In this extended dialogue Trent sits down with Sam Rocha to talk about the pros and cons of capitalism and whether Catholics can support this economic system.
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Sam Rocha:
Today on Folk Phenomenology, we have Trent Horn. Trent, welcome to my show.
Trent Horn:
Sam, thank you so much for having me.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. Before we get started here, Trent, I want to make sure that the record is very clear that I really want to thank you for two reasons. The first is for the debate that you graciously hosted at Catholic Answers almost a year ago, where we debated this compatibility thesis on socialism.
Trent Horn:
Can’t believe it’s been a year.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, I know we’re coming up on that. And as I’m sure you realize, I was the nobody rando commenting, and you platformed me, you gave me a chance to engage with you, and since then, I’ve been on something of a podcast tour of sorts, which never would’ve happened, and to be completely honest and totally serious, this show, Folk Phenomenology, wouldn’t have launched, I think, without that aftermath and what have you.
Trent Horn:
Well, I appreciate, Sam, you’re willing to engage people because, I mean, the reason I wanted to have a debate with you in the first place was I couldn’t really find someone who was willing to defend that position in an open debate.
Sam Rocha:
Sure, sure.
Trent Horn:
And the fact that you, one, expressed a willingness, and you’re not a nobody. You’re an academic, you teach at a university.
Sam Rocha:
Fair enough.
Trent Horn:
I mean, there are nobodies who would probably debate me that have an anonymous Twitter profile, but I’m not going to-
Sam Rocha:
That’s true. That’s true.
Trent Horn:
I’m not going to talk to them. But you were someone that had the credentials, and of all the people who have credentials, you were the one willing to do it. And so I appreciated that, and I’ve appreciated you’ve always, when I’ve seen your interactions online, you’re willing to talk to people who disagree. And that, to me, is a thing that I think is really lacking in the Catholic online sphere. You’ve got far left, slight left, slight right, far right online, but there’s only a few actors amongst all those groups who are willing to talk to people in the other groups, I feel.
Sam Rocha:
No, I think you’re right. And this show, this Folk Phenomenology podcast, was initially subdivided between equal parts of debates and interviews. And one thing I’ve actually learned is that my penchant for the debate, which goes all the way back to my high school experiences and whatnot, is probably less important than just encounter and talking with people, not necessarily on agonistic terms, but as you also know, I love the agonistic exchange, and I know you do, too. And you’re good at it. Prepping for that last one, I think I watched all up to that point of your debates up to then, and I told a lot of people, I was like, “I don’t think he’s lost one yet.” So this is a bad situation I’m getting myself into.
Trent Horn:
I think it’s always a win when two people come forward. People can hear each of their sides. Because for me, when it comes to debates, what’s interesting, Sam, is that I don’t think debates are the best way to resolve an issue per, per se. I think debates, their best function is they serve as a gateway for people to learn about the topic being debated.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. I think that’s a great way to think about it. I’ve thought a great deal about just what debate is and what its function is. I’ve described it as something of a game that I enjoy playing, and I think that, unfortunately, the game side of even just rhetoric in general is often overdetermined in terms of people assume that rhetoric, for instance, rhetorical claims have logical capacities, and that’s not always true.
Trent Horn:
But they have a hard time distinguishing the two. That’s why it’s hard. It’s not like back in the day when people would sit down and listen to a seven-hour Lincoln-Douglas debate.
Sam Rocha:
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trent Horn:
But it’s helpful to bring it together because if you do a talk on a thesis and you just put it on YouTube, you’ll get a lot of people who agree with you, and as many people who disagree. Debates are a great place, like I said, to open it up to others. I think today’s topic will be fun to chat about-
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, no, I’m excited.
Trent Horn:
… because there’s a multiplicity of views.
Sam Rocha:
Totally. So let’s go ahead and jump in.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Sam Rocha:
The format I want to take here is, and oh, the second thing I wanted to thank you for was for pushing me on the format. I grew up and cut my teeth on high school UIL, TFL, NFL, Lincoln-Douglas debate, and I love that format. For me, it was a safe Haven, and I was reticent to let it go. But several critics, and you, especially, in preparation for this, push me to say, “Sam, you need to let go of that crutch and of that penchant that you have, because you’re the only person who likes this. You need to open up these discussions in a more fruitful way.”
Trent Horn:
Well, here’s what I’ll tell you about this, though, Sam, is that I do believe debates serve an important role. I also think debates are helpful when you have people who aren’t keen to having the dialogue. Debates put up guardrails to help when you have a conversational partner who isn’t great at letting the other person converse, but after our previous engagement, because I hadn’t engaged you very much-
Sam Rocha:
Right.
Trent Horn:
So I know this is someone I can converse with. So you’ve cracked over the door, whereas for other people, there are some people I’d say, “I think I might need the guardrails of debate up with you, as an individual,” but I don’t think we’ll need that here.
Sam Rocha:
Sure. No. No, we don’t. And so we’re not debating a set resolution or proposition, but, I mean, a person who’s followed either one of us would have to be fairly … They would have to be in a unique position to not understand our general stances here, and I think this will become more clear. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to read out loud, pedantically, the four questions that I sent you and that we agreed on in advance.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Sam Rocha:
And then my intuition is we’ll just work from them one by one.
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Sam Rocha:
If it’s the case that we cover some of them and other ones, I’m very happy to concede those and move on. If it’s the case that this carries on at some length on maybe question one, and we just put the other ones off for another time, that’s fine, too. So I’m reading these for transparency, not to create any traps or anything like that. So question one is: As you may already know, I like to think about terms or labels and economy, historically. This has been, as you know, a subject of some controversy. I have read in your book and also heard in some of your podcasts and whatnot, you describe capitalism as beginning in the 14th century in Italy. This pre-industrial account of capitalism is new to me. Could you describe that to me in some detail?
Sam Rocha:
So that’s the first question, which is a historical question. The second question is following from this history, I’m also aware that there are presently competing and even incommensurable things that don’t measure up against each other, schools of capitalism. For example, the Austrian school and the Chicago school, and there’s gads of other ones. Within this variety of theories of capitalism, which one do you identify with, and how would you summarize its most important features to you? I think in your book you call this moral capitalism, but I’ll let you answer that.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Sam Rocha:
Question three is, as you know, capitalism has been a subject of critique throughout all of Catholic social teaching from Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 to Pope Francis’ most recent encyclical, Fratelli tutti, of last year. Now the terminology shifts at times, but it seems to be a stable, critical teaching. I would go as far as to suggest that the church’s position can be understood as a particular form of anti-capitalism. What would you say about this? That’s the third one. That takes us from the more broad historical, you might say, secular discussions of political economy into the more questions of compatibility that we talked about and the other one.
Sam Rocha:
And then the final one is very philosophical. I tend to think of political economy as fundamentally being about the maximal promotion of human flourishing. This is my Aristotelianism, I suppose. How does your account of and support for capitalism promote that to a higher degree than others, and by others, I mean, competing ideologies or systems, or in here you can even import some of the things I’ve supported as well, in the realms of politics and economy. So that’s the fourth question.
Trent Horn:
All right.
Sam Rocha:
So those are the four questions. I wonder if we can start with the history one, which is really just I have some doubts and misgivings about your story of capitalism. So maybe you can tell the story on your terms, and then I can ask you some questions about it, or even maybe propose my version of the story as I would see it.
Trent Horn:
Sure. And of course, it’s going to be difficult as we continue through because the meaning of term is going to be very important. Terms mean different things to different people. The term capitalism did not arise amongst defenders of capitalism. It’s a term that was developed by critics like Carl Marx. So he, himself, didn’t use the term capitalism. He used the term, “capital,” to describe means of production or things that are combined with labor power to generate wealth. And so it’s a term I don’t prefer because it’s a critic’s term, but something related to free markets, the idea of private individuals and firms being the typical entities that own means of production, that combine capital, and capital really is just money, whether it’s in the form of a liquid asset or an intellectual property or something like a factory or land, combining that with labor to create goods and services, then through trade and commercial transactions, you generate wealth and grow an economy.
Trent Horn:
So when I would look at the growth of capitalism at a super bird’s eye view would be we have the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, we go from most people, either aristocratic class and a slavery class to serfdom. So instead of slaves, serfs are tied to the land, but most wealth really exists in that, which is transferred like gold and silver from areas or just owning land in general. By around the seventh century, you start to get merchants that are traveling to fairs, these medieval fairs were ways for a lot of people … Well, for in classes to start to generate income, but you didn’t generate a lot. Traveling through fairs as a merchant, you weren’t going to rival a king doing it that way.
Trent Horn:
But then as you continue on and you get into the latter part of the middle ages, we transition from a traveling merchant class, one that just goes with their goods from village to village and has their money sack with them that in the 13th and 14th centuries, I would say, especially in Italy, you see the rise of different developments that allow for a sedentary merchant class, for someone who is able to monitor transactions over large distances from where they live in Venice or something like that, and so in doing that, you’re taking silk, which is cheap in China, importing it here, selling it in Europe where it’s expensive, and there’s a lot of things like double-entry bookkeeping, joint stock companies that are able to spread out the risk of maritime ventures, better shipping technologies. All of this together creates a growing merchant class that is able to produce enough wealth to reinvest it back into their companies, to grow them substantially.
Trent Horn:
So I would say that’s the rise of capitalism, but it’s more accurate to call it mercantile capitalism. But you’re right, as you get to the industrial revolution where you have the specificity of labor and labor saving devices being created, that’s where you get a lot more wealth creation in these urban industrial areas, and capitalism really starts to take off, and we see the migration from rural to urban areas as a result. I guess that’d be my bird’s eye to look at how I would see the story.
Sam Rocha:
Sure. I’m not going to dispute a whole lot of that. Maybe I’ll just add at least what my take on both the term, which I agree, the term and its history are slightly, one might say disjointed, concretely. And in so far as you would accept or maybe press how my story goes, that would affect the pressure point I would apply to your story because my sense of the idea of capitalism, or capitalism as a concept, is I don’t disagree that as a word or am expression, it emerges in the 19th century, in particular in Marxian or primarily Marxist critiques of capital. And the real term that really comes up in Marx is the capital list.
Trent Horn:
Right. The one who owns capital.
