An article this weekend on Salon.com reviews economist Jeffrey Sachs’s recent book on how to end global poverty. This book joins the frustrating queue of volumes to be read as soon as Serenity Valley and I return to the United States (end of August). After all, a Spanish translation of the book might well show up in a local librería within a year or two—or we could pay the surprisingly high cost to have the book sent to us in Perú. But we just don’t really have the funds to do that. So, it goes on the list…
However, the Salon.com review presents the central proposal of the book in an interesting light. Sachs apparently suggests that a large but manageable initial investment by wealthy countries would allow poor countries to develop the workable capitalist economies necessary to end extreme poverty and misery during this generation. Lack of infrastructure, disease, and related problems create what economists sometimes call a “poverty trap,” i.e., a situation in which individuals lack the resources necessary to actually earn any money whatsoever, thereby dooming themselves and their
descendents to continued extreme poverty.
But wealthy countries could break the poverty trap everywhere it exists. We could fund a sufficient effort to eliminate AIDS, build roads, schools, and houses, fix drainage systems to provide irrigation and defeat malaria, and all at a reasonable cost! Sachs estimates that the whole project could be funded by passing a 5% tax on Americans with an annual income above $200,000. We could call it the “Save the World” fund…
After this initial investment, Sachs believes that open-market economics will be sufficient to end extreme poverty. He makes this argument pointing to successes in China and India, where open-market economic policy has decreased overall levels of extreme poverty. During the 1990s, switches to such policy were the global trend. More recently, a counter-trend seems to be emerging in Latin America, where most of the recent elections have brought leftists who are skeptical of unlimited free-market policy to power. Let’s take a look at some data to try to understand why this might be true.
This plot shows the evolution of real median wages in each of 14 Latin American countries. For the non-social scientists in the room, a few points of clarification. These data come from CEPAL, the United Nations economic mission in Latin America. First, median wages means we’re not talking about the average amount of money that a person in the country makes; averages can be thrown off by a few exceptionally wealthy or exceptionally poor people. Instead, we’re looking at the amount that an average person makes. If you line people up from richest to poorest, we’re looking at the yearly wage of the person in the middle of the line.
Second, when we say we’re looking at real wages, that means we’re correcting for inflation. If the bare minimum cost of living is $100 this year and $200 next year, and my wages also double, I’ve obviously only just barely kept up. Using real wages fixes this problem.
Third, each country’s data series has been set so that it equals 100 in the year 1995. This means we aren’t comparing the absolute wealth of average people in different countries to each other; instead, we’re comparing the rate at which average people get richer or poorer. This is a chart about progress, not about where you start from.
Okay, all clarifications are now out of the way. This chart really calls our attention to three countries, where the median individual has gotten much worse off. These are Nicaragua, Perú, and Venezuela. In Perú, the biggest losses came during the 1980s, when then-president Alan García tried an unsuccessful state-centralized economic experiment. Market-oriented economic policies in the 1990s stopped the free-fall but did not rebuild prosperity for the average Peruvian. Hence, it is perhaps unsurprising that a great deal of uncertainty exists about the direction Perú’s leadership will take in next year’s presidential election.
Nicaragua’s biggest losses came under the Marxist government of the Sandinistas. While the US-sponsored war of military and economic destabilization against that country may be partially to blame for these bad results, Nicaraguan voters seem to have drawn the reasonable conclusion that Marxist economic policy is also undesirable; since 1990, they have consistently elected free-market governments. Furthermore, some economic progress for average Nicaraguans is in evidence—although the progress to date does not come even close to making up the ground lost during the 1980s.
Finally, Venezuela’s median-individual economic collapse came partly under a mixed economy with a strong state presence during the 1980s, and partly during a free-market reform effort during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Given this track record, we should not be surprised to see the Venezuelan electorate support an increasingly radically anti-free-market president in Hugo Chávez.
Clearing these worst-case countries out of the way, the following version of the chart allows us to look a little bit more closely at the remaining countries.
Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Guatemala have obviously done very well for their average individuals during the 21 years depicted in this chart. But, if you look closely, you can see that this period, which was marked by an extensive turn to free-market economic policy through the region, has not given most people in most of these countries much that they didn’t have before. Other than the four big winners just mentioned, most countries end the chart only a few points ahead of where they started. An entire generation’s working life gone by with only about 10% economic progress! Given that most of these people were deeply unsatisfied with their economic situations in 1980 (see the massive wave of regime changes under popular pressure during the early 1980s), this rate of progress can hardly seem satisfactory. Is it any wonder that these people have become somewhat disenchanted with free-market economics?
Of course, the solution is not necessarily for them to abandon the free market. (Economic conditions for the poor in Venezuela have not exactly improved since Chávez’s election in 1998, state largesse with oil money not withstanding.) But this does make clear that Sachs’s proposal needs to be supplemented; it’s not enough to just get countries out of the poverty trap and started on economic development. We also have to make sure that subsequent development actually helps the poor noticeably over a human time-frame. That might require an expansion of Sachs’s aid proposal to include job-training programs and credit assistance for the poor after economic development begins. We might also want to try some programs like that back home in the USA, while we’re at it!
