Paul Mills Posted: 31 December 2000
Keywords: Finance & the Economy,
The basic economic problem is that the incentives needed to promote efficiency and growth also lead to inequality. Biblical law sets out an economic model that shares contemporary concerns for economic efficiency and fairness while avoiding the problems faced by the current Western model. The beauty of its conception from an economic point of view has rarely been appreciated.
This is a remarkable paper for the sweep of its ideas presented with such brevity. The more's the pity that, ten years on, I am the first to comment.
I have for many years pondered the implications of taking deuteronomy seriously as an efficient and equitable economic model, spurred in part by reading an article by Nibley not unlike this one in spirit.
Hence, while reaching some of the same conclusions independently, the fundamentally new insight from the paper for me, is this:
The key to understanding the biblical model is that the production and sale of goods is almost entirely left to the unfettered operation of market forces, while the laws governing the use of labour, the allocation of land and the role of finance are tightly drawn so as to ensure a minimum level of income and wealth for all. In economist's parlance, the model envisages product markets (for goods) that are relatively unconstrained whereas markets for the factors of production (land, labour and finance) are tightly controlled or sometimes deliberately proscribed.
I had reached a similar conclusion, but not expressed as well or as precisely, in formulating an economic model called "common capital." In it the production and sale of goods is similarly left to the marketplace, but the accumulation of surplus capital is strongly controlled, while still leaving in place the natural individual incentives to maximize value added to the economy, measured in conventional terms of profit.
Can anyone suggest to me a way of contacting the author directly?
w. scott stornetta 4 September 2010