Adam Smith and N. T. Wright

N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, gave a sermon at Menlo Park last sunday. I am glad I got to hear him speak. Like the music of Bach, I found N.T. Wright to be wonderful in many levels. He comes across immediately as a deep thinker and a serious scholar, but at the same time, he was very approachable and had a great sense of humor. He talked about three current issues that the Western world faces: Gnoticism, Imperialism, and Post-modernism. Then he talked about how his new book: Simply Christian was relevant in these days. The sermon should be available online soon on the church website. Once I verified my notes I may blog about this more.

I started reading his new book - it seems very well written and Bach-like - but before I send you all to Amazon.com, let me say that there is one minor point I do not agree with him. His book starts out talking about justice, how everyone has an inner desire for fairness. That is all very good. But one of the examples he gave was that of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

First of all, I don't believe the poor is getting poorer in abosolute terms. My gut feeling is that the lifestyle of the poorest 10% of the world has been improving year to year. Secondly, global commerce is not social injustice. As long as people volunteerly work at so-called "sweat shops", there must be something more fair and just about working there, than at other local businesses. (One may argue that global corporations have so much economy of scale that local businesses cannot compete; but I have yet to hear of an area where the only employer is a global evil empire.)

While it is good to try to improve working environments around the world, one must take into account the different standards of living. A dollar in the U.S. cannot buy you a cup of coffee, but can get you a decent meal in Tibet. The poor in America is definitely well off compared to the poor in China or India. Which brings me to the other Englishman in the title of this blog: Adam Smith. I am reading his classic "The Wealth of Nations", which by the way, somehow got used at work. In the first chapter, he talks about the creation and distribution of wealth. If I understood correctly, it is the uneven distribution of wealth that Bishop Wright finds offensive.

Smith has something to say about that:

Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his [the poor's] accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savage.

Instead of lobbying to tax the ultra-wealthy, who earned the wealth in one way or another, perhaps those industrious and frugal peasants, who feel the pain of the savages, should simply do what they can with their own money to help. Instead of boycotting Nike or Starbucks, perhaps we should be reminded that even if a worker at a "sweat shop" only gets a dollar a day, that is a dollar more than they would have gotten if no one buys Nikes. When people groups join the global economy, they gain from the efficiencies in division of labor. This in turns results in better productivity, and eventually, better standards of living. To artificially inflate the cost of labor in a country where labor is cheap, and thereby distributing wealth to the factory workers in those countries, does not seem to me to be the optimal way of distributing wealth.

Of course Tom Wright did not get to the details on how to alleviate social injustice in the sermon. Perhaps he has some wonderful ideas as well.