The Natural Economy

Some question why God gave us instincts and then asks that we deny them? This is really not the case. All of our instincts have a proper and good outlet. Only the wrong use of our instincts is forbidden. For example marriage is the right use of an instinct that has grave consequences if used wrongly. So too we have instincts relating to economics. Ambition and rest appear to be the primary of these.

God commanded man through Adam and Eve to exercise the right use of the ambition he had given them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:28)

To give balance, God gave an instinct for rest to prevent ambition from wearing out people physically and emotionally and from corrupting them morally. So God commanded man to set aside time to rest.

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Exodus 20:8)

When ambition is corrupted people wrong one another in the pursuit of power and money. Likewise, when the rest instinct is corrupted, laziness produces poverty for all involved.

He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that hateth gifts shall live. (Proverbs 15:27)

Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty; open thine eyes, and thou shalt be satisfied with bread. (Proverbs 20:13)

Because these are instincts, they are designed to work properly in a natural economy tempered by the knowledge of God. In spite of nearly universal faith in God among ordinary people in the known Christian world, for many long years monarchies and robber barons prevented the knowledge of God from operating these instincts for general prosperity. Kings' abuse of ambition destroyed prosperity for the average man. America's experiment with democracy brought all the factors together for the first time that are necessary to make prosperity available for everyone (at least ideally). The knowledge of God together with the free operation of the natural economy operated the opposing instincts of ambition and rest in a way that created an expansion of prosperity previously unknown to man. Contrary to humanist propaganda, God was and still is the essential factor to this prosperity as obedience to his commands are necessary to the correct use of these economic instincts.

But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. (Deuteronomy 8:18)

Now those who have forfeited wisdom by replacing the knowledge of God with complicity to sin propose that an unnatural economy that suppresses the instinct of ambition and enables the instinct to rest will lead us into some post-modern utopia where prosperity can be created without the work that ambition is meant to create. Now completely unfettered, the instinct to rest impoverishes those so ensnared and the entire economy as well.

The Soviets tried a similar unnatural economy. Everyone was guaranteed employment regardless of their performance or productivity. Wages were set contrary to natural incentives. As a result factory workers did as little as they could without being punished. Agricultural workers did the same: They worked the state farms minimally then their own gardens with great care. As a result the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. Oddly, now that Moscow is rated as the city with the greatest population of millionaires in the world as a result of adopting a system similar our old one, we are being asked by Socialists under another label to embrace a failed system like the one they have abandoned.

Do not be seduced by charms of an unnatural economy!

¹See article The 90/10 Rule for additional reading on this subject.

Document History
September 19, 2012 Created.
September 19, 2012 Made a correction and reworded a sentence to improve clarity.