Now, email messages that I’ve received since I started this blog have made it clear to me that there are some controversial issues for many Latter-day Saints in these proposals. I’m going to list them without comment below. Let’s have a rip-roaring discussion of them in the comments forum for this post!
1) Is it morally justified to finance ending global poverty through taxation, or is this unjust
coercion?
2) Is it reasonable or even desirable to think about ending global poverty through an effort that is not led by the priesthood?
3) Is it God’s plan that there be widespread, extreme poverty, misery, and starvation? If so, might it not be wicked to try to end these conditions?
Finally, my personal addition to the list.
4) If there is an economically feasible proposal on the table for ending global poverty without endangering overall economic progress, can we ignore that proposal without getting blood on our garments?
Awesome post! Thank you for collecting this information together and pointing out what I think of is a hugely important issues. A couple of points:
1. I suspect that “free market” is not a fine grained enough concept to capture all of the issues. My impression from my — admittedly limited — exposure to discussion of development is that free-market economics is generally seen in terms of macro-economics. Hence, we associate free-markets with things like privatization of state industries, the absence of capital controls, independent central banks, etc. These certainly seem to be the sorts of things that the IMF or the World Bank have in mind when they talk about “free markets.” I wonder to what extent the Latin American countries you point to that have “free markets” have had all of the “micro” institutions of markets, in particular things like high quality commercial law, clear propety rights, low cost contract enforcement, limited barriers to entry for new businesses (things like licensing regimes, etc. frequently can make starting a legal business functionally impossible, etc.)
2. My sense is that Sach’s is way too optimistic about the ability to actually get aid where it matters. He seems to systematically under-estimate problems of corruption and incompetence on the part of local governments, NGOs, the UN, etc. In a sense, his position reminds me of Hernando De Soto’s position. De Soto says that we ought to property the poor by moving grey-property rights into the full, legal system. Great idea, I say. The problem is that clarifying property rights frequently means that it is simply easier for elites to steal property from the poorest of the poor and the new titles increases their incentives to do so. (My understanding is that this is exactly what happened in Bangkok when the Thai government tried to impliment a De Soto-esque titling regime.) Sachs has this vision of a world in which we can target aid effectively to those that need it. The problem is that in a second-best (or third or fourth best) world funding aid programs for the poor may be like titling the poor — it simply makes it easier for elites to steal from them.
Finally, I am extremely skeptical of the moral logic of your problem no. 4 for Mormons. I think that global poverty is one of the single biggest moral challenges facing the world. However, I am skeptical of any proposal that claims that the solution is so simple that failure to act on the proposal is nothing more than a moral failure. Don’t get me wrong: I think that the West can do far more to help the developing world. (Debt relief comes to mind as one big possiblity.) But I am not sure that I but into Jeffery Sach’s fairly land were a bit of money spent on job training saves the day.
Nate,
Thanks for your comments! The stark, and clearly overly simplistic, moral logic of my question #4 was meant as a provocation–which you’ve kindly taken up. The idea here was to suggest that there is a moral imperative on the other side of the debate; some Latter-day Saints tend to get so caught up in the perceived issues behind questions 1-3 that they forget the basic issue behind question 4: if we don’t try to fix things, we’re morally complicit in the current state of affairs.
Your comments on corruption and the problems of targeting aid are well taken. I agree that these are fundamental issues–giving money to the rapacious warlords of the world won’t help anything. How do we fix this?
On the issue of Hernando de Soto’s property rights regime and its shortcomings, a Slate article available at http://www.slate.com/id/2112792 from a little while back discusses these issues nicely. One rough indicator of the usefulness of de Soto’s ideas is the slide in my original post showing median income in Peru. During the Fujimori regime, from 1990 to 2000 (especially in the early years), de Soto’s program was adopted by the government. It doesn’t seem to have helped too much; as noted above, the median income line ended its free-fall but never actually recovered. So some skepticism about these ideas is in order.
With respect to issues of barriers to entry, in much of the Third World the informal economy is so extensive that there are effectively no political barriers to economic entry. Terms like “illegal” become ambiguous with respect to these businesses. A significant issue for informal businesspeople, of course, is access to credit. (Hence de Soto’s interest in fixing property regimes, but alas, more needs to be done somehow…)
On the other hand, the global infrastructure does seem to be in place to accomplish such poverty-reduction tasks as ending the AIDS epidemic. In that case, Sachs’ optimism doesn’t seem that far off base; an infusion of enough funds (and not all that many, at that) would probably do the trick.
