"One of the social rights and duties most under threat today is the right to work. The reason for this is that labour and the rightful recognition of workers’ juridical status are increasingly undervalued, since economic development is thought to depend principally on completely free markets. Labour is thus regarded as a variable dependent on economic and financial mechanisms." --Pope Benedict XVI in his New Year Day Message for 2013
Maybe "free market" is sort of Orwellian ain't it?
Financial mechanisms are the idols given the burnt offering of our dignity, a dignity which is supposed to find expression in economic development undivided from that inherent dignity - meaning that dignity must be evident, given translation in economic development that follows?
We must give these burnt offerings instead because man is totally depraved and for him to regard economic development as so important as to make the beneficence of the common good its foundation under God is to make of it an idol?
No, no, we can't have that. We must leave it to the "free market". We must stop thinking about this economy stuff; it's obsessive. Leave it to the "free market". Because otherwise you're making of it an idol. And then God no longer has any place in our lives. So leave it to the "free market". Give your burnt offering.
2 comments:
if you're barefoot, I'll make you a shoe. If I'm hungry, you'll make me a sandwich.
I Thess. 4: 11-12
We'll exchange prayers before the throne.
It just occured to me as funny that for me, as a mathematician, the adjective "free" can have quite a different connotation than for other folks; particularly, it often lacks any suggestion of goodness except for a particular purpose. A free group, for instance, has trivial word problem and their homomorphisms to other groups involve no computation, but they're rather large, paying for what ease-of-use they have by lacking a compact notation for most things in them.
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