Comments on: The pope and the ethical economy https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-pope-and-the-ethical-economy/2009/07/10 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:29:31 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Daniel https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-pope-and-the-ethical-economy/2009/07/10/comment-page-1#comment-415643 Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:29:31 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=3901#comment-415643 The Pope has some good things to say, but here I’m afraid his answer is far off-base. By inviting a universal government to take control, we do not make people better. People are still corrupt, and under a one-world government a single handful of corrupt elite would hold the fate of the world in their hands. By keeping the government out of our lives, we maintain the freedom to give (religion is full of giving to those in need).

I fully support peer to peer practices, but I believe the proposal by the Pope is antithetical to that in that he would have us all ruled by a relative minority (who we can assume all have varying degrees of corruption) and that their rules would be forced on us by our superiors and their inferiors. Ultimately, I don’t see such a thing as a peer existing in a world like that.

But we probably don’t need to worry. According to Tariq Ramadan (Oxford Professor of Islamic Studies), “It’s a systemic crisis but the system’s been living for 300 years. And they’ve saved it every time. And the question is: will they save it this time? And I think the bets are that they will. Because this isn’t just a question of finance, but a question of political power. And if the western financial system collapses, the western political body goes with it…” (quoted at http://www.newsy.com/videos/the_ethics_of_economic_survival)

]]> By: david ronfeldt https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-pope-and-the-ethical-economy/2009/07/10/comment-page-1#comment-415629 Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:52:04 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=3901#comment-415629 fascinating. many thanks for excerpting. much here that coincides with my TIMN and your P2P undertakings. today’s nytimes has an interesting article about this papal encyclical and a related book by archbishop reinhard marx, at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/weekinreview/12dougherty.html?ref=weekinreview

key quote: “The message in both is that global capitalism has raced off the moral rails and that Roman Catholic teachings can help set Western economics right by encouraging them to focus more on justice for the weak and closely regulating the market.”

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