Hurray, the United States government just declared the Church is officially off the hook in regards to the care of the sick and infirm. Now all we need is some social action to clear out that pesky widows and orphans problem and we can get back to the real job of speculative theology and anathamatizing each other.

Of course, he was speaking in jest but I will say this plainly–regardless of what effect the bill has on medical bills, the Church worldwide needs to know that we are most definitely not off the hook on the matter of helping the poor.  It is and always has been a mission of the church and the growth of the welfare state gives us no excuse to turn away from those in need.

Many extreme things are being said on both sides of the aisle, so I thought I would try to, if not persuade any of you, at least give you a glimpse of what’s happening in the minds of folks like myself regarding this bill.  Many on the right have hurled about accusations of fascism, Nazism, and communism against the supporters of this bill.  Naturally, those supporters who support the bill out of a love for the poor and hurting see such accusations as ridiculous.  On the other hand, there are those on the left who are shocked that the Republicans and libertarians of this country are almost unanimously against this bill.  Do they hate the poor?  Do they deliberately wish to prolong suffering?

And so, as someone against this bill, I will explain what I think.  The goal is not so much to persuade any of you but to show that opposition to this bill is not simply grounded in hatred for the poor and opposition to the principles of Christianity.  Because there are a number of points I want to bring up, I’ll only address each one briefly.  If you want more information on any of them, feel free to ask.  So here are some of my objections to the bill:

1)  Abortion.  As someone who believes that human life exists in the womb, I am against abortion.  Let’s leave aside for a moment the difficult problem of pregnancies which threaten to an unusual extent the life of the mother, which I won’t argue one way or the other at present.  As opposed as I am to even the toleration of elective abortion, it is even worse in my mind if the federal government were to pass a health bill granting my forcibly taken tax dollars to pay for elective abortions.  There has been debate over whether this bill includes such funding, but what is most telling for me is that the bill was forced through without Stupak’s amendment to forbid abortion coverage.  Instead, the bill was sent through with the promise of an “executive order” by President Obama to stop money from being used on abortions.  However, the President does not have the power to use an executive order to stop funding, so the order is not worth the paper it’s printed on.  See here and here.

2)  Personal choice.  There are, in my mind, two general tendencies any government can follow.  It can provide a minimum framework of law and order, and then allow individials to make choices about their own personal lives.  Or it can set about with the goal of planning out people’s lives for them, with the government given the power to make people make choices that the government thinks is right.  This bill, which severely limits the choice of the individual as to whether to get insurance and what kind to get, is a clearly coercive action by a government which thinks it can decide what is best for people–an action which is contrary to the principle of liberty which is the foundation for all prosperous societies.

3)  Socialism.  This bill is socialist in that it gives the central government the power to the healthcare industry–to regulate prices, what sort of health products are sold, who gets healthcare, how much healthcare they get, what treatments they get, etc.  It forces doctors and insurance companies to form policies not by competing to provide the best value to paying customers, but instead to try to keep up with a myriad of regulations imposed by the existing overgrown bureaucracy and 159 new agencies created by this bill.  To my mind it is about as sensible to say that this will result in better healthcare as it would be to say that North Korea’s Kim Jung Il has hatched a communist utopia in his nation.

4) Spending.  The United States government spending is currently equal to just under 50% of the nation’s total domestic product.  Amazingly, this massive spending by government, including incredible amounts of wealth redistribution, has not removed poverty from the U.S.  And yet rather than say that government spending is creating problems, our nation repeatedly resorts to simply spending and borrowing more each year to try even larger projects.  This new healthcare bill already requires a tax hike of 400 billion over the next decade to help pay for it, and that’s just the beginning, even according to our federal government’s ridiculously optimistic estimates.

5)  The national debt.  This point is of course closely related to the previous one.  We have a national debt greater than $12,600,000,000,000.00, (12.6 trillion dollars), we are borrowing about $1.5 trillion ($1,500,000,000,000.00) annually at our present rate of spending, and we spend 18.2% of our national income just keeping up with our interest payments.  Our interest payments will grab more and more of our federal revenues as we continue to increase our debt and as interest rates on our debt go up as the world begins to distrust our ability to pay back money.  If you doubt that the world would mistrust our ability to pay the debt, know that it is no coincidence that on the same day our already-broke government passed this massive socialist bill, it was announced that the market now finds more security in loaning to an individual (Warren Buffet) than to the U.S. Federal Government, and that we are in the process of losing our stellar national credit score.

So there it is, my friends.  Whether you agree with me or not, I hope I’ve made clear that the reason me and others like me oppose the stimilus bill is because of our concern for our nation’s stability and well-being, and not because we want the poor to suffer.

And what exactly are ’socialist motives’? You mean live feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and having all things common in a community so that everyone is equal?

Now, Joel did not say this directly, but what he is implying in this statement is that socialism or communism is the practice of the early Church as described in the Bible–that the feeding of the hungry, the healing of the sick, and the sharing described in the book of Acts are all socialist practices, opposed to the workings of the free market and private property rights.

