Previously, we considered economic efficiency—the practice that explores how well (or poorly) a market economy uses its available resources to maximize gains and minimize waste—and whether it can help make a society morally good. On its own, it’s a useful tool but not sufficient to improve the morality of a society. But what about when used as part of a broader Christian moral ethic?
A Surface-Level Compatibility
When Christians consider what can help make society morally good, we think of things that help us strive for the biblical vision of how God created the world. Thus, it’s plausible to see a link between wealth creation and responsible resource use, as Christians understand it.
For example, in an insightful article titled, “Toward a Biblical Theology of Efficiency,” Michael Cafferky argues that “the Bible encourages the pursuit of operational efficiency within the constraints of moral principles designed to foster abundant living in all dimensions considered important in the Bible: social, physical, spiritual, political, and economic.” Hence waste minimization—another way of describing efficiency—is a Christian value, provided we define waste appropriately.
But the compatibility is only apparent. As I argue in a new scholarly paper, economic efficiency is Christian only in a superficial sense. Since what counts as costs, benefits, waste, and other value-laden concepts depends entirely on Christian teachings, efficiency doesn’t bring anything distinctive to the analysis.
Cafferky and others who have explored the economic aspects of Christian ethics deserve credit for showing how efficiency can describe right action. However, efficiency can never constitute right action. There is no illicit activity (as Christians understand it) that becomes licit merely because it is efficient. As I put it in my article, “Studying the compatibility of efficiency with Christian teachings is certainly interesting, but that does not provide us with a reason to value efficiency independent of Christian teachings.”
Shining a Light on the Situation
So is there any way for Christians to use economic efficiency? Yes, but not to help us make ethical trade-offs, which is a matter of prudence. Instead, efficiency can help us find the tradeoffs. “We cannot use efficiency to judge or rank outcomes,” as I explained in my recent article. “But we can use it in a more limited sense as an input into the process of practical reasoning. Specifically, efficiency can help us locate the areas where prudence matters.”
As an example, consider the market for prostitution. It should go without saying that buying and selling sexual intimacy can never be licit for a Christian. Fornication and adultery are sins. The fact remains, however, that a great many people would be willing to buy sex and a great many people are willing to sell sex. There is a lucrative market here. The potential gains from trade are enormous. That does not make buying and selling sex good. But it does suggest the consequences of prohibiting it could be even more grave.
Suppose we are considering whether to outlaw prostitution markets. Civil or criminal penalties would lower the demand for prostitution, the supply of prostitution, or both. But these penalties would not destroy the market entirely. The exchanges would move “underground” to a black market. Participants (buyers and sellers) would use up resources to continue the illegal activity while evading law enforcement, as they do now in markets for illegal drugs. As with all black markets, we must worry about criminal enterprises and violence—and in this case, the horror of sexual exploitation.
Whenever resources are exchanged, some process will arise to determine who gets what. Criminality and coercion are ways to allocate resources when markets are legally prohibited. They emerge because the gains from trade are large, yet the legal system can no longer be used to protect voluntary exchange. This is just another way of saying the forbidden practices, though they are unsavory, are efficient.
Note well: we used efficiency not to resolve a moral quandary but to identify the moral stakes. “This is as far as the Christian economist can go,” I wrote in my article. “It is now up to the Christian economist to decide, given the moral tradeoffs involved, whether it is better for prostitution to be legal or illegal.”
Importantly, two intellectual giants of Christendom, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, thought the evil of prostitution should not be outlawed because the secondary consequences would be even worse. Perhaps our moral deliberation will agree with theirs; perhaps not. Either way, efficiency cannot help us, except to show where such deliberation is required.
A Call for a Moral Enterprise
Christians are called to discuss and judge economic affairs. Our faith impels us to respect the bounty of creation. Yet the concept of economic efficiency doesn’t tell us how to be good stewards. “Efficient” simply means “benefit-maximizing,” as determined by willingness to pay. This is “a description, not an endorsement. Both wondrous and horrible things are efficient,” I cautioned in my paper.
Christians, and especially Christian economists, should move beyond efficiency and embrace the art of political economy: a moral enterprise in search of a humane society, which requires sound economic analysis but is not reducible to it. Instead of looking for normative shortcuts like economic efficiency, let’s embrace the richness of Christian social ethics found in Scripture, tradition, and right reason.