Very interesting post. I love the use of visual aids. I read the review/excerpt for the book in Time and went out and picked it up for my own reading. Overall, I think Sachs makes some cogent arguments and valuable suggestions but I think all fall a bit short of real solutions. The prime shortcoming of the book is his understanding of the relationship between political stability and economic prosperity. Sachs argues that poverty produces political instability– that until some basic, stabil economic infrastructure is in place poor countries will continue to be political basket cases. Frankly, that’s wishful thinking because economic prosperity is directly related to the legal recognition and protection of property rights. Until property rights can be protected by a stabil government any economic assistance provided by a government is wasted. His examples of India and China are good examples. Over the last half century both nations have had inconsistent policies of protecting private property; however, as each has become more protective of property rights their respective economies have grown accordingly. But enough of the book review.
Concerning the questions you ask:
1. Taxing individuals in order to redistribute wealth is an evil practice because it dresses itself in appearanly “moral vestiture” while completely lacking any redemtive value. It’s like when a parent commands a child to appologize to a fellow sibling– if there’s no contrition what’s the value? Taxation in the name of charity or altruism elimates the ability of individuals to exercise their agency– the very purpose of our existence here on this Earth and the very thing we fought against during our Premortal Existence.
2. Is it reasonable to think that man would be able to end global poverty without the priesthood? No. Is it desireable to make the effort without priesthood leadership? Absolutely– just don’t compel people to participate.
3. I don’t think widespread poverty is part of our Heavenly Father’s plan. However, I do think some basic level of poverty is part of the plan. Lehi’s sermons on the plan of salvation are very explicit that an important part of this mortal existence is suffering– be it physical, economic, or emotional. Alma even pointed out the benefits of being poor (that the poor are often compelled to humble themselves and seek God). Christ, when speaking to the twelve, pointed out that the poor would always be among them. On the other hand I don’t think God would send down bolts of lightning from the skies if somehow man did manage to wipe out all poverty. Do I even think eradicating poverty is possible? No.
4. This is a loaded question because it presupposes that such a plan is even possible. Eradication of global poverty is pure fantasy simply because not all of us are willing to throw off the natural man and live under God’s law. To entertain such delusional visions represents a monumental waste of time and energy better expended simply trying to eradicate poverty one individual at a time.
I get very impatient with the argument that transfer payments have nothing to do with the command to be charitable to the poor because they do not involve a free will offering. It is not that this argument is necessarily wrong. I don’t think that people supporting transfer payments are being especially generous or virtuous. On the other hand, I have a hard time thinking that God’s command to care for the poor is focused exclusively on the virtue of the giver and has nothing to do with increasing the material well-being of the poor. Surely God cares about this, and it is a great good even if it is not accompanied by virrtue by the giver and perhaps comes with a bit of self-righteous hypocrisy by the policy wonks. Helping the poor is good. There may of course be other couterveiling arguments against transfer payments (such as that they are frequently counter productive, etc.).
One question on the numbers. Are they based on transfering local currencies into dollars and then measuring the inflation or are they tied to some index of purchasing power against a stable basket of goods priced in local markets? My understanding is that the tendency to compare national income levels by transposing to dollars frequently distorts the actual purchasing power of incomes. Just a methodological question.
On De Soto: I think that he makes an important point about informality. To the extent that the economy exists largely in the grey sector, there are huge limiting problems — ie access to international credit markets — and high transaction costs. Hence, I think that there is a lot of truth to his basic insight, namely that the poor need a real legal regime that works for them. Alas, I think that this is more complicated than simply providing people with legal title to real estate. That said, I am all in favor of lots of money poured into AIDS programs and anti-maleria programs provided that we have some way of knowing that this is where the funds are actually going.
On the methodological question, the numbers in my charts are based on purchasing power parity corrections, not on exchange rates or fiscal inflation. That is to say, they are based on adjustments for some basket of goods and services. Unfortunately, that basket differs from country to country; that’s why I used figures that were normalized within each country to show relative progress over time. These progress over time numbers are comparable both over time and across countries–as long as you keep in mind the fact that they measure relative change, not absolute poverty/wealth.
I think Paul has a sound point with respect to the political instability/economic deprivation linkage. It’s a well-known social science fact that increased wealth does indeed correlate pretty closely with increased political stability (see discussion in this rather dense book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521793793/qid=1112234351/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-3485641-5799911?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).
On the other hand, it’s equally clear that total political instability (or bad institutions more generally) produces economic stagnation. On this point, the political economy work is so dense as to be impossible to briefly summarize. So this may well be an further aspect of the poverty trap: poor countries can’t be stable until they’re wealthy, and they can’t be wealthy until they’re stable. But I don’t think this lets anybody off the hook in terms of helping them; it just means that, like the World Bank and other international agencies, we need to think about helping improve governance as well as economic institutions.
