Pope Francis I and global trends

Ross Douthat:

Second, the choice of a Latin American makes a great deal of sense on paper, since Latin America is in many ways the place where the different experiences of global Catholicism converge. The region shares a New World experience with North America, a long record of church-state entanglements with Western Europe, a history of colonial exploitation and stark extremes of wealth and poverty with sub-Saharan Africa. The Latin church faces the same challenges from secularism and sexual liberation as the church in the developed world, and the same explosive growth of Pentecostalist and prosperity-oriented Christian alternatives as the church elsewhere in the global South. A pontiff from the region is thus a natural choice, in ways that an African or Asian pope might not have been, to move the church’s focus away from Europe and North America (and especially Europe) in some ways without cutting the Vatican off from the trends, issues and crises facing the church in a secularizing West.

Walter Russell Mead:

In some ways, Francis was a typically canny choice by the oldest electoral college in the world. The choice of a Latin American, and the first non-European pope in more than a thousand years, made headlines around the world and galvanized many Catholics in developing countries where the Church is strong. But behind the drama is the cautious intelligence of an institution whose traditions stretch back to the times of the Caesars; with the exception of Australia and New Zealand, Latin America is the most European region in the whole global South. Argentina is the most European of Latin American countries, and Pope Francis, whose parents emigrated from Italy in the last century, is one of the Argentinians whose European roots are as strong and deep as they get.

It appears that, among other qualities, he is a compromise between those still nostalgic for the long Italian stranglehold on the papacy (Pope John Paul II was the first non-Italian Bishop of Rome since 1523) and those who want a more globalized leadership in the Church. He is as Italian as a foreigner can be.

With all this, though, comes political baggage. Most Cardinals from Europe these days have not had to cope with the political monsters running loose in much of the world. The selection of Benedict XVI, who came of age in Hitler’s Reich, raised some eyebrows, but generally speaking most European prelates these days haven’t had to exercise their ministries in countries run by murderous thugs.

That isn’t the case with people from much of the developing world. Cuba’s bishops must somehow work with the Castros; the bishops of Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Rwanda and many other countries have had to make choices that people from stable and democratic places know little about. In Pope Francis’s case, he lived under the horrible Argentine military government of the 1970s when disappearances and torture were business as usual. Those of us who haven’t had to navigate those treacherous waters should be careful how we judge those whose experience has taken them through trials we cannot comprehend. Nevertheless, Pope Francis must expect that his record under Argentina’s dictatorship will be carefully combed through, and it is not impossible that a Buenos Aires government with little use either for him or for the Church will engage in selective leaks.

Strangling entrepreneurs

Walter Russell Mead linked to this Matt Yglesias column about the difficulty of renting out a condo in DC due to the huge amount of regulations, which also affects urban residents of more modest means who would want to start a business.

Key quote from Yglesias (quoted by Mead):

Red tape, long lines, inconvenient office hours, and other logistical hassles probably won’t stop tomorrow’s super-genius from launching the next great billion-dollar company. But it’s a large and needless deterrent to the formation of the humble workaday firms that for many people are a path to autonomy and prosperity.

Key quote from Mead:

Heavy regulation plus bad governance hurts the poor and prevents jobs from being created in big blue cities where so many immigrants and minorities live. Those are exactly the people who most need the freedom to start businesses, and those are the businesses our existing blue model cities do so much to crush.

Christmas as economic savior

Walter Russell Mead has a short critique of this idea.

This of course reflects on the assumptions underlying a consumer economy. I discussed Mead’s ideas about this in this post, and followed up here.

Strengths and weaknesses of state-led economic growth

An exchange with a couple of colleagues reminded me of this post by Walter Russell Mead, in which he reacted to the bumps in China’s economic development:

Recent years have seen a bubble in China babble among the global punditocracy’s talking heads. China’s apparent immunity to the 2008 financial crisis led many talking heads and columnists to argue that the Chinese growth model – a cocktail of authoritarian political control and so-called “state capitalism” – represented a new way forward for economies everywhere.

