February 11, 2023
Art Carden and I have completed a “Crappy First Draft” of a book we’re calling “Mere Economics.”
Tentative subtitle: “Lessons for and from the Ordinary Business of Life.”
Think C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” meets Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” and/or Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics.”
If we can communicate the consensus principles of economics, and why they matter, to a lay Christian audience we will have succeeded.
That audience is not always receptive to economics. Some Christians turn their noses up at studying material reality. There are two important responses to this objection. The first is that God created material reality and He endowed both the natural and social world with laws which are a reflection of His own perfect character. What’s more, economics is about far more than material reality. It involves human beings’ purposes and plans.
Here’s Percy Greaves on the question:
“Economics is sometimes thought of as a very dry and dismal subject dealing with dusty tomes of statistics about material goods and services. Economics is not a dry subject. It is not a dismal subject. It is not about statistics. It is about human life. It is about the ideas that motivate human beings. It is about how men act from birth until death. It is about the most important and interesting drama of all — human action.”
Other Christians suspect that economics is little more than ideological cover for special interests (”the rich,” “capitalists,” or “rich, white capitalists.”)
Probably most popular in our day is the belief, shared by Christians and non-Christians alike, that there is no science of economics at all. Economics denialism is always good for a few belly laughs among the right crowd.
Trigger warning: Art and I believe in economic law. We believe that demand curves slope downward to the right.
We think so, ultimately, because Scripture teaches an anthropology that provides a foundation for doing economics. For this reason, and many more, Christians needn’t fear the Dismal Science. Instead, we should let the Spanish Scholastics show us the way. Their motivation for writing the first economics treatises was to glorify the Creator. Clearly, they saw no conflict between serving an infinite, unlimited God and studying his finite, limited creatures. Neither do we.
Stay tuned! Updates here:
February 28, 2023 note: Yes, this means I’ve postponed the project on credible commitments, though I’d like to return to it after “Mere Economics” is complete. It goes to show you that you want your commitments to be flexible enough to take advantage of serendipitous opportunities which arise!
Edit 11/18/23: Here are a few slides from a presentation I gave to the Grove City College faculty on “Mere Economics.”
