A New Economy for the New Year
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
January 3, 2010

Readings:

Tao Te Ching, 62
Matthew 6:25-33
Tao Te Ching, 53
Matthew 19:24-25 and 21:10-13
Reimagining the American Dream by Marilyn Sewell

Message: A New Economy for the New Year

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2010.

A sea of rooftops –
as far as the eye could see,
almost identical houses,
large homes with three or four bedrooms,
and two or three bathrooms,
open floor plans,
built straight up
on narrow lots.

On one of our first trips into Colorado Springs,
Morgan said to me:
I never knew there were so many shades of beige.
Hundreds of thousands of homes,
planned to be built out on the prairie,
and water pumped uphill,
a thousand feet and 45 miles,
from the Arkansas river,
to feed this expansion.

You could see the same sea of houses
on the outskirts of Denver, Phoenix, LA, Dallas and Houston, Chicago
and, more so than any other place,
Las Vegas.
And, like Colorado springs, the water for these developments
often just doesn’t exist.
The Colorado River, which feeds Las Vegas and Los Angeles,
ends in a trickle in the desert,
and someday, it will simply disappear.

But back in the boom times –
build, build, build!
credit was easy, and the day of reckoning for the water supply
was a generation away.
It is these seas of houses which helped bring this country,
indeed, the world, to its knees over the last year.
A glut of supply brought house prices down,
banks were overexposed,
and the whole thing came apart.

That was more than a year ago,
and there was a lot of talk back then
about how this was going to change us.
Marilyn Sewell’s observation that
“we have finally awakened to the hard truth”
was echoed all over,
by folks who thought,
ah, well, now we will have different values,
now things will change.

I held my tongue back then,
because I had my doubts.
The economic and political system is powerful,
and the strongest power in that system
is inertia.
That’s partly about the inanity of the Senate’s supermajority requirement,
but it’s much more than that:
the powers that be
like being the powers that be.

The system works for the ones who have the power
to change the system,
so why change?

There has been some tinkering around the edges.
The savings rate,
which was about zero,
is now about five percent –
but many economists predict –
and I think they are right –
that when the crisis is fully past,
people will spend that savings and return to their old ways.

A financial regulation overhaul is working through congress,
but it will be pretty modest –
the senators don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them.

A lot of folks, like Marilyn Sewell,
thought that a year ago,
we finally awakened to the hard truth,
but, in fact, most people woke up,
had a glass of water,
and went back to bed.

Not everybody, of course.
For white male college graduates between 25 and 44 –
which is to say, people like me –
the unemployment rate, at the end of Sept., was 4 percent.
If you are a black man, without a high school diploma,
between 15 and 24 years old,
on the other hand, well,
the unemployment in that group is 48 percent.
Forty-eight.
Some folks had a glass a water and went back to sleep.
Other folks were already awake, have been for a while.

Even if Marilyn was too optimistic
about the chances that people would change their lives,
or demand change to the system,
I think she was right about the diagnosis:
that our economic system is structurally unsound,
that we need some kind of radical change.

There are few reasons for this.

First, the true cost of things is not reflected
in the cost paid by most western consumers of goods.
Economics is supposed fix a cost to at item
which covers all the parts of that item:
the cost of raw materials, labor, expertise, overhead, etc.
But this doesn’t happen.

The costs of pollution are rarely included at all,
especially costs the climate costs.

When you pay ninety-nine cents for a burger,
none of that pays the cost of the cow’s methane production,
or the carbon dioxide costs of transportation
of that beef from the Brazilian rainforest to your table.

The costs of land destruction, water contamination, and species loss
are not added to the price.

The costs of labor are not fully included either:
not when the laborers can’t live on what they are paid,
and so require government assistance to make ends meet.
The costs of labor are not fully included when
the work maims, kills, and destroys the body of the laborer,
or when it robs children of their childhood.

But solving this problem isn’t simply a matter
of the adding these costs back in –
although putting a price on carbon is absolutely necessary,
unless we want a billion people to die of famine
in the next hundred years.

Adding the costs back in doesn’t fix things,
because the fundamental problem,
the reason that we snapped so quickly back to the pre-crisis
economic mindset,
is that we have structured a global economy
in which we worship growth – percent change over the previous quarter.

