Several years ago while working as an intern at Sojourners Magazine in Washington, D.C., I had the pleasure of taking a class from David Hilfiker. The class was titled, “The Radical Inclusivity of the Gospel: Ending the Spiral of Violence,” in which we explored the theories of Rene Girard. After having been enlightened by his class and the conversations that surfaced from our readings, I’ve stayed up with his work, both written and otherwise. Not too long ago he wrote an essay about capitalism called “Straight Thinking About Capitalism.” After having read that essay, I had a few questions for him. These are questions David graciously took the time to answer for me in an email interview.

Jeshua Erickson: Your write about the perils of past and current infatuations with free-market capitalism in your essay titled, “Straight Thinking About Capitalism.” What impact, if any, do you hope an essay like this will have on future discussions about economics and the public good?

David Hilfiker: Our culture faces an interlocking set of potentially disastrous crises: global warming and other environmental threats, global poverty and growing inequality, “peak oil” and other resource depletion, dysfunctional governance, an economic system that no longer improves human well-being, and so on. Perhaps the linchpin of what’s coming and what’s preventing us from stopping it is a free-market-based economic system that is simply incapable (even in theory) of preserving the environment, inevitably leads to growing inequality and poverty, results in recurrent economic collapses, encourages monopoly, and develops the power to effectively control government. In other words, we cannot escape the coming tragedies unless we drastically change our economic system.

One significant problem is the general ignorance of our economic system and the misperception that the common person cannot understand enough of it to have an opinion about what needs to be done. For the past 40 years professional economists have preached that the assumptions of free-market capitalism are simply givens, fundamental realities about which we have no choice. But that’s not true. The free market is based on assumptions, on choices that could be made differently: the primacy of self-interest, the universal goal of profit. The measurement of all value by a dollar yardstick, the distribution of goods according to supply and demand (ie who can pay and who can’t), and the absolute sanctity of private property.

Because of our nation’s general economic illiteracy, there is a fundamental confusion between capitalism (where a relatively small group of people own the capital [“the means of production” as Karl Marx said]) and the market (a decentralized method for setting prices and making other economic decisions that avoids the major pitfalls of centralized planning). Because of this confusion, we have confused conversations and end up reinforcing our assumptions that we can’t understand it.

Part of the confusion is that capitalism uses the assumptions of the market; but so do other economic system. A primary difference between capitalism and other economic systems is that the latter consciously moderate the assumptions of the market to produce the socially desired result. But pure free-market capitalism doesn’t interfere with market mechanism. It’s important to recognize that in practice no economy is based on an absolutely free market. Government services (like defense or police protection), government regulation (against, for instance, monopolies), some degree of assistance for the destitute, and so on, all contradict the free market but are part of any workable capitalism.

Unless enough of us understand (relatively) free-market capitalism, understand the choices it assumes, realize that we could make different choices, and are willing to work for those different choices, our society-as-we-know-it will not survive. I hope my essay(s) will contribute to economic understanding and the movement toward different choices.

Jeshua Erickson: Folks tend to see capitalism as a value system that holds its own intrinsic set of morals when, as you point out, the values associated with capitalism actually run contrary to a number of major spiritualities, including those in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Why do you think, for so many, capitalism has been interpreted as the economic system that is fully sanctioned by God? What Biblical basis may there be for this thinking?

David Hilfiker: I’m not sure I agree with your assumption that most people see capitalism as a value system. While I have not seen any polls to confirm this, I am coming to think (based primarily on the work of Howard Richards and Joanne Swanger )¹ that most people do not understand that there are value choices that underpin capitalism. People, it seems to me, have understandably bought the assertion by mainstream economists that the assumptions of (mostly) free-market capitalism describe the nature of reality; those assumptions are “just the way it is.” And if “it’s just the way it is,” then God must sanction it as well. If one wants to have an economic system that works, declare the mainstream economists, one must found it upon reality, ie those assumptions. Few people, I think (and certainly not most economists), realize that these are value choices that could be made differently.

Most people do recognize that the end result of a (mostly) free-market capitalism runs contrary their own values and certain contrary to most spiritualities, they bemoan the results, but they don’t think there are any real options. We been convinced that Western capitalism using the (mostly) free market is the “end of history” and that nothing else is practicable.

