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Opening Guidance on the Seventh Commandment
(para 2401 to 2406 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church) - God intends that the goods of the earth should benefit all men, but also ordains the private control of most goods because that allows for their most effective deployment.
The forgoing statement sums up the Catholic Church’s teaching about the proper view of things. Essentially the church teaches that God gives a limited right of control and use of the things of the world to private people so long as they keep in mind their obligation to use said things to help others. Should they fail to properly use things, or should they use them in an excessively selfish way, then the Church teaches that the state is authorized to step in to tax, regulate, or expropriate so that these things are used with greater concern for the wider society.
All this is fairly hypothetical and needs an example or two to flesh things out.
First, Large corporations own huge amounts property and other assets.. These assets are controlled by the company’s Board of Directors. These Boards pick CEOs to make day in and day out decisions to move the company forward.
For much of the last decade, a CEO named Stan O’Neal ran Merrill Lynch, one of the world’s largest brokerage firms. This CEO decided he wanted to maximize the company’s profits without paying much attention to risk. He pushed his investment banking department to create as many Collateralized Debt Obligation as possible. These are pools composed of residential mortgages. These pools were loaded with fees that are charged against the pools. These fees jacked up the profits of the brokerage firm issuing the CDO’s. When everyone in the land who could handle a mortgage had one, O’Neal started pushing people to find “no doc” and “low doc” borrowers so more CDOs could be issued. The scheme allowed Merrill to collect huge fees, it allowed O’Neal to collect a 2006 bonus of $76 million, it caused the collapse of Merrill in 2008, and it forced its merger into Bank of America after that bank was bribed to take on “the Merrill mess” with huge TARP payments. Mr O’Neal was given control over one of the greatest assemblage of assets in the land, he owed a trust and duty to several groups, his customers, his employees, his shareholders, and the country as a whole. He violated those trusts and was one of the greatest facilitators of the recent financial collapse that has robbed literally millions of their sense of financial stability. O’Neal misused assets that others had a right to expect would be properly deployed. Though he remains free, he is probably the greatest violator of the basic principles of the Seventh Commandment in this century.
Second, factories have been moving to China. Shareholders want maximum profits, and they see the low wage rates in China. They see lack of regulation in China: no unions, no rules on work place safety, no min wages laws, no environmental controls, no unemployment compensation regulations, etc. The pressure to move a factory out of a rural American town to China become overwhelming. The goods can be made inexpensively and shipped back to be sold at Wal Mart. The only people injured are the workers and other townspeople in the small rural town who had come to think of the factory as being their factory.
So an asset which had been the means of support for the small American town is now a means of support for a community in China. Is that a violation of the general principles of Seventh Commandment - perhaps .... perhaps not. The Chinese need work just as the Americans need work. But does the principle of subsidiarity, of keeping control close to home, extend to jobs. Should a local community have the right to impose a tariff on imports if those imports impinge on employment in their community? Should tariff decisions be made in a remote capital city 1500 or 2000 miles away? Should international businessmen be allowed to give big campaign contributions to Congressman and Senators who then vote to decide import policy?
No one has gone to jail for stealing jobs from American towns, but should they?.
Third, Hillaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton have written eloquently about “distributism” which holds that the means of production and the distribution of goods should be organized around small firms that operate across small geographic areas. The idea here is to develop firms where the owners, customers, and employees know each other and feel a sense of mutual interest that transcends mere financial exchange. The counter argument is that small organizations tend to be less than optimally efficient and tend to adopt new techniques slowly. After all, the economies of large scale production and the maximization of productivity through the specialization of tasks are both lost. This is true; however, Belloc and Chesterton would argue that small units of production encourage greater and deeper human interaction. The question then is this? Is it better to have more expensive goods possessed of less then the most advanced technology if the overall system draws people together? Or is it better to have low priced goods possessed of the most advanced technology made and distributed in ways that break down human bonds?
Belloc and Chesterton are certainly correct that their plan will promote local control of the means of production, but it will also require local control of the access to local markets. Should local people be allowed to elect one model or the other? Should far off central authorities have the right to force a unwanted model on local citizens? Is it a form of stealing to take away local control of the economy from the local people?
