SPEAKER_02 0:04

Is that an accurate way to be thinking about socialism?

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Well, kind of. The difference is when you go full socialist, you're not just redistributing the wealth that the private industry has generated, you're taking over the private industry.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Is it an anti-American? Should we be concerned? Is it a good thing or is it a bad thing?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Socialism is in the news a lot these days. In fact, there are quite a few mainstream politicians that are openly running as socialists in America. And it wasn't that long ago. I'd say certainly my grandparents' generation would have thought of socialism as anti-American. They would have fought it tooth and nail.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Yeah, I mean, is it anti-American? Should we be concerned? Is it a good thing or is it a bad thing?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

I don't know, Dan. What do you think? Well, let's dig into it. I don't think I can give that answer to you in one sentence, but we'll take this whole episode and we'll open it up. What should we think? What do we think? Does the Bible have anything to say about socialism? So welcome everyone to abundant conversations about the life everyone's actually looking for and what's getting in the way. I'm Dan Jarvis, along with my friend and fellow pastor and frequent intellectual sparring partner, Del Fasenfeld. Today, what can we learn from socialism, if anything? And fair warning, I don't think either political team will be happy with what we're about to say. Who knows? Maybe. Maybe we'll even make a few converts, but I'm not sure to what uh we really want to have open hearts about this and say there are things to learn, obviously. The impulses that are driving people toward this discussion, I think, are generally good impulses. We're saying, how do we best care for our neighbors? How do we best care for people who can't care for themselves? We see our society with you know a vast disparity of outcomes. Some people are wealthy and happy, other people are just struggling to make it through the next day. Should we be providing government help to those people? Should churches be stepping up in a different way? Should we do it personally? So let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Yeah, and one of the things that would help me, Dan, is to even just define our terms a little bit. I'm wondering if we even mean the same thing when we say socialism or when we say I'm a capitalist. I don't know. I know you've spent a little time thinking about economics. Yeah. What is a socialist?

SPEAKER_01 2:24

For me, by the way, I've been kind of a geek on this my whole life. Since I was a teenager, I read books about economics for fun. So you'll have to pardon me if I get a little overexcited about some of these concepts. But yeah, what is a socialist? A massive problem right now is that people running on a socialist platform or using that term, they mean different things when they're saying that word. And it's dangerous because I think a lot of people might vote for something and not realize what they're actually signing up for. So a classic definition of socialism would be that it's the state owning the means of production, the things that generate value in the society, the farms, the factories, the stores, the what whatever it is that's creating jobs and goods and services for people. Right now, in a capitalist system, you and I get to own those things if we want to. It's total freedom, total liberty. You want to start a business, go for it. You want to own a farm, save up your money and go own a farm or go talk to a bank or something. Under true socialism, the government owns those means. They own or they directly control how value is created in an effort to make sure that the outcomes for all the citizens are somehow equalized. So nobody can grow exceptionally rich, but theoretically, no one is supposed to be exceptionally poor either. Now the track record isn't so good about this, but that's the ideal. The ideal would be everybody is equal.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

For me to understand it is socialism would just say that the state gets to own it, therefore they get to make sure that it gets equal. And that would be socialistic. Now I had a chance to travel a bit in my past and actually spend some time overseas and particularly in Europe. And in my working definition, I would have said, man, these countries Sweden, you know, Denmark, even the UK or France or Spain, they are socialistic. So when I'm thinking socialism, I'm thinking my experiences there in Europe, thinking about lots of safety net programs, social programs, food programs, all kinds of programs that are helping people with housing, these kinds of things, very, very uh much more involved government aid to the average person. And you know, I'm wondering when we think about socialism kind of coming more to America, if we're thinking patterning after some of what I saw in Europe. Is that an accurate way to be thinking about socialism?