Sam Rocha:
Exactly. The one who owns capital. And capital emerges as a particular metabolism of value that he describes in the early parts of Capital Volume One.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Sam Rocha:
But I think that he’s in discussion there, though, and I would say, actually, in fairly constructive discussion, critical, but constructive discussion with Adam Smith, John Locke, Ricardo, a contemporary of his, John Stuart Mill.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Sam Rocha:
And so for me, the discussion, both in Marx and in Smith, who I know ideologically are put on different sides, but the discussion and the discourse-
Trent Horn:
They overlap sometimes, though.
Sam Rocha:
They do.
Trent Horn:
They’re polar opposites.
Sam Rocha:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Especially if you add Adam Smith’s lectures, his morals, the moral sentiments-
Trent Horn:
Right.
Sam Rocha:
… to his wealth of nations account. I think, actually, there’s a lot of overlap there. And I know some good Smithian philosophers who have really emphasized this, and I agree with them. Now, the reason I raise it, though, is my understanding is that, really, capitalism, as we tend to talk about it, is a species of economic liberalism that emerges out of, in particular, Locke, but also Smith’s account of the right to private property, private ownership, and the emergence from that liberal theory of a … Well, its implications for political economy, right? And so that would, for me, be like … Again, I don’t like putting dates on things because it’s arbitrary, but I would put 1776 as my date, which is the publication of Wealth of Nations.
Trent Horn:
Right. And I would say that’s a huge turning point in the understanding of markets. What I would say, though, is when you have Smith and what he’s arguing about, I think it’s important people to remember that Adam Smith was not an economist, per se. He was a moral-
Sam Rocha:
He was a moral philosopher.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. He was a moral philosopher.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
But moral philosophy covers a lot of grounds, including the question, “What does it mean for a nation to be wealthy?” And Smith is really challenging the idea that a nation is not … You can’t determine a nation’s wealth based on how much gold is in the king’s vault. The nation’s wealth is based on, “What is the standard of living of the people who live in that nation and what improves their standard of living?” And so I think Smith had very keen insights about what happens when you encourage voluntary exchange among people, and that markets exist and have an indirect to function to promote wellbeing, even though everybody is acting in their own interest. And so, I mean, that’s the invisible hand and all that stuff. But-
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, yeah. And invisible hand-
Trent Horn:
But he has criticisms, too.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. And invisible hand actually doesn’t come up in wealth of nations, which is interesting, because it’s one of the more kicked horses of Smithian capitalism.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Sam Rocha:
The other thing I would say, which just to clarify, is that in 1776, economics hasn’t really been invented yet. Social science hasn’t really emerged yet. So the domain of moral philosophy, in particular, the domain of moral philosophy where the question of ethics is much more classical, “How should I live? How should we live as a society?” Politics emerging from their economy or commerce or whatever, being one of the questions one asked in politics, these are more or less, I would say, natural questions asked, but you’re absolutely right that they occur within the domain of philosophical argumentation.
Sam Rocha:
Now maybe you can see now or appreciate a bit why a mercantilist account of capitalism, for me, it seems to give a pre-developmental account of an entity in a way that loses some of the sharpness of the entity, as I understand it, given my 1776 story. Now there’s another story, though, that I think is also important in this discourse. So we have Smith, we have Marx, but in 1905, Max Weber writes a revisionist account of capitalism and the Protestant ethic on the spirit of capitalism.
Trent Horn:
Yes.
Sam Rocha:
And his focus in 1905, which I always find super interesting, is quite a bit different. So Marx and Smith, Ricardo, Locke, Mill, they’re all pretty much working within a British continental European set of cues, where-
Trent Horn:
Northern European.
Sam Rocha:
Northern European. Yes, absolutely. Northern European set of views, which is why you can also see Italy is a little too Mediterranean for my sensibilities here, when we’re talking about this geographically, geopolitically. But Weber really looks towards the Dutch, and he tells a slightly different story, which is inflected with the rise of Calvinism and Protestantism, and he supplies this I think, in some ways, far slipperier and more ideologically dispersed because it’s built upon a religious account for capitalism.
Trent Horn:
Right. So Weber’s thesis is that in predominantly Catholic countries of Southern Europe, you demonstrate one’s piety sacramentally. You go to mass, you pray your rosary. We’re Catholic. We have all these sacramental ways to demonstrate one’s piety.
Sam Rocha:
Right.
Trent Horn:
But in Calvinism, you don’t. Well, for example, when I was in Geneva with my wife many years ago, we visited Calvin’s Cathedral, and it is a barren place. No art.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, yeah.
Trent Horn:
No iconography. The chair he sat in, here’s Calvin’s chair, and it’s just this rickety wooden chair. There’s no pomp and circumstance, just because the reformers abhorred those Catholic elements. Though, ironically, in Geneva, there are four statues of the reformers. So I think they’d be spinning in their graves to know what what they were turned into.
Sam Rocha:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
So yeah, so Weber’s thesis, okay, but how do I know that I’m part of the elect? How do I know that I’m saved? Well, if I’m working and I’m investing and I’m becoming prosperous, that’s the way I demonstrate that I’m saved because I don’t have sacramental ways to demonstrate it.
Sam Rocha:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
But I think a lot of scholars since then have been critical of Weber’s thesis. Historically, they don’t think it’s necessarily panned out.
Sam Rocha:
Sure, sure.
Trent Horn:
There’s one, and we’re not entirely sure why this is, but one reason … because it’s trying to explain, “Okay, why did industrial capital …” Because your thesis is like, “Okay, Trent, you’re telling me it started with Venetian merchants in the 14th century, but we all agree it really booms in Northern Europe, several centuries later.” Well, there’s one thesis, Sam, that colder climates tend to produce more wealth and gross domestic product than warmer ones. It’s interesting-
Sam Rocha:
I’ve heard lots to these temperamental accounts of the climates. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
They’re not entirely sure why. If you look all around the world, when you look at poor and richer countries, I mean, look at Sweden and Finland and compare them to Italy and Greece.
Sam Rocha:
Sure, sure, sure.
Trent Horn:
And so people have different theories. Frankly, it’s harder to work a long time in warmer climates. You’re more likely to take a siesta, and so your output is less. In the colder-
Sam Rocha:
I used to think that until I lived in North Dakota.
Trent Horn:
Right. So then people argue in the colder climates, people huddle in by their boilers and just work to stay warm.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, yeah.
Trent Horn:
There’s a lot of it. So I agree, it’s a multifaceted approach and it’s an interesting question, but I think even you would agree that nothing is created ex nihilo. There’s going to be-
Sam Rocha:
No, no, no, no.
Trent Horn:
… variants of it. And so I would agree with you that that’s why I give it the label like mercantile capitalism, because it still involves trying to create capital through long distance trade versus isolated industry and things like that.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. Well, what I wanted to do were two things, and you’ve done me the favor of deducing the critique from the story, which you’re good at. But just to show my motivations, I didn’t want to pull a, “I don’t like your story,” and not be willing to give my story. I feel like in the past, one of my weaknesses has been giving an impression to people that I don’t have any receipts in my pocket that I’m willing to show. So my story would be the 1776, 1873, 1905 version. I, like you, favor the economic liberalism story probably more than the Weberian looser, more speculative stuff just because I don’t understand it as well.
Trent Horn:
Sure. Yeah. The only thing that I would, and it’s true that a lot of the growth and development of free market capitalist environments is more in Protestantism than Catholicism. I think some people can get the misinterpretation. I mean, the problem is, there was a longstanding Catholic understanding of jurisprudence and Canon law and theology related to usury and markets that may have slowed the development of business ventures in the Catholic world until in the 19th century when you had the … I forget which Pope it was who backed off on confessors requiring bankers to spell out the nature of their loans to make sure they had the right titles to them.
Trent Horn:
But even starting in the 16th century, there’s an interesting school of thought that comes from people like Francisco Suarez and others, the School of Salamanca, these Spanish theologians that, really, it’s like proto Smithian work going even in the 1500s.
Sam Rocha:
Oh, I agree. And in fact, I’m aware of some Catholic scholars, and just to be really clear, Trent, I’m not going to try and pull a Weberian move to turn new into a Protestant because you want to be a capitalist. So we can clean that off the table. I’m not Eugene McCarraher. That’s not my move. But Aquinas’s account of the dominus sui is … So John Crosby writes about this in his book on The Selfhood of the Human Person.
Trent Horn:
Oh, that was the first book I read at Franciscan, my very first class.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Sam Rocha:
Well, I mean, I consider myself still philosophically a person list. So that’s an important book, and in many ways, that idea of the dominus sui, I have argued, predates the sort of Lockean autonomous account of the individual and liberalism by many things. So I’m not trying to say, and I would hate to imply that things occur ex nihilo. I do think where we put our emphasis within certain historical accounts matters, and the reason, and now I’ll make my more critical point.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Sam Rocha:
The reason I’m probably not willing to accept, except under the circumstances we have here with a lot of explanation, out of hand this account of mercantile capitalism as an origin story for capitalism is that most of the discussions about capitalism that are central to the 20th century, both within the church and otherwise, are really laser-focused on industrial capitalism. And so it seems to me to be a problem of emphasis to introduce to someone a form of something that really predates the thing that is really under discussion, because to me, it pulls their eye away from the real problems of labor, such as the working day, such as child labor, such as unionization, such as all those things, and instead it places them in this more innocent, romantic account. And that’s where my critique really emerges, right?
Trent Horn:
Well, I think the way look at is, first, when it comes to the story you’re telling, you’re placing it in the 18th century. You’re placing it among thinkers-
Sam Rocha:
That’s true.
Trent Horn:
… whereas I’m placing it among actors. So I think in order to have a comprehensive account, you’d have to say, “Here are the actors that are promoting these capitalist practices. Why are they engaging in certain behavior rather than other behavior?” Number two, I might bring up to say I think the critique you make that, yeah, if you just dwell upon Venetian mercantile capitalism, it starts to gloss over the abuses, and the abuses that do occur, and this will come up when we talk about the church’s anti-capitalism-
Sam Rocha:
Sure, sure, sure.
Trent Horn:
… the abuses in the system, you’re like, “Well, focus on the correct era.” I would say that that mindset can also go against those who are anti-capitalist because I would say we’re no longer an industrial era. We’re in an information era.
