David Brat's Economics

Anthony tipped me off that goliath-slayer and college econ prof David Brat wrote an article on usury in 2011, citing his own education in a Calvinist seminary.

 The answer to usury is likely a good proxy for the answer to where one stands on capitalism. And there, my friends, we have a good story, because that is the story of our day. Capitalism is the  major organizing force in modern life, whether we like it or not. It is here to stay. If the sociologists ever grasp this basic fact, their enterprise will be much more fruitful.We set alarm clocks to follow the schedule of the market. Children leave their families to follow the job market.We often weigh our social worth by looking to market wages, salaries, and consumption patterns.We spend much more time on market activity than God activity. Thus, Calvinism.

"We"? set alarm clocks...  yes, capitalism is a positivist system of policies that benefit some and not others.  And while Brat is making it clear he limits the "we" to those who are the winners, I think he is being facetious when he equates worshipping Mammon and rejecting God to Calvinism.  He probably wrote this before thinking about running for office, knowing (believing) his audience in this obscure journal will be that of two friends.  And, as to capitalism, "It is here to stay."  Or as they used to say in the Soviet Union about communism:  Это здесь, чтобы остаться.

Brat makes an error in his introductory comments, he assumes correlation is causation, that is the engine of change is capitalism.

 This is due to market capitalism. Over two billion people now have food to eatand some minimal goods to go along. So, as a seminary student concerned with human welfare, I naturally wanted to learn about these free markets.  (Emphasis editor's)

This is the relentless slight of hand capitalists perform, to equate capitalism with free markets.  It is absurd to think in either China or India government policy effected any change.  What happened was a lack of government control, concomitant free markets, and thus an advance in human commonwealth. The Chinese Communist party knows full well they had little to do with the success of the last 30 years, they know they merely got out of the way. Their big fear is now the excesses of the capitalists among the free-marketers. Capitalism and free markets are mutually exclusive because of the usury aspect of capitalism, and its enforcement by state violence.

As another preliminary he notes Calvinism allows for -

 God is the source of morality and ethics. In brief, I think that God tells us that if we intend to love and help our neighbor by such an action, then the answer is “yes”; to harm, “no.”

And in Calvinism that is up to the individual conscience, in Brat's view.  So essentially, "do your own thing."  And then he goes on to voodoo economics...

 Society became more and more complex as the industrial revolution worked its magic and modern life emerged in fits and starts.

Wars and more wars as usury provided for concentration of power to the point very few could actually call the shots.  The very heart of capitalism is the means of concentration of capital for the ends desired by the few holding that concentrated power.  Wars and more wars are mere fits and starts.

 A key line in ethics has been crossed. Morality, as traditionally conceived, allows the moral actor free will when making ethical decisions. It appears that we have left the realm of morality and entered the realm of power politics with the expanding role of positive rights. Capitalism is highly dependent upon the rule of law and the clear articulation of property rights. These are very much in flux at present.

The rule of a set of laws that benefit those who gain exceptional wealth through usury.  We are all obliged to pay taxes to protect those winners of the usury game.  Child sacrifice, in the form of elimination of the inconvenient and a poverty draft of the young are required to keep the system alive. Brat goes on to make the current defense of usury:

 If the borrowing party thinks that $20 in interest payments is too much, then he will simply not make the deal. Along these lines, it should be noted that in economics, all voluntary trades are beneficial to both parties and the easiest way to see this is by noting that if one were not better off, one would not take part in such a trade. Right? Right.

Right.  And when four people sit down to play poker, they are all in agreement, come what may, regardless of any asymmetry.  Even the State does not enforce gambling debts, but it sure does enforce usury agreements. And this force is noted specifically by Brat.

 Let me add one more definition to the picture to heighten this tension. In economics and political science, it is common to define the government as the entity that holds a monopoly on violence. This definition goes back to Max Weber,9

He is supporting another point, but my point is Brat is well aware that the State ultimately rests on violence.   He then approves of the state with a profoundly dishonest reference:

 God asked the people of Israel: Are you sure you want a king? That is a good question to ask at this time.

Don't take my word for it, read 1 Samuel 8 - 10, and 1 Samuel 12, and indeed, the entire Bible to see how profoundly dishonest this is, and probably why he himself did not cite the passage to which he refers.  And his summary of the progress of acceptance of usury is also dishonest for its tendentious assertions.

Brat summarizes Calvinism:

 I like the world that God has made, and I like Richard Niebuhr’s depiction ofthe Calvinist “type” in his famous book Christ and Culture .16  Calvinists believe in Christ the Transformer of Culture.We are called to make it better, in history.

If so, then this is a pithy exposition of why Calvinism is heresy.  It's not our works that make the world a better place, it is Christ indwelling that produces good fruits from our labors. Christ redeemed the world, that work is done.  Now Christians are to manifest that is true, not claim to be doing a job at which Jesus failed.

 Fifth, preach the gospel and change hearts and souls. If we make all of the people good, markets will be good. Markets are made up of people. Supply and Demand are curves, but they are also people. Nothing else. If markets are bad, which they are, that means people are bad, which they are. Want good markets? Change the people. If there are not nervous twitches in the pews when we preach, then we are not doing our jobs.

Now we get to it: change or die.  Where have we heard that before?  So in an article on the morality of usury, the summary call to action is...

 We could also follow the micro loan experience of those in poverty around the world. The peer pressure they put on each other in the form of moral suasion results in very high repayment rates.

Bring on usury! Who would see that coming from a politician?

Two parts, secondarily, he recognizes peer pressure, that is no government violence needed in markets, just moral suasion.  This is free market, and contrary to capitalism, which depends on violence to maintain its asymmetrical gains.  Primarily, he advocates microloans, which have proven a relentless and unmitigated evil for all who are involved.  Those who say different are either ignorant or liars, and since micro-loans are war on the poor, anyone advocating those would study them carefully and learn the facts on the ground.

So the evil banker's-ganymede Cantor has been replaced by a seminarian whose path to Congress is on the backs of students enslaved by usury to get an "education."  (Tuition alone is prox $70K for a BA at his college.) The world will be a better place when a pro-usury congressman is replaced by a pro-usury congressman.  Watch out Wall Street!

For more theatre, Brat is being proffered as exhibit one in the boogey-man fear of the tea party radicals coming out of the Bundy ranch swamp and taking over congress.  Sigh.  Brat was as well known in his congressional district as Cantor.  He is a gadfly ever on the news as the "go-to" college professor with the other acceptable opinion on whatever.  And his democratic opponent is another professor from the exact same college at which Brat professes.  Aside from the fact there is not even such a thing as a tea party (if so, where is it's headquarters? who is its chairman?), no one anywhere has anything to fear from a complete take-over by the tea party, given that they will not threaten the warfare/welfare state.  Alles gut, Kommissar!

The article from which I am quoting is $25 or something for 11 pages, but I am a UCBerkeley instructor so I get free access to the entire UCBerkeley library system at no cost.  Man, priceless!  Noncredit ed is massive in the USA, and there are some 1300 schools looking for instructors.  Go back to college, but as an instructor. I actually wrote a book on teaching, writing, publishing on the side, which may be found here.

Perish Your Publisher



And while I am at it, may I recommend a campaign theme song for Brat, the German version, to compliment the language of Calvin?


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