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Well, kind of. So you could say some of those programs are socialistic, just like we have social security is socialistic. It's the social group, like we're getting together and we're funding something together that an individual can't fund on their own. The difference would be those countries are still free market economies. You can still own a business if you're in Denmark or Sweden or in the UK, face more regulatory headwind, you might pay more taxes, but the ownership of the farm is not the government. The ownership of the farm is still you. There's a huge difference there. So what you see in the debate between kind of American safety nets, which are pretty robust as well, honestly, but maybe even more robust European social safety nets, would be how much of the free market wealth that's generated does the government get to take and use to redistribute? That's a great question. I think we'll debate that until the end of time because the needs are always evolving. That's been classically how American political debate is shaped between the two political parties and even independence. You know, it's usually a disagreement about how much can we take and redistribute. The difference is when you go full socialist, you're not just redistributing the wealth that the private industry has generated, you're taking over the private industry. And now the government is commanding and controlling everything and everybody.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

So for me, this has been a little bit of an education, like just having this conversation with you, because again, in my mind, when I think socialism, I'm thinking some of these higher tax rate countries that are providing more robust safety nets. What you're saying is actually, yeah, the tax rates are a lot higher, like 50%. You know, so people pay kind of by force in that sense into the safety net system, but that's a lot different than true socialism. Could you give me some examples of like a country that would be like a true socialist country and like what is the yeah?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Well, I mean, before it collapsed, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR, Mao's China was certainly socialist, where you you think of uh collectivization, you think of everybody kind of owns everything, there's no private property. Uh North Korea would be that. Venezuela was that until really recently. I'm not really sure where that stands right now, but they they were a free market economy, and then they voted themselves into like real socialism, and the whole thing collapsed into poverty and literally starvation in just one generation. When the government takes over the means of production, all the incentives for productivity change, and that's what's not calculated. So generally people step into this somewhat unknowingly because the the line that's sold would be, hey, we're going to help the poor, you're struggling to make your house payment, and if the government could, if the government was controlling the banks, they'd give you better interest rate. If the government controlled the oil companies, they'd be able to lower the gas prices. And and when you're struggling, you you might say, Yeah, I kind of wish for that, and maybe the government could fix it. The problem is as soon as you flip that switch, you change the incentives, and history and math all teach the same lesson, and that is it just doesn't work. The best way for the most people to prosper is to give people liberty, and then in the context of that liberty to buy and sell and make your own economic decisions, to then say, now let's get together and determine how much of our collective output we're going to segment off and use to help the people who, for whatever reason, need help. And that would be medical benefits or snap food benefits, things like that. Those are worthy debates to have because you can also mess up your economy by overdoing that. You can pay people not to work, in essence, or you can tax people at such high rates that they think, why bother having a business at all? I might as well just collect the welfare as well. Like you can take anything too far, but the danger right now that I see is that some of our politicians are toying with actual socialism, which dictionary definition is not that different than actual communism. That's rough and that's scary.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

Yeah, so so part of what's so confusing right now and is worth thinking about as a citizen is that we're using these terms differently. And we actually might be we might be being sold one kind of socialism, like let's just help people more, when we're actually talking about at the same time, policies that would actually change the ownership. Like they're doing it in New York right now with with uh government-owned grocery stores or governments. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

That's a that's a great example of the the pitfalls. I mean, we'll see how that goes. Because it's not a nationwide program, like I suppose it could kind of work and you'd never know if it wasn't working, but the idea that you would somehow just mandate prices to be lower is not realistic for many economic reasons. It just denies supply and demand. The worst thing you could possibly do with a high-priced item is force the price to be lower because it means less producers will jump in and make that item, which is going to make the meaning there'll be fewer of that item, which means the cost the actual price will go up. And that's why in truly socialist economies, in a socialist economy, you line up for the bread. In the capitalist economy, the bread lines up for you. And I don't know about you, but that's what I see when I go to the grocery store. I see every possible variation of bread lined up for me, and anything I want is available if I'm if I can pay for it, you know. Granted, there's an issue there. But as soon as you change the incentive structure, the bread stops lining up.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

So I I want to I want to hear in a second from you, because I know you've thought a lot about this and read about it, just what you see as some of the features when that upstream economy becomes state-owned rather than us just talking about downstream how we want to distribute the wealth to people through social programs. Two different conversations. Yeah. But I just want to highlight that difference that right now we we really need to find out when we are voting for socialism, what kind of socialism are we voting for? What does the politician actually mean when they use the word socialistic? And we need to be aware that they might be selling an upstream like change of who owns what in the name of just helping people, and we can help people necessarily without changing the upstream ownership. Is that kind of what we're saying?