Sam Rocha:
Fair enough. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Because 100 years ago, let’s say 120 years ago, beginning of the 20th century, about 40% of jobs were in mining, farming, or construction, manufacturing. Only three percent of jobs were in information services.
Sam Rocha:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
Today that’s the plurality of them. So those other jobs do exist, but it is a lot different. It doesn’t mean the abuses have stopped. Human beings will always have abuses, but I think you’re right to, on both sides, be aware of the era you’re in.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. And actually, I think there’s some really good critique … So the neologism that around the ’80s gets started being used by David Harvey and others, neoliberalism, which, for them, is this refresher term of a kind of liberalism that would’ve been unimaginable, and it’s Rawlsian, Millian, Smithian accounts before. So I think there’s a lot of credibility to that later stage critique to zero in here as we move to the second question.
Sam Rocha:
To me, the most compelling accounts of capitalism, which are critical, occur within Marx’s analysis of the working day within Volume One of Capital where he goes through, basically, the invention of shift work, and he says, days are 24 hours and weeks are seven days a week, and our bodies live for so long. And whenever we’re young and we’re eight years old and seven years old, we have different body-
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:29:04]
Sam Rocha:
And whenever we’re young and we’re eight years old and seven years old we have different bodies than we have when we’re 17, or we’re 24, or we’re 30. And of course life expectancy in the 19th century was short. And so he kind of adds this temporal feature of time to analyze the working day and to show how value or this idea of surplus value that he theorizes, how it comes oftentimes at the expense of vulnerable people, in particular children, and particular people who haven’t had enough sleep, or stuff like that. And so that to me is actually a really concrete place, because he’s often talking about British factories and the House of Commons, laws that are on the floor and being discussed and what not. And so that would be one area that I would say for instance, capitalists, anti-capitalists, whatever, I see that as really the front and center of what we would call labor politics, right?
Trent Horn:
Well, I think we all agree. I mean, everyone’s in agree… It’s like when we talk about what do we do about poverty? It’s very rare to find someone who’s just a pure social Darwinist. It’s like just let the poor die off. It’s like everyone can…
Sam Rocha:
I wish you were right, I don’t disagree about this, but..
Trent Horn:
Right. We have to be careful about spending too much time on the internet too. And I don’t even know if people, what they say on there, they always believe. But when you talk to people of goodwill, regular people, there are some callous attitudes towards the poor. But I think in general, people agree with the statement. We ought to reduce poverty. We ought to improve working conditions. Where we will disagree is on the prudential matter of how do we go about and do that.
Sam Rocha:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
And so, and I think that when you read Marx and Engels and their critiques of industrial capitalism in Manchester, England, they do describe some frightful working conditions. The same with Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle, which is not something you ought to eat after you have lunch. But at the same time, I think what we have to understand that progress in these areas is thing slow and gradual. And I think Marx and Engels really pedaled kind of a myth about the idea that rural life prior to the industrial revolution was better when we’ve done modern sociological surveys looking back of the rampant poverty, famine, people were willing to risk these conditions for better livelihoods. My kids, for example, right now they’re listening to Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Little House on the Prairie”.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
And beautiful stories to listen to. But it’s so interesting how they talk about farm life and just how terrible it is.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, totally, it’s precarious.
Trent Horn:
And the desire, not only that it’s with farm life. U.S. Farm life and in industrial life both involve long hours. But farm life, it’s so precarious that the crop could just fail on you. Whereas in the industrial you have usually, and when the rules are being played, you get your wage, and obviously wage theft is a crime and everyone agrees with that. But then, so when we look at it though, for me, I would see as markets develop conditions do improve. In 1830, manufacturing workers were doing about 70 hours a week. By 1930 that had dropped to 40 hours. Now people have said it should have dropped more. One theory as to why it hasn’t gone down more is that if work is valuable enough, people are willing to put in 40 hours a week for the return that comes from it. So for me as someone who would defend markets, I think that these are good goals.
Trent Horn:
When we allow the increase of the market, we do see a natural progression towards better working conditions. So that we see that today in the global South, there are people who labor under difficult conditions like that were in Manchester, England 150 years ago. The goal is, do we get them on the same trajectory so they’re eventually near where we are or 1930s America. Or things like that.
Sam Rocha:
I agree with most of that with maybe just added caveats, like the working day hasn’t been reduced. I would say naturally it’s been reduced in many cases through labor politics, right? Advocacy for better working conditions.
Sam Rocha:
But maybe the key distinction though, getting back to the kind of historical, is that when we’re talking about mercantilism we’re really not talking about wage labor. Whereas when we’re talking about industrial capitalism, we’re talking about wage labor. And in some sense, we’re talking about a particular modern invention of a form of labor.
Trent Horn:
It’s a larger in increase in wage labor, because you only have so many sailors and camel guides on these trading expeditions. The mercantile capitalism in their books had to pay laborers and do this kind of stuff. But I agree with you that creating a system… And this is where maybe one day we’ll have a distributors with us that [inaudible 00:33:59].
Sam Rocha:
I don’t argue with distributors to be honest. Their sense of history is way more anachronistic than what we’re doing here.
Trent Horn:
The critique reminds me of Chesterton. That his critique of capitalism ironically enough, is that it took fathers out of the home. You didn’t have your workshop and you’ve made all your stuff. And so a lot of distributors we know long for a return to that. And I would tell them, you remember your rose collared glasses, running a business ain’t easy.
Sam Rocha:
We’re agreed on this. I find that, Chesterton and Belloc are great whenever you’re 19 or something, but you have [crosstalk 00:34:38]-
Trent Horn:
Looking at this idea of when you talk about wage labor. And I think that throughout most of human history, people were in order to live in survive in society, you had to be about 90%, self-sufficient. You had a farm, you created your own clothes and goods, and then you engage in minimal trade with others, with the stuff you couldn’t make. Whereas the rise of markets and capitalism has created a class where you and I, now we’re what, like 15% self-sufficient. We’re highly interdependent, but I think that’s a good thing. That’s something that Popes have actually said is a virtue in the human community.
Sam Rocha:
No, absolutely.
Trent Horn:
But in doing that, we trade our self sufficiency for working and being sufficient upon a wage we receive. And then there are ethical issues that come up in the reception dispensation of wages.
Sam Rocha:
If I was going to retrofit your historical account of capitalism, I would say it would be more interesting if an account of mercantile capitalism focused on the wage earners working under the merchants, right?
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Sam Rocha:
That would be a very different story. And in some sense, it’s kind of almost exciting for me to wonder if it analogizes to industrial capitalism because they’re the entities to me that makes sense. The problem I have with an over-reliance on a kind of an antecedent account of industrial capitalism and mercantilism is that the merchant entity doesn’t really compare to the worker or labor in the industrial analogy. Those things don’t logically line up to me.
Trent Horn:
Sure. But for me it creates important institutions whose role we’ll understand later. For example, it was through mercantile capitalists that the first modern banking systems really arose. Because, what you had before, when you’re trying to engage in this long distance trade, trying to pay somebody with gold coins, it’s like, ugh. It’s such a risk to send them by ship or by caravan. But if you had a network of institutions that have gold and you can write out bills of pay, and this is where we see in the late 14th century, this coming up a lot.
Trent Horn:
Now you have an ability to in engage in these trades and the risk is minimized so much in order to allow for it. And so then now when we have wage laborers, we think you get a wage, what do you do with it? Banks or credit unions are vital to allow for the secure transfer of funds and storage of funds to be able to use in this more modern economy that will date back more than mercantile era.
Sam Rocha:
That’s good. I think we’ve on the one hand amplified the picture of capitalism. I don’t think we’ve been loosey goosey about our words or our language or the language of capitalism. I think there’s some sophistication involved but hopefully no one is going to yell at you or me about definitions here.
Trent Horn:
They will because you and I are not professional historian or economist. That’s one thing that’s hard to apply our Catholic principles. One has to be cognizant of limitations but still feel able to speak on certain subjects.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, sure. I just think there are obviously different points of emphasis. We could have for instance, just focused on the theoretical account of wealth of nations and you usually press me to talk about something that has concreteness to it. And that’s why I kind of wanted to talk about that.
Trent Horn:
But I do think Smith is, he is artful in his insights, including on his criticisms of capitalism. For example, that merchants want to conspire together to keep wages low. I think that same as we’re moving forward for me, when it comes to understanding what economic system we use in general. And what I have a hard time with in the Marxist viewpoint is looking at it as you have the worker and owner and the owner exploits the worker, to me it’s too simplistic. I believe because of the human sinful condition everybody wants to exploit everybody. And so I don’t think that is…
Sam Rocha:
That’s pretty close to Marx though, honestly. So Marx whenever he talks about the real concrete danger to the proletariat, it’s usually the Lumpen proletariat, it’s rarely the cap…. Like structurally speaking, surplus value empties out into the capitalist pocket. That’s true structurally, but when he is getting into the real nitty gritty of…
Trent Horn:
I’ll just put a pin I don’t agree with Marx’s surplus value, but that might be, I’m just putting my pin there, we’ll take it down the line.
Sam Rocha:
Do we want to get into the M-C-M formula thing here? I mean, I’m okay with that.
Trent Horn:
My point I just wanted to make simple for people to follow is owners would love to have workers work and not pay them. And workers would love to get paid and not work. That’s the natural human instinct. And so when you have a system of voluntary interaction where you can’t be forced to buy or sell or pay others, then you have to put forward these incentives. And from that, it’s like Smith gives the example of the butcher who’d love to sell you rotten meat. He’d love to sell you rotten meat for a $100, but in a free market he can’t do that. He has to make it so that the exchange values both of you. Now, of course, there’s going to be systems where people are in unusual or interesting historical circumstances where exploitation occurs. But I think in general, the market helps to weed that kind of thing out.
Sam Rocha:
Sure. Maybe instead of focusing on this surplus theory of value, which is a little bit in the weeds, what about the Marx’s account of, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs sort of mantra. Because I find that a very uncontroversial Marxian line.
Sam Rocha:
It even captures kind of what you were saying earlier. I would say
Trent Horn:
To me it would depend on what the system is describing. Like in our house I don’t expect my six year old to do as many chores as I do, from each according to his abilities. And I’m not going to pay my six year old $50 for taking out the trash. He doesn’t need that to each according to his needs. So that’s a very paternal and familial thing. When it gets extrapolated to the state, where my recompense for working is just that which I need to survive, to me, slavery essentially is when you are forced to work and your compensation is only that which you need to survive. So it would seem like a kind of slavery if it’s imposed from a top down governmental structure.
