Christianomics: A blog on economics, politics, and law

  "There is a big difference between equality and equity" - Kamala Harris (1) Equality is that of opportunity or equality under the law. This is how most competitions and sports are governed and also the principle applied in Luke 19 when the nobleman gives an equal portion of money to each of his servants. When the nobleman returns he commends the servants who brought a positive return on his investment. It is also noteworthy that the nobleman rewards the servants in proportion to their success. Equity is about equality of outcome. This is something you want in a production environment where you want each product (ie an airplane or a vaccine or even Krispy Kreme doughnuts) to be as good as the next. This provides stability. An example of this can be found in Matthew 20. The master of the house pays people to labor in his vineyards. He goes out throughout the day collecting more and more people to work his vineyard, and at the end of the day he pays them for their labor. To ev...

"Prices are communication. Price controls are government censorship." -Russ Nelson One of the most important factors (and one of the most overlooked) aspects of free market capitalism is the utility of prices. Without know anything about the product, a high price can tell you something is rare or hard to make. It might also hint at the quality of two similar products. Price controls (most often associated with top-down socialism and communism) removes these features. And that’s when you excesses (when prices are fixed too high) and shortages (when prices are fixed too low).

First everyone has a legal right to do what they did: Gina Carano had a right to post on her Twitter account. People upset at her post had the right to call for her being fired. Disney had the right to fire her. Disney also has the right to not fire Pedro Pascal (Mr. Mandalorian) and other employees for posting very similar nazi/holocaust content on their own Twitter accounts. (1) People upset at the hypocrisy of Gina’s firing have the right to boycott and #canceldisney .(2) And Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire have the right to partner with her for their next movie.(3) So all of that is legal and constitutional. And considering none of the actions are mandated by the government I would also claim this is the free market at work. However, free market or not, the fact that this situation happened at all, begs the question: “Where does this end? Leftists told Trump supporters to, “Build your own social media.” When Parler was shut down, they said, “Build your own servers.” Now when Disney ...

This past week has seen lots of eagerness and angst directed at Gamestop, hedge funds, Reddit, and Robinhood. There are plenty of explanations for what is happening and the various legalities (and illegalities). I’ll provide a link to Ben Shapiro’s summary which I found to be succinct and clear.(1) But what I want to cover is [1] this emerging idea that the stock market doesn’t improve economic prosperity, [2] that the stock market is just gambling, and [3] how the government got us into this situation. [1] In the traditional sense of investments and buying stocks, there are tangible economic gains to be made for both the companies and the investors. It’s the same reason I went to the bank to ask for a lot of money to buy a house, and the bank said “Okay.” My house provides shelter, heat, air conditioning, a place to hang out with friends and makes my life better and more comfortable than before. The bank is similarly going to profit because it will recoup all the money it gave to me, ...

  "In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”- Acts 20:35 I see Christians on the liberal side of the political spectrum pointing to verses like Acts 20:25, Luke 3:11, Galatians 6:2, 1 John 3:17, and Leviticus 25:35-38 as evidence that Christians should be voting for socialist politicians and policies. When I ask why they think socialism is the answer I’m told they believe we should be generous and that society is better when we take care of the needs of our neighbors. This results in less crime, homelessness, substance abuse, and mental health problems. Those are perfectly fair and reasonable things to want. In fact they are so reasonable that I, a firm believer in the superiority of free markets, agree across the board. So what’s the problem? The problem is these are merely goals. Goals with no clarification on the means of achi...