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Exactly. So if you were gonna make it, you know, kind of an obvious way to think of it is should the government take millions of dollars and own a grocery store, or could the government just decide to give all the gift cards to the people who are poor and use the private grocery store, but we all decide, yeah, we should help the poor?

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Like the two very different ways to solve and that might that's gonna have a bearing in the real tax rate, but that's a different discussion than whether we want to change our entire economic system. That's just what I that was a learning for me. I wanted to just highlight it. And then since you've looked at this, this is not an idea, like this upstream ownership of the by the government of property and goods and services is not a new idea. It's been around and been actually tested out over the last hundred years.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

People have tried it in every which way.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

And there's also been experiments that have been run, just simulations to see how human behavior will change when they are given different incentive structures. Yeah. So there's a lot of different ways that we could look at this. What are some of the things that we should keep in mind if we are kind of inclined to say, well, why what's so bad about moving to an upstream model where government owns and controls things? What are some of the what are some of the real world impact of the answer that with a story from American history?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

We're talking about America's future. If we go all the way back to the way in the past, to the pilgrims, when they landed at Plymouth Rock and they started the first colony, they started as a socialist colony. Now, usually the argument will, you know, say something like, Well, capitalism is is greedy and socialism is benevolent and compassionate. And so just it would be better, it'd be nicer to share what we have. And then you would say, like, well, why didn't it work in the USSR or in China or something? And say, Oh, well, it was the people were corrupt or whatever. So you so what you'd really, if you wanted to run a good experiment for this, you would need the best possible kind of people in a totally new environment without any other factors around them that could sort of suppress the result. And I actually think the Plymouth colony is exactly that.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yeah, I don't know a lot about that colony, but I do remember reading that they were pretty, pretty devout.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

They were really committed to the extremely honest and loving and compassionate.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

And they were really committed to each other, and so here what here they were in this new world and they wanted to share their stuff.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Yeah. So they started out with collective ownership of the farmland and the premise that we're all gonna do our best here. We're hewing out this new life in the new world, and we're in the wilderness, so let's all let's all do it, guys. And so they're all excited about starting this new colony, and so they they do. They start a new colony. Nobody owns property, they're just all supposed to do their best in the gardens to make as much as they can so that everybody will have the food they need. Pure socialism with a Christian spin on the whole thing. So you'd think this is a good experiment to run, right? If you read what Bradford, the governor of the colony, like his evolution of thinking in this, things devolved really quickly, literally to the point of starvation, before they realized they had to change the incentives, they had to change the structure. So to get to your point, what are the features of this one way or the other? This story is a great one. So I have a few quotes from Bradford that I pulled just to share. He wrote, the young men that were the most able and fit for labor and service were not sure they wanted to spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense, without any compensation. Like if I'm gonna work for you, you ought to pay me. No, no, we're all in this together, guys. You're supposed to be sweating for the other people here. The strong, people who had the ability to produce a lot. This is all in like really old English here, so I'm trying to translate as we go. But basically, the strong realized that they were going to have to do all the work. The weak realized they really didn't have to do any of the work because the strong guys were going to do it. The old were starting to depend on the young, the young were resenting the old, and and here before long, in this Christian loving community, every subgroup of people, they were they all had grievances against each other because nobody was working. Was it like the whole idea of a fair share was not happening? Um, it did not feel fair, and it really wasn't fair. And so Bradford realized we're going to have to change all of this. So here's what he said after two years of trying, and they call those the hungry years, because everybody was hungry in the end. So they began to think about how they might raise as much corn as they could and obtain a better crop than they had done, and not languish in misery. At length, after much debate, the governor, with the advice of the chief chiefest among them, gave way that they should set corn, every man for his own in particular. Again, this is very old English, so I apologize for that. And in that regard, to trust themselves. He assigned to every family a parcel of land according to the proportion of their number. So they basically said this is not working, being like sharecroppers here. Everybody, you get a slice of land, you work it, and if you've got extra, you can share it or you can sell it. And guess what happened the very next year? The most bountiful harvest you can imagine. In fact, that's how we ended up with our Thanksgiving holiday. They were celebrating the bountiful harvest. And it wasn't just like, oh, it rained a lot that year. It's that they had finally cracked the code on productivity, which is free market capitalism informed by Christian virtue, led to all sorts of bounty and joy for the colony. So people did have to pull their weight. It wasn't just free benefits for everybody. You had a parcel of land, you had to cultivate that. But the premise that the first experiment they were running was somehow justice, that wasn't justice at all. In fact, it was very injust. The second pathway is what thankfully our whole culture ended up adopting as its path forward.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

