{"id":7370,"date":"2021-05-04T00:47:47","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T00:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/?p=7370"},"modified":"2021-05-04T00:47:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T00:47:52","slug":"myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Myth of the Free Markets: A Catholic Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><span class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-red-color\">By  Dr. Hassan M. Shirvani<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"679\" data-attachment-id=\"7372\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/capture-1\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture-1.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"1257,834\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;Izaguirre, Navil&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1620070847&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Capture-1\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture-1-300x199.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture-1-1024x679.jpg\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture-1-1024x679.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7372\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture-1-1024x679.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture-1-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture-1-768x510.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture-1.jpg 1257w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The importance of economic education in fostering higher levels of social welfare and&nbsp;political stability&nbsp;is&nbsp;widely acknowledged. &nbsp;However, judging by the&nbsp;poor quality of&nbsp;most public&nbsp;economic debates, the level of&nbsp;economic literacy, even&nbsp;in&nbsp;major&nbsp;industrial countries,&nbsp;seems&nbsp;to be still awfully low.&nbsp; This is particularly evidenced by the&nbsp;increasing tendency&nbsp;of many debaters to refute the views of their opponents, not through sound economic arguments, but rather through disparagements and even name-callings.&nbsp; A good example&nbsp;of this tendency&nbsp;is provided by the constant chastising&nbsp;of the Catholic Church&nbsp;for her periodic warnings about the&nbsp;dangers&nbsp;of unbridled&nbsp;free market economies. &nbsp;In these warnings, issued in&nbsp;a&nbsp;series of&nbsp;papal encyclicals dating back at least to 1891,&nbsp;the Church, while supportive of these economies,&nbsp;has also raised serious concerns about the rising levels&nbsp;of economic concentration,&nbsp;environmental degradation, and&nbsp;inequality&nbsp;that have been associated with them.&nbsp; In addition, the Church&nbsp;has also offered&nbsp;strong&nbsp;support&nbsp;for&nbsp;the rights of the workers&nbsp;in these economies&nbsp;to&nbsp;unionize, to&nbsp;earn living wages,&nbsp;and to enjoy&nbsp;safe&nbsp;working conditions. &nbsp;In response, some of the&nbsp;papal authors&nbsp;of these encyclicals have been criticized as being economically illiterate and&nbsp;even branded as \u201cradical leftists, if not worse. &nbsp;In addition,&nbsp;the Church has been frequently advised to leave&nbsp;all&nbsp;economic matters to economists and instead to concentrate solely on the issues of faith and morality. &nbsp;Apart from the fact that economics is primarily a moral science, this dismissive attitude of the critics ignores the fact that modern economic theory is far more supportive of the&nbsp;economic positions of the&nbsp;Church than those of her detractors. &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Myth of the Free Markets<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One reason for the unsatisfactory state of economic conversation in many industrialized countries is the fact that, unlike most professions, economics can be seemingly practiced without a license. &nbsp;Thus, without any prior economic training, many individuals consider themselves to be competent economists and, thus, highly qualified to express opinions on the most important economic issues of the day. &nbsp;Even for those professionals who have taken some introductory economics courses, there still remains the problem of the limited scope of those courses. &nbsp;Thus, while many of&nbsp;those courses&nbsp;pay&nbsp;lip service to a&nbsp;variety of&nbsp;market&nbsp;structures,&nbsp;the standard model of the economy that they eventually single out for special treatment,&nbsp;and the one that&nbsp;most&nbsp;students take away with them, is the perfectly competitive model of the markets.&nbsp; In such&nbsp;markets,&nbsp;characterized by their popular demand and supply curves, many small&nbsp;buyers&nbsp;and&nbsp;sellers&nbsp;regularly meet to freely exchange their&nbsp;goods&nbsp;and services&nbsp;at&nbsp;mutually agreed&nbsp;prices. &nbsp;These flexible prices will in turn ensure that all&nbsp;markets&nbsp;are&nbsp;continuously cleared,&nbsp;that all&nbsp;scarce resources&nbsp;are&nbsp;efficiently allocated, and&nbsp;that&nbsp;all economies&nbsp;will&nbsp;be&nbsp;always at&nbsp;full employment.&nbsp; What is less emphasized,&nbsp;however, is that for the perfectly competitive markets to work,&nbsp;it is also necessary to make some additional unrealistic assumptions.