Sam Rocha:
One thing to mention as well historically here is that if we do focus on industrial capitalism, another reason I think it’s important is that obviously history and political history and geopolitical history and periodization matters. When we focus on the 19th century and even on the 18th, we’re well within the grasp of this big era called modernity and within that big era called modernity, we have these large scale things called colonialism. A part of colonialism involves of course the transatlantic slave trade, shadow of slavery and so on and so forth.
Trent Horn:
And I would say that is antithetical to the idea of a free market, obviously people have to be free to accept goods and services or reject work, and slavery is completely incompatible with that.
Sam Rocha:
Marx is looking a lot, especially when he is tracking the price of coin. He’s looking a lot across the Atlantic. And he’s noting for instance, one of his accounts of surplus value, like the most extreme version is, if you get people and you don’t pay them, you get a lot of surplus value out of that because you don’t have a wage to give.
Trent Horn:
I wouldn’t use Marx’s terms. I would just say your overhead is a lot less.
Sam Rocha:
Well, that’s kind of what surplus value is, really.
Trent Horn:
Surplus value from, I guess we’re [inaudible 00:43:21]
Sam Rocha:
I guess we’re there. Okay.
Trent Horn:
I mean, surplus value is Marx’s idea that, he’s trying to figure out, and this is something, obviously economists try to figure out is, “What gives a good its value?” You have the costs of the raw goods for creating something. And then I was actually watching a video at the Grovel Institute that was expanding on this from the point of view that you’d be defending. And the example they used was look, Herschel has a burger stand and he pays a $1000 for the supplies. And then you work at Herschel’s burger stand and you sell burgers and Herschel makes, or it’s Harold, sorry, Harold makes $3,000. Yeah. That’s $2,000 of surplus value. And he pays you, but he never pays you quite enough because he needs his profits. And I think that, Marx trying to say, okay, here is the labor that went into creating this thing that may give its value.
Trent Horn:
But then the owner sells the thing, whether it’s a burger or a pair of shoes for more than that. And so Marx’s has reached the conclusion that the extra value had to be taken from the worker. And I would just disagree because I fundamentally disagree with their views. Which also goes back to our point when he talked about just price. To me, the value of a good or service lies primarily in the desire that other people have for it. And so when like in Harold’s account, it was not at the burger worker who made $2,000 there. The money that’s created is from a variety of things. The fact that somebody can go into a store, look at a nice menu, follow marketing, know that the burger shop has entered into government regulations, and all of these other things. And so for me the extra money has created the profit. There is a justification for the owner to be able to receive that because the owner took on entrepreneurial risks that the worker that the worker didn’t.
Trent Horn:
And so in trying to justify all that, so that’s one there for the profit, but this idea of surplus that really goes back to Ma’s labor theory of value. I, I just think that’s false because you could have, this is an example I’ve given before. You could have two houses that have identical costs for their construction, one just happens to be painted pink and the other’s paint white, but they’re going to be worth different because people value them differently. So that’s where I think there’s, you’re going to have a big headache. And it’s ultimate that undercuts Marx’s labor and surplus theory of value.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. The sense of his surplus theory of value that I understand, it’s a descriptive account of how is it the case that things that are exchanged on a basis of relative value, that a third entity enters into that exchange.
Trent Horn:
My answer to that is because when people in a free exchange, it is a win-win scenario, value is created in that people have what they desired. I believe this gentleman’s name is Kyle McDonald. There is a story online he did this back in the mid 2000s called the Red Paper Clip. And this is in Canada actually, so it’s part of your Canadian folklore, looking up the one red paper clip over the course of a year, he started with one red paper clip and through a series of about 14 trades ended with a two story farmhouse. So he trades the paper clip for a pen, the pen for a doorknob, the doorknob for another thing. And the value keeps increasing. But I would think under Marx’s view of the relative value and trade, it would seem like McDonald had to have stolen that farmhouse cause a paper clip is worth less, but in all of those trades, everybody was benefited and value was created from the free exchange between people. So that’s why I would have a counter to Marx’s there on some of that.
Sam Rocha:
I’m not entirely sure if that thought experiments. The first section of capitalism Capital Volume 1 is on value and his opening question actually has nothing to do with economics. It’s just what in the world is value. And how is it the case that value, it’s almost like a meta axiology, it’s like asking the question basically, what is value? And out of that emerges this account of, what will become capital, which will become money. And the story he tells which is super abstract for someone who’s supposed to be a historical materialist. There’s no history and there’s no materialism in the first 100, 200, 300 pages of capital. He very carefully suggests that, exchange between equivalent things makes sense.
Sam Rocha:
And that whenever exchanges between equivalents becomes exchanges between non equivalents, that there’s something is happening. And that here we have an emergence of a different kind of value, then a sort of equivalent exchange. It’s that kind of tick or that jump in equivalent exchanges that he tries to analyze. And you’re right that later down the road, he puts this to work in favor of an anti-capitalist of the critique of capitalist. But in the early parts of his analysis, I think his descriptive sense is that whenever I hand you a chicken, because you don’t have any chickens and you hand me a loaf of bread because I don’t have any wheat simplistic as this is, so it’s like a [inaudible 00:49:27]
Trent Horn:
That’s the first economy bartering. That’s been going on for thousands of years.
Sam Rocha:
Exactly. And he works himself kind of, he says, and then this becomes in some sense, sophisticated, but in other cases complicated from a philosophical point of view because we can kind of understand intuitively what the meaning of value is in the context of trade and bartering. But then we have these trades where it’s not just equivalent exchanges, there are other entities. What is that? And out of that comes this descriptive account of surplus value, which as you noted, he turns into a hammer which he uses later.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. And I think for me, once again, my critique of Marx would be that he thinks that value is something like a metaphysical entity within the object or the service itself. Whereas, I would say that value is actually something that we have that is a disposition towards particular goods or services. For example, that would explain why a good or a service, its value can radically change based on the behavior of other individuals. I mean, that’s anything it’s like, I would really love, how much something is, like a chicken may not be worth as much to me if I already have a whole pen of them in the back. Well, anything of value. So for example, if I ask you the question, what is more valuable, a bottle of water or a Picasso painting?
Trent Horn:
Normally we would say a Picasso painting, which is ironic though, because Marx and others try to say that value comes from satisfying our needs and other things like that. Whereas a Picasso painting doesn’t satisfy our needs. You might say, oh well it’s because it’s rare. Well, there’s a lot of other rare paintings out there nobody wants because they’re garbage. It’s also valuable just because lots of people want the Picasso. But if I was lost in the desert and I found a trunk and I owe opened it up, and it was Picasso paintings instead of water, I’d be really disappointed. So for me value relies on the disposition of the individuals involved in these exchanges. And that explains it’s dynamism I guess.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. I think a lot of that makes sense. I just think sometimes Marx, maybe it’s because he wrote so much and it took him so long and he ended up saying things later down the road using some concepts earlier, but, commodity exchange, because he really didn’t talk about goods and services at all. And this I think is about commodities, right?
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Sam Rocha:
And I think there’s the critique you made earlier that we don’t live in an industrial economy how can we understand, how can we critique capitalism or industrial capitalism for today whenever today’s economy is vastly different. In the same sense I agree with that. Marx isn’t really talking about goods and services, he’s talking about commodities. And the thing about commodities that’s important is that they can be accumulated, and that they can build up. And he talks a lot about accumulations as the kinds of surplus, like the effects of surplus value. So, one proof to surplus value would be, insofar as value through commodity can become accumulated, and then over time people could have accumulations of value through commodities that other people don’t have. This is like getting caught red handed with at least a descriptive understanding of surplus value, right?
Trent Horn:
Yeah. To me as long as whatever it is, whether it is a raw commodity like coal or it’s a currency of exchange like dollars that are given in exchange for coal sale or coal mining, as long as someone has accumulated it and they haven’t engaged in fraud, everyone’s needs are being met. And I fail to see the ethical problems. There will be people who will be able because of exponential growth, either by investing capital or by reinvesting it into industries, their ability to accumulate will be at a faster rate than other people. But just because that is unequal I don’t think that’s unjust as long as fraud and other things are not entering into the equation.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. Later on he talks about this thing called primitive accumulation, which is the forms of value through commodities that you essentially inherit and the ways in which, not all actors are entering into these commodity exchange in zero sum one off things. Over time, this gets really big and complicated. Interesting way actually it does lead to a kind of Kings with gold and a kind of in a weird almost retrograde way it can develop into these kinds of massive accumulations that create massive inequalities in terms of [inaudible 00:54:43]
Trent Horn:
Well, I would also say it allows for the first time in human history and that’s what Pope Leo the 13th of Serum nov arum’s critique of the socialist, was that they want to acquire property, whether private property, whether it it was acquired through lawful work, or the rightful title of inheritance. Because inheritance is anathema to Marx, but Leo saw that wealth generation within families is a key to lifting people out of poverty. I actually watched a movie on the plane the other day. It was all right. It was called an American pickle with Seth Roger. He plays two different characters.
Sam Rocha:
I `think he’s from Vancouver.
Trent Horn:
It’s an absurdist comedy drama about a pickle factory worker who falls into brine and wakes up in 2019, a 100 years later and meets his great grandson. I thought it was an okay movie comedy drama.
Sam Rocha:
Sounds, horrible.
Trent Horn:
But it’s interesting it starts with lowly pickle farmer. He learns his son became a brick factory foreman. His son is an accountant. Now his great grandson is an app developer. And so the ability to be able to acquire net worth among individuals and pass that along to their children, I think is crucial for the development of wealth intergenerationally. That’s why I’m not going to go on the weeds in this because that could be another topic for all of us. But we find point of agreement that in the early 20th century, when you had things like redlining that prevented blacks from owning homes. You’ve you’ve crippled the ability to amass wealth that would, if they could have in the 1930s in 2020 would make many black Americans have a very different economic perspective.
