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economics Archives - Eve Poole

May 23
0

Joy and Prosperity

By | Theology | No Comments

Paper given at the University of Aberdeen, 11 May 2017 

Luke 18:22-3 ‘Jesus said, “You still lack one thing: Sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.” But when the rich young man heard this, he became very sad, because he was extremely wealthy.’

The hypothesis of this Joy and Prosperity event is that Christians have traditionally driven a wedge between them. A bit like the rich young man, there has been a feeling that you can’t have both joy and prosperity: blessed are the poor. Today we are testing that assumption, and my contribution is to look at the question through the lens of the axioms of classical economic thought. Read More

Jan 29
1

7 Deadly Sins – capitalism’s flat-earth problem and what to do about it

By | Business | No Comments

JustShare Lecture – St Mary-le-Bow Church – 29 January 2014 at 6.05pm

In general, market capitalism depends on 7 big ideas. Economists like to look scientific, so they tend to present these ideas as laws of nature. But even scientific truth is not this fixed, and the flat-earthers have moved on. But not so the Economists. The 7 big ideas that served the market so well in the past have now become sins not virtues, and are toxic to its future. And unless we correct the system at a fundamental level, reform is doomed to fail. But where to start? Tonight I’ll start with a quick run down on Capitalism’s 7 Deadly Sins. Then I will talk about the theology that informs my critique and ask some tricky questions. After all, it’s hardly fair to attack the market’s beliefs without being candid about my own. Finally, I’ll suggest ways in which Christians everywhere can get involved in the market’s reform.

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Apr 21
1

Monopoly

By | Business | No Comments

One of these days you are going to come to Ashridge and I am going to teach you economics by making you play Monopoly. My family once told me that, apart from the salary increase, they could tell I’d done an MBA because I suddenly started winning at Monopoly. But did you ever really stop to think about what sort of economics it is teaching you? Read More

Jul 22
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Theology of Money

By | Business, Theology | No Comments

This week I am back at Douai Abbey finishing off my PhD. Today I am reading Philip Goodchild’s Theology of Money. In it he argues that money is more powerful than God. This is because money, through credit, naturally multiplies, endlessly and exponentially, in order to keep repaying the debts it incurs en route, like restless air seeking a vacuum. The implication is that God, or religion, is not programmed for growth in the same way. I like Goodchild’s use of money as a metaphor and his recognition that money is essentially an article of faith. However, he does not develop his argument far enough. Read More

Jun 05
1

The universal store of value

By | Business | No Comments

Skins, pots, beads, gold, coins, camels, land, wine, stamps … throughout history and across the world communities have had different stores of value. The innovation of coinage created liquidity for barter economies, and the innovations of credit and fractional reserve banking have accelerated this liquidity to a froth. Stiglitz and others talk about economies as being reducible to information. Perhaps it helps to regard the universal store – the universal language – as value itself, as expressed through price. This abstracts from the material into the relative and, communicated through information flows, allows a more exact matching between supply and demand. Meanwhile, people have themselves become banks, living on fractional reserves, such that their lives become a house of cards, held up by trust, a trust in the faceless millions whose total actions sustain a securitised economy. Read More

May 15
0

love your enemies – the business case?

By | Business | No Comments

If one applies market thinking to capitalism, it becomes apparent that capitalism is in danger of becoming a monopoly. This movement towards supremacy appears to lie at the heart of much of its current shortcomings – being the only game in town means that capitalism owns the rules, with the old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely. What should capitalism do to save itself from the torpor of monopoly? It should cherish its rivals, realising that without them to keep it honest, it will fail. Rather than fighting them, capitalism should take a lesson from Axelrod’s Prisoner’s Dilemma competition and strive to win against itself, rather than by competing head-to-head. And might co-opetition – with apologies to Nash, Axelrod, Nalebuff and Brandenburger, increase the total set of outcomes?