Now, you may know if you’ve read much here that I am very much an advocate of free markets.  But I want to, at the outset, make clear the fact that I am pro-feeding the hungry, pro-healing the sick, and pro-sharing of resources.  But all this does not make me a socialist.  Socialism as the word is used today refers to the use of governmental powers to force people to share resources.  And it is this that I object to.

So let’s skip straight to Acts and see if the passage Joel is referring to actually has any relation to socialism.

And all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and distributed them to all men, as every man had need.  And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, ate their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people.  (Acts 2:44-47.)

At first glance, this description might look like socialism.  But a knowledge of early Church history will reveal at least one crucial difference:  no governmental enforcement.  Indeed, the sharing of resources voluntarily is entirely consistent with free-market economics.  The Church, in the book of Acts, was an institution of those who chose to join it, regulated according to voluntary decisions and completely separate from the actions of the state.

Nor was cooperation with the sharing of the early Church in any way coerced.  The story of Ananias and Sapphira makes this utterly clear.  Rather than retell the whole story, here’s just six verses (Acts 5:1-6):

But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possesion, and kept back part of the price (his wife also was in on this) and brought part of the proceeds and laid it at the apostles’ feet.  But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the proceeds from the land?  While it remained, it was yours, wasn’t it?  And after the sale, was it not still under your control?  Why have you conceived this thing in your heart?  You have lied not to men, but to God.  And as Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last.  And great fear came upon all who heard these things.  And the young men got up, wrapped him in cloth, carried him out, and buried him.

Notice that Peter was upset over the fact that Ananias lied.  You have lied not to men, but to God, says Peter.  And it’s not as though you had to do this to protect your stuff.  It was your land, for Pete’s sake.  And even after you sold it, you were free to do whatever you wanted with it.  So why lie about it?  Why pretend you’re giving more than you are?  You’re lying about your personal choice is unnacceptable.  And for this Ananias died.

And so despite the widespread sharing going on in the Church, even such a leader of distribution as Peter himself implicitly recognized the validity of personal property.  Even though people were being given what they needed, Joel is wrong about the reason.  His comment asserts that this distribution is being done “so that everyone is equal.”  The distribution was being done to relieve genuine need, not to make everyone equal.

Indeed, Paul later spells out in more detail policy on distribution to widows, revealing that he has a strict notion of who should and who should not receive from the common purse.  His policies outline the fact that as Paul saw it, the norm was to produce one’s own sustenance, with only exceptional cases granted monies outside of what they produced (1 Timothy 5):

Don’t let a widow be enrolled if she is under sixty years old, having been the wife of one man, with a good reputation for good words;  if she has brought up children, if she has taken in stranger, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has given relief to the affliction, if she has diligently followed every good work.  But refuse the younger widows . . .

Monetary redistribution for Paul is something exceptional;  not a means to creating a world of forced equality as some would imagine.  And remember how the early Church in Jerusalem was conducting a utopian common-purse system?  To see how that turned we can find a hint in Romans 15:25-26

But now I’m going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints.  For it has pleased those from Mecedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints who are at Jerusalem.

For some reason or another, the total sharing movement of Jerusalem failed to provide any sort of long-term relief for the poor believers.  This is to be expected, however, because any system that relies on the continued selling off of property cannot provide stability.

And so in conclusion, the record of the New Testament is this:  there did exist, for a while, an incredible level of sharing of resources in Jerusalem about 30 A.D.  This project, for reasons we are not given, failed in the end, leaving the Jerusalem church impoverished and in need of outside assistance by sometime between 50 and 60 A.D.  Even amidst the massive sharing experiment of the early Jerusalem Church, Peter still recognized the validity of personal control of property.  And after the collapse of the sharing experiment, Paul’s letters leave for us a set of instructions confirming that his intent was for the mass of believers to be personally responsible for their own expenses, with only a very small minority being the recipients of the Church’s common property.

And so it looks to me like the New Testament record is fully compatible with a free market system, and there exists no demand anywhere in the New Testament for the abolition of the free market or personal property rights.  On the contrary, property is repeatedly upheld in the Bible.

Here’s the government conclusion.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying, but here’s what I see when I look at the situation:

A highly socialist agency (ACORN) which receives millions of dollars in Federal government funding taken away from taxpayers has established offices where it provides help in dealing with financial paperwork.  Two people, believing the organization to be corrupt, disguised themselves as a pimp and a prostitute, and came in asking for financial help in concealing  this so that they could get assistance in moving their business into a new area.  They also revealed that they were planning to move a bunch of 13 to 15-year-old prostitutes into the house they wanted to buy with ACORN assistance.  And the ACORN employees thought that was fine and gave them all manner of advice on how to fraudulently hide their money.

ACORN was not expecting to see those tapes released on air.  There wound up being a government investigation.  And the government has decided that there was “no criminality” on the part of the employees.

And that’s when you know something’s horribly wrong with the government.

The saga of Amy Bishop, for those of y0u who may not have heard about it, is a peculiar tale.  Evidently, this Professor Bishop was not selected for tenure, and as a result killed three of her employees.

Now, there is no one to blame except Dr. Bishop for her actions.  And the authorities have taken her out of society, as is right.  But her case, tragic as it is, allows us to take a look at the economic structures of teaching.