It must also be mentioned that, with some very important exceptions, Americans have done very well by the current system. Although they don’t like many of the end results, they’re also afraid that modifying it may change their privilege (which, indeed, it should). So, the way most people deal with the cognitive dissonance between their values and what they want is to avoid learning to much about capitalism’s underlying values.

Jeshua Erickson: Jen once pointed out an interesting contradiction. She mentioned how odd it was that some Christians who are vehemently opposed to Charles Darwin’s ideas are perfectly happy using “survival of the fittest” as a rational for why capitalism and free-markets ought to be the rule of the day. And why government should not act on behalf of those who live in poverty. Do you observe folks using this rationale? If so, how do you call it out in a way that is tactful and diplomatic?

David Hilfiker: Again, I don’t think that most people really are happy using the “survival of the fittest” as their rational. The privilege we’ve gotten to date from the way capitalism works and the teaching that the assumptions are “just the way it is” mean that most of us don’t see that there is a choice.

I would also disagree with your assumption that most people believe that government should not act on behalf of those who live in poverty. Most polls show that people are very concerned about poverty, and, in every poll I’ve seen, people think the government should intervene … they even seem willing to pay higher taxes to make it possible.

Most of the people that have used that argument with me have been college students enamored of Ayn Rand; it doesn’t usually survive into adulthood.

Jeshua Erickson: This next question is slightly off topic, but helpful in understanding a bigger picture, perhaps, of where you’re coming from in your writings and the overall impetus behind your concern for the poor. Can you point to any anecdotes in your childhood or growing up that shaped your current perspectives on justice and care for the poor? Or did your own personal movement toward helping marginalized folks come only later in life in your work as a physician, etc.?

David Hilfiker: I’ve been asked that before and I’m always at a loss to explain it in large part because nothing else makes sense to me. I don’t see how one whose basic needs are met (as mine certainly have) could not be concerned about the marginalized. Compassion is innate, although it can and does certainly get squelched by our experiences.

By the way there is a fascinating experiment with toddlers showing their apparently innate desire to help another. The toddler is in a room with his or her mother. The researcher comes in and makes a “mistake” in which he demonstrates a clear need for help. (For instance, the researcher tries to hang up a garment on a clothesline, drops a clothes pin, and pretends not to be able to reach it.) In almost every instance the toddler comes over immediately (to a stranger, no less) and helps, in this case picking up the clothespin and handing it to the researcher. I was astounded by the videos of some of these, which are online. (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5765/1301 You have to sign up, but it’s free and one can opt out of any consequences.)

Certainly my parents held the same values I do (my mother was a nurse; my father was a pastor who directed an integrated youth center in a poor area of St Louis when I was very young), but I don’t remember any defining stories. (Of course, my memory is such that I don’t remember much of anything from childhood.) I took part in several civil rights education projects in the South during the mid-1960s and lived for a number of years in the inner city, but those seem to be more expressions of my values than causes of them. So I can’t be very much help to you there.

Facts about David Hilfiker

Date of Birth: Feb 12, 1945

Education: (high school, college, graduate school): Kenmore East Senior High School near Buffalo, NY, Yale College, University of Minnesota medical school

Author(s) or thinker(s) who have most influenced your work: some great philosophy courses at college, René Girard, William Julius Wilson, Walter Brueggemann, Walter Wink, and I’m sure many others.

¹Richards, Howard, and Swanger, Joanna, The Dilemmas of Social Democracy, Lexington Books, New York, 2006.

Well, the health care debate rambles on. Conservatives are afraid of more government and liberals are seeing an opportunity to make health care available to millions of people who would not otherwise have it.

Amidst thousands of pages of an actual bill and hundreds of thousands of pages of commentary, how are we supposed to know exactly how a bill is going to affect us? And how will we know whether a health care reform bill will really work?

Sure, there are endless articles out there claiming to know this or that about legislative health care reform. Most popular are the claims that politicians hold a hidden legislative agenda. Some argue that it is the personal hope for some politicians is that they will some day be able to control our lives as much as possible and take our freedoms away.

They are out to get you! They want to make your lives miserable!

So often we forget that politicians simply move whichever way the wind blows. The reason health care reform has made it this far is because of public outcry. And the reason why Democrats have taken the lead with their programs for reform is because when the GOP had the majority, they didn’t do enough to respond to public frustration with the rising cost of health care.

