Growing Economically

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Growing Economically Rev Richard Gedge With thanks for material from Jubilee Centre and Relationships Global, Cambridge

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Talk given by Revd Richard Gedge in the Growing Forward? Series for Lent 2013

Transcript of Growing Economically

Page 1: Growing Economically

Growing Economically

Rev Richard Gedge

With thanks for material from Jubilee Centre and Relationships Global, Cambridge

Page 2: Growing Economically

Growing Forward?

“Liverpool is Britain’s fastest growing city economy outside the capital and has the UK’s second largest wealth management industry.

Yet, five of the country’s most deprived boroughs are within the city boundaries.”

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Robert Kennedy 1968

“Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product… counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife. And the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.”

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Robert Kennedy 1968

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Robert Kennedy, speaking at the University of Kansas March 18th 1968

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Capitalism

The Good

• Efficiently allocates material resources

• Free markets balance

– supply

– demand

• Competition

• Lower prices(?)

• Innovation

• Creativity

• Technological change

The Ugly

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Capitalism – Flaws

1.Materialistic vision for society

• Everything ends up serving the financial end

• People are consumers or suppliers

• Supranormal consumption

• “Its just business”, “Shareholder value” excuses for decisions with socially negative consequences

2.Reward without responsibility [relational distance]

• Debt based system of finance

• Investor no knowledge of social gain or ill of his investment

• Who pays for the social ills created: – Gambling, Alcoholism,

Addictions

• Company only a money engine

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‘The divorce between ownership and the real responsibility of management is serious within a country when, as a result of joint stock enterprise, ownership is broken up among innumerable individuals who buy their interest today and sell it tomorrow and lack altogether both knowledge and responsibility towards what they momentarily own.

Jubilee Centre 22/9/2012

The Problems of Relational Distance

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“But when the same principle is applied internationally,

it is in times of stress, intolerable – I am irresponsible

towards what I own and those who operate what I own are irresponsible towards me.

There may be some financial calculation which shows it to be advantageous that my savings should be invested in whatever quarter of the habitable globe shows the greatest marginal efficiency of capital or the highest rate of interest. But experience is accumulating that remoteness between ownership and operation is an evil in the relations among men, likely or certain in the long run to set up strains and enmities which will bring to nought the financial calculation.”

John Maynard Keynes, The Yale Review, June 1933

More Problems of Relational Distance

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Capitalism – Flaws

3.Disconnection of people from place

• Land (property) is an asset to be traded

– familial connection lost

– land no longer a fall back

• The encouragement of labour to move around the globe – fragments families

– family responsibility diluted

– welfare bill rises

4.Inadequate social safeguards

• No provision for the vulnerable

• Welfare state cannot afford to make good the relational deficits of Capitalism

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Capitalism

The Good

• Efficiently allocates material resources

• Free markets balance

– supply

– demand

• Competition

• Lower prices

• Innovation

• Creativity

• Technological change

The Ugly

• Materialistic Vision of Society

• Reward without responsibility

– Maximise shareholder value

– “Its just business”

• Disconnection of people from place

• Deconstruction of family and its local responsibilities

• Inadequate social safeguards

• Higher welfare

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Robert Kennedy 1968

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Robert Kennedy, speaking at the University of Kansas March 18th 1968

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Copernican Revolution

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Biblical Law

• Defines ‘poverty’ in relational terms, not financial

• Seeks to reduce mobility of labour and capital

• Time-limited loans, not gifts, to preserve recipient’s relationship with themselves (dignity) – Deut 15:7-11)

• Empower and enable extended family through access to land and co-location (Lev 25:8-35)

• Ensure time for relational support (Deut 5:12-15)

• Provide opportunities to work for the relationally disadvantaged and landless (Deut 24:19-22)

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Building Strong Relationships: Relational Proximity

• Directness How much face to face time? [Phone, email, text...] 1:1 or with others?

• Continuity How much time is spent on a relationship, as well as its overall length and stability.

• Multiplexity Do I know you in many arenas? Family, work, socially, sport...

• Parity How equal is the power dynamic in the relationship? Is there respect?

• Commonality To what extent to we share goals and identity?

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Growing Relationally Growing Economically

‘No reward without responsibility.

No investment without involvement.

No profit without participation.’

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www.relationshipsglobal.net

Promotes more relational societies

and organisations

www.jubilee-centre.org

Christian social reform organisation that offers a biblical perspective on issues and trends of relevance to the general public.