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.

If you never go outside your peer group, you’re only going to see the world the way your peers see it.

The impact that my peers’ opinions have on my opinions is fairly obvious. If I have a conversation with someone, or several someones within my peer group wherein we share opinions and I discover that I’m in the minority, I’ll have a tendency to moderate my opinions toward theirs. It may not be 100% agreement, but a few percentage points toward theirs at least. As time passes, this happens over and over and over, not unlike the impact that water has on a seemly indestructible stone stuck in the bed of a river.

Here’s the full interview.

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.

Here is the lead from a recent article in the Albert Lea Tribune titled, “Immigration reform groups march in Albert Lea”:

Carrying a message of hope, justice and fair immigration reform, about 30 people from multiple organizations around the state marched in Albert Lea on Sunday, during what was the last of a series of reform marches over the weekend.

Of particular interest are the kind of comments that get posted after an article like this. Here is an example of a comment written by a fellow who goes by “taxpayer”:

It makes me sick that this was held near the veterans memorial. What a slap in the face to all the vets who gave their lives in order for us to have the rights and lifestyles that we have today(or used to have). I am sick and tired of all of these immigrants whining and crying about EVERYTHIING! One of the reasons that this nation is financially in the crapper today is because of all the catering that we do to these people. Who the heck provided all of these things to our immigrant ancestors when they came to America? NOBODY, that’s who! They earned everything that they got. Nothing was handed to them. If you dont like it here, do us all a favor and leave. Please..let us AMERICANS get back to life as we used to know it.

I’m afraid that this sort of comment is not unusual and not unique to Albert Lea. These kind of comments are being posted on news websites and forums all over the country. And it appears as though the pervasiveness of comments like these won’t cease any time soon.

Every once in a while I add a comment or two of my own just to show that not everyone who reads and posts comments at the Albert Lea Tribune has such a vindictive attitude toward immigrants, but it feels like a losing battle.

Here’s one comment I wrote:

You all have a right to your opinion. I respect that. Just respect that I have a right to treat people kindly whether they are here legally or illegally. They are all God’s children and many of them are trying to support their families the best they know how.

If you feel you have the right to step on them because they’ve broken the law, remember that being merciful is a good thing and using vindictive words toward immigrants probably won’t fix anything. Work to change legislation. It will be far more productive than working to instill fear.

And a response to the above comment from a fellow by the name of “savypro”:

They are all God’s children,,,,,,,,Paaalease,this is not about religon,its about ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS coming here trying to change the laws that mine and yours LEGAL IMMIGRANTS fought and spilled their blood trying to protect.

Yikes. There is a great chasm between folks who view faith as something that doesn’t apply to political discussions, particularly immigration, public health, etc. and folks who view faith as that which teaches us people ought to be respected and treated kindly…even if they knowingly break the law to find a better life for themselves and their families.

My reply to “savypro”:

Savypro, how I treat people, whether they are lawbreakers or not, has everything to do with my relationship with God and my religion.

If you get the chance, stop by the Albert Lea Tribune and leave a comment.

My brother-in-law, Kevin Land, sang this fantastic tune at my son’s baptism. It’s a song he wrote and I’m not even sure of the title of it, but the line that ties it all together is “Death is no more master over him.” The phrasing is excellent and I liked it so much that I played it from my camcorder and listened while I drove home from Mankato with Jen and Axel. For those who don’t know Jen and I have a new baby boy, Axel Christian Erickson, who was born on March 19, 2009…just over a month ago. We have piles of pictures on Facebook.

Roger and Markell Vogt are potato farmers near Palisade in Aitkin County, Minnesota. They grow red and russet potatoes that are out of this world!

So if you’re in that area come harvest, drop by their farm and pick up some potatoes. You won’t regret it.

My favorite is their red potatoes. When mashed, they are remarkably creamy. We rarely mash them, however, because boiled or steamed, these potatoes express down-home goodness with each and every bite.

For more information, visit their one page website: www.gunlakepotato.com

Jen I and just ordered the book, which is a New York Times Bestseller: “Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.” From what I’ve read about the book, it stresses stuff like eating right and building community. It makes perfect sense that the community surrounding a person would have tremendous impact on their health and well-being.

As I skim through the “Blue Zone” website, I see pages of fantastic articles which all get to the core of what makes people happy and healthy. The author of the book, Dan Buettner, is a Minnesotan with a very important vision about how to improve the quality of life, not just for older folks, but for people of all ages, and I’m confident that this “Blue Zone” effort in our community will be extremely well-received.

Here’s the article in the Albert Lea Tribune about Blue Zone folks choosing Albert Lea.

Welcome Buettner, Blue Zone and AARP!

Jen uses it for walking, as she finds running rather difficult…being due in March and all. As for me, I’m on that thing nearly every day. And to guide me in my workouts, I’m reading “Daniels’ Running Formula,” a truly amazing guide for those who wish to get themselves in tip top racing shape.