Sam Rocha:
Absolutely. And then there’s interesting interface between race and class and is actually really rich. I wonder if I can import one last thing we’re not getting very far, but one thing you said that I, I took probably more direct issue than these kind of gradients of things, which was, you really seem to imply at least rhetorically that the extension of lifetime expectancy, infant mortality rates and these things. Over time obviously they’ve risen. I mean they doubled the last century. No one can dispute that, right? You kind of seem to imply that there were, that this was almost causally related to the emergence of capitalism or capitalist societies. And I wondered, is that true? Because my understanding is that the history, immunizations, modern medicine and all these things is way more complicated than an economic history.
Trent Horn:
Right. But I think also it’s not just the development of things like vaccines or things like that as a whole that has brought down infant mortality rates and things like that because we saw big declines in that in the 19th and early 20th centuries before we had the development of antibiotics and regimented immunizations. To me, it seems very clear that…
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:58:04]
Trent Horn:
… regimented immunizations. To me, it seems very clear that what caused the surge in human population growth over the past few centuries was more reliable and dependable access to the basic necessities of life. We can also compare this to areas around the world that open themselves up to market economies and transition away from this kind of extreme poverty. You have East Asia, for example, in the mid-20th century is like 60% of people there lived in extreme poverty. Nowadays it’s dropped down to about 10%.
Trent Horn:
When people have just the ability to have reliable and regular access to the basic needs of life, I think that we can credit that to the fact that capitalism has created efficient food supply lines, efficient distribution and communication systems that has brought about something that had never been seen in the world before. I’m very skeptical of any other alternative explanation for that.
Sam Rocha:
I mean, for me … I mean, the alternative explanations you probably have heard of and that are well known are kind of just comparing, you could say, apples to apples, which is, you know, income inequality, food scarcity, those kinds of things. That’s not for me actually the most persuasive alternative. To me the persuasive alternative is the story of how the development of public health systems, as Pasteur and other breakthroughs, and our understanding of the science of medicine, as those became adopted in widespread health programs and stuff like that, I think that’s where you see a lot of the precipitous drops-
Trent Horn:
But I agree with that [crosstalk 00:59:49].
Sam Rocha:
… extensions of human life, right?
Trent Horn:
I would agree with that, but also I would say that the reason that modern medicine has been able to be proliferated and have such a massive impact on the human community is through the rise of private firms and pharmaceutical companies, biotech, other kinds of large multinational corporations. I mean, it was, private industry is what got us these RNA vaccines so quickly. I mean, at the beginning of 2020, when China released the genome for COVID-19, Moderna or Pfizer, it’s one of the two — they had developed the vaccine formula two days after they got the genetic sequence. They had a vaccine ready in March of 2020, but they couldn’t release it because there’s all this government red tape and stuff. Said I would agree with you on the, public health programs are helpful, we had them to help inoculate widespread MMR, things like that, but to me-
Sam Rocha:
I mean, we wiped out polio and smallpox and we’re going to get past a global pandemic, right? I mean,
Trent Horn:
But to me, without those private firms operating out of a profit motive.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Because they sink billions of dollars into the development of these vaccines to reap tens of billions of dollars in revenue. That’s what’s allowed it to be so efficient and so [inaudible 01:01:15].
Sam Rocha:
I think the details here really matter, right? I’m not going to overextend myself and make some kind of a 100% public-based option here. Because by the way, if you take it all the way back to like, who does the idea belong to? It belongs to an individual. States don’t have ideas because that’s not, they don’t have a psychology, so I’m-
Trent Horn:
But the leaders of states do.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. But I’m talking here about like, Louis Pasteur and people who actually do the work of having the idea that begins a movement of a revolution and change.
Trent Horn:
The same thing happened. An employee at an R & D at Moderna is doing the same thing.
Sam Rocha:
I’m actually agreeing with you here. What I’m trying to say is I don’t want to say too much. At the same time though, it seems really clear to me that whenever you scale this into the kinds of statistical realities and significances, like doubling a life expectancy rate or cutting an infant mortality rate in half, but the story really mixed. I would say, no one scores an easy cheat point, whether it’s a public option health or a capitalist innovation or like, I think everyone’s in it together. This is also kind of talks a bit about politics, which is I believe in hybrid socialist models with private options and so on and so forth, yeah.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, and I agree with you that one ought not oversimplify history, history is complicated. But I do think that we have had modern constitutional representative governments for centuries, but these technological advances, some of them are spurned by government research and development that happens lot in wartime and things like that. You know, we got Tang and other stuff from the space studies and … and other things that we use.
Sam Rocha:
The internet.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
But then we also, but to me, I would say, to only put it in there and to not see the realm where private firms have, I think, moved this at such a rate and have been willing to take the risks, entrepreneurial risks to do that is [crosstalk 01:03:30]
Sam Rocha:
Well that’s not … yeah, yeah. That’s not going to be the … I have no desire to occlude or get rid of that. How about we move into the second one where you tell me what kind of capitalist you are?
Trent Horn:
You know, it’s nice. I didn’t know how long we were going. This one’s a lot shorter.
Sam Rocha:
Okay, good.
Trent Horn:
For me. I mean, I’m fine going longer on the first one because, I mean, because I’m not an economist.
Sam Rocha:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
So I’m going to be very … I’m an apologist and my graduate degrees are in theology, philosophy, and bioethics. Economics is a hobby for mine. That’s why when I wrote my book on socialism and Catholicism, I had an economist co-author with me.
Sam Rocha:
Sure, sure, sure.
Trent Horn:
So your question. To me, there is … I’m similar to my co-author, Catherine, who teaches economics at CUA. There’s not really one school I fall into. If there is a good in a particular economic school within this free market framework, I’m willing to adopt it. But I’m not going to be some kind of slavish, obedient yes man for one of these schools.
Trent Horn:
I know some people who are very … what’s the word we’re looking for here … want, want to … you know, like me, who are very open about talking about benefits to capitalism. A lot of them fall in like the Austrian school, for example, like Tom Woods and people like that. I see a lot of benefit there. I think my general attitude is that I’m very skeptical of government having the efficiency necessary to accomplish a lot of good. I used to work for the government at one point and I saw a lot of inefficiency. I’m more in line with schools that allow for personal freedom and growth in the market. But I see the role of government intervention, especially to underserved communities that are very small in nature the market won’t reach as well.
Trent Horn:
An example I gave in a previous conversation on this subject was I had a friend of mine who used to teach at a school for children with autism. So it’s hard, there aren’t a lot of schools like that because there aren’t as many families with the income necessary to pay and start up these schools just for autistic children. Sometimes you might need maybe a government program to help with something like that. I mean it … although once again, I hesitate to want to have to rely on it. But also with the schools, yeah, there’s things I disagree with. I think it was Milton Friedman who said that the only responsibility a company has is to its shareholders. I think we’ll know, and I’m I’m definitely not Ayn Rand, objectivist type of capitalist. To me, we do have moral responsibilities to one another. So I do believe employers have responsibilities to their employees, to their consumers, to the community as a whole. Government can have a role in there to make sure that’s being carried out. But it does become complicated in the best way to achieve that, because sometimes when we institute policies to do that, our best intentions can lead to unintended and unfortunate consequences.
Sam Rocha:
Sure. I mean, this question is sort of … it’s kind of double loaded, and so I’ll just come out with the sort of two implications of it. Because I think it’s perfectly reasonable to you to say like, “Look, I’m not economist. I don’t have to accept a kind of a school of thought here,” or, “I don’t have to conference with a particular group of people or whatever. That’s not my domain.” That’s fine.
Sam Rocha:
I’ll be very blunt. Over the last year, I’ve had a lot of people try to pinhole me on socialism. My frustration has been to say, look, capitalism any easier than socialism to pinhole because there’s so many different kinds and no one agrees with each other. I prefer to talk about history, other people prefer to … you know, so on and so forth. Other people like to talk about political association, what party do you belong to, who do you caucus with. I guess I’ll use the negative question, which gets us a bit off the road, but would you accept the view that your approach to capitalism resembles in some ways my approach that you’re somewhat familiar with, to socialism?
Trent Horn:
I don’t think so because I still think I can give a succinct definition of of capitalism and socialism related to who primarily owns means of production. Amongst … let’s take three schools. You have Austrian, Chicago, and Keynesian, named after the late economist, John Maynard Keynes, who favored more government intervention in markets to increase stability and things like that. But I would say, I believe though I could … to me, the areas I have not fully weighed in on, I would say I’m closer to the Chicago and Austrian school than the Keynesian school, but I don’t want to speak out of my expertise.
Sam Rocha:
Sure, sure.
Trent Horn:
I would say that the problem is for me, the areas I’m not settled on are extremely fine points, like the role of the federal reserve or … which is there’s a difference between the Austrians and the Chicago school on that, and things like that. I think for me, the differences among capitalists where I don’t have a firm view are much finer points, whereas among even a Keynesian and a Chicago and neoliberal Austrian, we would all agree on the same basic sentiment about the desire to have the proliferation of free markets and to prevent ownership of the means of production to be primarily in the state or the community. So I do think I have a bit of a tighter description and that where I haven’t weighed in on, they’re just much finer points.
Sam Rocha:
I see. But it is a question of degree, not of kind, right?
Trent Horn:
Amongst the schools?
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. In other words, you would say like, we don’t resemble each other because of degrees, because you have a finer cluster, you might say, that you can make definitions with, whereas you would argue my cluster’s a bit maybe wider, more spread out, more dispersed.
Trent Horn:
Wider or even more nebulous, possibly.
Sam Rocha:
Sure.
Trent Horn:
Like to me, it would be like trying to say which kind of conservative group in the Catholic church do I fall into? I’m kind of a maverick in that. I would say that I’m a conservative Catholic, however you want to define that term, but it would be hard to place me into any particular group because amongst all these individuals, I do pick and choose, but it’d be very clear on the spectrum though in that bubble where I do end up.
Sam Rocha:
Sure. I mean, I think this is … so this is the passive side of this question, and I just wanted to not be passive aggressive in my use of it.
Trent Horn:
That’s fine.
Sam Rocha:
The active side of the question is I think the account you gave, I think it makes sense, but I think it does also raise a question about, well what are the criteria or what kind of principles govern this dispersal? My understanding of this spectrum is that it’s really about, like you have a kind of anarcho syndicalist capitalism on one side, so kind of like libertarianism maximally expressed. Then you have the more kind of classical economic schools of capitalism that understand that there are numerous factors that have to be addressed in numerous ways, including kinds of forms of regulation that ironically kind of keep markets more open and less open.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, but for me, I am generally … regulation to me, it tends to, I give it a presumption of being unnecessary rather than necessary, that the regulation is guilty until proven innocent. When I would see that and working through with government … I mean, to be at the mercy of the government, to me is just something that is … I mean it’s just almost very Kafkaesque sometimes when you’re trying to deal with them.