I agree with Nate’s argument against Paul’s reiteration of the classic LDS stance on coercion. Even if it doesn’t do anything for our personal morality, it’s still better for the morality of society as a whole to make an effort to help the poor. Non-coercive efforts are great–that’s where we turn when we are concerned about personal morality (paying fast offerings, donating to one of many NGOs, etc.). But these agencies are swamped by the size and persistence of some global problems. Because voluntary charity efforts can be extensive in well-publicized and emotionally involving crises, like the recent tsunami, they obviously have a role to play in systematic efforts to address global problems, as well. But chronic problems, such as child starvation and the AIDS pandemic, are not equally engaging to the public. Does that make these victims less deserving of help than those that are more telegenic? I don’t see it.
Nate wrote:
“I have a hard time thinking that God’s command to care for the poor is focused exclusively on the virtue of the giver and has nothing to do with increasing the material well-being of the poor.”
I think you need to more accurately define the concept of virtue as you use it above. The Gospels repeatedly emphasize just the opposite to your above assertion. Granted, there is virtue in giving to the poor out of strict obedience, but there is no doctrinal support to maintain that coerced action retains any virtue at all (if you can find doctrinal support to the contrary please point me in that direction and I’ll seek a change of heart). We are here to pursue our own salvation and assist others in pursuing theirs. How does a state of poverty affect that pursuit? Does it prevent onefrom having faith, repenting, being baptized, and recieving the Holy Ghost? Does it prevent onefrom having charity for one’s fellow man? Does it prevent one from pursuing any gospel principle? On the contrary, gospel doctrine teaches that WEALTH is the greater impediment to salvation as it cultivates pride– the precursor to all sin. I challenge anyone to establish a doctinal basis for asserting that coerced action retains any virtue at all.
RT wrote:
“Even if it doesn’t do anything for our personal morality, it’s still better for the morality of society as a whole to make an effort to help the poor.”
How are you determining social morality? If coerced giving does not contribute to any individual morality how can it possibly contribute to some sense of social morality? Social morality would have to be a function of something other than the collective morality of the individuals. Such an assertion would of necessity require the existence of an inverted concept– social immorality. For example, are all those who lived in 1934-1945 Germany guilty of crimes against humanity? Can I be condemned because a live in a society that is socially immoral (or at the very least is that something I will otherwise have to overcome)? Ther is no doctrinal basis for applying some sense of social morality. Again, if you can provide one I will seek a change of heart.
Concerning the relationship between political stability and economic prosperity I think India provides a good example for understanding that “chicken and egg” issue. Under British imperial rule India had a vigorous, growing economy. Once India secured independence it turned around and began nationalizing entire industries which turned it into an economic basket-case. Then in the 1980s the nation began to privatize industries and move to a more market-based economy. Today the standard of living for all Indians is improving by leaps and bound. Of course there is still rampant poverty, but it’s a developing nation with a population of nearly 1 billion. A century from now it’s not out of the question to imagine that the average Indian will maintain a standard of living similar to the US.
RT, I was wondering if you’ve ever read PJ O’Rourke’s book Eat the Rich. The section contrasting Tanzania and Hong Kong is quite revealing on the subject.
Paul: The most obvious examples of coerced charity in the scriptures are in the law of Moses. The two most dramatic example were the jubilee year that required the cancellation of all debts every so many years, which is the functional equivalent of a transfer payment from creditors to debtors. Another example would be the prohibition on gleanin the corners of the field. It was against the law in ancient Israel to clean up your fields after the harvest and the poor had a legal right to enter your property and take the food left lying on the ground. Indeed, the rule even extended to animals, as it was against the law to muzzle oxen to keep them from eating extra grain while you plowed the fields.
This does not mean that I am a fan of any and all transfer payment program. I actually tend to be a neo-liberal, free market wacko, and I think that many (perhaps most) transfer payment programs are wrong headed, prone to corruption, etc. etc. My objections, however, tend to be pragmatic. By and large, I think that the government ought to be involved in alleviating the poverty of those at the bottom of society. I suspect that in many developing countries a huge first step would be for the governments to achieve some basic level of honesty, consistency, and rule of law. Unlike Sachs and others who believe that the West can easily (and rather painlessly) spend the world out of poverty if it only summons enough enlightened moral will, I think that many of the most basic problems facing developing countries are the sorts of things over which the West has limited control short of a renewed interest in imperialism and the taking up the White Man’s burden and all of that. For all of its brutality, one can’t help but thinking that perhaps the situation in the East Congo would be a bit better for a bit of the British Raj, as horrible as such a thought is in the post-colonial world.
Nate:
I’m not sure that the two examples you provide reach the level of coerced charity as a failure to comply simply put the offender at risk of something akin to excommunication– the offender would not be subject to some form of state-sanctioned criminal punishment. That’s a punishment far different from the certitude of imprisonment were an US citizen to choose not to pay his/her taxes. But alas, the vast majority of US citizens are not even given the choice of paying their taxes as the money is deducted from paychecks by employers and sent to the federal treasury. The severly punative nature of forced transfer payments raises such practice beyond misguided or unjustified practice to the level of evil.