As for my own opinion on the matter, I am optimistic, but until I finally read the final version of the Senate bill, or at least portions of the bill that interest me most, I can’t really speak authoritatively on the matter. Which gets me to to my final point. What percentage of us can really speak authoritatively on this matter? 3%? 5%? Or is it even less than that…1%? Regardless, the speculation flies and amidst all the information and commentary, we all actually know very little. How ironic.

I’m sure Reuters will love me for pointing this out. But they mistakenly called Obama, Osama in an article published minutes ago. This is probably the hundredth time that a publication has done this. I thought this one was particularly funny, though. It reads, “The New York senator dismissed Osama’s criticism over the economy, saying his plans fell short on extending health care to the all Americans, on dealing with the mortgage crisis and expanding the sue of renewable energy.”

This sermon by David Hilfiker is titled, “Kindom Economics.” His not the usual critique of capitalism. Instead, he uses the biblical illustrations to portray an economic system that takes us beyond the bottom line, or calibrates our bottom line to be based on peoples’ well-being rather than profit margins.

Of course, staunch supporters of the supposed “miracle” of market capitalism suggest that capitalism simply takes care of people by increasing production and making it so that there is more for everyone. Hilfiker responds, “The problem, of course, is that our earth won’t sustain ‘more for everyone.’ We simply don’t have the resources. But built into the fundamentals of the system are ever-increasing production and productivity.”

The above response is one piece of several issues he addresses in “Kindom Economics.” I recommend reading it. Whether or not you agree that capitalism is good, bad or indifferent, it is clear that society simply cannot sustain itself with capitalism in its current form.

Download the “Kindom Economics” sermon.

Wal-Mart is the largest company Earth, capturing unimaginable amounts of market-share; unrestricted by national borders or regulations that keep strategic bottom-line thinking from remorselessly taking advantage of workers, the environment, and state and local infrastructures.

Supposedly, Wal-Mart “helps” their suppliers. According to those I know who’ve either worked at Wal-Mart or spent time researching the retail giant, Wal-Mart has redefined the term “bottom line” and forced it’s suppliers to unprecedented levels of efficiency. The right products arrive at exactly the right time in exactly the right isle’s…on exactly the day they’re needed.

If suppliers don’t have the capability of keeping up with Wal-Mart’s unparalleled zest for satisfying their consumer’s material appetites, then Wally World either stops doing business with that supplier or sends a team of efficiency professionals to their supplier’s manufacturing headquarters to shake things up a bit, if you will. Often times this shake-up will take suppliers to unimagined levels of performance. Which often results in substantially lower costs for a product.

Wal-Mart’s prices are fantastic. When I’ve gone to Wal-Mart to shop, (Wal-Mart’s livelihood depends on hypocrites like me, though I do shop there now only when I deem it necessary: two or three times a year), I often find myself in a state momentary reverse sticker shock. It’s great to discover that I won’t have to spend as much on something as I first thought.

Fact is, every time I make a purchase there, it’s like I’m saying, “Wal-Mart, good job! You are doing the right thing.”

Ironically enough, those who protest Wal-Mart setting up shop in their communities often find themselves there years later, buying things like gallon jars of pickles priced just below three dollars. And, as many know, those gallon jars eventually put Vlasic out of business; as the supplier for Wal-Mart’s dirt cheap gallon jars, they couldn’t keep their prices low enough without eventually filing bankruptcy.

All this said, I’d like to suggest an introductory solution to the Wal-Mart problem. My weakness is my wallet. When I know how much Wal-Mart charges for something and I know how easily it will be for me to get nearly everything I think I need…all in one place…I find it hard to resist shopping there.

If you can’t stop shopping there, simply shop there less. If you plan to get three things at Wal-Mart, see if you can’t buy two instead. Take it one step at a time and see if you can’t lessen your dependence. I’m a realist. I know it’s hard, but I find the littlest things we do can make the biggest difference. Wal-Mart owes a lot more to this country than the trucks they sent to New Orleans to bolster their image.

They owe us all the decent paying jobs that have been shipped over-seas because manufacturers can’t compete in the US any more. They owe us for the environmental damage they’ve done to land around the world, both with their store placement and with the bottom line practices of their suppliers and manufacturers. They owe us for the suffering of sweat shop laborers who now have no choice but to work for Wal-Mart because their culture and way of life has been overcome by the presence of manufacturers who promise cash for souls.