We worship growth.

If the economy isn’t growing,
then something is wrong.
But there are only three ways that an economy can grow:
things can cost more
each person can buy more
there are more people in the economy

You see the consequence, right:
the whole structure of the economy
is predicated on more people buying more things for more money.

But eventually we will run out:
run out of space, or water, for those people,
run out of money to buy things,
or even – though this is the most unlikely –
we might even run out of an appetite for stuff.
OK, that’s pretty farfetched.

God forbid that we would
lose our appetite for stuff.

If we were satisfied with less,
if stopped trying to fill our lives with things,
well, our economy, as it is, would fall apart.
Fall apart is too strong – things would have to change.
Radically.

Look, I know how hard this is.
There is the social pressure,
to have what others have.
There is the lure of the exciting,
the temptation for the new toys.
I understand, too, that sometimes you don’t have a choice –
something breaks, it has to be replaced,
you want the best for your children or spouse.

We can make better choices,
and I hope this church, this faith,
will inspire you to do so.
My faith commitments cause me to make different economic choices.
It’s why I don’t eat beef or pork,
unless I know the small local farm it came from,
and why I drive what I drive –
even though that costs more, at least up front, not less.
It’s why I don’t shop at some places, if you know what I mean.
It’s why we make a whole set of choices –
but I also know that not one of our choices,
can, by itself, change the system.

We can all make a difference, individually.
We can all raise children or grandchildren, nephews and nieces,
who will make better choices.

But fundamentally,
changing our economic system will require
more than individual choices.

We’re talking about a whole a different system,
not just a set of new individual choices.
Let me describe for you, then,
the sustainable economy of the future:
Imagine a world where folks work fewer hours a week,
and make a little less money, too, on average:
they live in smaller homes,
and walk or ride some kind of public transport
when they go out,
more often than not.
Lots of folks work out of their own homes,
designing things, selling things,
providing and organizing various kinds of knowledge.
Energy costs a lot more – especially oil and coal.

You pay more for some things,
including paying a Value Added Tax on many items.
The education system is dramatically different:
children start earlier, spend more time in class each day and each year,
but transition to a more specialized higher education earlier.
People return to school throughout their lives
as they change or grow in the professional lives.
The internet is woven into everything that people do,
and the availability of knowledge increases efficiency,
although a lot of things that people do now won’t be done then.
Communities and connections will be spread out
around the globe.
We will spend a lot less, per capita,
on health care – specialty physicians will make a lot less money,
and we’ll have less tests,
and we’ll let people die with dignity;
indeed, there will be a real social stigma to poor health:
especially obesity, smoking, and the like.
Most importantly, we’ll care much less about Gross Domestic Product
and care much more about human flourishing.

The strength of a society will be measured
more by the capabilities of the members of that society,
their opportunities to realize their full potential as humans,
and less by how many dollars are moved from
one bank account to another.
From you I receive, to you a give,
together we share, by this,
in this new vision, we shall truly live.

This new new economy –
green economy, just economy,
whatever you call it,
will be a philosophical break from the modern period
of the last three hundred years.
We will focus not on what we “consume”
but on what we make –
we will remember that work is a means to an end,
we’ll prize flexibility, curiosity, and opportunity.

Some of this has already started to happen.
But a lot of it will be hard.
A lot of old ways of doing thing will have to end,
and that’s not going to be easy.
Folks who missed out on a good education,
in particular, will find it harder and harder to keep afloat,
unless we, as a society, make a decision
to give these folks a change to catch up.
A lot of folks who benefit from things as they are
will benefit less.
Hardest of all, we’ll have to change what we value:
caring more about the quality of our life
than the quantity of our things.
We’ll have to see limitation
as a change to focus, to move to depth instead of breadth,
instead of an unacceptable check on our freedom
to do whatever we want,
the consequences be damned.

This new new economy,
this new paradigm:
There are two ways we can get there,
generally speaking.