Two points:
1. Don’t be so sure that the only punishment for violation of the law of Moses was “excommunication.” The Law of Moses contains numerous penalties up to and including death. Furthermore it was the only law that existed in ancient Israel, the current distinction between state and church not existing. Furthermore, in the case of the Jubilee, the transfer of wealth was automatic, as the debt was canceled as a matter of law. After the jubilee there was no way of collecting the debt. In other words, this is a bad dodge.
2. You are not required by law to have taxes witheld from your paycheck and you can instruct your employer not to withhold those taxes. You will still, of course, remain liable for them.
Nate:
Regarding the year of jubilee I consulted a number of Jewish encylopedias before my initial response. First, neither of the Jewish laws applied to non-Jews living in Palestine or Jews living outside of Palestine therefore application of the law was not universal (unlike today’s tax laws). The modern-day equivalent would be that in the US non-citizens would not be subject to taxation and neither would US citizens living and/or working abroad.
Second, jubilee was a civil practice– not a criminal one. If an Israelite wanted to avoid the jubilee and the concommitant responsibility with living up to it all he had to do was leave Palestine for the year (though at the time that was not very practical). During the jubilee year creditors were required to forgive debt balances and release to the debtor the security (no CC debt at the time) used to back the debt. The vast majority of the time that security was servitude. During jubilee the creditor merely had no legal recourse to enforce repayment of debt. In instances where real property was at stake it would have been an instance of the haves transfering to the have-lesses and rarely occurred as it would have been a severe blow to honor for the benefiting family. In short, without the threat of criminal punishment the concept of coercion is lost.
It wasn’t a dodge but rather an informed– though overly brief– retort.
Paul: Virtually all ancient legal systems applied only to particular races or peoples. Jurisdiction was a personal not a geographic concept. One finds precisely the same sort of thing in Roman law.
Furthermore, if you think out the legal implications, you will find that civil and criminal distinctions ultimately breakdown. Consider the gleaning case. Imagine that to keep the gleaners from “stealing” his property, a farmer forcibly expelled them from his land. Would this act of violence be subject to punishment? Criminal?
Regardless, I think that the distinction between civil and criminal is doing too much work in your argument. Most contemporary tax laws are not enforced with criminal but civil sanctions. If you fail to pay your taxes, in most cases the government is not going to try to throw you in prison. They are going to assess a judgement against you for back taxes, interest, and penalties and simply attach your property.
The fact of the matter is that you will find no clear analogs to modern taxation in the scriptures because those scriptures were written in an ancient context that lacked anything like the modern state. You will find lots of rules that cut against the sort of property rights fundamentalism that is at the core of the no-coercion argument against transfer payments. Finally, it is worth pointing out that ALL government — even stuff like police protection — involves transfer payments. It is never a question of coercing or not coercing, but only of how much coercion one applies.
Regardless, I think that the issue of coercion goes only to the question of the individual virtue of the giver. I don’t think it is either here nor there as to the question of relieving the poor. To say coercion is sufficient to reject the notion of transfer payments is to assume that God’s command to help the poor ultimately has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MATERIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. This, it seems to me, is absurd.
Nate:
I agree with you that OT examples of specific commands to the Israelites are inapplicable to today’s modern society. My descriptions were meant to magnify that point. Neither example provides evidence that modern-day doctrine supports the idea that virtue derives from coerced action. Your assertion that there are plenty of scriptural examples that undermine the concept of property rights is severly weakened by the historicity argument you make in the prior paragraph. The OT and NT are both written with a strong cultural bias that is not applicable today. The BoM and the D&C are mostly stripped of the cultural component and are more purely doctrinal and those two scriptures are devoid of the kinds of property-undermining examples to which you allude. D&C 134 specifically calls out the protection of private property and the preservation of conscience as responsibilities of government. Your entire argument for the justification of transfer payments seems to rely on the statement you make below.
You wrote: “To say coercion is sufficient to reject the notion of transfer payments is to assume that God’s command to help the poor ultimately has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MATERIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. This, it seems to me, is absurd.”
Why is that absurd? You still have not addressed the issue of how individual poverty affects one’s ability to secure salvation (the reason for our existance). In an earlier posting I listed a number of questions on this issue which, up to this point, you’ve chosen to ignore but they are central to the argument you make in the citation above. If you could show that a state of poverty would prohibit any single individual from securing salvation then your argument has merit. If not then your contention is absurd. Given that we have been told that God will not allow any of us to encounter a situation we are not capable of spiritually overcoming, arguing that poverty somehow impedes any individual’s process of salvation becomes a quixotic endeavor.