These opening paragraphs on the Seventh Commandments stimulate more questions than set out hard answers. Perhaps later paragraphs in the Catholic Catechism will provide more clarity.............. (prepared by Hugh Murray on 1/20/2010)
Excesses of Some Black Leaders May Illuminate a Wider Black Problem
In an earlier essay (from this series of essays, found on page - gen_09d.html ), the immoderate, ill-considered, anti-social behavior of three black leaders was discussed.
Following from that essay, the question then for this essay is this: is such immoderate, ill-considered, anti-social behavior common among large numbers of young and middle aged black men? In other words, is this problem limited to a few or is it more widely manifest? Blacks represent about 15% of the American population and yet America’s prison inmates are 50% black. This is a profound disconnect. America’s judges try to frighten first time offenders into changing their behavior, by putting them on probation. Imprisonment is not their first option. Prison is costly, and it tends to harden the hearts of those who are incarcerated. Given this fact, it says a lot about black men, when they don’t seem to experience a change of heart after getting a “wake up call” by the judge handling their first arrest.
There seems to be a need for special programs to curb these urges toward immoderate, ill-considered, anti-social behavior and to make sure “wake up calls” issued by authorities are not ignored.
Little black boys grow up into men. So what change can be introduced into the kindergarten and grade school curriculum that will counter the urges these youngsters experience that send them toward excess?
The Roman dramatist, Publius Terentius Afer (sometimes called “Terence”), urged “moderation in all things”. Somehow this maxim, which leads to, if not a happy life, at least a contented life, has to be ingrained into these black youngsters. They have to gain a degree of self control that they currently lack. They have to be able to step outside their immediate set of feelings and examine how the behavior, they are drawn toward, will impact themselves and others: friends, relatives, strangers, and even those not yet born.
Some people learn right behavior by reading the great works of literature, others learn by being told about how to behave by respected adults, still other learn by seeing others suffer the consequences of bad behavior, still others only learn from experiencing consequences themselves. Currently grade schools generally use lectures and written material to instruct students. In predominately black schools, this approach seems to be failing. Perhaps the last two approaches , learning from the hard experiences of others and/or experiencing hard consequences personally, would be more effective.
It is always easy to state a hypothetical, but how is this to be implemented? Perhaps in every majority black high schools a solitary confinement room could be constructed where offending students might be punished. Students who commit major rules violations would be filmed having their violation: first, reviewed by the school administration, second, filmed being placed in solitary, and third, filmed coming out later. This film would be shown to grade schoolers so they could see “consequences” in action. If the local court would allow cameras; the same could be done for more major offenses being handled in court. All this might require some adjustment to America’s rules on privacy?
Grade schoolers might be subjected to a wide array of punishments for any anti-social acts. These punishments could include: accurately copying pages from great works, practicing penmanship by writing out a short sentence twenty or thirty times, cleaning the floor in a hallway, bathroom, home room, etc. Here punishment is connected to acts. It would also be good if these punishments were performed while other students were around to see the punishment.
Regarding teaching “impact on others” many short films could be made showing the impact on others from anti-social behavior. Some examples might included:
First, a bullet fired in fun goes through a window and hits someone in the back causing lifelong paralysis;
Second, an impatient visitor rips open a stuck door in an apartment destroying the door jam, causing the apartment to fail an occupancy inspection, making the apartment unrentable, and triggering the spiral of decline that leads a building into slum status,
Third, a fling with the 13 year old girl living next door can lead to the out of wedlock birth of an underdeveloped baby who has great difficulty surviving in a neo natal unit;
Fourth, cutting other drivers off in traffic or changing lanes rapidly without a signal can frighten other drivers and cause bad accidents,
Fifth, showing the downward spiral of repeated incarcerations that result when an offender ignores a judge’s forbearance following a first offense and refuses to reform his life, etc.
These films might be shown again and again to high risk grade schoolers.
As everyone's mother use to say "a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".............. (prepared by Hugh Murray on 1/30/2010)
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. This page hopes to bring a common
sense, old fashioned view to today's news. The comments displayed
on this page were prepared by
Hugh V. Murray, who can be reached at hvm@aol.com
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