Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!
Updates
We’ve mostly recovered in the Mueller household from two weeks of sickness. Energy levels are back up and, like high-energy electrons, there are also more social collisions between children. I’m struck by how removing one child from the mix can noticeably reduce the number of conflicts. I’m very pro large families, but there are tradeoffs – at least with the number of younger children.
But it’s fun to see the older kids developing specific interests and being able to engage with the world more each year. While I don’t use the program Duolingo myself, whatever they have put together is pretty compelling. Kathryn and the older two use it daily and are each studying a different language. We’ll see what the payoff is over time, but that level of consistency and engagement – especially because of enjoyment rather than a sense of duty – will likely pay dividends over time.
I joked with some friends recently that the next Mueller enterprise will be creating a glass works here in Leadville. But I was only partially joking. Working with stained glass has become Kathryn’s new major hobby. And she is getting quite proficient at it!
We’re thinking through methods of marketing and selling some of her creations – initially just to pay for the hobby. But I could see it far exceeding the expenses in relatively short-order. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please send them my way.
The enterprise part of the idea is that all the children are interested in the process and the older ones are starting to learn some of the skills…
News
The Superbowl happens tomorrow. Even a relatively disconnected non-sports fan like me is well aware of this iconic American cultural phenomenon. I’ve seen more than one person refer to it as an “unofficial” American holiday. And I don’t think they are wrong. Still, for myself I wonder whether it is better to look for edifying ways to participate in such a broad cultural phenomenon, or whether ignoring it as a means of “dissent” to not give it any more cultural power than it already has, is best.
I’m afraid the presidential election will be in the news a lot this year. Here are a few brief observations. It was a bad week for Nikki Haley. She got far fewer votes than the “none of these” option in the Nevada primary. That, more than anything else, suggests she has no chance of beating Trump in the primary. The Supreme Court heard arguments this week about whether Colorado could prevent Trump from being on the ballot. It’s hard to imagine them doing anything other than over-ruling the Colorado court.
Finally, the DOJ released the conclusions of a special counsel investigation into President Biden. The results were eerily similar to the FBI investigation of Hilary Clinton in 2016. In both cases the investigations criticize the subject and paint them in a really bad light, but choose not to bring charges. Apparently Biden’s legal violations were brushed aside because his memory and cognitive ability are largely compromised….That won’t play well for his presidential campaign.
I’m not a lawyer and cannot say definitively that there is not a double standard going on here between Clinton and Biden on the one side and Trump on the other, but it certainly seems like there is. We’ll see how all this plays out this year, but the sense of double standards, politicization of the department of justice, and the blatant use of lawfare will certainly play some role in driving election turnout.
Reflection & Writing
I’m combining these sections this week. The reflection I want to share is also part of my writing for the week. I’m working on a longer essay about the moral status of free market capitalism. I’ve noticed that a large number of intellectuals on the political right are either ambivalent, or increasingly skeptical, of free market capitalism. Even if they do not criticize it directly, they are quite hesitant to defend it on moral grounds.
This relates to the rise of “economic nationalists” and “national conservatives” who openly advocate departing from the “destructive” orthodoxy of neo-liberal market fundamentalism – the idea that free trade and free markets are good and that the best kind of government is one limited to providing national defense, clear “rules of the game,” the administration of justice, and limited public goods like infrastructure.
Instead, they want to see government (especially the federal government) subsidize “important” industries, support blue-collar workers, families, and communities who have been “left behind” or explicitly harmed by free trade globalization. They are happy to use the tax code aggressively, expand antitrust law to go after large corporations, and allocate billions or tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to their favored industries. They also advocate higher and more extensive tariffs to “protect” America’s industrial base.
My essay criticizes these developments and their treatment markets as purely means towards other ends. I also want to encourage the ambivalent to take a more positive view, and be willing to defend, free market capitalism on moral grounds.
In a nutshell, I argue that we ought to use the theological understand of human beings as physical and spiritual beings to understand markets. Free market capitalism is “the body” of society while its “spirit” are the higher things of justice, virtue, and community. Although the concerns of our physical body are not as important as the state of our souls, they should not be ignored. In fact, our physical bodies have dignity, beauty, and worth because God created them. And they are inextricably linked with our spiritual state.
So it is with free market capitalism and the higher things of society.
I’m still working on the essay, but here are a few excerpts to give you a sense of it:
“A specter is haunting capitalism – the specter of “higher” things. Many people on the political right feel haunted, or at least uneasy, about advocating free market capitalism. They worry that it aids and abets materialism. They worry that it distracts people from worship. They worry that it neglects the higher things of virtue, justice, and community. In sum, they worry that championing free market capitalism elevates lower material goods over higher spiritual goods.
This worry is unnecessary and betrays an unhelpful demotion of market activity. But rather than banishing this specter of higher things, we ought to recognize it as the disembodied spirit of capitalism. Just as human beings are spiritual and physical, society also has both spiritual and physical dimensions. Let me suggest that the “higher” things of virtue, justice, and community are the “spiritual” dimension of society while business and the marketplace are the “body” of society.”