Your contention that all taxes collected represent transfer payments of some sort is quite transparent and without foundation. Taxes collected for local police protection are not a transfers of wealth but rather the means utilized for funding a public good from which the taxpayer receives the benefit. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of public goods then you’ll find this argument perplexing– but I don’t think that’s the case. Now, I’m not interested here in going down the rabbit hole assessing the virtues and vices of all public programs and taxes, I was just using the example to refute your ealier assertion.
A mistake many LDS make is the failure to recognize that there is an hierarchical order to the gospel. Relief of the poor is a virtuous endeavor as long as it is undertaken in the spirit of charity. But the reason we chose the Son’s plan in the first place and our primary purpose for coming to this earth is to learn the proper exercise of our individual agency. Mormon doctrine completely collapses if, for any reason, you exclude the concept of agency from any moral discussion or somehow justify its importance.
A few quick responses to a very interesting discussion.
First of all, I think it is very clear that there is an idea in the scriptures of societal morality that is something more than the sum of individual moralities. The consequences of societal immorality seem to have more to do with the divine destruction of the society than with the eternal fate of its members–but the idea is there. This seems to be a major part of the traditional Book of Mormon cycle idea (don´t have time to provide specifics, but it should be fairly obvious). This argument is also always invoked in modern debates about right-to-life politics: some people on the social right are worried about the moral state of the US because Terry Schaivo died. So I don´t think it´s much of a reach to invoke societal morality in discussing poverty. The example of the Nazis is in fact pertinent as a case of societal immorality; for an argument along these lines, see the book Hitler´s Willing Executioners.
I haven´t read the O´Rourke book; it´ll join the other books in the queue.
Disobeying or evading any commandment always beings a consequence that is at least as severe as any “coercive” penalty the government can ever impose: loss of the Holy Ghost, loss of communion with God, and therefore (temporary or permanent) spiritual death. Hence, all commandments, up to and including the commandment to give generously to the poor, are completely coercive; otherwise, they wouldn´t be called commandments (root word command).
How does poverty prevent people´s spiritual development? Extreme poverty (the kind driving Sachs´s book and the original post, involving daily income of $1 or less) reduces people´s calorie intake to the point that their cognitive functioning is impaired and frequently involves 7-day work weeks of 16+ hour days. If that doesn´t sound like a major impediment to the success of missionary work, I don´t know what does.
Paul: I suspect that we are simply going to have to disagree. Youre claim that the D&C has no passages underming rights fundementalism is absurd given the amount of ink spilled there on creating institutional procedures for collective property ownership. I find your claim that relieving poverty is not a good unless accompanied by charity on the part of a giver to be SCARY! So the poor are nothing more than occasions for our personal virtue? They are not worthy of any independent moral concern, but only in so far as we can improve ourselves by — incidentally — bettering their lot? I am sorry but I just find this logic sick.
Can I similarlly dismiss OT and NT doctrines regarding prohibitions on murder, adultery, etc. on the grounds that they were given for another historical context?
Provision of a public good does not mean that you are not engaged in transfer payments. For example, public education is clearly a transfer payment, regardless of the fact that there are positive externalities, etc. The same is true of defense. One could purchase police protection from private contractors in the marketplace. This is what happens in many countries in, for example, West Africa. Indeed, Robert Nozick’s discussion of the State in the first half of _Anarchy, State, and Utopia_ begins with the recognition that even the provision of basic public goods like police protection involves a transfer payment that must be justied. Now perhaps the public good/not public good distinction is the right one for figuring out what sorts of transfer payments are justifiable and what sorts are not. However, this argument will ultimately rest on utilitarian considerations rather than some sort of fundementalist belief that all transfer payments are wrong.
RT:
You still have not provided any justification for a notion of societal morality. Your example of the social cycles of the Nephites does not bolster your arguement as those are arguments for a sense of collective morality affecting the progress (or lack thereof) of a society. On a societal level, the BoM tells the story of cyclical self-destruction caused by the collective immorality of its members and there is no evidence that God played a direct role in said destruction. There are very few instances where God himself has actually passed judgement on a society as a whole. The best example is Sodom and Gomorah. However, even in that instance Lot was sent to find a single righteous soul with success staving off the invevitable destruction. It took the depravation of every individual in a society to evoke the judgement (in the flesh) of God. The fact that an individual may choose to assiciate with a group of moral individuals does not, in and of itself, transfer some moral virtue to that single individual.
Regarding your discussion of coersion, you assert that, basically, all commandments are coercive. That assertion confuses the definition of coercion. God never behaves in a coercive manner. We are given commandments by God and we can, via agency, choose whether or not to obey them. The result of our choice is either additonal blessings or not. For example, we are commanded not to commit murder. Suppose I decide not to obey that commandment. Does God intervene and somehow prevent me from disobeying through coercion? No. I am allowed to act and in the eternities I will not be allowed to progress to exaltation (my assumption). God does not force us to obey his commandments– that was Lucifer’s plan and one we rejected before coming to earth.