Try turning that twenty visits to Wal-Mart a year into ten and you’ll be making a difference. You’ll be casting that many fewer votes in favor of overblown capitalism at its worst.

My own sad confession: I bought my computer at Wal-Mart a year ago. It cost me very little and it’s been a wonderful computer, but I promise you this, when it’s time to get a new computer, I’m not getting it at Wal-Mart.

I share this article with you not as a socially responsible angel, but as a self-conscious hypocrite who has a legitimate concern for what a Wal-Mart dominated future holds. If you can’t boycott the place, simply buy less. If we all buy less, and boycott if we’re able, then Wal-Mart will have reconsider the effectiveness of their bottomless bottom line business model. We must stand strong against Hurricane Wal-Mart by keeping levees of economic justice and a concern for the common good in tact.

It’s apparent that tax breaks for the wealthy under the guise of ‘trickle down economics’ do not work. Water, not money has trickled down into New Orleans, and lots of it. Now we have situation where we’re going to need a whole heck of a lot more than a trickle of money to fix the problem.

Federal policy making like what led to the New Orlean’s disaster (cutting funding for work on New Orlean’s levees and pushing the poorest of the poor into flood zones) is happening all over the U.S.

Here’s what I suggest with respect to policy decisions in the weeks and months ahead:

1) No repeal of the estate tax. This is money we need to support our nation’s infrastructure. Businesses and corporations cannot turn a profit without working highways, law enforcement officers, teachers and educators, regulators (believe it or not), and all those things that we take for granted as that which is paid for by someone else, but not us. (Ask Bill Gates Sr. He’ll tell you.) No corporation can survive without the services for which all United States Citizens pay. If we take away the estate tax, we cannot fix our nations levees. And, in the end, everyone will lose, not just those who live in poverty.

2) Keep social security alive. Do not sweep it under the carpet of privately held investment accounts. Social security did not come into being as a retirement plan for the wealthy and upper middle class. It is a measure of protection that supports those who live in poverty when they are no longer able to support themselves. For the most part, private investment accounts will not help those who live in poverty. Many do not know the first thing about how to invest because they’ve never had the money to do so. Let’s not let social security dwindle. If we do we’ll have broken levees and a mess much much bigger than we could’ve ever imagined.

3) Support our public education system by giving schools what they need to hire more teachers and build an adequate learning environment in which all students can learn. Forcing teachers to give more tests, not adequately funding these tests and then taking money away when an achievement gap is exposed will not solve anything. In fact, it will weaken the levees of our educational system. More and more students will not get the education they need. Poorly educated children are a threat to national security.

4) Keep emission standards in place that reduce the amount of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere. Right now the Republican majority is doing everything it can to destroy an environmental levee that might some day protect us from more natural distasters like Katrina. The reason hurricanes like Katrina are on the rise is because temperatures are on the rise. Folks, when insurance companies are adjusting their long-term assessments accoring to what they expect will be the effects of global warming, we can at least expect our very own federal goverment to do the same. If we don’t act now, the global warming levee will break and we’ll have a very very expensive mess on our hands.

The greatest threat to our nation is not terrorism, but selfish, shallow short-term-profit seeking on the part of our current adminstration and those who don’t want to support an infrastructure that makes them their money in the first place. If you want to make money in this country, you’ve got to pay your dues. And if you don’t pay now, you’ll pay later.

Lately, I’ve witnessed a fair amount of Bush bashing, either from my own mouth or from the mouths of others. Why didn’t our very own federal government respond immediately to its own suffering citizens in the Gulf Coast states? Is Bush a racist? A classist? Are we witnessing institutionalized racism first hand? Classism? Does Bush epitomize this reality? Has our civilized society revealed its selfish and unyielding malevolent underbelly?

My answer: ‘all of the above’ and ‘none of the above”. Friends, Bush is not to blame. We are. We are voting citizens. When funding for the infrastructure of this country falters, we must let politicians know that we disagree with policy decisions at the root of falterned funding. That well-funded engineers can maintain levees at a far better rate of effectiveness when they have the money and resources to do so. When folks living in poverty have no place to sleep and nothing to eat, it is our responsibility to let senators and members of congress know that neglecting the citizenry of this country, rich or poor, is not acceptable. All people should have a place to sleep at night. All people in this country ought to be able to get food when they are hungry; clean water when they’re thirsty.

