This Is Our City

Paul: "How much of poverty could be eliminated by putting values first in the myriads of purchases we each make?" Almost none. You need to read the history of foreign aid. It has been almost a total waste. How much less wold "mindful purchasing" accomplish. The only thing that has lifted people out of poverty in the past century has been the adoption of free markets, especially in China and India where over 500 million have been lifted from starvation to relative wealth in a generation. The World Bank reports that China and India have cut world poverty in half through freer markets.

Yes, the Torah mandates wealth redistribution, but Jubilee wasn't part of it. But as Jewish historians have noted, the poor laws were considered moral laws and they left the enforcement of them up to God. The courts did not enforce the poor laws, so no one can argue that forced redistribution through power of the state is Biblical. As I wrote, Israel had no state until it rebelled against God and chose a king. So there was no one to enforce the poor laws and force redistribution of wealth. Giving to the poor was always a test of the giver's love for God and was always voluntary. God has always hated compulsory giving.

Yes, Jubilee was a negation of debt, as I wrote. It was a mortgage burning. The debt that Jubilee dismissed wasn't just written off, as our modern bankruptcy does. The selling of the land and the slavery paid the debts. Jubilee recognized that payment. Of course, few would loan to the poor more than could be paid by the slavery or harvests from the land they would receive until Jubilee. That's why the Bible tells the Israelis how to prorate the value of the land by the number of harvests left until Jubilee. To dismiss the Jewish authors of the article in the Oxford Manual without even reading it only advertises you lack of interest in the truth.

Paul, your understanding of Jubilee is superficial and violates one of the prime principles of hermeneutics, which is to interpret scripture in light of the culture and historical setting. The Torah is the most free market, capitalist document in the history of mankind. There are no price controls, no regulation of business beyond enforcing laws against theft and fraud, which all free marketeers have insisted on. There was no state, no executive branch, no legislative branch, no standing army and no police. Only courts existed, and according to Jewish historians the courts did not concern themselves with religious law or moral law, but only the civil law. The original Israeli government was a libertarians dream!

Paul, yes the Popes have all endorsed the market socialism of Western Europe and the US. They opposed atheistic communism, but had no problem with socialism implemented through democracy. Of course, no free marketeer from Adam Smith on has endorse the kind of capitalism the Popes describe. Capitalism has always and everywhere required the state to do its job of protecting life, liberty and property. The "capitalism" the Popes understood only existed in the dishonest minds of socialists.