Regarding your discussion of severe poverty impeding spiritual progress I agree that such abject poverty makes spititual progress difficult but it by no means makes it impossible. With regard to missionary work, before the Church can open a mission the political climate must be stable enough for the mission to operate effectively. With respect to the 120 work weeks you describe, that is just not the case. Sach’s never dirctly addresses the issue but the conditions he describes indicate that those suffering from abject poverty do very little work if any at all because there isn’t any to do. Caloric intake is below 1000 calories a day which is barely enough to sustain basic life functions much less an active work day. Most time is spent searching out those 1000 calories which, surprisingly, takes very little time. You still have not made the arguement that poverty prevents spiritual progression which is the real issue. We all suffer challenges to our spiritual progression but none of them acutally prevent us from progressing.
Nate:
I just want to know what is SCARY or SICK about the position I outline? What dire consequences are in store for society if such a position were univerally adopted? Your allusion to the United Order contained in the D&C cannot be serious. The UO is based entirely on the willingness (agency) of the participants and is governed by the priesthood (a critical requirement). The UO falls apart unless all the participants are committed to the institution. The D&C is also clear that we are not bound to live under the UO right now– its a case of revelation being provided to show how far we have to still progress as individuals collectively before we can all live a celestial lifestyle. I am surprised and disappointed that you would resort to intellectual name-calling rather than a reasoned, doctrinally based explanation suporting your position. I invite you to provide a supportable explanation for why God cares about the material condition of the poor.
Provision of public goods does not represent transfer payments and the examples you provide do not support your argument to the contrary. Education is not a public good, but a private good that we unfortunately choose to fund publicly (through taxes). Public education is a transfer payment. The private security services you mention are not at all similar to the police function. The funtion of the police is to enforce the law, something private security services cannot do unless chartered by the government (at which point they become the de facto police). While to a certain extent the police do provide some marginal level of individual security that is just an external product of enforcing the law (just try and get you local PD to protect your teenager from the local bully; they’ll arrest him after the fact but that won’t prevent your teenager for getting his nose broken). As for national security, the purpose of an army is the preservation of the existing government and not the individual.
Paul: I give up. It seems to me that you are taking the position that the commandment to give of our sustence to the poor has nothing to do with improving the material condition of the poor, because that is not something that God cares about. For example, when Christ fed the ten thousand because he saw that they were hungry and his heart was filled with sympathy for them, his sympathy had nothing to do with the fact that they were hungry and it would be a better world if they were not hungry, but rather was focused entirely on accruing whatever personal benefits flowed to his soul from the particular reaction that he was having. I am sorry, I find this a peculiarly narcicisstic view of things. That is what I find sick and scary. Charity is NOT simply about the the condition of the soul of the person giving their goods, it is also about the benefit that accrues to person recieving the goods. I simply cannot believe in a God who is ultimately indifferent to the material suffering of his children in the way that you seem to assume.
I think that you are being simplistic with regard to coercion. You are confusing the metaphysical notion of free will with the political notion of illegitimate pressure. Threats are always to a greater or lesser extent coercive, even if ultimately they do not persuade us to act differently. FWIW, I think that figuring out what is or is not coercive is tremendously difficult, and I don’t have a good set of concepts for sorting it out either. You seem to be wedded to an idea whereby only the absence of volition is coercive. Under such a definition tax revenues extracted by the threat of imprisonment rather than the physical taking of property are not coercive. It is precisely these sort of absurd results, however, that require that we seperate the notion of coercion from the notion of free will.
My point with regard to the United Order was not necessarily that it was a coercive order, but rather that it was one which apparently had little respect for modern notions of property. I realize that there is an argument that the United Order is based on a kind of Lockean concept of ownership because without true ownership true conscecration was not possible. The problem with this view is the notion of stewardship taught in the D&C suggests that God owns everything, regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not. This subltle shift in the rhetoric and understanding of property, however, seems to down shift its normative significance. My point is not that the United Order is a coercive counter example, but rather that it undermines the moral logic of “You can’t take that it is my stuff,” precisely because it suggests that no stuff is every truely ours.
A public good is something from which public consumption cannot easily be excluded. National defense is an example. If the government defends America from invasion, it is difficult to exclude anyone from within the country from “consuming” this good. Education can be a public good if you believe that (a) education creates benefits that accrue to people other than those being educated; and, (b) it is difficult to exclude others from the “consuption” of these benefits. One example might be that the more highly educated people are the less likely the are to commit crime. Yet one cannot keep people from “consuming” this decreased criminality. This does not mean, however, that it is logically impossible for people to purchase public goods. Someone could hire a private army to defend themselves, or even pay for their own education. The argument for government sponsorship, traditionally, has been that there are free-rider problems that will lead to underinvestment particular activities. Taxation solves the problem. This doesn’t change the fact that taxation will still be a matter of taxing money from X in order to confer a benefit on Y.