Any power held by the Bush adminstration is there because we gave it to them. Bush’s sentiments, in a shameful measure, represent American sentiments. If not, he would’ve never been elected president in the first place, let alone a second time.

This is our country. And Bush is our president. FEMA’s response to Katrina was lousy. Bush adminstration policies concerning the environment, poverty, education, and the military are all mostly lousy,

But we all are no less lousy than the person who we decide should get all the blame. Every mess, whether it be Iraq, high gas prices, or a poor response to disaster in New Orleans, is a mess created by ‘We, the people…’

So I promise to take a break from my Bush bashing from time to time, in order suggest alternatives to the plans he proposes. I promise to be clear why I disagree, yet clearly state what it would take for me to agree. Yes, keeping troops in Iraq sucks, but what’s my alternative? What do I suggest we do instead? The federal response the Katrina aftermath: lacking, but what do I suggest we do now? What do I think it will take to get the Gulf Coast back on it’s feet again?

I’ll write about what we can do to make things right. I’ll talk about what we can do to heal as a a nation. What steps can we take to overcome adversity together? I’ll continue to bash those of a slightly different political bent than my own, but not without thinking carefully about what exactly I suggest we ought to do instead. Most folks know why they disagree with public policy decisions, but they don’t usually say much about what we ought to do instead.

Stay tuned as I try to temper a measure of my negative words with positive suggestions. As a nation we are in for challenges in the weeks and months ahead. We can only overcome them by using our imaginations to offer plans and ideas to counteract those plans we are certain won’t work.

Gas Supplies Tight; Bush Asks Drivers to Conserve

Never thought I’d see the day. Bush actually said, “Don’t buy gas if you don’t need it.”

Wow! What a novel idea! Bush, that left leaning liberal hippy, telling people not to buy something if they don’t need it. Oooh, that commie! That’s the last thing we need is an ‘activist’ president. Who does he think he is, telling people to consume less.

Pat Robertson, with his now infamous quote about ‘taking out’ Hugo Chavez, highlighted not just the sentiment of Pat Robertson, but decades of U.S. policy in Latin America.

Hugo Chavez fears for his life not because he’s paranoid, but because in the last hundred years, when the U.S. didn’t like a leader in Latin America, they did what they could to ‘take that leader out.’

Folks who don’t believe me ought to take an afternoon and do some quality reading on the subject of Guatemalan history. Plenty of coups and plenty of ‘taking ‘em out’.

Frankly, the chances of Chavez being assassinated, thanks to Robertson’s comment, have now been significantly lessened. Because if something really does happen, all fingers would inevitably turn toward our very own state department and the CIA.

Fact of the matter is this: U.S. policy and current administrative agendas are right in line with the kind of suggestions we hear from Robertson.

And as cynical as I may sound, the reason for U.S. shady policy in Latin America has not been to protect freedom. Folks, it’s all about corporate greed. In Guatemala, it was about the natives getting all uppity and unionizing. Imagine! The nerve! (Especially, when the things they were organizing about had to do with not letting the higher-ups spray pesticides WHILE they were working in the fields.) Unions would most assuredly make the cost of our bananas get way too high. Time to back a coup so that we can ‘take out’ the leader who is letting folks organize.

And, sadly, our current administration cares far less about ‘Iraqi freedom’ than they do about the status of the second largest supply of oil in the world. We did not invade Iraq because we were overly concerned about our brothers and sisters in Iraq, but because of oil. Not only that, but all the other ‘reasons’ Bush has made up for the Iraq invasion have now simply fallen away.

We ‘took Saddam out’ all right, but for all the wrong reasons. Robertson has exposed the underbelly of U.S. policy, for better or for worse. At least now Chaves has a fighting chance. He’s not another Saddam, but a democratically elected leader of his people. Let’s hope democracy doesn’t start becoming a threat to our country. Democratically elected Hugo Chavez is not a ‘weapon of mass destruction.’

It is not by some random consequence that Robertson is an ally to the Bush administration. Pat Robertson and George Bush are ideological look-alikes. Robertson’s Christian Coalition is a strong and reliable subset of W’s base. And that’s a fact.