If you look at it just pragmatically, I mean, just to even take the justice piece out, when he just said these were the hungry years and these were the abundant years, it sounds like there was a lot more to share and go around in the second set of circumstances than the first. And so just on a pragmatic basis, if you were trying to think about what's actually going to produce the most for the most people, system that actually produces productivity would be preferenced over one that has scarcity.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Absolutely. So you think if you want to feed people, you need someone to produce food. And so that's where when you were mentioning before the upstream versus downstream in economics, the upstream is who owns the farm. Downstream is what do we do with the food that the farm produces. You can have a great debate about you know, if people have a bountiful harvest, should they be made to share with some of the people that didn't get that? You know, you could I think you could make a good debate that that that is the case in a functioning society. But if you go back and you say, well, nobody can own a farm because you might have unequal outcomes, well, suddenly nobody's motivated to farm anymore. And that's what you see in any socialist experiment. That's Venezuela, that's the USSR, where you can read and you can see people going from moments of plenty like right into famine, and then you mix that with human corruption, and it's even worse. That's the part of history that gets kind of whitewashed over in this conversation. It's like in the name of compassion, you kill the golden goose, as it were. It's like, no, you don't have to kill the goose. You can let the goose keep laying the golden eggs, but then when you have a pile of golden eggs, you can talk about how to redistribute them in a in a worthy way.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

So someone that would be saying, Wow, I mean, these politicians now that are that are bringing this true socialism to America are anti-American. Part of what they're saying is exactly what you're getting at. They're actually not talking about the degree to which we share things with people in need. They're talking about the system that actually produces the things that we share. And I think that's such an important distinction to teach our kids and to think about as a society right now that you could have someone on the news going, This is anti-American, and they're not meaning that's not help people. They're just meaning that if we if we actually change this upstream-downstream equation, we're gonna end up in a collective disaster. And because that's what's been proven out over history, and one of the things that made America what it is and prosperous is that we had a system that prosperity could actually flourish so that we could have more to share.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah, for for sure. I made a list of what the why would socialism not work to actually deliver compassion. Okay, so if you think that's the real aim, and that's where I would say I share the aim of delivering compassion. That's why I work at a church, that's why I did foster parenting, that's why I try to care for my neighbors. This isn't who cares and who doesn't care. Let's assume that everybody actually cares, the capitalist and the communist. The issue is how do you deliver that care? How do you deliver the value to the people that need it and create the opportunity for that value to flourish and for people to thrive? And that's where you have to look at the track record of all these things, and you have to look at what incentives the systems create. So I made a list of five that I think help summarize all this. And then something I do want to touch on before we get too much further is to bring the Bible into this discussion, because I think that also gets all mixed up in people's minds about, well, we've got to love people. Well, that doesn't mean you tank your economy in the name of love. There might be a way to have the best of both worlds. So we'll talk about that too. But five reasons why socialism can't produce prosperity. One is perverted incentives. So you can see that in the Plymouth colony, where like the young men who could do the hard work are saying, well, why should I work so hard anymore? The incentive structure is messed up if you can't have fruit from your own labor. There's also incentive structures that are created in the governments that now control the means of production, where suddenly the backroom deals are way more valuable. If the government owns everything, becoming a politician is like the new, the new elite class that has all the power in their hands and the common person, what can they do? So lots of incentive issues that are created. There's also distorted information, and this is where you have to take a little economics class to think about this deeply. But there's a reason why, for example, if a gallon of milk costs $3, there's a reason why it costs $3. Because there's cows that have to be fed, there's farmers that have to be paid, there's land that has to be purchased, there's delivery trucks, there's store owners. There's clerks, there's all sorts of things. There's somebody printing the label that goes on the milk. All of those things add up to the cost that you're paying. So you can't just say, well, hey, everybody, today we're making milk $2. Because now somebody in that chain, where is that money going to come from? How are they going to get paid? How is that fair? And so then you say, well, maybe the government should fill in the blank. Now think about that. Now you're going to take money from other people who are working in other industries to help pay for the milk. Or maybe even take it from the other, like the private milk producer is going to pay for the public milk producer. It all gets mixed up really quick. Without letting the market tell you how much something should cost, you have no idea what it should cost. And that's why shortages are created. Because what you really want is if there's a shortage of something, you want the price to go up. I know it's painful. We all hate when that happens. But think about if the price goes up, what does it mean to the next business guy? He thinks maybe I should go into that business. Maybe I should buy some milk cows because milk cows are really profitable. And the supply rises to meet the demand. But if you cut that system off, now suddenly there's demand and there's no real motivation for supply. And that's why socialist economies end up underperforming at best and completely collapsing at worst.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