&nbsp; According to the most important of these assumptions, the individual&nbsp;economic&nbsp;units should have no&nbsp;significant economic power, should be&nbsp;fully informed, should be&nbsp;willing to pay for&nbsp;all&nbsp;public goods,&nbsp;and should respect the well-defined property rights of others.&nbsp; Needless to add, in the absence of these stringent conditions, the idea of the free markets as an economic nirvana will simply be a myth.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The&nbsp;Market Failures<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The foregoing should make it clear that, given its reliance on too many restrictive assumptions, the competitive model of the free markets can hardly provide a realistic&nbsp;description of&nbsp;how modern economies operate.&nbsp; These economies&nbsp;are&nbsp;almost universally&nbsp;characterized by the presence of vast concentrations&nbsp;of economic power,&nbsp;the prevalence of&nbsp;uncertainty and&nbsp;asymmetric information&nbsp;between many buyers and sellers, the existence of&nbsp;free riders&nbsp;for&nbsp;many public goods, and&nbsp;the&nbsp;absence&nbsp;of&nbsp;clarity&nbsp;about the nature of&nbsp;many&nbsp;existing&nbsp;property rights. &nbsp;As a consequence,&nbsp;most&nbsp;modern&nbsp;economies&nbsp;suffer from the so-called market failures, in which&nbsp;many&nbsp;large&nbsp;corporations&nbsp;routinely&nbsp;manipulate the markets,&nbsp;pollute the environment,&nbsp;ignore&nbsp;the interests of&nbsp;their&nbsp;stakeholders,&nbsp;destabilize the financial markets,&nbsp;and&nbsp;facilitate the growth of the&nbsp;extreme forms of economic inequality. &nbsp;Under these conditions,&nbsp;it is therefore incumbent upon&nbsp;governments&nbsp;to&nbsp;address these&nbsp;market failures through&nbsp;a host of antitrust,&nbsp;environmental,&nbsp;financial, and labor&nbsp;regulations. &nbsp;In addition, governments also need to periodically apply appropriate&nbsp;demand management&nbsp;and redistribution&nbsp;policies&nbsp;to maintain both economic and political stability&nbsp;in their economies. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Abusing the Free Markets Model<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Notwithstanding its mythical nature, however, the free markets model&nbsp;is still widely&nbsp;used to&nbsp;uphold a host of unwarranted economic positions and policies. &nbsp;This can be illustrated by a few examples. &nbsp;First,&nbsp;consider&nbsp;the&nbsp;argument that the imposition of a minimum wage will push the price of the low-skilled workers above&nbsp;its&nbsp;economically justifiable level, thus resulting in higher unemployment&nbsp;among these workers. While this&nbsp;conclusion&nbsp;is valid under perfect competition, it fails to hold if&nbsp;employers enjoy considerable economic power either in the product or in the labor market.&nbsp; Under both of these conditions, it is easy to show that firms will&nbsp;tend to both underpay and under-hire workers.&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus, the minimum wage legislation can&nbsp;indeed&nbsp;result in both higher wages and higher employment. &nbsp;To this should be added the positive effects of higher wages on consumer spending and, hence, on the level of employment. &nbsp;Indeed, there is considerable evidence that a gradual minimum wage increase will entail minimal loss of jobs, while at the same time providing millions of low-paid workers with rising incomes.&nbsp; In addition, even when some small businesses are adversely affected by their higher labor costs, governments can always cover some of these costs through appropriate tax breaks and direct subsidies to these businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Second, consider the assertion that individuals&nbsp;always&nbsp;earn&nbsp;what they deserve, that is,&nbsp;what they contribute&nbsp;to national output. &nbsp;Again, this assertion, which is aimed at justifying the existing inequalities and undermining any attempt at&nbsp;income&nbsp;redistribution, is based on the perfect competition&nbsp;model. &nbsp;In reality, economic power, together with artificial barriers to entry, can significantly influence&nbsp;the distribution of personal incomes. &nbsp;This explains the absurd disparity between the compensations of many CEOs and their average employees.&nbsp; This also accounts for the fact that many modern professionals, such as musicians and medical specialists, who enjoy either copyright or licensing protections, make much more money than their predecessors in earlier times, who did not. &nbsp;In addition, while many entrepreneurs and managers deserve financial rewards for their efforts and risk-takings, this can hardly be said for the passive owners of wealth.&nbsp; Put differently, the ownership of capital per se should not be deemed a productive activity and should not be rewarded.&nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Third, consider the assertion, proven wrong again and again,&nbsp;that&nbsp;the severely depressed&nbsp;market&nbsp;economies, if left alone, can&nbsp;speedily&nbsp;recover on&nbsp;their own. &nbsp;As the experiences of both the&nbsp;Great Recession&nbsp;of 2007-2009&nbsp;and&nbsp;the current coronavirus crisis indicate,&nbsp;adherence to&nbsp;such a view would in general be a prescription for disaster. &nbsp;Indeed,&nbsp;and despite massive government interventions&nbsp;during the current pandemic,&nbsp;the global economy is&nbsp;still in the throes of&nbsp;unprecedentedly high rates of&nbsp;unemployment, mass poverty, and&nbsp;business failures.