The Pope has said:
The idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology . . . is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth's goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit
And according to the FT:
In a tweet on Thursday, he added: “There is a need to seek other ways of understanding the economy and progress.”
He may want to read The Courageous State where I explore such issues in some depth and offer alternative economic theory.
Please note: Comments relating to other aspects of Catholic dogma will simply be deleted. I don't agree with it all, and am broad minded enough to seek common ground where it is available. I expect the same of others
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What economic qualifications does the pope have and why should we listen to him?
Ah, the old charlatan’s defence: only I am qualified to comment so your opinion does not count
I dont believe Osborne has any economic qualifications but millions listen to him
Probably about the same as George Osborne
Mr or Ms “the inconvenient truth”
At face value this comment really must constitute a (the?) nadir of commentary.
The Pope has at his disposal, both within the hierarchy, but also far beyond it, an incredible warmth of highly qualified talent upon which he can draw, as is evidenced by the Catholic Social Teaching Encyclicals that were initiated by Pope Leo Xlll in his “Rerum novarum” Encyclical of 1893.
Consider, for example, thishttp://www.acton.org/pub/religion-liberty/volume-21-number-4/vaticans-economic-letter
No, your real argument is “Why doesn’t the Pope stick to his ‘real’ job, of preaching the Gospel to the faithful, and stop meddling in areas where he has no righrvto intervene? Stick to bells and smells, and pious sermons, and let the ‘real’ world get on with it.”
Two responses to this: first, this is the usual “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario, where, if churchmen say nothing, they’re accused of being irrelevant, while if they say something they’re accused of meddling.
Secondly, when Bishop Desmond Tutu was taxed with exactly such criticism, the religion and politics don’t/shouldn’t mix, observed – wittily, and somewhat tartly – that such people “must be reading a different Bible”, a book full of calls for justice, including economic justice.
For the record, I’m not a Roman Catholic, though I am an Anglo-Catholic, with considerable respect for Catholic Social Teaching, and for what Pope Francis is clearly seeking to achieve – a world of justice and respect for humanity and creation
Andrew
Many thanks
And I am not a catholic (although it should come as no surprise to learn that my father was brought up as one)
But Catholic social teaching on economics is good – and I agree it has tried to follow that difficult line between capitalism and Marxism since the 1890s, better than many who have also tried – and whatever the other failings of the church
Richard
I’m not one of Francis’ flock, but definitely prefer Pope-ulist to ‘populist’.
We do not have to use up all the earth’s resources to keep growing. Labour and land (natural resources) are the building blocks of production. Land (surface of earth, including oceans + below earth and above) does not deplete at all. Services are part of production. By recycling minerals we can have almost limitless growth. (That’s why we should tax consumption of resources as well as land – but not services directly).
Carol – that’s not strictly true, there are physical constraints on growth.
Whilst labour is a renewable resource, land and particularly soils and fish stocks are not limitless resources to be exploited at will. They need careful conservation – something they are not currently receiving.
Another report today highlights the extinction threat to vertebrates – people do not realise how delicate the balance is that allows nature and the human race to flourish. Unfortunately we are currently bludgeoning nature over the head with a pick axe handle so that people can buy whole chickens for just £3 or growing biomass for fuel instead of growing food, to pretend we’re ‘green’.
So yes, a fair amount of decoupling can take place towards services over consumption which will keep the show on the road for a good number of decades ahead – but these future centenarians will need basic resources and materials too.
@Carol. Some brief comments. Read some of the recent literature e.g. “Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet” [1] There are a number of risks to how far homo sapiens can go with their current ways. Some of the major risks are not what you might guess e.g. the flow of phosphorus and nitrogen into the biosphere (and water) from fertilizers etc is damaging our biosphere with alarming risks. Genetic engineering – we can and will make new forms of life by synthesizing the DNA, bioengineer to electronics / comms, who knows what new machines we will be able to make. ‘Military flies’ on the wall? This Science Journal article is a moderate view [1].
Much of our modern manufacturing relies on very scare elements that we will lose soon, read this article published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.[2] Will you need a whole body MRI scan when you are unwell in the future – much more difficult when helium runs out. We can’t make helium, or any of these elements. There have been geological processes that operate on long time scales that have given us rich [concentrated] resources e.g. metal ores, some of these will run out in the next 100 years, recycling will not be enough to sustain the current models of growth. Recycling is a lossy process, and for very complex products/elements extremely lossy, difficult to recycle elements due to the small amounts involved (economics of recycling) and pollution caused by the recycling process. How do you recycle single atom materials (so called nanosheets), these are examples of extremely diluted systems.
The biosphere is not engineered and controlled by humans we are a small part of a system with feedback that will not be easily predictable. Carol there is chemistry going on everywhere we can not stop or even know about. The pH of the oceans is changing — read up on the different forms of calcium carbonate that are formed. Those sustaining ocean life is formed at current pH levels or earlier levels, as pH changes the wrong type of carbonates are formed = no life i.e. corals dead. Excess CO2 causes acidification of the oceans.
Facts and scientific truths can be difficult to use as a rational for future policies especially with neoliberal story-tellers everywhere persuading the population of new fictions and myths. [3]
[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1259855 If you register you can read free of charge.
[2] http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2011/January/CriticalThinking.asp
[3] BBC world service http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02sytk6#auto