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Abstract
In an earlier essay (Sibley, Angus. 2016. “Can there be a Catholic economics?” International Studies in Catholic Education 8 (2), 211) I observed that ‘the Church has a long record of consistently criticisng the obsession with competition that has such a dominant place in orthodox economic thinking and practice’. Inordinate emphasis on competition is so prevalent in current economic behaviour, and has so many adverse consequences, that a more detailed examination of this phenomenon, and of the Church’s arguments against it, seems to be timely.
Note on contributor
Angus Sibley is a fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and a former member of the London Stock Exchange. Among his many publications on the problems associated with neoclassical (neoliberal) economics are The ‘poisoned spring’ of libertarian economics (Washington DC: Pax Romana, 2011); Catholic Economics: Alternatives to the Jungle (Collegeville, MO: Liturgical Press, 2015); and ‘Healthcare’s Ills: a Catholic Diagnosis’ (The Linacre Quarterly, 83:4, December 2016).
Notes
1 John Paul II, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (25 April 1997), nos. 4 and 5.
2 Andrew Phillips (Lord Phillips of Sudbury), letter to Financial Times, 22 March 2000.
3 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), book I, chapter 10, part 2.
4 Wilhelm von Ketteler, sermon at Offenbach am Main, 25 July 1869.
5 WWF, Living Planet Report 2016, 13.
6 Pope Francis, interview with Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi (La Stampa), October 2014. See Tornielle and Galeazzi, trans. D. S. Yocum, This Economy Kills (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2015), p. 147.
7 Pope Francis, Address to participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements (28 October 2014); cited in This Economy Kills, p. 104.
8 This phrase translates sani ordinis in the Latin text, suggesting that we may read it as ‘rational order’; thus we should possess things for which we have a genuine use, rather than things we have acquired haphazardly on whim or in response to hard-selling practices.
9 In French law, marketing a product so designed as to ‘deliberately reduce its life in order to augment its rate of replacement’ is now punishable by two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 300,000 euros (law no. 2015 – 992, article 99).
10 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1132b – 1133b.
11 Thomas Aquinas, Sententia libri Ethicorum, book 3, section 9.
12 Domingo de Soto, De justitia et jure (1553), book VI, question 2, article 3.
13 Babylonian Talmud, Bava Bathra, folios 8b and 9a; see www.sefaria.org.
14 See, for example, Sen (Citation1987).
15 This attitude is widespread among free-market economists. For example, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who has a considerable following in America, wrote (Citation1949, 868) that ‘economics, like logic and mathematics, is a display of abstract reasoning’ and (Citation1962, 73) that the economist ‘does not learn directly from history’.
16 John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), chap. 12, part 5.
18 For comparisons between normal and ‘fair’ trading in coffee, see Daviron and Ponte (Citation2005, 215–219); Sibley (Citation2015, 169–171) and (Citation2016, 209–210).
20 Cf. Caritas in Veritate, no. 42.
21 Richard Lesser, interview with Philippe Escande, Le Monde (Paris), 9 October 2014.
22 Anthony Aguirre, interview with Yves Eudes, Le Monde, 15 April 2015.
23 Elon Musk, cited by Ariel Cohn in “Can AI remain safe as companies race to develop it?” See http://futureoflife.org, 3 August 2017.
24 However, the sale of books was exempt from the provisions of the Resale Prices Act until the Net Book Agreement was outlawed in 1997.
25 Juliet Hassard and Tom Cox, “Work-related stress: Nature and management”, see https://oshwiki.eu/wiki/Work-related_stress:_Nature_and_management (Introduction).
26 Christophe Dejours, “Sortir de la souffrance au travail”, Le Monde, 22 Febuary 2011.
27 Richard Layard (Lord Layard of Highgate) (London School of Economics), quoted by Catherine Mayer in Time, 7 April 2008.
28 Pope Francis, in discussion during a pastoral visit to Genoa, 27 May 2017; see http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2017/may/documents/papa-francesco_20170527_lavoratori-genova.html.
29 Pope Francis, Address to the Roman Curia (22 December 2014), no. 2. He refers to Luke 10:38–42.
30 See Friedman (Citation1962), chap. 8.
31 However, Welch later admitted that the pursuit of shareholder value, considered as an end in itself, ‘is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy’ (interview in Financial Times, 13 March 2009).