really goes much deeper than that. Sikes observes that “the culture has overwhelmed its purported masters; the culmination of systemic wrong-headedness has miniaturized much of the leader class.” He reminds us that the Founders were most concerned about the “overwhelming importance” of the young nation’s moral condition, which is the basis for economic and political decision-making. Sikes:

Today’s crisis is said to be about money (too little liquidity); I believe it is about character. Putting people at profound risk as a tool of either public or private greed is morally wrong. Sure, each time a loan is made to an aspiring homeowner or entrepreneur, for example, there is risk, but the risk of highly leveraged purchases of exotic securities is of a different order. And the risk of under-funding pension and health-care promises (yes—promises, not mere programs) is of a different and, I would suggest, more profound order.

In a Darwinian world such conduct is simply in the order of things. After all, there are thousands who now live in lavish comfort as a result of their predation. They are survivors. But those who deal derisively or dismissively with faith and its foundations should pause; this crisis offers a learning moment.

We are on the eve of an election. It is often said that this election will be the most important one in at least a generation. Perhaps. I have no trouble finding admirable traits in both candidates for President, and I am hopeful because that is my temperament. But in parallel, I am convinced that the most important need is not on Pennsylvania Avenue but in the hearts and minds of the governed.

Read the rest of “Overwhelmed by Culture.”

Posted by John Couretas in News and Events at 15:54 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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al sikes, character, culture, financial crisis, greed, politics, trinity forum, václav havel

Pope Bendedict Warns France on Money, Power and Greed

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Pope Benedict’s visit to secular France and its reformist President Sarkozy has proved to be successful above all expectations, as reported by Vatican newspaper L’Osseservatore Romano. During his Paris homily, at the Esplanade des Invalides, the Holy Father encouraged the 250,000 faithful in attendance to turn to God and to reject false idols, such as money, thirst for material possessions and power.

In his homily the Pope referred to the teachings of Saint Paul to the early Christian communities in which the Apostle warned the ancients of idolatry and greed. The Pope explained how modern society has created its own idols just as the pagans had done in antiquity.

The Pope emphasized that these idols represent a “delusion” that distracts man from reality, that is, from his “true destiny” and “places him in a kingdom of mere appearances” as quoted in Zenit’s article. Benedict underlined that the Church’s condemnation of such idolatry is not, however, a condemnation of the individuals per se, but more so of the evil temptations themselves.

“In our judgments, we must never confuse the sin, which is unacceptable, with the sinner, the state of whose conscience we cannot judge and who, in any case, is always capable of conversion and forgiveness,” he said.

The Pope recognized that the path to God is not always easy, but through the Eucharist, he said, man understands that God “teaches us to shun idols, the illusions of our minds” and that “Christ is the sole and the true Saviour, the only one who points out to man the path to God.”

This does not mean that the Benedict condemns business, trade, all the positive economic phenomenon that allow for wealth and prosperity. But concerned for France’s extreme tendencies toward materialistic relativism, the Pope rightly pointed out how France cannot marginalize itself from religion.

Benedict’s sermon strongly underlined how every believer in the light of God should pursue his own vocation, which may include business or particular talent God has instilled in him.

Had it not been so, I doubt that secular and business orientated President Sarkozy would have ignored State protocol and met the religious leader on his arrival at the airport. The French President was eager to promote “a new dialogue” with the Church and to talk about the need of a “positive laicity” in Europe and its expanding economic unity.

Posted by Paola Fantini in Vatican at 09:15 | Comment (1) | Trackback

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france, greed, money, nicolas sarkozy, pope benedict xvi, power, roman catholic church

George Hearst of Deadwood: 'The-boy-the-earth-talks-to'

Thursday, November 15, 2007

In a bit of an addendum to my review of the HBO series Deadwood in the current issue of Religion & Liberty, “A Law Beyond Law: Life Together in Deadwood,” I couldn’t help thinking of this bit from Clement of Alexandria when describing George Hearst, the über-robber baron of the Old West.

In that piece I write, “Hearst fancies that he is doing his fellow man a service in his devotion to mining gold, to acquiring ‘the color.’” There’s a patina of “other-directedness” in Hearst’s self-understanding. Indeed, Hearst’s influence isn’t entirely without its merits, but at bottom his explanation of his task seems more like self-rationalization to cover for a deep-seated greed than the righteous employment of a man divinely called.

Aunt Lou, who is Hearst’s cook describes him thusly: “George Hearst, he do love his nose in a hole more and ass in the air and back legs kickin’ out little lumps of gold like a badger.”

Clement of Alexandria describes that same human condition with a bit more theological insight: “But he who carries his riches in his soul, and instead of God’s Spirit bears in his heart gold or land, and is always acquiring possessions without end, and is perpetually on the outlook for more, bending downwards and fettered in the toils of the world, being earth and destined to depart to earth,—whence can he be able to desire and to mind the kingdom of heaven,—a man who carries not a heart, but land or metal, who must perforce be found in the midst of the objects he has chosen? For where the mind of man is, there is also his treasure.”

