Book review by Ryan Helfenbein, The Gospel Coalition
(Review written in 2012) Already this presidential race has provoked countless controversies. The party conventions exposed a diverse range of value systems, worldviews, and religious convictions regarding marriage, sexuality, sanctity of human life, and human dignity. Various factions clamor to define the future of our nation. And the ongoing jobs crisis perhaps makes economic debates more germane and inescapable than ever.
Economics is a science of moral behavior and freedom. It is the telltale of our greatest values—for better or worse. Though many books have been written on economics proper, fewer have attempted to distill economic principles in terms understandable to the common reader. Defending the Free Market is the latest of such works from Father Robert Sirico, co-founder of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty (est. 1990).
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I hope to make time to read this book, but would like to recommend another one with a similar theme: “Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution”, by economics professor (and Christian) Victor Claar. It argues that programs such as fair trade coffee do little to relieve property, and may actually harm poor people; while free markets (imperfect as they are) do much more good for more people.
I meant “relieve poverty”, of course.
An economics professor I once had stressed that for a free market economy to truly remain free it must maintain a benevolent character. Otherwise, it becomes a greed economy. Ironically, a free market economy is a liberal idea as the opposite of it is a controlled economy, which is totalitarianism. That said, even the most free markets in the world have some controls and safeguards to curb runaway greed. Finding that balance between freedom and controls is the ongoing struggle.