As history, this was simply ignorance speaking: authoritarian states and forms of state capitalism have been achieving rapid bursts of growth since the era of Louis XIV. During the Depression, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were all widely hailed by clueless western pundits as having found more “modern” and “efficient” methods of promoting growth than the “failed” policies of the liberal capitalist states. It has been well known for centuries that over the short term, concerted state-guided modernization drives can outperform liberal policies; the trouble is — and always has been — that sooner or later the accumulated inefficiencies, distortions, and political shortcomings of non-liberal states lead to prolonged slowdowns at best, revolutions and wars at the worst.

However, those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat the mistaken cliches of past generations as if they were shiny new truths; China babble has reigned among exactly the kinds of people who used to marvel at Hitler’s autobahns, Stalin’s steel mills, and Mussolini’s ability to make the trains run on time.

This seems to be a helpful way to understand why the New Deal model seemed to work so well from the 1930s to the 1960s, but not as well after that. This model of government transformed the landscape of the US, bringing about a national highway system (and the attendant suburbs) and a lot of development of rural areas (like the TVA). But there’s another side of the coin too.

American support for Israel’s Gaza operation

Walter Russell Mead has a thought-provoking interpretation of American support for Israel in its military response in Gaza: Americans don’t really believe in just war theory or proportionality in the conduct of war because of the circumstances of our national development. He links this to the prevalent “Jacksonian” attitude toward foreign policy in the US:

The European just war tradition springs in part from the reality that historically in Europe war was an affair of kings and rulers that hurt the little people without doing anything for them. Peasants really didn’t care whether the Duke of Burgundy or the Count of Anjou was recognized as the rightful overlord of their village, and moralists and theologians worked to limit the violence that the dukes and the counts and their henchmen wreaked on the poor peasants caught up in a quarrel that wasn’t theirs.

With no feudal past in this country, Americans have tended to see wars as wars of peoples rather than wars of elites and in a war of peoples the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets tends to collapse. The German civilian (male or female) making weapons for Hitler’s Wehrmacht was as much a part of the enemy’s warmaking potential as the soldier at the front. Furthermore, in a war of peoples in which civilians are implicated in the conflict, the health and morale of the civilian population is a legitimate target of war. This justified the blockades against the Confederacy and against Germany and German occupied Europe during the world wars, and it also justified the mass terror bombing raids of World War Two in which the destruction of enemy morale was one of the stated aims.

This is the same logic by which someone like Osama bin Laden could justify his attacks on civilians at the World Trade Center, and it is the fundamental logic behind Hamas’ indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilian targets. Americans don’t like it when their enemies use this kind of logic, but it is a type of warfare they understand and they have fought and won enough of these wars in the past to be ready if necessary to do it again.

From this perspective, in which war is an elemental struggle between peoples rather than a kind of knightly duel between courtly elites, the concept of proportionality seems much less compelling. Certainly if some kind of terrorist organization were to set up missile factories across the frontier in Canada and Mexico and start attacking targets in the United States, the American people would demand that their President use all necessary force without stint or limit until the resistance had been completely, utterly and pitilessly crushed. Those Americans who share this view of war might feel sorrow at the loss of innocent life, of the children and non-combatants killed when overwhelming American power was used to take the terrorists out, but they would feel no moral guilt. The guilt would be on the shoulders of those who started the whole thing by launching the missiles.

In his review of Mead’s Special Providence, Peter Leithart summarizes Mead’s category of “Jacksonian” attitudes: “that government exists for the protection of the governed. Both domestically and in foreign policy, American should use its power to provide physical security and ensure prosperity for American citizens. Honor is a central value for Jacksonian cowboys, and when American honor is assaulted, Jacksonians make war with the fullest fury they can muster.”

Some time ago, Mead also wrote about why Americans support Israel in general, which I blogged about here.

Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church, and Syria

Recently, Walter Russell Mead and Peter Berger both wrote about Russia’s history as the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Middle East and how it applies to Russia’s stance on Syria. Here’s the New York Times article that they both referenced.

About three years ago, I linked to an article in National Geographic about the renewed ties between the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Another industrial revolution?

Yesterday, I posted about a potential revival in American exports, made possible in part by better manufacturing technology. Walter Russell Mead showed how technology could return manufacturing jobs to America, linking to an article from The Economist by Paul Markillie that looks at 3D printers:

Instead of bashing, bending and cutting material the way it always has been, 3D printers build things by depositing material, layer by layer. That is why the process is more properly described as additive manufacturing. An American firm, 3D Systems, used one of its 3D printers to print a hammer for your correspondent, complete with a natty wood-effect handle and a metallised head….

