PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S INNUMERABLE SINS?

You sound angry.😉

I see no hypocrisy in accepting the benefits that you pay into. The hypocrisy is in not only accepting them, but indeed depending upon them, and then biting the hand that feeds you.

Look at Kansas. They tried to build your Ayn Rand Utopia. Even Republicans admit that Brownback’s little experiment failed, and that farm states depend on good roads and schools, perhaps more than other states.

“Here is an example. I say redistributing the wealth is stealing. Do we debate the moral validity of redistributing the wealth? Nope!”

I’ve never objected to debating this. I just object to the way you frame the issue because it does not reflect legal or economic reality, much less any Christian morality that I know of. On numerous occasions I’ve tried to critically parse out each word, and you just demure with angry emotion.

“Redistribution”. The whole concept of capitalistic economics is that wealth is constantly created, distributed, and redistributed (fairly or not). Through property law, contract law and corporate governance laws, government forms the playing field, the rules and the umpires for that creation, distribution and redistribution of wealth. Markets and government work synchronistically to imperfectly determine fairness (or not) of distribution. Take one piece out and the whole institutional systemic collapses. I’ve spent much of my graduate and post graduate doctoral life studying how this works. I can elaborate exhaustively, if you really want. But I think that I already have many times, haven’t I?

“Wealth”. From a Christian point of view, everything belongs to God and we are just temporary stewards in a material world of what rightfully belongs to the Master. Again, however, the laws of men decide who practically owns God’s property (legally, the bundle of rights and responsibilities to use and exclude from use certain tangible and intangible real and personal property). The Christian righteousness (or morality) of wealth is based on stewardship for God’s purposes, not ours, if you just read the Bible.

“Stealing”, Doug has pointed this out as well, is a legal construct that has to do with how we define property at law. Biblically, the sin of “theft” is when we fail to love as God mandated. Again the Bible is quite clear on this. You have to practice a form of pharisaic rationalization not to see it.

When you say “redistribution of wealth is stealing”, you are only parroting meaningless jingoistic right speak, not a thing based on Christian moral, economic or legal reality. You can’t even realistically define the terms of your outlandish grievance. You just keep repeating it over and over again like a mantra to some weird angry god you wish to worship.

Tom,

“Property”, “redistribution”, and “theft” are words with distinct and separate legal (made made) and moral (God made) implications that are so interconnected that it is easy to confuse the two, and that is what you are doing.

Take a patent right. When you apply for and receive a patent on something, at law (man made) the GOVERNMENT is granting you a limited monopoly (rights and responsibilities) to use and exclude others from use of certain government defined intangible intellectual property. In so doing, the government redistributes property (an idea) that actually belongs to God because God created all ideas and people just discover what God already invented.

Do the government created patent rights and responsibilities reflect God’s intention of good stewardship of His property? If the government monopoly is excessively broad or long in duration, perhaps it is an unfair distribution of God’s property. Is it a theft then? From a man made legal perspective, if government defines the property right and its redistribution, it cannot by definition at law be a theft. It just can’t.

If that is too confusing, then look at legal riparian rights. In the West, water was more scarce so state governments favored those who first put the water resource to good productive use, say watering cows or crops on their land. That means that if someone moves in upstream from the first developer of the water resource and that property owner downstream has already put all of the water resource to productive use, then at law that person does not actually own the water in the stream or feeder streams or even the rain that falls on his land. At law, government redistributed God’s water to the first steward of that water.

Are the government created riparian rights and responsibilities redistribution a theft at law from the person upstream? No. Is it perhaps bad stewardship of God’s water? It’s debatable, and that’s the problem because the moral justice of that question is a difficult weighing of what is the most loving thing to do on both a personal and a grand societal scale. By first developing the water resources, the first land owner assumed the risk and produced essential goods to feed the whole community. In a big picture sense, is it loving then to take away the water he relies on and destroy what he invested in in contribution to us all?

Is the legal and moral situation static? Of course not – it is constantly changing, not just economically, technologically, but because the world situation is in constant change and flux. If massive rain starts to fall in the West and turns the land into a Rain Forrest, aren’t both the legal and moral issues subject to revision?

There is no easy moral answers to these complex moral questions of how GOVERNMENT defines and distributes property rights and responsibilities, but the government role is practically inseparable from how we balance those moral questions, and you are pretending that isn’t. This makes no sense legally or biblically.

“God invented the moral law, and we just discover the best ways to enforce the moral law. When we just make up our our own law because we think things ought to work the way we want them to work, we make a mess.”

Tom,

I agree that God’s Law is the foundation for morality. However, man, specifically a government, actually imperfectly creates property law by that government’s defining, arbitrating and enforcing property rights and responsibilities. In so far as this man made law comports better with God’s morality, then property law will be more just, but in a finite and fallen world, that justice will always by aspirational rather than perfected.

Jesus summed up the basis for God’s morality in these statements from Mathew 22:

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

In so far as man made law, including property law, most closely comports with this God mandated standard, it will be more just. The problem is the assumption that there is always a right and a wrong way to do this. Why is it so difficult to match God’s Will perfectly with man made law?