Trent Horn:
I mean, for example, our son was born at home because … unexpectedly. He was born back in September, and we still can’t get him a social security card. So I didn’t even claim him on my taxes because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of trying to claim someone who I don’t have a social security number for. It can feel almost nightmarish. What makes it hard with being at the mercy of government is that I can’t [crosstalk 01:12:12]
Sam Rocha:
… recommend a CPA to you. My CPA is really good.
Trent Horn:
It’s like, yeah it would help.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. He’s Catholic too.
Trent Horn:
There’s no competitor I can go to. So for me, when there is more competition, when you can increase that, it makes everyone better off. So when it comes to regulations, dealing with monopoly and things like that, I can see some role for the state and antitrust laws, but I’ve read other economists who’ve said that in general, the thing that usually keeps monopolies sustained is actually state intervention in the long run. It’s very hard to maintain monopolies in free and efficient markets.
Sam Rocha:
Okay. What would you make from this kind of set of principles then, of the kind of claim that’s common in political discourse … you probably heard Bernie Sanders say this before … of the idea that your general stance regarding capitalism at least concretely results or has resulted, at least in the United States, in a form of socialism for the rich. This is one of the kind of language games I see that I actually think is fairly effective to say well …
Trent Horn:
People say we don’t want socialism. We have socialism. For the rich.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, exactly. That was good.
Trent Horn:
I miss hearing Bernie more.
Sam Rocha:
So do I. I love Bernie.
Trent Horn:
To me, I mean, I totally disagree with him, but he’s definitely fun to listen to.
Sam Rocha:
He stays on point.
Trent Horn:
I know why he is so popular. He’s just like everybody’s brash uncle. I love on SNL once he did like, “And now we have Bernie Sanders. Bernie, how you doing?” “I’m good. Little hungry. I’m good.”
Sam Rocha:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Anyhoo, but well, I’ve heard that term thrown around and I don’t follow … I mean, I follow politics, but I’m not like a super politico. For me and the work that I’m trying to focus on is apologetics. So for me also … and by the way, I’ll get to the Bernie thing here shortly … it’s kind of like a strange thing. Sometimes people will say to me … I’ll put this out there. It’s an interesting critique I’ve heard when I go out and I defend capitalism and things like. That on the one hand, all I care about is materialism and promoting a materialist and lavish view of life. Whereas for me, I would say, well no, I promote this because I believe it’s the most efficient way to carry out Jesus’ commands in Matthew 25 to feed the poor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, this and that. Then other people, distributors usually, have then said to me, “Well, Trent, you’re going to get all,” you know, “You’re focusing so much on giving the poor all these material goods when really that’s going to take their eyes off of God when you’re focused so much on trying to raise their material welfare that in being poor, they’re more focused on religious goods.” I’m like, “Wait, it’s like I can’t win with you guys.” You know,
Sam Rocha:
I would much rather you didn’t keep importing distributors into our otherwise sensible [inaudible 01:15:11]-
Trent Horn:
Sorry, but some other people …
Sam Rocha:
No, I think you’re right.
Trent Horn:
[inaudible 01:15:14] hard as I do hear that [inaudible 01:15:18] approach. Now with Sanders, I guess that comes to the idea that this will, within capitalism, you’re going to have intramural debates about, for example, what kind of tax policies and revenue policies are best for government to be able to assist people. You can correct me if I’m wrong. When I hear socialism for the rich, usually that seems to be a critique of things like tax cuts for high earners or for large businesses, with the idea that these individuals will reinvest their extra … that when you are wealthy enough, that when you are lower income, your excess wealth is usually, it is spent or it is consumed, whereas when you’re a high income earner, your excess wealth tends to be invested. You don’t just consume it.
Sam Rocha:
Accumulation.
Trent Horn:
There’s going to be different debates about how effective these different policies are. Frankly, just get my little political rant out of me.
Sam Rocha:
All right.
Trent Horn:
There’s a lot of conservatives out there who, to me, betray the basic principles. They want to do things like tax cuts and things like that. But then they also don’t want to rein in the spending you have to do with that to make it effective. Other wise, you know, so … but yeah, so I would say with that, there are these different policies. What’s good in both a free market and a free society, what’s interesting is I noticed Elizabeth Warren got in a spat with Amazon on Twitter a few months ago. She was saying like, “You guys don’t pay your fair share of the taxes.” The Amazon Twitter, which is weird, this is what life has come down to, it says to her … we don’t know who it is. It’s the guy running the account … says to her, “Well, you wrote the rules, the tax rules. If you don’t like them, change them.” And he has a point, you know?
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. I mean the sense I get for socialism for the rich, it is in some ways about taxes, but it relates basically to the idea that sort of the national budget has a kind of familial form in the sense that … a budget for a nation is just a series of maximal degrees higher than a budget for a family in the sense that you can’t spend money that you don’t have unless you can borrow it, unless you can borrow on enough credit, you know.
Trent Horn:
Well, we’re doing that all the time and it makes me incredibly concerned.
Sam Rocha:
I mean, I’m actually pretty, probably more fiscally conservative than some might think of in terms of spending without raising revenue. I think the inability, for instance, for Democrats to talk about like, “No, we need to raise more money for the programs that we want to buy.” I think that’s actually a more conservative and more sensible thing to say and they often don’t say it because of a kind of rhetoric of socialism. You have to admit, and I heard you say this and I want to give you full credit for this, that the crying wolf game about socialism from conservatives doesn’t benefit their larger ideological arguments.
Trent Horn:
It’s utterly stupid. It’s utterly stupid to do that with anything that is a threat, whatever kind of threat that you see. It’s kind of like when traditionalist Catholics, and I would consider myself … I mean, I go to a Byzantine church. We don’t even have pews. [crosstalk 01:18:45] Right, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s another term that’s so elastic, but it’s like when a traditionalist Catholic says, “Oh, don’t do that. That’s modernism,” and I’m like, well, I don’t even know what … that’s the heresy modern … I don’t even know what that word means. So if everything you critique is modernism, you just played it, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Trent Horn:
It’s similar with anything when … although I would flip this over to the political left. If every conservative is a Nazi …
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, absolutely.
Trent Horn:
I mean, they were saying … like Mitt Romney, Romney is a Nazi. So if everybody’s a Nazi, then you’ve got people who will say, “Well, I don’t care if the guy I vote for is an out and out xenophobe and racist, because you’ve said everybody I pick is a Nazi. So who cares?” That’s sort of the inverse of what the [crosstalk 01:19:36] socialism.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, I think the Nazi game, the argumentum ad Hitlerum is awful. One thing I note, and in fact, I noted this in my critical discussion a couple days ago on communism was that the Allied powers, the UK, the United States, Canada, France, they united with the USSR because red communism and liberal society, soft fascism has a greater threat in the moment, and they united in outright global world war against that. Ideologically, should that console any communist or any defender of free society and democracy? Probably not, but it definitely happened, and I think thinking about it more critically, other than just defaulting into a Cold War mentality is bad.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. But going back to the crying wolf over socialism. I think that’s … and this goes to the alternative. I’ve read Ibram X. Kendi’s criticisms of capitalism. He tends to define it … the problem is he defines capitalism according to just a particular, hyper political view of being against any kind of entitlement program, any kind of public spending. But even you have someone like Friedrich Hayek from the 1940s, who is one of the most informed critics of socialism, he himself saw no problem with government programs to combat things like unemployment or things like that. But he said provided that they do not require that special kind of planning, which according to its advocates is to replace the market. That’s what he was concerned about.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah. I mean, the rejoinder to the welfare socialism charge on my side would be something along the lines of you don’t get voting rights, women don’t get to vote, union protections, all of these kinds of things, and welfare programs in the US — WIC, CHIP, all these things, they don’t emerge sort of spontaneously. They always emerge from a broadly speaking political left or labor politics or worker politics.
Trent Horn:
Sure, but I will say, on the two fronts there. One, when it comes to labor unions, I would say an important element of capitalism is these free associations, whether it’s free associations with workers-owners, or free associations among the workers themselves. I would be a strong union advocate provided though that there are checks and balances.
Trent Horn:
What I am concerned about is not so much private sector unions but public sector unions. Because let’s say you have a private sector union at a clothing store. The workers gather together, they place their demands for wages that are higher than the cost of the labor and are not feasible. If they do that, the store raises the price of the goods, they lose revenue. You have a interlocking check and balance system. But with a public sector union, whether it’s teachers unions or police unions, frankly, you have a problem-
Sam Rocha:
Or faculty associations.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. You don’t have the check and balance that entity will always be funded, usually. It’s compulsory in that regard. So then you have the situation where you have, whether it’s the police federation or the teacher’s union, they’re bargaining across the table from the elected officials they helped to get into office. So it creates a hanky kind of situation.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was also talking about how one of the biggest critics that I’ve read in print of just the idea of a trade union in terms of corruption was actually Marx.
Trent Horn:
Interesting.
Sam Rocha:
Because a lot of the early associations of labor were built on pretty dirty politics that were playing with the house of commons, and they saw Marx’s critique as a threat to their getting kind of control of the worker’s side of the game in that case and so he has some pretty nasty things to say about them. But no, this is all really reasonable. I wonder if we can now jump into the Catholic side of things.
Trent Horn:
Yes. I texted, I was supposed to go out to dinner with my wife and in-laws but so far I don’t think I don’t think we’re leaving yet.
Sam Rocha:
Oh no.
Trent Horn:
Oh, we’re good. We’re good. She’ll let me know.
Sam Rocha:
All right. Yeah, you just let me know. I have proposed what I hope is a moderate but maybe hopefully sensible idea that there at least does exist or could exist a particular form of anti-capitalism within Catholic social teaching. Obviously, that puts you in, not a super hot seat, but it forces you to make some distinctions. Unless you want deny the claim from the get go.
