Ordinarily I’d be reluctant to question the wisdom of someone more than a billion people consider infallible. But in this case, I can’t resist taking issue with the pope’s call last week for a “legitimate redistribution of wealth” to remedy what he considers an unconscionable income disparity between the rich and poor all over the world.
Speaking in Rome to the United Nations secretary general and other international leaders, Pope Francis continued his relentless assault on capitalism, even going to far as to assert the Bible demands that wealth be redistributed.
I’m certainly not going debate the pontiff on the content of the Bible, but when it comes to interpretation, I feel I’m on pretty safe ground in pointing out that, “Thou shalt not steal” almost certainly trumps whatever obscure verse he’s quoting from.
And where I come from, taking money and property from people who’ve rightfully earned it and don’t want to give it to you is the textbook definition of theft – even when the state sanctions it.
I don’t for a moment doubt the good intentions of the pope – or, for that matter, anyone concerned with alleviating poverty and suffering in the world. And if his solution was urging people to be more charitable, that would be one thing.
But it isn’t charity when the government takes what belongs to me at the point of a gun – which is precisely what His Holiness is advocating when he refers to, “…the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society.” (Emphasis mine.)
First of all, charity begins at home, and it seems to me the Catholic Church is already sitting on plenty of wealth worth redistributing right there in the Vatican. So before Francis starts encouraging my government to start confiscating what’s mine, seems like it would be a nice expression of good faith to start forking over a bunch of what’s his.
But in the interest of brevity let’s skip right past hypocrisy and jump right to the real problem with the pope’s reasoning, and that’s his total absence of real-world logic.
To be specific, even if the sort of government-sponsored theft he proposes were moral – and it isn’t – the benefits to the poor would still last only as long as it took for the “rich” to stop producing the wealth to be redistributed. And that would happen the moment they realized the fruits of their labors were being scotch-taped onto someone else’s tree.
Maybe in the idealized universe the pope envisions people will continue to work hard so that an increasing share of what they produce can be handed over to someone who hasn’t lifted a finger to earn it. But in the one the rest of us inhabit, people aren’t chumps.
In point of fact, perfect altruism doesn’t exist and never will. People always work harder for their own gain than they do for anyone else’s. That’s why capitalist countries, almost without exception, produce the wealth that do-gooders like the pope want to redistribute to those with the sort of totalitarian regimes he evidently prefers.
Here’s a thought: If you really want to end poverty, why not pressure the world’s dictators to change what they’re doing wrong instead of badgering free nations to stop doing what actually works?
With all due respect, it’s impossible to “legitimately redistribute” what belongs to someone else, and the imprimatur of the neither the government nor the church changes that fact.
As the good book says:
“So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly
or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:7)
