What comes to mind if someone says, “it is a very successful business” or, “one of the nation’s most successful businesspeople”?
The bus climbed up the rutted dirt road starting the journey from Minas de Oro to Tegucigalpa. I sat staring out the window imagining possibilities for Julian and his family. I had spent the weekend with Bob and Gracie Ekblad. Their work excited me. In contrast to my teaching at a bilingual high school I sensed their efforts could make a significant difference for the poor. The Ekblads modeled regenerative farming methods on their hillside plot and taught the methods to others. We spent Saturday with Julian. He, his wife and young children lived in single room shack. Julian rented both his home and a plot of land where he grew corn and beans. Bob, always the visionary, had persuaded Julian that the hardpacked patch of dirt in front of his shack held great possibilities as a vegetable garden. We took the first step that day, cutting up banana leaves, weeds, and grass to start a large compost pile. Sitting on the bus I imagined the compost transforming the dirt into rich soil. I imagined the family eating vegetables from the garden, the bananas trees producing more in the enriched soil. They would not just eat better, they would spend less on food, and could sell the surplus. I imagined him putting the methods into practice on his rented plot and production increasing. Then I imagined them, through increased income, buying their own land—a small plot first, then a bigger one. A realization crashed into my imagining. In spite of my intense commitment to live simply and give to the poor; and in spite of my strong critique of wealthy Hondurans, and foreigners, who had unrelentingly pursued wealth, bought up acres upon acres of prime valley land leaving the vast majority of Honduran farmers with tiny hillside plots—in spite of that what was I doing? I was turning Julian into a capitalist success story.
Perhaps, right now, you are doing just what I did then, thinking “wait a minute Mark, don’t be so hard on yourself. Julian was desperately poor, it is fine to imagine him having land of his own. And sure your images were all about increased production and income, but what you really wanted for Julian was a better life.” True, yet I could not escape the fact that my default success story was one of economic growth. On the surface many of my perspectives and lifestyle choices had changed, but down deep I still had the same framework of most in my society.
To be clear, I do not think the things I imagined for Julian were wrong. He was desperately poor. Having land of his own would be a great thing. What sobered me in that moment, and saddens me today, is how quickly my mind went to money and economic growth. Take a moment. Think, what else could I have imagined?
I could have been looking out the window excitedly thinking about the richness that would come to Julian’s life through meeting regularly with the group the Ekblads had brought together for training and Bible study. I could have rejoiced in less erosion and less burning that would happen through Julian using these methods. I could have imagined changes that would occur in his life and in his family through interacting with the Ekblads and coming to know the God revealed by Jesus. I did not. I thought of economic growth. What stopped me that day was a voice within me asking, “and does he just keep going, growing bigger? Is that the point? When does he stop? What is enough? Is there another model?”
If economist Kate Raworth had been sitting beside me on the bus that day she would have said, “Time to reimagine progress Mark.” In her book, Doughnut Economics, she critiques 20th century economics for flawed theories that have led most of the world to pursue economic growth not only as desirable, but as necessity. Think for instance of hearing on the news, “the economy is not growing.” We expect the next statements will say why, and what can be done so it will start growing again. There is little questioning of that. Raworth challenges us to change our focus from working to make economies grow, whether or not they make us thrive, to instead creating economies that make us thrive whether or not they grow (209). She asks why have we settled on growth and efficiency as the default goals and not others? “What if we started economics not with its long-established theories but with humanity’s long term goals, and then sought out the economic thinking that would enable us to achieve them” (8). (Her “doughnut” is pictured above.)
She is thinking at a macro level, societal, not just an individual’s goals, but using a micro example might help grasp her point. Let’s return to where we started, how we define a successful business? The Fortune 500 are ranked by total revenues, that reflects how most would evaluate a successful business. What if the Fortune 500 were not ranked just on how much money they made, but on employee satisfaction, on their contribution to lessening inequality and increasing the health of their workers and customers, on their levels of pollution and resource depletion, etc.
The unrelenting commitment to economic growth and the unquestioning use of profit as the definition of a successful business has a host of negative consequences—on society, on employees, on the environment, on individual consumers. God recognized this. In the Old Testament, through the Law and prophets, God sought to instill other values in addition to what we might call financial success. The Sabbatical and Jubilee years prioritized the value of redistribution and leveling the economic playing field on a regular basis. Through years of gathering daily manna God trained Israel to not practice hoarding. They could not use any more than enough.
To be clear, neither Raworth nor the Bible is against a business or a farmer making a profit. They need to make money to stay in business. Rather, similarly to how I argue that efficiency is just one characteristic to consider when we evaluate what is the best, so Raworth wants to broaden what characteristics we use to evaluate if a business or a nation’s economy is successful. Sometimes a nation does need economic growth. The problem is making it the one value and assuming it is always good and necessary. It is unsustainable for all economies to continue growing forever.
Many of us might want to agree with Raworth, but think it will not work. It goes against the “laws” of economics. In 20th century economic theory growth is not a problem it is the solution. Raworth points to fundamental flaws in those laws. (See her book for her thoughtful and clearly articulated arguments on limitations of widely accepted economic laws.) Yet, even if we find her arguments compelling, change will be difficult because most of us have so absorbed the values of an economic-growth-as-measure-of-success perspective. (Think of me on the bus.). It may be a default, but we are not hardwired this way as humans. In Europe when techniques were first adopted that enabled people to accomplish more in less time, what did people do? They worked less hours. Their priority was not economic growth. They did not assume that more income would make life better. Many traditional societies have lived by the principle of sufficiency. In the 19th century in Manitoba European traders offered the Cree higher prices for furs. They assumed it would motivate the native people to bring in more pelts. The opposite happened, “The Cree brought fewer furs to the trading post, since a smaller number were now needed to obtain the goods that they wanted in exchange” (240). We are trained and shaped into embracing economic growth as the definition of progress—for societies and individuals. That means we could be trained and shaped to embrace other values and goals.
Part of achieving continual economic growth is influencing people to consume more and more. In my class session dedicated to consumerism I have sought to expose the lies of consumerism and point to ways through Jesus and Christian community we can be free from it. That is important. I will continue to do it. Reading, Raworth, however, led me to see that although that is getting below the surface it is not deep enough. I have not worked at the deeper societal level. Economic growth demands increased consumption. We must address the societal commitment to the former, not just individual resistance to the latter.
Invitation: Watch Raworth’s TED talk; watch a news clip about a city putting her approach into practice. Read her book. (It is accessible, engaging; not an economics text book.) Then share with me and others ideas you have on how we can work at this paradigm change. I will start by sharing this action-step idea for the Church.
Action step: I put Julian into the mold of the definition of success given to me by society. Many Christian business owners today do the same. They work to be successful based on the definitions of success given to them. Imagine what would happen if churches began to promote a different definition of success and actively honored Christian business owners for their success based on that alternative model. It would impact not just the lives of the owners, but all those working for them, and it could contribute to our society changing its model of economic success. A deep change we need.
Postscript:
A day after finishing this blog I heard Mary Hirschfeld interviewed (Mars Hill Audio Journal, 147). She is an economist and theologian and also calls for going deeper. She states that mainstream economics teaches that acquiring more increases our happiness. It teaches us that it is rational to seek to pursue more and that we should seek greater income and wealth to meet our desires. She challenges this in her book Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy. And if, after reading this blog, you are assuming all of this is “leftist” or “socialist” I encourage you to listen to the first 15 minutes of her debate with a democratic socialist.