Redeeming Economics (9) Scarcity

In his book called Redeeming Economics, John D Mueller discusses Augustine's thinking about scarcity.

We noted that St. Augustine’s insight is crucial in understanding the implications of scarcity for moral choice. What does it mean, he asks, to “love your neighbor as yourself”? Loving someone means willing that person some good. What this involves depends crucially on whether the good involved is “diminished by being shared with others”—that is, scarce.

Though all goods with a material dimension are finite, some are normally so abundant (for example, fresh air at the earth’s surface) that we loosely speak of them as “free.” But we realize that this is not literally the case, when we consider exactly what is involved in providing sufficient air to astronauts in outer space, to divers or submariners under the sea, or to miners far below the earth’s surface. Even at the earth’s surface, fresh air can be diminished by pollution. To be literally free, a good would have to be infinite.

As a Christian, Augustine could conceive of infinite goods such as the love of God or eternal happiness. And he argued that all men can and should love each other equally in wishing other persons such goods. But Augustine also pointed out that we cannot actually give others such a good, only wish it for them. Moral philosophers have traditionally called this kind of love benevolence, or “goodwill.” If love is taken to mean actually sharing one’s scarce goods (which include one’s time and affections) to that person, Augustine says that it is flatly impossible to love every other human equally. Moral philosophers have traditionally called this kind of love beneficence, or “doing good.”

Augustine’s sensible position is that no one is morally obliged to do what is impossible. Therefore, loving your neighbor as yourself cannot mean doing good equally to everyone. “Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.” Differential calculus would not be invented for some 1200 years, but Augustine expresses the idea of “declining marginal significance” by posing the problem of an indivisible good: “Suppose you had a great deal of some commodity, and felt bound to give it away to somebody who had none, and that it could not be given to more than one person; if two persons presented themselves, neither of whom had either from need or relationship a greater claim on you than the other, you could do nothing fairer than choose by lot to which you would give what could not be given to both. Just so among men: since you cannot consult for the good of them all, you must take the matter as decided for you by a sort of lot, according as each man happens for the time being to be more closely connected with you.” Thus Augustine puts the fact of scarcity squarely at the center of moral decision-making.

And all the scholastic “economists” followed him. For example, Thomas Aquinas, after noting that the word "neighbor" denotes the reason for loving—“because they are nigh to us, both as to the natural image of God, and as to the capacity for glory"—concludes, "The mode of love is indicated in the words as thyself. This does not mean that a man must love his neighbor equally as himself, but in like manner as himself."

By way of illustration, consider the famous story of the Good Samaritan, the classic case of “loving one’s neighbor as oneself.” On the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, a Samaritan came upon a Jew beaten by robbers and left for dead. A priest and a Levite—that is, two religious officials of the same faith and nationality as the beaten man—had already seen the man and passed him by. A Samaritan in the 1st Century A.D. had roughly the same relation to a Jew as a Palestinian Arab does to a modern Israeli, or a member of Afghanistan’s Taliban to a modern American. Yet the Samaritan stopped, treated the man’s wounds as best he could, and transported him to an inn.

We are told that the Samaritan paid about two days’ wages in cash to the innkeeper to look after the victim, and promised to pay any further costs on his return. He must have lost at least another half-day’s wages stopping to help. The decision cost him at least half a week’s wages, or 1 percent of his annual income, on the spot. For someone earning $50,000 a year, that would be equivalent to handing out at least $500 in cash for a stranger. The Good Samaritan loved his neighbor “as himself” in the sense that, unlike those who passed by, he treated him as a person like himself. But the gift represented half his income for a week, not for a year or for the rest of his life. He loved his neighbor as himself, but not equally with himself. (I imagine the Good Samaritan’s wife, when he returned home, saying: “You gave what!? To whom?!”).

Common sense and simple arithmetic tell us that St. Augustine was right: the number of human beings with whom it is possible to share one’s scarce goods equally is limited to the fingers of two hands (or even one hand). For most people, substantially equal sharing is limited to their immediate relatives. But it need not be so. It would be entirely feasible for an otherwise unattached person with an average income to share it equally with five close friends, or with five strangers, rather than with five family members. People do it all the time: for example, when joining a religious community. Moreover, most of us can and do voluntarily contribute something to help those in need to whom we are not related. Christians are told that that their lives will be judged on this. “If you do good only to those who do good to you, what virtue is there in that? Even sinners do the same.”