Veritas et Sapientia – Today’s Economics Are For Godless Mercantilists, Hamilton Was A Godless Mercantilist

Mandeville, LA – “Economic fallacy”? Mercantilists (even if they don’t call themselves that anymore) have always worked, often successfully, to convince the American people that their political and economic system which favors special interest groups instead benefits everybody. The “trickle down” theory of which we heard so much in the 1980s is an example. Do you know many persons who were reached by the trickle? Were you? The hard fact is that with inflation taken into account real wages for average Americans in most work categories have been static since 1972. Yet voters bought into “trickle down” and many still do. It sounds good. People want to believe it the same way many believe now that everybody goes to heaven regardless of whether they merited it when living. This is what Rothbard meant when he spoke of using economic fallacy — in other words, lies — to build up state power.

Readers may be surprised to see a Catholic commentator, myself, citing a libertarian. Catholics who know the Church’s historic social teaching understand that making wrong economics right so that the majority benefit depends on right politics, that right politics depend on having right morals, and the morals derive from the religion. I don’t want to get bogged down here discussing what is wrong with doctrinaire libertarianism, but too many of its acolytes pervert morals and ignore religion (think Ayn Rand) and they all give primacy to economics over politics.

That doesn’t mean they are wrong in their economics, or not entirely. Some degree of regulation is needed if only to enforce contracts and punish fraud in commerce, trade and banking. However, libertarians are correct to see true capitalism as a system of free, voluntary exchange, one in which capital finances investment projects of likely real benefit to consumers, not a system based on government, business and banking cronies scratching one another’s backs.

Christians would also hold, if libertarians would not, that private-sector enterprises should not be larger than ones that members of a family can run without a huge army of employees. Small is better than giant. This is where politics, the means by which the life of society is governed, come into the picture and should have primacy over economics. Politics should aim to keep things small, and this is where morals and the religion come into play if the politics are not to become intolerably coercive. Individuals must practice self-restraint, which is as necessary to the health of society as it is to the sanctification of individuals. Sanctification is of course necessary for our entry into heaven. If ordinary sinners, most of us, will require time in Purgatory to make it, it is harder for the man who devotes his life to seeking wealth instead of virtue — as hard, Our Lord says, as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” – Gary Potter, Our Wrong Economics

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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