“Because…free market capitalism is…the most natural structure and ordering of human society. It respects moral agency, individual autonomy and responsibility, the rule of law, and voluntary and civil association. Within free market capitalist systems we find abundant opportunities to pursue vocation and to fulfill the cultural mandate of Genesis 3.
Advocating for a free-market capitalist social order does not mean we must reduce everything to economic exchange – far from it! This order creates the means and space for us to engage in non-economic, non-market behavior – not only with greater leisure time, but with greater scope for family, education, health, worship, and caregiving. To use philosophical language, free market capitalism expands our capacities as individuals and communities. Our social and cultural problems arise not from this increase of our capacity through free markets, but from our abuse of this increased capacity.
As C. S. Lewis pointed out in The Four Loves, “the highest does not stand without the lowest,” nor should we “throw away our silver to make room for the gold.” A healthy culture cannot exist for long outside of a healthy economy and vice versa. The spirit and the body should be in harmony, not at war. Of course, when it comes to our fallen nature, the spirit must confront the excesses and abuses of the body – but it does so from a close affinity, even love, for the body it inhabits.
This has implications for how we should talk about problems in the marketplace – with loving correction, not with hostile loathing or indifference. Although our bodies sometimes need external intervention to restore health (such as medicine or surgery), what most of us need is renewal from within – a vision of health – establishing rhythms of exercise and rest, of eating well, and of respecting our limitations. But one can lose weight in harmful and unsustainable ways.”
“Market exchange and production may feel mundane, perhaps even trivial, compared to the “higher things” in our lives. Yet they are inextricably linked. The needs and desires of our physical bodies may be less important than our spiritual good, but they still matter. Sickness in the body affects the spirit. We are less able to participate in spiritual activities and in community when we are laid low by the flu.
Wrong views of the body tend to distort our views of the spiritual too. Marxism and Communism demonstrate just this point. Societies governed by those principles struggle to teach and aspire to the higher things – Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, N. Korea, etc. Virtue, justice, and community, though “higher” than market activity, are also intertwined with and even reliant upon it.
Free market capitalism without virtue and morality is corrupt. It is the body without the spirit. But where is the spirit without a body? Free market capitalism houses the spirit of higher things and allows that spirit to act in the world. Creating to stark a separation between market institutions on the one hand and virtue and justice on the other falls prey to the Manichean heresy that elevated the spirit and devalued the body. Manicheism was rightly rejected by the church over 1500 years ago. We should also reject social Manicheism.
The higher things don’t haunt capitalism, they enliven it.”
Game Corner
We played Wingspan quite a bit last fall after Teddy bought it. We pulled it out again this week. It’s a great game, though it has a bit of a learning curve to it. As with most games, the player with the most points wins. What makes Wingspan fun is that there are many ways to gain points.
The basic play consists of playing bird cards on your board. Every board has three habitats (forest, grassland, and water). Depending on the bird, it could be played in multiple habitats, or it might be limited to one specific habitat. On your turn you can either play a bird or you can take an action associated with one of your habitats.
Using your forest “action” allows you to draw a food token(s) from the birdfeeder. There are five different kinds of food in the game, and again the birds vary in terms of what food you need to use in order to play them from your hand to your board. The more birds you have played in your forest habitat, the more food tokens you may draw.
The grassland “action” allows you lay eggs on your birds. Eggs are worth points at the end of the game. They are also necessary for playing your second, third, fourth, and fifth birds in each habitat. The more birds you have played in your grassland habitat, the more eggs you can lay with that action.
The water “action” allows you to draw more bird cards. More birds played in this habitat allow you to draw more cards. The birds you play to your board can be worth 0 – 9 points. They may also have a special “ability.” These abilities could involve laying bonus eggs, drawing more bird cards or food, or drawing bonus cards (cards that give you more points if you meet their conditions at the end of the game).
As you can see, there are a lot of dynamics to the game: deciding which birds to play, making sure you have the food and/or eggs to play them, considering tradeoffs between points for the card vs. useful abilities, and then pursuing various bonuses, either via cards or via the round’s competition (i. e. the player with the most birds, or the most eggs, at the end of the round gets bonus points).
One neat dimension to this game is that the there is information about the birds you play on the cards. My kids have learned about quite a few birds in the process of playing Wingspan. And the art and materials in the game are excellent.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend (whether or not that involves Super Bowl festivities)!
Thanks for the report!
Your idea of a healthy body (i.e., successful economic system) providing a better environment for a healthy spirit is worthy of exploring. I believe market capitalism has proven over time to be the most socially equitable and viable of the economic systems humans have used to date. It typically provides a level playing field and rewards performance over other less esoteric measures of success.
The challenges others may highlight with respect to market capitalism leading to the loss of moral values is failing to see the forest from the trees. As you noted, less economically viable systems cause even greater fundamental issues. Less or reduced economic success leads to less or reduced social and/or spiritual freedom.
Shalom.
-- Duane