In past years, when the snow started to fly in Minnesota, I’ve been hard-pressed to get in good workouts because running over ice and snow tends to mess up a person’s form a bit. Now with a treadmill I’m able to tackle my workouts and target paces with a higher degree of accuracy.

Furthermore, I can listen to music while I run.

And it isn’t just ordinary music, mind you. One section in “Daniels’ Running Formula” explains how a runner is most efficient right around 180 steps per minute. There aren’t very many 180 bpm songs, so I analyzed my collection, using a nifty piece of software called “Mix Meister” (you’ll find it in a quick Google search — Mix Meister is free, so no need to whip out the ‘ole credit card). All the songs I use for running on the treadmill are right around 90 bpm so as to train my brain to run 180 steps per minute.

Among my favorite treadmill running songs are “Numb” (U2), “Gravity” (Eddie form Ohio), “Yer So Bad” (Tom Petty), and “Stupid Memory” (Sondre Lerche). I’m sure I’ll find more, but those are a few that stick out in my mind. They’re all 90 bpm.

Unlike most people, I love monotonous running. Running on a track is heavenly, and so is running on a treadmill. I love to know exactly what my pace is and how far I’ve been running at that pace. Few things fascinate me more than the science of running. The more I read and research, the more I discover that running the fastest races doesn’t mean you train harder. It means you train harder, but not too hard, and that you use your brain and listen to your body when you plan your workouts.

In a future entry, I’ll write about Wharton Performance and their “Active- Isolated Stretching.” It’s a fantastic way of getting your body ready for workouts and races. I bought their “Stretch Book” and am learning more and more how to use their stretches in order to become a more efficient running.

In the Christian tradition, Satan is a fallen angel. God created Satan and then Satan became evil because God granted him the free-will do to so. Does evil come from Satan because Satan chose evil, or does evil come from God because God granted Satan the power to choose evil? Some argue that evil is the absence of God, which inadvertently suggests that there are places where God does not exist. How could there be places where God doesn’t exist if God is the Creator of everything?

These questions get me back to my own fascination with free-will. I’ve been thinking and writing about free-will for over a decade. Theoretically, all the ingredients that lead to our making one choice or another come from God. If all ingredients come from God, and if all the experiences we face come from God, how is it that we’re the one’s responsible for the outcome of our life’s recipe? Excuse the cooking metaphor, it’s just difficult to see clearly where the Creator stops and Creation starts. Where does the hand-off take place? Or does it take place at all? Who is actually at work in the world making us who we are?

Finally, if we acknowledge the existence of Satan, are we not saying that there are two gods? Are we not saying that there are two competing forces in the world? I’d argue that there is only one true force of power in the world: a God who created everything. But this doesn’t explain what many have described from experience as the apparent presence of evil.

I’m not prepared to rule out the possibility that Satan’s evil is a force in competition with God’s goodness. There is plenty of evidence in history to suggest that evil exists as its own force: the holocaust, ethnic cleansing, brutal wars and injustices; and millions of experiences and tragedies that are too horrible to describe.

What I see, however, is that people tend to worship that which they fear the most. If they fear Satan more than God, then this preoccupation with Satan takes over and they loose their emotional and spiritual footing — and often their sanity. If people consider God as the sole source of true power in the world, I speculate that they experience less fear in their day to day lives and, as a result, have more room in their hearts to love their neighbors.

The purpose of this latest blog entry is not to answer questions, but to ask them. My reflections on “The Problem of Evil” change from one month to the next. However, I am inclined to say that singleness of mind comes, not from trying to spot evil in the world, but from seeking God. Rather than asking, “How is Satan at work in the world?” it is far better to ask, “How is God at work in the world?”

Bob told me about a book written by Francis MacNutt, “Deliverance from Evil Spirits: A Practical Manual.” MacNutt says that folks encounter evil and can sometimes become disturbed by demons within. These people come to the church for help, but most churches are unable to help them because delivering folks from evil spirits simply isn’t in ministers’ job descriptions or training.

According to MacNutt, certain can people become conduits of the Holy Spirit, ministers of healing and deliverance from evil. For some, a catalyst toward entering this type of ministry comes from first being “baptized by the Holy Spirit.” Folks who are baptized by the Holy Spirit supposedly experience a radical infusion of the Holy Spirit. And many find they are then able to deliver people from evil spirits and free them from whatever emotional or physical distress they’re experiencing simply by calling upon the Holy Spirit to do this work for them.

So what it is this Holy Spirit? I’ve felt in the past that all this healing and deliverance stuff was just a bunch of hocus pocus. I’m not so sure any more.

If folks are interested in learning more about healing and deliverance, I suggest they visit Bob Ekblad’s website and look around a bit. He’s busily bridging gaps between conservatives, liberals, charismatics and evangelicals. And every time I talk to him I find my understandings of God’s power get challenged a little more.