And I don’t mean to be a downer,
but a lot of folks worry that
the way we are mostly likely to get there
is through a cataclysmic shock:
a billion refugees from climate change,
or the United States defaulting on its debt,
or a real oil shock,
the kind that makes the ones in the 70’s seem quaint.
The power of inertia,
the interests of the powerful,
the utter dysfunction of the United States Senate –
these things mean that we’ll just keep on doing what we are doing
until we simply can’t do it anymore.

The other way is better:
it is what could happen when we make a deliberate choice
to change the structure of things.
We would need lots of local experiments,
chances to try out new ideas,
and let them spread.
We would need to fix our democracy.
Most of all, we would need be less reactive and fearful
as a culture.
Instead of the ostrich, head in the sand,
or, really, the passenger pigeon,
so ingrained in habit that we can’t tell the difference
between a tree and a hunter’s gun,
we need to be the goose,
ready to travel long distances for the sake of something better,
we need to be the bacteria, adaptable, nimble in the face of change.

This is a spiritual challenge.

Look, it isn’t about how we think about these things,
not fundamentally.
Thinking about it differently won’t solve the challenges we face,
as much as it pains me,
a devoted thinker,
to admit that.
It isn’t about thinking.
It’s about what we love.

Can’t buy me love,
so says John and Paul, Ringo and George,
and so, too, says Lao-Tsu and Jesus,
the things that matter most,
the things worthy of love,
can’t be purchased.
Instead of fancy gifts,
the sage offers Tao.

Offers Tao,
which is already always present,
but forgotten
when rulers act like thieves
and fill their palaces with the belongings of the people.
You can’t buy love,
so says John and Paul and Lao-Tsu,
and, says Jesus,
why do you worry?
Consider the lilies,
arrayed in all their glory,
you can’t buy love,
and you can’t buy God,
and you can’t buy the Tao.

It’s about what we love.
Where our treasure is, there will be our heart, also –
that’s in another part of the gospel of Matthew;
and this is everything.
Where is our heart?

When we are filled with overwhelming love
for the treasures of our house,
for stuff and space and even for security,
well, then we will not be able to change the system,
even if, intellectually, we know the system doesn’t work for us.

This is why the rich man, like camel,
cannot pass through the eye of the needle.
It is not that they are rich, per se,
but that they love their wealth.
When the rich man asks Jesus,
what must I do for eternal life,
he says, follow the commandments,
and then adds this:
sell all you own, give the money to the poor:
but this the rich man cannot do.
He loves the money too much.

What we need, instead, is to change what we love.
We need to be filled with overwhelming love
for the earth and for people whom we’ve never met,
for people who speak different languages than we do,
we need to be filled with love for our grandchildren’s children,
we need to be filled with love
for simple pleasures:
a short walk, riding the bus with others,
a train wizzing through the city;
a simple meal with local foods, in season,
connecting with a friend on the other side of the world,
learning new things.
Life is the greatest gift of all. Life itself, lived and loved with joy.
We need to be filled with love
that you can’t buy,
and can’t steal:
love for meaning, love for family, and love for love.
We need, as a society, to be filled with love
for participation instead of power,
democracy instead of drama.
We need less shouting and more conversation.

I don’t know about you,
but I don’t want to wait for the next crisis,
the cataclysmic shock that will end our illusion
once and for all.
I’d rather be proactive.
We can help make this change real:
we can be the change,
and talk about what we love,
and why,
and start conversations,
and get them to go deeper,
and we can voluntarily embrace limits
and flourish within them,
we can help folks awaken,
stay awake, get ready, and get to work.

We will need to do the individual changes,
the little things that add up.

That will be important for the sake of cultivating
our love for what is worthy,
and it is also important for the sake
of our credibility as we ask others to do the same.

But to create the new economy,
the one that is just, and sustainable,
we will need to focus on these structural and spiritual questions:
to encourage adaptability and courage,
to be prophets of love,
to work with other people of faith:
Christians, Jews, Taoists, Muslims, Sikh’s, Buddhists, Hindu’s,
and on and on
to speak, together, for a better future
for all of creation and all people.

There’s no magic fix,
no secret spell.

It will be hard work.
And it will be the best work we can do,
the work that will matter,
for generations and generations to come.
Let us start today,
let us embrace that love of love,
that love which, alone,
will guide us from greed to giving.