Trent Horn:
No, I don’t deny the claim. I appreciated how you you phrased the question to say to me. There’s been a long … I would agree with you there is a long running critique of capitalism, of markets in particular. That makes sense to me if free markets hinge upon voluntary associations among people. Because of human sinfulness, many of our voluntary associations will necessarily be for the benefit of others. So those critiques will be necessary. Rerum novarum, Leo makes it very clear about factory worker owners who treat their employees like they’re bags of coal and subjects women in children to work that’s unsuitable for their sex and age, things like that.
Trent Horn:
I thought of this analogy, I don’t know what you would think of this. I would say that the church’s overall teaching would be that capitalism or at least free market economics, in and of itself … I’ll read this from Pope Benedict XVI the day [inaudible 01:25:38]. He said, “Economy and finance as instruments can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man’s darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se.”
Trent Horn:
So my analogy would be, I feel like sometimes the way the church talks about free markets, it’s kind of the way when you look at the 2000 years of Catholic tradition on the church’s teaching on sexuality or the marital act. I would say when you go back to like, especially the church fathers and Aquinas and forward, there’s a heavy amount of skepticism about the morality of the sexual act. The [inaudible 01:26:22] are rejected who say that it’s evil. But we seem to have a transition away from it being there are evils associated with it that we tolerate and that it’s only for the procreative end of this act that justifies the whole thing, to moving towards, well, the unitive and the procreative end are both equally important. I think that’s just, and I think it’s a rightful … so you could say there’s a long running critique of sexuality in Catholicism, and I think justly so, because sexuality, it’s like with Benedictine markets. It’s like man’s darkened reason produces the consequences, not the instrument per se. Obviously, it’s not the marital act itself that’s bad, it’s man’s darkened-
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:27:04]
Trent Horn:
Obviously, it’s not the marital act itself is bad, its man’s darkened reason applying it and the fruits of it. And so, to take something that is so good and powerful and can lead to bad consequences requires this kind of finessing. And I would see a similar kind of treatment in the church’s teaching about free markets, though it’s much more recent because markets are more recent. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Sam Rocha:
I think the punchline for saying, what kind of capitalism is the anti-capitalism of the church? It’s this Francis’ unfettered capitalism, that’s been his kind of rhetorical expression. There is also there been a critique of at least the rhetoric or the metaphor of the trickle down economics as being..
Trent Horn:
[inaudible 01:27:51]
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, exactly. And for my purposes, by the way, I prefer some of the older, like the passages [inaudible 01:28:03] Newman, because they resemble so much those same passages from the working day. They’re very concrete. They get you right on a factory floor and show you, this is wrong.
Trent Horn:
Sure. But [crosstalk 01:28:11].
Sam Rocha:
This is wrong.
Trent Horn:
But even in those frameworks, you have Pope Pius XI talk, he says that, “Now we shall examine capitalism because of its most bitter accuser, socialism, has brought charges against it.” And he says that, “This system in and of itself is not to be blamed.” And then he proceeds to give in Quadragesimo Anno, all kinds of qualifiers about wages being too high or too low. Though he does talk about how, what is good about how businesses have incorporated the standards that Leo demanded in Rerum novarum, many of them had come to fruition by the time a Quadragesimo Anno, basic working conditions and things like that. I would say we’d see that as well in the older encyclicals.
Sam Rocha:
No, I think it’s even throughout one thing I just to point out that I agree with you with and I’ve defended your point on this, on other podcasts. Since, is that I, it would be convenient and I am sympathetic to the idea that for instance, the preferential option for the poor is something that we trace from the prophets, the orphan, the alien and the widow. What I don’t accept on certain accounts like David Bentley Hart’s account recently that you mentioned, and a few others is the idea that when we talk about socialism or when we talk about anti-capitalism that we see this actually happening in vivo historically in acts. I think that..
Trent Horn:
In acts, you mean in acts of the apostles.
Sam Rocha:
Yes, yes. And Luke’s sequel. I think you kind of reject the idea. You say the kind of the historical conditions have changed since the times of the scripture and the times of the early church. And so we have to kind of really focus on a contemporary discussion. I actually accept this more historical approach to talking about economics and political..
Trent Horn:
And well actually in Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict, reflecting on the early church’s communal life. He says this, he says “Though, as the church grew, this radical form of material communion could not in fact be preserved, but it’s essential core remained within the community of believers. There can never be room for a poverty that denies anyone, what is needed for a dignified life.” But I’m appreciative of your thoughts on that.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, no, no. I think it’s a bit of a slide of hand in at least the argumentation that’s made. So it doesn’t mean that I don’t accept just to be clear for Catholics. I’m not saying that I don’t accept scripture as having the ability to give moral instruction to our daily lay lives, nor do I say that the early church fathers or patristic texts don’t apply. But I think that there’s, we have to then practice our judgment in a way that doesn’t over determine how that application gets made.
Trent Horn:
And that’s an important point for me, especially, when we’re dealing with economics. Because for me, economics is a science. We both agree it didn’t exist definitely before Adam Smith and really came into development after him. For me, economics is the science of understanding ways to define it. The science of how man makes the living, understanding the interactions between producers and consumers. That this is a science. And my frustration can be sometimes those who want to import Catholic moral principles to say, well, here is just what we should do economically to which I want to say, well, the problem is it’s a science and you like sociology, you can try to do something. And the market and humans will react in a predictable way based on what we study. And we have to make our policies in line with the way humans tend to act in these circumstances.
Trent Horn:
So what my point would be like, if we look at applying what the church fathers, what this Bible and what the church fathers say about caring for the poor. I would agree with much of what they say, but we also have to understand that just as we do not restrict ourselves to healing the sick to first century solutions that we would find in the father’s or scripture, we ought not restrict ourselves to helping the poor to the solution we would find in the new Testament scripture, because just as Medical Science is advanced, Economic Science is advanced.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah, no, no, that line of that sequence of thought to me strikes as sensible. And it’s also one of the reasons why I won’t really argue with distributors. Cause I think they’re operating in a kind of fantasy zone of reality. They don’t have a sense of a…
Trent Horn:
It’d be entertaining if you have one on your podcast, Sam, I don’t know
Sam Rocha:
Why?
Trent Horn:
We’ll see.
Sam Rocha:
So I can tell them that they’re playing fantasy games. Like again,
Trent Horn:
I’ll try to maybe I, there are some that I know who are not as old school that are more like neo and they how to apply, distribute his principles within a market economy, which I think sometimes tracks with sometimes What you’re saying.
Sam Rocha:
I would be interested in talking to a dis- a scholar of distributism about Belloc and about the servile state and about his essence in a historical sense.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Sam Rocha:
I’m very interested in that. Don’t get me wrong. That’s real. What I don’t like is whenever they use that to import themselves into these fantas- economic fantasies that don’t exist. Now, I think actually the Pope’s though might be a little bit on edge. There is a squeaky part in this position that I think we both hold in common or at least an approach, our method. Because the popes often refer to Church Father in the scripture, in their Catholic social teaching as ways to make arguments about the present.
Sam Rocha:
And this has always struck me as a weak spot. So like in Populorum Progressio, Paul VI says, as St Ambrose’s put it and then he quotes Ambrose. “You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back. What is his? You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.” Paul VI says, “These words indicate that the right to private property is not absolutely and unconditional.” Now this strikes me as a difficult claim to evaluate, given the method that we have decided here.
Trent Horn:
I think what the, what we have to do is when we’re zeroing in on this, we have to understand what are the essential truths that we are being, receiving in scripture and in the fathers, what are the essential truths and what are the truths that are more contingent? So an essential truth might be, always treat your fellow human being with dignity, a contingent truth might be always practice kindness towards your slave. In Colossians, Paul makes it very clear to, you masters be kind to your slaves because you have a, you both have a master who is in heaven, but we wouldn’t read that rigidly to say that there’s nothing wrong with having slavery today. But the essential truth and you could apply that to owners and workers, employers, people have authority over others. And that’s the process of theology of avoiding the… I’m talking with you, I can make all kinds of literary references don’t feel like snooty or anything.
Sam Rocha:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
In the Odyssey it’s what’s at the the Scylla rocking our place, the Scylla of hyper traditionalism that we just read the letter. The Fathers in scripture by the letter and that’s that. And so it’s, you can shoot Muslims with cross bows, but not Christians because the second letter in council said so, or the regard of this, I’m putting all of this, it’s been so long since I read the Odyssey the other extreme of, all completely contingent and it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing universal, marriage is whatever you want it to be. That I think is when you’re trying to find the narrow lane here in theology.
Sam Rocha:
No, I agree with that. I think though that the reason this is difficult is not only for methodological reasons, but it, and this is something I think that both of us would agree with, which is that Catholic social teaching and the church’s magisterial voice. And here again, you’re an apologist. We’re firmly in the area where we can, I hope speak with confidence here.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Sam Rocha:
But it’s, we’ve argued with compatibility of socialism and here we’re kind of not really arguing about the compatibility of capitalism. We’re having a slightly different discussion, but neither capitalism in its modern sense, nor socialism in its modern sense, nor any other ideological recent arrival is the same. As it’s like compatibility is not identical to the church. And so when the church teaches Catholic social teaching, I think we have to kind of, I think I have to accept that the church’s voice is always going to speak in a meta physically different register, all things considered than a secular socialist or what have you, even though those registers can be an impacted by the church and vice versa.
Trent Horn:
It is going to be hard when you apply the church’s teaching. It’s like when we start with areas of like dogmatic theology, the Trinity Marian dogma.
Sam Rocha:
Histology,
Trent Horn:
Histology. It’s not simple, but it’s a lot more cut and clear and you have infallible definitions and, but then it’s like concentric circles. Then you move away from that to systematic theology, moral theology. And then like the outer circuit I feel like is when you get into things like Catholic social teaching that are going to be difficult, where there, whereas you start with dogmatic theology, there’s very small margin for just Prudential judgements. Like in Christology, there’s just a few matters of speculation. But then when you get out to Catholic social teaching, you get way more Prudential judgements because of the dynamic nature of how, I mean, just seeing how society has changed even in the past 30 years, 20 years. Not to mention 200 or 2000.
