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Robert_Sock
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Will the World to Come be Capitalistic, or does God have something far better planned?
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JamestheOlder
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Much better, we pray. “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard…”
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Nec5
Guest
I think it highly unlikely because capitalism is a system designed to set off folks’ inherent greed (self interest in academic speed) against each other in a free market. It works well because you have a great deal of evils canceling each other out, and I can think of no better alternatives. However, it is a flawed system because it is based on all of us flawed human beings and our own inherent sinfulness. I suspect in heaven we will be above these types of petty pursuits regarding materialism and pride.Will the World to Come be Capitalistic, or does God have something far better planned?
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Abu
Guest
In that case the great Catholic Late scholastics who developed free enterprise based on cause and effect, and Bl John Paul II who taught the support of free enterprise, and Pope Benedict XVI who affirms that support, must all be frightfully stupid and in error.Nec5
I think it highly unlikely because capitalism is a system designed to set off folks’ inherent greed (self interest in academic speed) against each other in a free market.
While the Sacred Scriptures condemn greed and wrong use of wealth, commerce or merchants are not condemned. St Augustine stated that price was not only of the seller’s costs but of the buyer’s desire for the item sold. The first examples of free enterprise appeared in the great Catholic monasteries, about the ninth century. (John Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages, St Martin’s Press1969, I; cf. op. cit (Stark) p xii, 55-58).
The fact is that Catholic philosophy and theology, based on reason and faith, enabled the birth of free enterprise. From the great monastic estates in the ninth century, immense increases in agricultural productivity grew from “such significant innovations as the switch to horses, the heavy moldboard plow, and the three-field system” away from subsistence agriculture to specialised crops and products, sold at a profit to initiate a cash economy. “As their incomes continued to mount, this led many monasteries to become banks, lending to the nobility.” The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p 58].
Randall Collins has noted that innovation and specialization in the monastic estates was “a version of the developed characteristics of capitalism itself… the dynamism of the medieval economy was primarily that of the Church.” [Randall Collins, *The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change, 1998, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p 47].
Free enterprise economic development started in the great Catholic monastic estates of the ninth century, and a solid basis of economic Catholic thought developed from the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century the Late Scholastics who were Thomists (followers of St Thomas) “writing and teaching at the University of Salamanca in Spain, sought to explain the full range of human action and social; organization.” They “observed the existence of economic law, inexorable forces of cause and effect that operate very much as other natural laws. Over the course of several generations, they discovered and explained the laws of supply and demand, the cause of inflation, the operation of foreign exchange rates, and the subjective nature of economic value…” For these reasons Joseph Schumpeter applauded them as the first real economists. (Thomas E Woods Jr, The Church And The Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 8).
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Ridgerunner
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I assume you mean after the resurrection of the body and a “new earth”, since spirits would have no material desires or ability to use material goods.
This is all speculative, of course, but I can’t see there being any “ism” at all in a renewed world, since, like Lewis’ “Perelandra”, every material good would be there in superfluous abundance and pleasing beyond measure. So, what would there be to trade? One of Lewis’ wonderous tree nuts or intoxicating bubbles? Well, they would be all over the place, so why would anyone bother? All economic “isms” presume scarce goods, but what if none were scarce?
And what if our bodies became like Jesus’ so we could, if we wanted, dive into the bowels of the earth to view with wonderous eyes the deposits of gold or diamonds or whatever, any time we wanted? Would we bother to bring any to the surface, and for what reason, since we would have an eternity to admire it in situ? Well, maybe we would fashion a ring of it, set with a “stone” from an ultra dense black hole’s core to give to someone just for fun. We would all be friends equally so we would likely give it to the first person we met on the surface, willy-nilly. But then, perhaps not to clutter, we would ultimately return the stuff to where it came from anyway. Having no limits to our energy, we wouldn’t mind doing it.
But in a certain sense, perhaps, we would be capitalistic, since our enlightened selves would be free to do what we wanted. But everything we did would automatically be just because we would no longer want to cause, or even risk, any harm by anything we did.
This is all speculative, of course, but I can’t see there being any “ism” at all in a renewed world, since, like Lewis’ “Perelandra”, every material good would be there in superfluous abundance and pleasing beyond measure. So, what would there be to trade? One of Lewis’ wonderous tree nuts or intoxicating bubbles? Well, they would be all over the place, so why would anyone bother? All economic “isms” presume scarce goods, but what if none were scarce?
And what if our bodies became like Jesus’ so we could, if we wanted, dive into the bowels of the earth to view with wonderous eyes the deposits of gold or diamonds or whatever, any time we wanted? Would we bother to bring any to the surface, and for what reason, since we would have an eternity to admire it in situ? Well, maybe we would fashion a ring of it, set with a “stone” from an ultra dense black hole’s core to give to someone just for fun. We would all be friends equally so we would likely give it to the first person we met on the surface, willy-nilly. But then, perhaps not to clutter, we would ultimately return the stuff to where it came from anyway. Having no limits to our energy, we wouldn’t mind doing it.
But in a certain sense, perhaps, we would be capitalistic, since our enlightened selves would be free to do what we wanted. But everything we did would automatically be just because we would no longer want to cause, or even risk, any harm by anything we did.
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Nate13
Guest
Say what you want about capitalism, but you cannot deny that the system spurs creativity and ingenuity more than any other economic system. All systems are inherently flawed because they depend on humans. I also believe that capitalism is good because it promotes personal responsibility. It is always easy to get people to move away from personal responsibility, but its insanely hard to get them to pick it back up again. If you don’t believe me go take a look at the problems in Greece.I think it highly unlikely because capitalism is a system designed to set off folks’ inherent greed (self interest in academic speed) against each other in a free market. It works well because you have a great deal of evils canceling each other out, and I can think of no better alternatives. However, it is a flawed system because it is based on all of us flawed human beings and our own inherent sinfulness. I suspect in heaven we will be above these types of petty pursuits regarding materialism and pride.
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Paddy1989
Guest
I hope one day that Distributism (based on Catholic social teaching) will take over fully from Capitalism which in my view is not much better than Communism
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