Popeonomics

I like Pope Francis. He seems like a nice fellow. The man is genuinely concerned with poor people and injustice in this world. I applaud him for that. Better for him and the rest of us though that he sticks with his job as a man of God in the Vatican and keep his papal nose out of global economics.

That’s because he, like so many other statists, including all men of the cloth, knows virtually nothing about the science of economics. Why should he? After all, Popes and priests, preachers and clerics, aren’t really much concerned about the temporal realities of existence. They’re all wrapped up in their religious fantasies; what their imaginary God wants; the afterlife; and the promise of salvation for eternity.

So most of them, including Francis, honestly believe and candidly maintain that all the wealth of our temporary existence on Earth is God given and should therefore be distributed evenly. Why not, they reason? Wealth beyond what is necessary to scrape together a modest existence on Earth doesn’t matter when measured against an afterlife in which wealth is unnecessary for the infinity of eternity.

Now, if all that were true, I’d agree with him. But it isn’t true. It’s fantasy. It’s a deception in conscious minds. Wealth is not God given; it’s created by the activities of humans. We all have but one life to live and when our lives are over we’ll be dead for eternity, in which case wealth won’t matter either. It matters only during our lives.

Of course, no one, especially Pope Francis, will be changing their minds anytime soon because of the facts of reality and what I’ve just said. They’ll go right on with their fantasy about the efficacy of wealth distribution, social justice, and how to achieve salvation no matter what the evidence.

The Pope is calling for the governments of nations everywhere to redistribute wealth to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the “economy of exclusion” that he believes is taking hold today.

He doesn’t like the economics of capitalism because he thinks it excludes too much of humanity. So he wants the state to take by force the wealth from those who create it and distribute it to those who don’t. He wants the state to stifle liberty.

In his heart of hearts, Pope Francis is not just a man of God; he’s also a Marxist. But the problem with Marxists is that their fantasy has already been tried and failed over and over again since the dawn of civilizations.

Wealth taken by force from those who create it will simply go to a new class of takers who quickly squander it until there is no wealth left to take at which point the fantasy always collapses and reality reasserts itself. In the interim the poor stay poor and most people are poor. They stay poor because the takers won’t allow them the means and the liberty with which to create wealth.

When force is taken out of the equation and liberty is restored, new wealth is created by those who create wealth, and the very best system for them to create wealth happens to be free market capitalism which raises the standards of living for rich and poor alike.  

But Pope Francis and all the other statists of this world just don’t get it. All the evidence of history is right in front of their faces but they ignore it in favor of fantasy. And in Francis’ case that fantasy includes Popeonomics.