We're such inveterate free-marketeers here, folks ... dreadful news, I'm afraid.

[Joe Chi Minh]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jun/23/pope-caritas-capitalism-encyclical

[Captain Hilts]

1. The Vatican under JPII was a staunch critic of unbridled capitalism.

I'm glad to see that Cardinal Rat's take is similar.

Capitalism is a great system, but it needs boundaries. Moral boundaries.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. Well, I think that's oxymoronic. Morality must mean, at the very least,

a mixed economy, while the subordination and/or sacrifice of any and every other consideration, including morality, to the imperative for greater profit, is what we normally understand by "capitalism", isn't it? Am I wrong?

Didn't you notice this:

"In his distaste for Soviet attitudes John Paul II often seemed unwilling to criticise those who claimed leadership of "the free world", corrupt, dictatorial and inclined to terrorism against the developing world as it often was."

[Captain Hilts]

3. JPII was a fervent critic of the cruelties of capitalism, specifically citing

unemployment and a heartless labor market.

Adam Smith is quoted only from Wealth of Nations, but the book he wrote prior to that one - Theory of Moral Sentiments - was about the communal morality that reigns in the free market. His work was a reaction to the dog-eat-dog social Darwinism of Hobbes.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. You're quite wrong about Adam Smith. He warned against the chronic

recidivism of the businessman, stating that they lost no opportunity to conspire against the common good; that they needed to be very closely monitored and controlled, and (what you would consider) "taxed to the hilt" on their income.

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Second, he believed that workers deserve a living wage:
· "It is but equity ... that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerable well fed, clothed and lodged."

Third - and here's a real shocker - he believed that the wealthy should pay more in taxes:
"The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state."

Fourth, he believed in the necessity of public investments in infrastructure and public goods. He spoke of the duty of government to support "public institutions and those public works, which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain."

Very Socialist, indeed, though not quite to the Gospel level. The Hidden Hand he referred to would have been what we call "synergy", in the modern world. "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God."

It cannot have been the so-called "free market", in which businesssmen are given "carte blanche", since he warned against precisely that.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/23/4046

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. I don't understand this:

For their part, conservatives in Rome are still reeling from the fact that earlier the Vatican daily Osservatore Romano carried a big front page piece (with photo) of one Gordon Brown, setting out his ideas for a global response to the banking crisis.

So the Vatican daily thinks the guy who controlled the British financial system over the past 12 years is the guy with the answers to what went wrongly, notably in the British financial markets (eg Northern Rock, RBS, AIG), over the past 12 years or so?

Does this mean the Pope will have to fire the editor of the Osservatore Romano when he brings out the encyclical?

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. I think you've made a non-existent connection there. After Blair, Brown

would probably be the last person in Europe Benedict would have wanted to consult.

No, just Brown's talking about a global response to the banking crisis, anyone, for that matter, talking about it, would worry them, since their favourite paradigm would be, say, George Bush's. And any other suggestions would be bound, in some degree to, at least, change the redness of such ultra capitalism "in tooth and claw" to a pastel shade thereof. The more so, the more global.