All services are provided on the basis of exchange.  In this case, the service being provided is teaching.  The student wants to learn, and educators want to make a living by teaching students.  And so what happens, as in every other sort of business, is that money is exchanged.  The student pays the teacher.

Now, with the exception of private tutors, the student usually does not pay the teacher directly.  Institutions known as schools exist which act as a go-between for the students and teachers, collecting money and organizing the entire process of exchange.

In the open market for teaching, quality is assured by the competitive nature of the industry.  Students seek out the best teachers, and only want to spend their money paying for the best teaching they can buy.  For this reason, teachers who are better at providing the teaching being sought are able to charge more, and teachers not quite as good must charge less.  And teachers who are altogether bad must leave the business because their reputation will cause students to quit taking their courses.  Even in schools where students do not pay teachers directly this principle must generally hold true, because a school which is unable to provide quality teachers at a competitive price must go out of business.

All is well.  And then the government steps in to provide education.  Note that this post is not primarily aimed at arguing against government involvement in colleges, but mostly aimed at looking closely at some of the practices in government education and how they affect quality of teaching.

So the government begins providing schools, and now institutions are running more or less independently of the profit motive.  Initially, this may seem to be a good thing.  Freed from profit motive, teachers are now able to concentrate on teaching well instead of trying to please their payers.

But with the profit motive removed, there suddenly exists a disconnect between teaching quality and profit, because government institutions are not profit-based.  Now, all sorts of devices are used to try to produce quality teaching in the absence of direct accountability to consumers for profits.  One of these is tenure, which is designed to allow instructors who have a good track record to feel secure in their jobs.

The tenure process is based on a vote by one’s fellow-professors, and basically makes one impossible to fire without a vote by pretty much all of one’s fellow-profs.  What this means is that, in many cases, a sort of ensured position can be gained based on one’s past track record and ability to maintain allegiances with fellow professors, rather than on one’s ability to draw paying students.

The tenure system then becomes a Mecca, not only for genuine excellent teachers who want job security (and who doesn’t want job security?), but also for comparatively lazy people who don’t want to be subject to the constraints of the real world.

Amy Bishop was one such person.  She was a Harvard student, so it’s a safe bet she was intelligent.  But she had an extreme lack of the social skills necessary for a teacher.

Three times her students passed around petitions to get her fired, because her teaching style consisted of reading from the text book and constantly avoiding eye contact.  She was also had a nasty sarcasm.  Once, in a restaurant, she was enraged to find out that the last booster seat had just been given away to the customer, and then demanded the booster seat, viciously punching her the unsuspecting customer in the head while shouting “I am Doctor Amy Bishop.”  In 1986 she shot her brother and forced someone to drive her away at gunpoint.

Nevertheless, the Federal Government considered this woman fit to teach.  Now, I could be wrong on this, but I’d be willing to bet that a private institution would have considered a woman like her a financial risk they would be unwilling to take on.  After all, if they wanted someone to simply read a textbook, they would hire someone cheaper, like a college student.

I could have taught a class by reading the textbook.  I could teach any subject that way, for only a fraction of what a professor would demand.  Her services wouldn’t command more than $14.00 per hour at most on the free market.  I’d do her work for $10.  And I’d throw in eye contact and some explanations from time to time for free.

The only reason she managed to stay a professor that long was because public educators are not subject to the full purifying force of the market.

Say anything you like against the capitalistic free market, but it is socialistic education that kept this psychotic woman in a position to abuse her title in restaurants, subject countless poor chem students to an expensive class that did them no more good than buying a textbook would, and ultimately kill three of her colleagues when she wasn’t granted even greater institutional power.

I think she instinctively knew what she owed to socialistic thinking.  Maybe that’s why she was a socialist.

Yesterday, I commented on Venezuela’s recent currency devaluation.  Now, the Mises Blog has chimed in.  Basically, the results have followed what happens whenever the government induces rapid overnight inflation:  people are abandoning currency because they don’t trust it anymore.  So they’re all heading out to stores and trying to buy up everything they can so that they don’t get stuck with bolivares.  Of course, when the people who have the most cash are buying up everything they can, the people who have less money and are really in need now face less available goods.  Now, in a normally functioning economy, this would mean that the poor would be hit harder by rising prices.  But the Venezuelan government, supposedly in the interests of helping the poor, is working to artificially force prices to stay low.  Now, a lower price for essential things like food would, in theory, make life easier for the poor.  But reality doesn’t follow simplistic theory.  In reality, the result of forcing down prices in the face of shortages is that people can just keep buying and buying till the artificially cheapened goods completely run out.  And then the government policy to lower prices leaves the poor with nothing, instead of just less as they would have in a free market.  So now who will rescue the poor of Venezuela.  Naturally, the government!  The government will simply take some of the loads of money they just sucked out of the Venezuelan economy and use it to buy supplies for the hungry.  And it makes the government look heroic just in time for the election.

Because all this is done by manipulation of the market rather than simple seizure of goods, the average voter may never know that they are being given to by the same hand that took away what little they had.  And so the government, for disrupting trade, comes out looking heroic.

Twisted, huh?