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finally, there is the assertion that financial markets are informationally so efficient that security prices can be relied on to constantly reflect their true&nbsp;values. &nbsp;Again, as evidenced by the repeated cycles of boom and bust&nbsp;on Wall Street, the idea that&nbsp;financial markets know best and can&nbsp;largely&nbsp;self-regulate&nbsp;turns out to have been badly mistaken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fictitious model of the free markets,&nbsp;assumed to be free from all forms of market failure,&nbsp;is often used&nbsp;by the proponents of private initiative to&nbsp;deny any legitimate economic role for&nbsp;governments.&nbsp; Like most modern economists, the Catholic Church has always had issues with the&nbsp;relevance of this simple model. &nbsp;In&nbsp;particular, the Church has found&nbsp;little&nbsp;evidence that many corporations,&nbsp;in the absence of government regulations,&nbsp;will voluntarily respect the interests of their&nbsp;diverse&nbsp;stakeholders, from&nbsp;the welfare of&nbsp;their employees to the&nbsp;environmental safety of the&nbsp;communities in which they operate.&nbsp; In addition, the Church has consistently rejected the assertion that private charity would largely obviate the need for any systematic governmental support of the needy. &nbsp;Instead,&nbsp;the Church has called for an inclusive and responsible capitalism, in which both businesses and governments can work together to ensure the highest possible levels of welfare for all&nbsp;their citizens, regardless of their&nbsp;economic, political, and&nbsp;social standings.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Dr. Hassan M. Shirvani The importance of economic education in fostering higher levels of social welfare and&nbsp;political stability&nbsp;is&nbsp;widely acknowledged. &nbsp;However, judging by the&nbsp;poor quality of&nbsp;most public&nbsp;economic debates, the level of&nbsp;economic literacy, even&nbsp;in&nbsp;major&nbsp;industrial countries,&nbsp;seems&nbsp;to be still awfully low.&nbsp; This is particularly evidenced by the&nbsp;increasing tendency&nbsp;of many debaters to refute the views of their opponents, not&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":7371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-csb-student","category-economics-economics","category-finance"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Myth of the Free Markets: A Catholic Perspective - Cameron School of Business Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Myth of the Free Markets: A Catholic Perspective - Cameron School of Business Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Dr. Hassan M. Shirvani The importance of economic education in fostering higher levels of social welfare and&nbsp;political stability&nbsp;is&nbsp;widely acknowledged. &nbsp;However, judging by the&nbsp;poor quality of&nbsp;most public&nbsp;economic debates, the level of&nbsp;economic literacy, even&nbsp;in&nbsp;major&nbsp;industrial countries,&nbsp;seems&nbsp;to be still awfully low.&nbsp; This is particularly evidenced by the&nbsp;increasing tendency&nbsp;of many debaters to refute the views of their opponents, not&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cameron School of Business Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-05-04T00:47:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-05-04T00:47:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1257\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"834\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Hassan Shirvani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hassan Shirvani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/\",\"name\":\"Myth of the Free Markets: A Catholic Perspective - Cameron School of Business Blog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-05-04T00:47:47+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-05-04T00:47:52+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/#\/schema\/person\/3d941056bccf001625b83564692cf2e9\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2021\/05\/Capture.jpg\",\"width\":1257,\"height\":834},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/myth-of-the-free-markets-a-catholic-perspective\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Myth of the Free Markets: A Catholic Perspective\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/\",\"name\":\"Cameron School of Business Blog\",\"description\":\"CSB Blog\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/#\/schema\/person\/3d941056bccf001625b83564692cf2e9\",\"name\":\"Hassan Shirvani\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.stthom.edu\/cameron\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d315bc8e57ff422516a50093e3cbf091d5a696051dddf8d324e7a05e48d252db?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d315bc8e57ff422516a50093e3cbf091d5a696051dddf8d324e7a05e48d252db?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Hassan Shirvani\"},\"description\":\"Dr. Hassan Shirvani is the Cullen Endowed Chair of Economics. 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