Everything in the factories of the future will be run by smarter software. Digitisation in manufacturing will have a disruptive effect every bit as big as in other industries that have gone digital, such as office equipment, telecoms, photography, music, publishing and films. And the effects will not be confined to large manufacturers; indeed, they will need to watch out because much of what is coming will empower small and medium-sized firms and individual entrepreneurs. Launching novel products will become easier and cheaper. Communities offering 3D printing and other production services that are a bit like Facebook are already forming online—a new phenomenon which might be called social manufacturing.

The article calls this the “third industrial revolution.”

People as producers

About a year ago, Joel shared a post by Mark Horne that asked “Is there such a thing as Christian economics?” He began provocatively:

Where to start?

Why don’t we start with people?

Are they a good idea or a bad idea? Are they valuable or a drain?

I was looking at the content for the “new” version of Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, and I noticed that, despite a great deal of backtracking about claims as to what will happen, he still refuses to let go of the myth of the population explosion. We are supposed to help other people, and that means making sure that no more come into existence to eat “our” pie. I assume Evangelicals for Social Action (or whatever organization fulfills its functions now) is pretty much against immigration laws (and they should be!). But the most draconian immigration control is the one guarding married couples from having (“too many”) children.

He contrasts this with Psalm 127′s declaration of children as a blessing and Genesis 1′s injunction to “be fruitful and multiply.” Take a look at his whole post for his reasoning.

I recalled Horne’s approach this spring when I read a couple of different things. One was a World Bank or IMF report that I read for a course on Middle Eastern Political Economy (I don’t recall the institution or specific report). The report talked about improvements in the fertility rate, which of course meant that the fertility rate had dropped off. Orwellian language, to say the least.

Secondly, an installment in Walter Russell Mead’s ongoing analysis of the waves buffeting the New Deal/Great Society model reminded me of Horne’s thesis:

One of the realizations that helped me accept the need to move on was the corrosive effect of one of blue model America’s most unattractive features: the emphasis on consumption rather than production as the defining characteristic of the good life. As I reflected on the corrosive consequences of this shift, and also began to see that a post-blue society might reverse this priority, I began to think more positively about what could come next. Frank Fukuyama wrote about the appearance of Nietzsche’s Last Man at the end of history; that Last Man is more or less Homer Simpson come to life, a mostly passive, consumption-focused individual whose life is all episode with no plot. But if the blue model isn’t the end of history, and if we are moving to something new — there is hope. Bart and Lisa just might grow up into a bigger world that would stretch their capacities and make them something more than Homer and Marge.

Under the blue model, Americans increasingly defined themselves by what they bought rather than what they did, and this shift of emphasis proved deeply damaging over time. The transformation to a new and higher kind of political economy will require us to put production and accomplishment back at the center of our value system. Both on the left and on the right this is something that should be welcome to a lot of thoughtful people.

Mead believes that the changes roiling the nation’s political economy could help to de-compartmentalize the worlds of family, work, and education that used to be much more mixed together before the 20th century. I’d recommend the whole thing, but here’s an important point from his analysis:

You were also increasingly a consumer rather than a producer of government. In the 19^th century, American communities were small and generally self-managed. Most Americans lived in small towns or in rural areas where government really was something people did for themselves. The “state” scarcely existed; outside port inspectors and postal officials, the federal government was largely invisible. And even at the state level, local communities were much more autonomous than they generally are now. Local mayors and selectmen had very few mandates coming down from on high; people managed their own schools and roads and other elements of their common life by their own lights.

In the 20^th century Americans became more politically passive as the state grew. The citizen was less involved in making government and more involved in watching it, commenting on it, and picking candidates who were sold the way other consumer goods are marketed: you voted for which party and candidates you supported, but more and more of the business of government was carried on by permanent civil servants acting under expert guidance. Government did much more to you, and you did less of it yourself.

A re-emergence of the value of production, as described by Mead, would be friendlier to the model of Christian economics described by Horne.

Analyzing the new Israeli governing coalition

I’ve read some interesting columns about Netanyahu’s decision to bring in the Kadima party, which split from Netanyahu’s Likud during Ariel Sharon’s leadership.