So you're a lot better off keeping the price of the milk at $3, and then if you want to give the milk to somebody using either private or even public taxation to give the milk because you quantify the actual price.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah, you're still being honest about the real price tag. And then you're saying, well, maybe that's worth giving to somebody, but we're not going to short circuit the whole system that produces milk to begin with just to try to make it fair.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Okay, that was number two. The third would be hidden costs, and that is you just don't realize what you're actually paying when the especially when the government's involved in helping. You can see this in American medical care right now. I think anybody who's a part of any, we would all say the system needs some sort of reform. The issue is the more the government's involved, the more you don't really know why things cost what they cost. So you get some bill that says your scan was $6,000, and then but the insurance company write-off is $4,000 and then somebody's going to pay your deductible or and you think, I don't even understand any of that. Why why is anything costing that? And part of it is there's multiple layers where there's hidden cost. Anyway, without that correct information, you you start to make bad decisions. That's why back in the old days, the a famous example is that the Soviets kind of looked across the pond and realized America was really good at farming and they needed to match that. So they amped up their tractor factory production. They're like, we're going to build better tractors, more tractors. Well, that doesn't mean the farmers can pay for them. It doesn't mean anybody knows how to use them or they even want them, but suddenly there's tractors. The market is a far better, far better organizer of the economy than any one central planner, no matter how compassionate they are. Another big issue would be what I would call mandatory sunshine. And that is as soon as the government controls everything, I mean, you've heard government politician speeches, they always have to sound like things are going well. So can the government ever admit that it's not working? They really can't, or they won't get elected again. And so now let's say if a business isn't working, people stop buying the product, the business closes up, and somebody does figure out how to do it right, and they stand up and they do the better way. If the government's not working, people just keep throwing money into the sinkhole and wasting, it's inefficient, but it may even result in true shortages where now all of a sudden the thing you actually need, nobody's really producing that. So I could go on and on. Yeah. There's there's lots of reasons why it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