Paul: I give up. It seems to me that you are taking the position that the commandment to give of our sustence to the poor has nothing to do with improving the material condition of the poor, because that is not something that God cares about. For example, when Christ fed the ten thousand because he saw that they were hungry and his heart was filled with sympathy for them, his sympathy had nothing to do with the fact that they were hungry and it would be a better world if they were not hungry, but rather was focused entirely on accruing whatever personal benefits flowed to his soul from the particular reaction that he was having. I am sorry, I find this a peculiarly narcicisstic view of things. That is what I find sick and scary. Charity is NOT simply about the the condition of the soul of the person giving their goods, it is also about the benefit that accrues to person recieving the goods. I simply cannot believe in a God who is ultimately indifferent to the material suffering of his children in the way that you seem to assume.
I think that you are being simplistic with regard to coercion. You are confusing the metaphysical notion of free will with the political notion of illegitimate pressure. Threats are always to a greater or lesser extent coercive, even if ultimately they do not persuade us to act differently. FWIW, I think that figuring out what is or is not coercive is tremendously difficult, and I don’t have a good set of concepts for sorting it out either. You seem to be wedded to an idea whereby only the absence of volition is coercive. Under such a definition tax revenues extracted by the threat of imprisonment rather than the physical taking of property are not coercive. It is precisely these sort of absurd results, however, that require that we seperate the notion of coercion from the notion of free will.
My point with regard to the United Order was not necessarily that it was a coercive order, but rather that it was one which apparently had little respect for modern notions of property. I realize that there is an argument that the United Order is based on a kind of Lockean concept of ownership because without true ownership true conscecration was not possible. The problem with this view is the notion of stewardship taught in the D&C suggests that God owns everything, regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not. This subltle shift in the rhetoric and understanding of property, however, seems to down shift its normative significance. My point is not that the United Order is a coercive counter example, but rather that it undermines the moral logic of “You can’t take that it is my stuff,” precisely because it suggests that no stuff is every truely ours.
A public good is something from which public consumption cannot easily be excluded. National defense is an example. If the government defends America from invasion, it is difficult to exclude anyone from within the country from “consuming” this good. Education can be a public good if you believe that (a) education creates benefits that accrue to people other than those being educated; and, (b) it is difficult to exclude others from the “consuption” of these benefits. One example might be that the more highly educated people are the less likely the are to commit crime. Yet one cannot keep people from “consuming” this decreased criminality. This does not mean, however, that it is logically impossible for people to purchase public goods. Someone could hire a private army to defend themselves, or even pay for their own education. The argument for government sponsorship, traditionally, has been that there are free-rider problems that will lead to underinvestment particular activities. Taxation solves the problem. This doesn’t change the fact that taxation will still be a matter of taxing money from X in order to confer a benefit on Y.
None of this is an argument in favor of transfer payments. It is simply a plea that they be evaluated pragmatically.
Nate and Paul:
Thanks for an interesting discussion. I think we´ve reached the critical point where ongoing debate will generate more heat than light, but the issues that have come up here continue to be valuable. I´ll try to find different frameworks and optics for thinking about them; as I come up with something interesting, I´ll post on it in this blog. Until then, I´m checking out of this thread.
Thanks, once again, for the interesting comments!
Jumping into this conversation, I have a few thoughts:
For one, the discussion has yet to take into account the active role of poor people in making and changing the world. In everything that has been said, poor people are always acted upon from above, either by state policies, by market forces, by exploitation, natural disaster, whatever. However, the tremendous living potential and creative energies of poor people, their struggles for survival and dignity, the various manifestations of those struggles, these all shape our world just as much, perhaps more, than the political moves of managers, elites, and governments. Is it possible that poor people might put an end to their own poverty? Or must it be a gift from the $200,000+ crowd? If a gift, how long should poor people wait? Is human agency a function of wealth, status, and power, or is the agency of each human being to be valued with some equity, regardless of status? If the latter is true, then I think more attention needs to be paid to the masses and the powerful forces of their individual and collective agency.
For two, there hasn’t been a serious wrestling with the origins of this devastating poverty that now holds a full one-third of humanity (!) in its grips. There is an implicit assumption at work here that underdeveloped nations can follow the rich nations (in almost all cases, their former colonizers, slave-traders, etc…) up the ladder to prosperity. This however, skips over the bloody history of how Europe came to be “rich” and Asia, the West Hemisphere, the Middle East, and particularly Africa became “structurally underdeveloped”, to employ a euphemism. To some this may seem like ancient history, not very relevant. To me, it is extremely important. It forces me to ask general questions like: “Does wealth require persistent poverty to expand and function?” “Is poverty structured by and within wealth?”
Though these are criticisms of the discussion, I want to make it clear that I believe that this discussion is extremely valuable and great to see within an LDS context.
Just fininshed Sachs’ book, and just wanted to say this was one of the most interesting reads in the Bloggernacle in quite a while.
Aaron B
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