First, Do No Harm

In Mere Economics, Art and I urge Christians to take a Hippocratic Oath regarding the causes they support.

Ask: “Are the means I’m supporting compatible with the ends I’m trying to achieve?”

Answering that question means learning mere economics.

It’s not enough, for instance, to support a minimum wage because one’s goal is to bolster the lot of the poor. Minimum wages harm the poor. Full stop. Wishing so doesn’t make it so.

To the question of means-end compatibility, Christians must add: “Am I supporting God-honoring means in addition to God-honoring ends?”

Having God-honoring ends doesn’t necessarily imply the existence of God-honoring means. Suppose your end is to raise the incomes of the bottom half of American society. Surely, Scripture’s concern for the poor is consistent with this impulse. Yet, killing every American who currently earns below-average income would “accomplish” this goal! It’s a mathematical certitude.

I highlight such an absurd example because it shows that there can be an ethical disconnect between the praiseworthiness of the ends and the praiseworthiness of the means. Don’t allow moral intuitions to substitute for the hard work of moral—and economic—analysis. 

A common way for this disconnect to arise is through policies that violate people’s private property rights and thus, in my view, violate the eighth commandment: “Thou shalt not steal.” An example is a policy of “redistribution” of income from the rich to the poor. "Redistribution” belongs in scare quotes because in markets, income is not “distributed” in the first place; it is earned. When it is "re"-distributed, it is thus stolen.