I want to bring up the, you know, you mentioned how should Christians process their own faith and their own text? I want to read you a passage from Jesus. Okay. And I have a lot of really great friends who read this passage as an affirmation that Christians should vote politically in a more socialistic direction. I'll I'll read it and then let's let's talk about what did Jesus actually mean and how would taking Jesus seriously about something like this inform how we thought about public policy? Okay, so he basically said directly to his disciples, When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink. When I was a stranger, you invited me into my house into your house. When I was naked, you gave me clothing. When I was sick, you cared for me. When I was in prison, you visited me. And they were like, When? Like when when when were you sick? When were you in jail? Like, when did we when did we visit you? And he said, Whenever you did it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me. And so that's that text for like for my friends, ours is equated like Jesus was commending this way of caring for anyone who has a need as be basically how you treat God Himself. So they just equate completely loving God with any kind of action that would actually help someone in need. And they also like the reverse would be true. If someone has a need and we're not meeting it, you don't love God. So that's just so then they would say, Well, we vote politically because food stamps and social programs and parties that are supporting an offer to help people at the highest scale obviously have to be more Christian than the ones that aren't.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Yeah, so there's a couple different ways to unpack that. One would be obviously I 100% agree with Jesus that we should be loving each other and feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting those in prison. Of course, right? That is compassion, that is love in action. Here would be a few factors I would add to the mix. One is this is downstream generosity, not upstream control. So Jesus isn't saying, you know what would have been a lot better, guys, is if Rome ran your farm and gave me food. That's not at all. No, this is like you had a farm and you saw I was hungry and you gave me food. That was how you loved. So it's it's way more personal. Now, there are definitely problems on scale that you'd say, well, even if we all personally were just a little more generous, it wouldn't meet the need. I think of like Medicaid or something where there's no way that we could I could just say, Well, I'll pay for yours, Dell. I mean, that that we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars a year. So it wouldn't be you can't share compassion through government, but you do have to recognize that the more you do that, the more you do create those distorted incentives that may not serve the person as well. So I would look at the people in, let's say, Mao's China, millions who died from the famine that was created because of what they called the Great Leap Forward, where they tried to centrally plan their economy and do all these things for all the people. Millions of people died. They weren't clothed, they weren't fed. None of what this text says happened to them. Now, in the name of compassion, you could say the people kind of selected, they were they were trying to make that happen, but it didn't work. So there I would say you you have to you have to start from the premise of I want people to be fed, I want people to be clothed and cared for. What is the best pathway to do that? There's a scripture in Ephesians 4 where Paul is talking about the way of repentance, and he's talking about all the things you need to change as you put your faith in Jesus and start walking this new way, and he says, You who have been stealing must steal no longer, but must work doing something useful with his hands so that he will have something to share with those in need. The goal isn't go steal from somebody and give it to the poor. When you become a Christian and you embrace this value, you go out and you work hard, you do the work. So much so that you can provide for your own needs and share with others. And that's where the compassion comes in that actually is accountable and that doesn't mess up upstream and like ruin your economy. No, it's you you jump in. So the more you want to follow Matthew 25, the more personal it becomes, in my view. Now, here's the challenge back where I know it has to do with scale, where you say, but even if churches stepped up or individuals stepped up, there are problems that are beyond the scope of what any one of us could do. How would we solve it? So here's kind of a vision for how it could work. And I really think this is actually what our founding fathers were aiming at when they created what we call our federalist system, uh, where there's like local government, state government, and then federal government, and that the federal government was intentionally limited, and the state and local governments were supposed to be doing more. So here would be the logic. Let's just say you have a problem, Dell, and I'm your good friend, and we're gonna talk about how to solve your problem. The best answer to your problem would be that you solve it. Right? Would we agree with that? If you can solve your own problem, we want to encourage that. But what if you can't? What if it's outside of your ability for whatever reason? Well, then we would say, could your family rally together and solve your problem? You say, Oh, my family can't. We we can't do it. It's beyond us. Okay, well, here I am, I'm your good friend, and we're sitting here in our church full of friends, so could our church solve your problem? Could I solve your problem? If I can, I would be that like Matthew 25, I would be there to clothe you or help you or something. Well, what if we can't? Then what do we do? Well, then we look out at the broader community, the broader neighborhood. We say, well, what if we did a GoFundMe? Or what if the whole neighborhood got together? What if the local government, is there any program or some agency nearby that could solve your problem? And we might find quite a few options. But maybe you say, the problem I have is even bigger than that. It's more expensive than that, then I can't find the help I need. Okay, well, let's call our representative, not in Washington yet, but here we are in Michigan. Let's call our representative in Lansing. Say, is there any state government program that could help with this problem? If he then says, no, no, there's no way the state of Michigan can help you, it's too big for that. Say, wow, it must be a pretty big problem you've got here, Dell. I guess it's time to call Washington, D.C., and take it all the way to the top and say, we need the U.S. federal government to solve your problem. And then Congress should debate it and they can allocate spending. They don't have to take over the free market economy to solve your problem, but they could allocate a little bit of the tax money that they get from the productivity of our economy to help solve your problem. So it's not that there's not a safety net, it's that here's what I see happening when people use Matthew 25 and say, like, oh, that means SNAP benefits or that means more government. It's like they're jumping right to Washington, D.C. before they've even wondered, is there any other way to solve this problem? The beauty of solving problems more locally, more personally, is that there's accountability, there's love, there's personal connection, there's there's next steps. But the further away from the problem that you get to where you finally get the solution, like the further, the further up you go and you're in the federal government, now there's no personal relationship. As we're finding out now with all the allegations of fraud in our social programs, we realize there's no accountability because you don't know the people. They don't know you. There's lots of ways to game that system. And suddenly what started out as an act of compassion, like let's feed the poor, has become a corrupt, inefficient, impersonal, very unloving government program. I think it'd be better to go all the way back to the starting point and let's have a personal meeting and talk about how to solve your problem. So are there some problems that are like federal scale? We should solve it all together as a whole country. Of course. Yes, there are safety nets we all need. My personal opinion is that probably quite a few of those could go down to the state level and they would actually be more efficient and better run if they were states and not just all 50 states together doing it. But that's a political discussion that could still operate within how you deal downstream with a product with a productive free market. You don't have to take over the grocery stores in order to help people.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