Trent Horn:
So then in applying it, you have more room for these Prudential judgements and here the, now the church can weigh in on the Prudential judgements and it should, and it does, but and those teachings should be given consideration, but even in Don Varitas from the congregation of the doctrine of the faith, talked about how the magisterial is not always free from error in its discussions about interventions in Prudential order, cause it might not have all the facts. It could not have everything. I’ll give you an example, it’s not, I wouldn’t say it’s magisterial, but it’s unfortunate. One thing that I believe would help, both for global poverty and I’m concerned about climate change. There’s a lot of conservatives that jump down my throat for that. But to me, both of them would be addressed very well by the promotion of nuclear power generation.
Trent Horn:
And I think like that, that would just be gangbusters to, for all of that. When Pope Francis visited Japan like a year or two ago, he was saying, “We shouldn’t have nuclear power. It’s not safe.” And now to be fair, most of the Japanese citizens agreed with them because they’re still freaked out by the Fukushima in incident after the Japanese tsunami. But at the end of the day 67 or 60,000 people
Sam Rocha:
Not to mention even in Nagasaki.
Trent Horn:
That’s nuclear is going to be a touchy subject in Japan, but over in China, like 60,000 people a year die from coal dust from coal power plants. And China’s building a lot of nuclear plants. They know this. So for me, it’s like when I read sometimes in the encyclicals, I see things in there that rightfully challenge others. I’m pretty open border’s guy. Another thing people will jump down my throat about. And then things that challenge me that I have to, maybe I got to reconsider this and the other things, I think that this is a Prudential judgment I’ll give consideration, but I don’t know if it was entirely well thought out. So that’s my
Sam Rocha:
No, that’s good. I think that makes a lot of sense. I know there’s a lot of people who followed this interaction going backwards so quickly insert this and then we’ll get to question four is and I don’t know if I’ve actually wondered this because I never understood things in bad faith ever myself. But there are many who believe that the argument on the compatibility thesis regarding socialism was in your mind a kind of, almost like a dogmatic situation. Whereas my argument was that it’s more relativistic and there’re all kinds of lines between there. But I think we both agree that these are both within the Prudential range of reasonable opinion one can and should have as Catholics. Right?
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I think here’s where the problem is going to arise, on this issue. I would say that the church is teaching on the incompatibility of Socialism and Catholicism. It’s not infallibly defined. I believe it is repeated consistently enough across a wide variety of authorities to fall under requiring the religious submission of mind. And well, now that being said, the problem then becomes, what do you mean by socialism? That’s where it’s kind of like the church’s condemnation of usury. I would say that even following John Newnan who wrote The big, I got his, I found his out print book on the subject. For only like 30 bucks, normally it’s like five hundred bucks. Even he, in that book says the church never defined this infallibly, but it’s pretty like the church has always taught and continues to teach that usury is wrong.
Trent Horn:
But then we get into the nitty gritty. What is usury? Is it charging interest on any loan or is it exploitative on just and so I think, I talk to a lot of people who tell me, they can’t believe you’re saying Catholic, can’t be a socialist. You’re saying, I can’t believe in unemployment benefits and public parks. I’m like, no, I’m not. I’m talking about the primary ownership of the means producing the means of goods and services. So for me, I would think it would really depend on how you define the particular term. And how you apply. I would say..
Sam Rocha:
Could that mean like some people would, when I become a Canadian citizen and I can vote here, I’ll probably become a registered member of the NDP Charles Taylor’s party. And it is the, not communist, but socialist party. And even there are some socialists holdouts say it’s not socialists enough, blah, blah, blah. Just like I’m a dues paying member of the DSA, which has a very bad rep amongst leftist, because it’s kind of like the left wing of the democratic party. Basically. It doesn’t have kind of
Trent Horn:
Do you mean Leftist? Like, like communist people are left of DSA [crosstalk 01:43:33]
Sam Rocha:
PSL people. So party of solidarity and liberation folks see the DSA as just like the sellout, not serious. And those are the people who I generally get into big disagreements with on the left.
Trent Horn:
Well and that goes to like, you’re not
Sam Rocha:
What I’m saying is that you’re not saying a Catholic can’t, you can’t. You’re not saying like Charleston cannot be a big figure in the NDP. You’re not saying that Catholics can’t be in the DSA, these political associations aren’t things.
Trent Horn:
For me, it depends. It ultimately depends. Because once again, even that term democratic socialist it’s going to be elastic. If it’s a way of implementing classical socialism via democratic means, I would say that you can’t. If it’s a means of promoting, for example, if it, lets say, for example, your goal as democratic socialist is to institute policies. So that companies have an easier time allowing for workers to be co-owners of a firm. I wouldn’t necessarily, I wouldn’t be opposed with that because you’re still leaving that free agency there, but so it’s once again, it’s about finding the gradient that’s involved, whether it’s like democratic socialist for me, as long as it’s more on the democratic side than the socialist side, and it’s not that’s where, cause for me, people will say like, well, Trent, you’re not for socialism. You don’t think because like covenant eyes is a pornography accountability software program. And they recently, I believe sold the company and all of the workers, co-own it. And I’m not opposed to that.
Trent Horn:
There are people there’s this guy. Oh gosh. He had a credit card comp-, I think his name’s Dan Price. He, I want to say that’s what it is. He decided, he had 120 employees at a credit card company.
Sam Rocha:
Is this when he paid them all the same amount?
Trent Horn:
Paid him 75 grand. He took, he was making like a $4 million salary and he voluntarily took a giant pay cut, gave his employees a raise. And there were conservatives saying, “That’s just socialism.” I’m like, “You’re an idiot.” You’re an idiot. If you’re going to say that social, because it is Price’s money. If you make $3 million and he wants to reinvest, now I do think though that you can spend money. And I think there are ways Price could have spent the money more efficiently to help more people. That’s effective altruism. That’s a different.I would love to buy a million malaria nets or fund a malaria vaccine, or whatever. But if Price chooses to do that with his money, that’s his business.
Sam Rocha:
You can’t tell.. [crosstalk 01:46:10]
Trent Horn:
But if government starts to encroach and try to make every CEO, a Dan Price, that’s where I’m going to have issues where we’re going to have unintended unfortunate consequences.
Sam Rocha:
That’s super helpful. And by the way, Jacque Magneton and Emmanuel Mounier, two French philosophers, who I really kind of think a lot of, they had this very dispute in which Magneton says, “I’m a social democrat, but I won’t be a democratic socialist.” And Mounier was a democratic socialist who thought that the social democrat move was just kind of eroding the ground they stood on. And they both occupied, when you start lining up sort of like a chart of what they believed in issues wise and theologically and stuff, they occupy almost all the same space.
Trent Horn:
Sure. And what’s interesting if you go to the Stanford encyclopedia philosophy and you look at the entry on, and I love how you can pronounce it. And all Bush Jacquemetton, so awful. But if you look at him, it says in there while his political philosophy led him, at least in his time to be considered a liberal and even a social democrat, he issued socialism itself.
Sam Rocha:
It was because of Mounier because he wouldn’t sign on to, Mounier’s more overtly socialist project. And for me, just to be clear, I would never, ever, and I have never, and will never say that a Roman Catholic in the United States cannot be a member and even running for office within the Republican party or the Democratic party, or in other words, I don’t know if there’s a party in existence within the United States right now that I would say no one could be a member of. This would include libertarians greens, PSL, DSA. I can’t think of one. And I think that’s important because sometimes I think people hear these things, as us telling people who you can associate with. And I think we both believe in freedom of association here.
Trent Horn:
Well, we have to do that though. I do think it is important that as we associate, we have, we are clear on the things we cannot compromise on and we are open to dialogue on the open questions.
Sam Rocha:
No absolutely.
Trent Horn:
And as long as we do that, it can be fruitful.
Sam Rocha:
Great. Well, look, you’ve been very generous with your time. This final question is very kind of philosophical. It kind of gets us down to human flourishing and in some sense, the question of the good life. I don’t want you to feel pinholed here at all because I genuinely think that at the end of the day, one needs to be able to give some account of how the views they promote, especially in public, in the Agora, promote the good life as far as they see it. I’m not inclined to probably ask too many counter questions here, but if you want to give us a sense of what your vision of the good life is, I would love to.
Sam Rocha:
Because I would rather give an unfortunately brief answer to a question that deserves, quite lengthy one. But I think like how do you Trent, how do you reconcile capitalism, Catholicism and the pursuit of the good life?
Trent Horn:
I would say, ultimately our good is not in this world. It is in a kingdom that is not of this world. And so our ultimate good is union with Jesus Christ and to become holy and be perfect, as our heavenly father is perfect. And to grow in the life of grace that we received through sacraments. And in doing that, then we model Christian charity in our various stages of life. For some people that will be married life, could be religious, could be priestly. For most people, you will also have to model that Christian charity in life, through work. In order to have a society where we can function, we will have to, some people will work.
Trent Horn:
I think everybody, I mean, everybody works. Some people, their work includes ownership and oversight of other workers. And so we have to be cognizant of that. But I do believe that human beings, it’s unfortunate because of our sinfulness, we do veer towards evil. We’re not totally depraved. We veer towards evil, but God and his mercy chose to not centrally plan our lives like a Calvinist ordained deity. As I reject central planning economically and theologically,
Trent Horn:
You’re not God.
Sam Rocha:
God gave us freedom in that regard. And sometimes it is misused, but God is able to work everything to good, to those who love him. And so just as God gave us that freedom in our spiritual life and we are, and that is key to our ability to be able to flourish. I have, I believe the testimony of reason in empirical sciences and history when people are freely able to associate with one another in markets to be able to meet each others needs in fair, free transactions and respect the dignity of each other.
Sam Rocha:
I think that provides a good foundation so people’s material needs are met and then they can grow in their spiritual needs. But ultimately, I would say that markets just, what I would say like I quoted Pope Benedict while back in Davis Kerry’s podcasts, that the fault is in man’s darkened reason, not the instrument per se. So we’re always trying to renew human beings within this free market approach. We have to meet each other’s material needs. And then ultimately though the market cannot meet all of our needs. Pope Francis has been absolutely right. A consumer’s culture is wrong. We cannot meet all of our needs through, the market on Amazon. Our most important needs are those that are going to be met spiritually, but before somebody can hear the good news, if they’re starving to death, it’s good for them, they’ll eat something first. And then they’re in a good place to hear the good news of the bread of life that, that never, that never corrupts and leaves ever lasting life.
Trent Horn:
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PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:52:21]