BANKRUPTCY:

INTERVIEW: with Foster Friess: Virtue a Prerequisite for Economic and Political Freedom (January and February 1998, Religion and Liberty)

R&L: Speaking more generally, in what way do biblical principles apply to the free-market system?

Friess: I think that one of the most important ways that the Judeo-Christian tradition can help clarify free-market processes is with the principle of sin.

R&L: How so?

Friess: You see, just as there are physical consequences of sin, there are also economic consequences of sin. Too often, these costs are just passed along to the consumer and taxpayer. Unfortunately, sin is too often overlooked when trying to reduce these costs and improve society. Just as millions of consumer decisions every hour affect the overall picture of the United States–for example, in determining whether we are in a recession or expansion–the millions of moral decisions citizens make will determine whether we live in a noble society or a degenerate one.

I propose that a morally bankrupt society cannot maintain a strong economic balance sheet. Consider the sin of greed. One way that greed manifests itself is when city dwellers decide they are paying too much rent. Instead of moving somewhere else, they get city governments to pass rent control laws. Rent controls, however, invite landlords to protect their investment by converting to condominiums and, even worse, discourage developers from building any more rental housing. Under the guise of protecting the poor, rent control ends up as a subsidy for the middle and upper classes while driving poor people out of cheap housing.

Any businessman interested in building a healthy economy should see not only the moral but the economic value of discouraging sin and encouraging virtue. As Michael Novak has said, "Self-government depends on the capacity of citizens to govern their own passions, urges, habits, and expectations." We should work to rebuild a virtuous economy. Ephesians 4:28 reads, "Let him who stole, steal no more–but take up honest work." Through our sin, we steal from our economy. God wants us, instead, to be productive–to replace the costs of sin with the rewards of virtue.

R&L: You speak of the need for the people in free societies and free markets to be virtuous. What are some of the more important virtues that should be cultivated?

Friess: I think that there are two virtues–at least two–that are very important, especially for Americans: courage and hard work. America was built by men and women who came to this country in search of just one thing: freedom. Having experienced the horrors of totalitarian repression, stifled opportunity, and hierarchical societies, they saw America as a shining land of opportunity. They knew what it meant to work and they knew what it meant to be free. They embodied what Theodore Roosevelt talked about when he said, "Our country calls not for the life of ease but the life of strenuous endeavor." They became captains of industry, architects of our material wealth, guides for our spiritual health, and leaders who called us to see things as they could be. They were also the anonymous millions who worked hard, raised families, passed values on from one generation to another–they were the threads of the fabric of America.

R&L: Many argue that these kinds of virtues–as well as freedom itself–are in short supply today. What happened to cause this shortage?

Friess: For some reason, in the past several generations, there have been those who have attempted to curtail the very freedom that made America possible–believing that the risks of freedom were too great or perhaps that the rewards of freedom were more than they could control. And so in this great nation we began a social experiment unprecedented in American history. Having been conceived in liberty and nurtured in freedom, we had these birthrights traded in for a system of elite governmental control–and we have reaped the whirlwind. No longer believing in the freedom of man, we have engaged in a crazy experiment that has had an incalculably high toll. Free men in a free State become, instead, objects of affection of an overbearing "Nanny State."

This process of course feeds on itself. As we become less virtuous, we demand more and more government to protect us from each other and from the consequences of our own lack of virtue. Unable to govern ourselves, what choice do we have but to expand Government? Posted by Orrin Judd at January 6, 2003 12:22 PM