It would be a beautiful vision where where we could retain a sense of our personal agency and freedom, both as human beings, with each other and even with our faith, where we still get the needs of everyone met with maximum freedom as well. And I think it's a you know kind of an amazing thing. And and I I think I'm walking away, like really challenged from this conversation, primarily with my definition of socialism, like this idea of upstream or downstream, that the conversation is not just simply about how we want to apply resources. It's where we, it's it's sort of like where those resources are owned and generated. And you can be very, very pro-social, even very, very pro-safety net, and believe that more and more of uh income needs to go to help people because of an extension of your values and your faith without necessarily changing the system itself, which is really the debate I think that we're going to be facing here over the next 10-15 years in America.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

Yeah, absolutely. So if we were making it really personal, we say, well, the government's job isn't to love. Like you could extend compassion or love through government, I guess, to a degree, but our job is to love. This is supposed to be really personal. So I think a takeaway from Matthew 25 and from the discussion, especially if you're a Christian and you're saying, I do want to follow Jesus, and I recognize my first response probably shouldn't be to try to get Washington, D.C. politicians to somehow represent Jesus. Maybe I should do something, would be to take one of those verbs in Matthew 25 and make it personal to you. So Jesus said something about feeding, something about visiting, something about clothing. So is there are there one of those verbs you could take on and you could say, I'll go get involved in doing that? My guess is that right inside your own church or in your own community or in your own neighborhood, there are opportunities, there are people in need. There are probably already organized agencies that would be able to help with that exact kind of thing. And they're looking for volunteers and donors, and you can make it really personal. You don't have to tax somebody 500 miles away to help the poor. You could actually help the poor.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

One of the advantages of me doing something is that I can actually customize and personalize that help to whatever degree that I can do as a as an individual right here, where it's not just a system that is sort of in personal helping. I can also extend that personal touch, that personal care, that personal time. Actually, really love somebody. That's pretty empowering.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

It is. One of my favorite quotes, and this this would be maybe a good way to wrap up, because there's other this conversation could go on and on, right? John Wesley, when he was talking about his approach to wealth and money, he did a sermon warning people against greed, which is a legitimate problem. Any in any system, you can have greedy people. He said, here's his his philosophy gain all I can, save all I can, give all I can. And it's that first part, I don't think it's enough celebration. Gaining all you can is a valuable thing to do. Like if you have the ability to produce, if you have the ability to earn money, go do it. Earn the money. Because as you produce, you're like one of the young guys in the Plymouth colony. Like, if you can do it, we want you to do it. We want you to produce as much as you possibly can. Why? Just so that you can sit on all of it? Well, no. It's so that you can share with others. You can bless the community around you. And so there are so many opportunities to do good in the world. I think it would be sad. For me, I would feel sad if my primary mechanism for doing good was just to vote for politicians who make inflated promises. That's a you're going to be disappointed every time. But if you have the ability to go produce and care for people with that product production, that's an amazing blessing. And that's what the free market affords you is the ability to go choose to do that. Well, this has been Abundant, sponsored by Barion.life. Our podcast here originates from Barry and Center Bible Church in Southwest Michigan. Special production thanks to Ben Sanders, Trevor Jones, and the whole BCBC team. Scripture quotations are from the New Living Translation. Help share abundant. Subscribe wherever you listen and pass this episode on to one other person who needs it, and share what you're carrying with us at share at abundant.show. Until next time, live abundantly.