1. Complexity. Made made law in a modern state is situational to the facts, and the number of possible fact variations in any given area of the law is almost infinite. The law seeks to build therefore on a long history of legislation and juris prudence to apply and adapt that controlling law to each new set of facts in each new situation in an almost endless number of possible variables. In so doing, the law also seeks to apply the latest knowledge in equally complex fields like sociology, psychology, science and economics. Patent law is just one complex example of this complexity.
2. Ambiguity. No matter how much we think we know, no matter how fast we learn and predict, there is infinite more that we are blind to. God also created this universe with a random quality where the coin can land either way. This makes even those best made plans of mice and men fraught with unintended negative consequences to be constantly contended wit, and the law must constantly be reformed and adapted.
3. Dynamism. We and the universe are in a constant state of flux, and because of leaps in science and technology, change is happening faster rather than slower.
Furthermore, as soon as we pull at one string the whole web of the law changes.
4. Imperfection. In a finite and fallen world full of near endless dilemmas of competing and conflicting rights and responsibilities, there are very often simply no perfectly right solutions. More often property law is simply trying to balance competing equities for the least imperfect answer.
5. Sin. This is related to all of the above. The source of every other virtue is love, but the loving choice is not always clear. Virtue often precariously lives between competing vices. The most courageous action lies between foolhardy folly and cowardly fleeing. The most prudent action lies between the impulsive spendthrift and the uncharitable miser. And each situation is different. People’s self interest often is not enlighten. Coercion may be necessary but genuine love has to be voluntary. Just property law appeals to the voluntary better angels if our nature but angels also carry swords to keep the demons at bay.

As I’ve said, everybody is for limited government if the choice is between all government and no government. I too would have no more government than is necessary, and I agree that government can grow beyond what is necessary to take on a corrupt life and wasteful purpose of its own. You are right to point out where that is happening and to demand accountability, greater efficiency and reform.

However, my points above are an explanation using the example of property law for why government by necessity has become more complex and larger in scope in response to dynamic change and expansion in technology, knowledge and markets to national and then global levels.

Think of the market economy like a highly competitive game that constantly changes and grows. As it does so, there must be whole new institutions that advance and regulate the game, the playing field must be kept uniform, safe and fair even as it grows, the rules must also change and expand to keep up, and the number and expertise of the referees must follow the demand.

Take patent law as just one example where as it grows and adapts to technology we have to define whole new classes of laws along with the institutions to arbitrate and enforce those laws, now on an international scale.

Look how big our military has gotten since the days when many of the Founders saw no need for as standing army. Why would the rest of government be any different?

In some ways, as the world changes and all these areas grow, it’s like a Red Queen Game. We have to run faster and faster, grow larger and larger, just to maintain the same equilibrium. We either do that or be smashed and left behind by the competition.

The definition of economics: “of, relating to, or based on the production, DISTRIBUTION, and consumption of goods and services”

You need to be more specific about what you mean by the government not redistributing wealth.

Markets are all about redistribution of wealth. Governments define the laws, arbitrate the disputes and endorse the rights and responsibilities of the market parties thus providing the paying field, the rules, the umpires and the regulatory institutions that allow markets to even exist. Just by setting those rules, such as in patent law, government affects and effects market redistribution of scarce resources to their highest and best use. The lines between what is government and what is private in our market system are more blurred than you may imagine. A corporation itself is a creature of government such that in actuality, it is more of a government/private hybrid. If the game of capitalism is to create and distribute wealth the government is the playing field, the rules and the umpires in that game. Capitalism is a team sport and government is a necessary part of the team.

Also the government itself more directly creates and distributes when it builds the infrastructure that allows for more efficient and productive commerce. For example, a rich person would be willing to pay more for the benefit that he receives for a given road than poorer persons. If the cost of the road is less than each person using the road would be willing to pay, and therefore each person is then progressively taxed for the road at a rate lower than each person was willing to pay, then the government enabled an efficient transaction where every tax payer received a benefit of the bargain. In the positive difference between what each person was willing to pay and what that person actually paid, in economic terms, wealth was created.

So the question is not whether government distributes wealth. I does as part of its essential purpose. The question is whether it is doing so as efficiently and morally as it should, and whether some other organizing principles could do it more morally and efficiently. And those are tough questions that are not as clearly answered as the ideologues on both sides would have us believe. When something is a public good or service that is best provide led by government, or granted to regulated private monopoly (like most power companies) or corporations or charitable organizations or just greater regulation is not always black and white.

I agree with you that government redistribution of simply taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor is the least moral nor efficient government action. Nothing productive comes from people just standing in line to get money. Those programs, however, are actually kind of rare and are usually justified on extreme exigency.

On the other hand, government can work closely with labor and business to make both more safe, versatile and competitive. The most worthwhile social safety nets benefit everyone, including businesses. Rich people tend to move to cities that have great public parks, superior infrastructure, great public schools and universities and an entrepreneurial spirit, and rich American are willing to suffer higher taxes to get these government goods and services (think silicone valley).

Hey. Unfair! I was the one to use the “Alice in Wonderland” illusion first (Red Queen game).

But seriously, who really is fooling himself here? You haven’t actually disputed anything that I have written. You just offer slogans, cliches, and memes. “Joe the Plumber”? Why not Honey Boo Boo too?

Give me a modern successful, democratic country where your concept works? Russia? Explain to me how major roads get built without any government involvement to at least plan out the project, choose the monopoly owner and condemn the land? Do you really consider such private road ownership and maintenance a “market” – like patents, it is a limited government granted monopoly at best. Like private prisons, it is less accountable and mediocre at best.

The best you give is sarcastic derision of government, but I have yet to see your vision of a modern democratic state that actually would work, much less is working. I try to give you a thoughtful analysis of why I think the successful mixes of government/capitalism in modern democratic states in the world work well, and your best response is Joe the Plumber wants to keep his money? Joe the plumber also wants his kids to go to good schools that he can afford, he wants good streets and stop lights and police and fire to keep him safe. He wants a safe work environment and playgrounds that aren’t polluted by the factory down the road. He expects his military to protect him and his federal government to come to the rescue when his city is hit by terrorism or natural disaster. Joe the Plumber, God love him, is a symptom of a certain social malaise, not a solution to anything.