George Hearst: ‘The-boy-the-earth-talks-to’

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Bible and Theology at 09:14 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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bible and theology, deadwood, gold, greed, hbo

The Cause and Cure of Poverty

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

What causes poverty? The question presently plagues many serious Christian thinkers and leaders. The answers vary but the proposed solutions are the stuff of our political campaigns every four years. We can already hear the discussion from the various candidates for the presidency in 2008, both Republican and Democrat. One candidate, John Edwards, actually wants to make poverty a major issue in the next election, maybe as important as the Iraq War. He openly presents his version of a solution and thus makes it a major part of his stump speech these days.

Many Christians, who think about these kinds of questions, will argue that poverty can not be solved in a free-market context. They believe the problem is economic since capitalism is fundamentally rooted in greed. The idea here is quite simple. The rich have all the wealth, they are the ones who create the products, make the money and drive the markets. The poor suffer all the more when this happens. Because capitalism has this perceived inherent flaw it will always, or at least ultimately, foster huge inequities in income and create greater poverty. These inequities will actually increase grinding poverty for millions of people, making things even worse for more poor people as the wealthy class grows. Since the percentage of monetary growth in the present economy shows the rich are getting richer and the poor and middleclass are gaining ground by a much smaller percentage this seems to favor these kinds of arguments against capitalism. (I will not get into this issue in this article, but there are different answers to this question that are both appropriate and sound.)

In 1981 author and political advisor, George Gilder, wrote a huge best-seller, Wealth & Poverty. This popular book influenced a new generation. It did so by challenging the “greed thesis” at its core. I have always admired George Gilder. I realized back in the 1980s that it was his thinking that powerfully influenced the Reagan administration to adopt what became known as Reaganomics, a much maligned and oft-debated theory of wealth, poverty and economics.

(Continue reading the rest of the article at the ACT 3 website...)

John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at “encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening.”

Posted by John H. Armstrong in Effective Compassion at 11:03 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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capitalism, George Gilder, greed, poverty

2006 in Review, 3rd Quarter

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Our series on the year in review continues with the third fourth of 2006:

July

“Isn’t the Cold War Over?” David Michael Phelps

I’ve got an idea for a new sitcom. Titled, Hugo and Vladi, it details the zany adventures of two world leaders, one of whom (played by David Hyde Pierce) struggles to upkeep his image of a friendly, modern European diplomat while his goofball brother-in-law (played by George Lopez) keeps screwing it up for him by spouting off vitriolic Soviet rhetoric and threatening all of Western civilization with his agressive (but loveable) arms sales and seizures of private oil companies....

August

“Wealth, Envy, and Happiness,” Jordan J. Ballor

This natural tendency to compare our financial status to others is an expression of money envy, which also finds expression, at least in part, in the concern about income disparities....

September

“DDT Breakthrough at the WHO,” John Couretas

Africans are hailing a major shift in policy at the World Health Organization: A recommendation for the limited, indoor use of DDT to control malaria....

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in News and Events at 07:23 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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2006, ddt, envy, greed, hugo chavez, malaria, money, vladimir putin, wealth, world health organization, year in review

Money for Nothing, or So it Seems

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

These kinds of stories make me sick, and they are all too common. In today’s Washington Post, a lengthy article examines the Livestock Compensation Program, which ran from 2002-2003, and cost over $1.2 billion.

In “No Drought Required For Federal Drought Aid,” Gilbert M. Gaul, Dan Morgan and Sarah Cohen report that over half of that money, “$635 million went to ranchers and dairy farmers in areas where there was moderate drought or none at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post. None of the ranchers were required to prove they suffered an actual loss. The government simply sent each of them a check based on the number of cattle they owned.”

Texas rancher Nico de Boer says, “The livestock program was a joke. We had no losses,” de Boer said. “I don’t know what Congress is thinking sometimes.” On the $40,000 he received, de Boer continues, “If there is money available, you might as well take it. You would be a fool not to.”

But the story doesn’t just stop there. The moral ambiguity of simply taking the money that is offered to you is eventually replaced by the incentives to actively seek out and campaign for more funds, effectively defrauding the government.

Under the original terms of the plan, “a rancher had to be in a county that was suffering from a drought and declared a disaster by the agriculture secretary in 2001 or 2002. More than 2,000 counties had such declarations at the time, including many with only modest dry spells.” But once the pork started flowing out of Washington, everyone wanted to get a spot at the trough.

Increasing pressure from lobbyists and special interests eventually made even the original flimsy requirements too onerous. Speaking of 2002, “There was pressure that year to grow emergency declarations for drought,” recalled Hunt Shipman, a former top USDA official who now works as a lobbyist in Washington.

The results? “Under Congress’s new version of the program in 2003, livestock owners could qualify as a result of any type of weather-related disaster declaration by the secretary of agriculture. Or they could become eligible if their county was included in a presidential disaster declaration. Under the new rules, the time period covered also was extended, to Feb. 20, 2003. One rule remained the same: Livestock owners still did not have to prove a loss.”

And under that new situation, “With the rules relaxed by Congress, federal agriculture officials pushed their local offices to find disasters that would make more livestock owners eligible, records and interviews show. It didn’t matter if it was a cold snap or a storm that was two years old.”

There’s not much else to say, I think, besides recognizing the truth that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10 NIV).

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 10:10 | Comment (1) | Trackback

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corruption, government, greed, subsidies