• David Makovsky noted and then analyzed the goals of the coalition: “In a joint press conference on Tuesday, Netanyahu and Mofaz announced that the new government’s focus will be fourfold: drafting new legislation to replace the Tal Law, a controversial measure that exempts the ultraorthodox (Haredim) from military service and is due to expire in August; proposing changes to the electoral system in time for the next election; passing a new state budget; and advancing what Netanyahu dubbed a “responsible” peace process with the Palestinians. Any preliminary analysis of these developments must look at both the political and policy motivations.”
• Walter Russell Mead thought that Israel, Netanyahu, and Obama will all benefit. (Hat tip: Michael Totten)
• Aluf Benn thought that it showed Netanyahu playing it safe.

An optimistic view of the 21st-century economy

Walter Russell Mead has been writing a lot about the decline of the New Deal model of governance in the US, and I’ve been linking to some of those posts. In his latest series, “Beyond Blue,” he’s been looking at what could succeed the mid-20th-century cooperation of big government,  big business, and big labor. The latest post looks how the service economy might develop in a post-industrial economy. Mead may be too optimistic about it, but it’s an interesting contrast to the usual pessimism on this subject:

Many of the dystopian fears about the future that lead people to cling to blue model ideas — and the belief that mass manufacturing employment is the only conceivable model that can provide good living standards — are rooted in this concern that the economy is all about the hard stuff. There are fears that we will transition from a world of well paid steelworkers in secure lifetime jobs to a world of baristas and waiters without money, without respect, and without any kind of security or dignity.

Again, this is pretty much what people thought when the family farm was on the ropes.  Without agriculture as the mainstay, America would become a nation of paupers. The dignity and self-reliance of the farmer would be replaced by the dependent, pauperized masses toiling anonymously on the assembly lines. Wages and living standards would precipitously fall; American democracy was at risk, a choir of worried voices proclaimed, as the country split into a small group of capitalist haves and a large group of wage-slave have-nots.

The factory jobs that are now hailed by the nostalgists as bulwarks of working class independence and self respect were once denounced by the farm nostalgists (and the utopian Marxists) as anonymous, soul killing jobs. Outdoor farm work was healthy and life affirming. Factory work was the opposite. Americans wouldn’t just lose their affluence as the farms failed and they moved to the cities, they would lose their dignity and their humanity in the brutal, depersonalized factory environment.

But Americans found pride and dignity in factory work; the blue collar working class found its self confidence, built institutions, organized political movements and effectively defined and fought for its interests.

Much of the work of the 21^st century will be in the field of personal service rather than factory work. And at the moment wages for this kind of work are relatively low, as wages in factories were once relatively low. With the old sectors of the economy shedding jobs, there are lots of people chasing all the jobs that open up.

This will change as the new economy grows, as entrepreneurs build new businesses and industries. Indeed the relative cheapness of labor is one of the factors that will help the new sectors grow – just as the cheapness of labor helped manufacturing grow in the past. But market forces will ultimately drive wages up and they are likely to stay that way despite the competition from overseas. Many personal services cannot easily be performed at a distance: your morning frappuccino can’t be made in Guatemala, at least until teleportation technology is ready for prime time.

Some nostalgists talk about the dignity of factory work versus the world of personal service. But is there anything inherently less human or dignified in making and serving coffee than in performing a repetitive movement on a mass production line? Overall, an economy that is based more heavily on people-to-people services will offer more people more fulfilling and fully rounded roles than the old factory system did.

In any case, the new service economy is not just going to be a world of pool boys and pedicurists. It will be a world in which more students get individualized educational counseling from a growing group of education coaches and guides. There will be people who help us manage our technical and information systems: you may have a neighborhood Geek Squad type outfit that not only fixes computers when they go wrong but helps you manage and run all the information-dependent appliances and operations that make your home and life work. More people will work with fitness, nutrition and whole-person health professionals. Many of the services that the very rich enjoy today will be adapted to the needs and the pocketbooks of the middle and lower middle class tomorrow. You may have a life and work coach or agent who helps you manage your ongoing lifetime of learning and recertification as you learn new skills and move into new kinds of work. Many of the consulting services that large companies now have will be available to much smaller enterprises. Busy married couples with two good incomes already live in a cloud of people who help with everything from child care to lawn care; there will be more and more services targeted at this market, and more and more people will earn good livings working with upper income clients who have plenty of money but little time.