32
MANDATORY REDEMPTION UPON PAYMENT And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger's family: After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him: Either his uncle, or his uncle's son, may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him; or if he be able, he may redeem himself. And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he was sold to him unto the year of jubile: and the price of his sale shall be according unto the number of years, according to the time of an hired servant shall it be with him. If there be yet many years behind, according unto them he shall give again the price of his redemption out of the money that he was bought for. And if there remain but few years unto the year of jubile, then he shall count with him, and according unto his years shall he give him again the price of his redemption. And as a yearly hired servant shall he be with him: and the other shall not rule with rigour over him in thy sight. And if he be not redeemed in these years, then he shall go out in the year of jubile, both he, and his children with him. For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God (Lev. 25:47-55).
The theocentric meaning of this passage is that deliverance out of bondage is an act of God's grace. The universal redemption of Israelite freemen out of bondage was to be automatic in the fiftieth year, the jubilee year. On the day of atonement in the jubilee year, the day on which the ram's horn sounded, no Israelite heir of the original conquest could lawfully be kept in bondage except for criminals and those who, through renunciation of the covenant or by excommunication, had lost their judicial status as freemen.
This law added another way of escape for the Israelite bondservant: redemption by his kinsman-redeemer. The first form of redemption -- the jubilee -- required no payment to the slave owner; the second did. The first was based on judicial inheritance; the second was based on personal grace by the nearest of kin.
Why would anyone have sold himself to a resident alien? Because he had finally run out of income. This raises another question: Had he already leased his land to another? I think he had. The sabbatical year system of morally mandatory interest-free charitable loans would have protected a person with a farm to return to. Defaulting on this kind of loan, he would have sold himself to another Israelite to repay it. His temporary owner then had to care for him and his family, although without paying him wages, and then was required to give him food and animals in the sabbatical year (Deut. 15:14-15). This implies that the man in year seven owned his own land to return to with his new flock. But the man in Leviticus 25 was in such desperate straits that he had to sell himself and his family into bondage until the next jubilee year. He would not be entitled to assets out of his master's capital at the end of his term of service. He had become a stranger in the land. This was only permitted by God until a kinsman-redeemer bought him back, or until he could buy his way out of bondage, or until the jubilee's trumpet sounded. But the foreigner was under no obligation to pay him a wage. The made the Israelite slave especially helpless.
God's Designated Agents The kinsman-redeemer was God's designated agent of family redemption. He was the one who had the primary authority to buy back a close relative who had been forced to sell himself into bondservice.(1) That someone in his family had been reduced to such a desperate, humiliating act was a mark of family shame. It was such a shameful thing that a kinsman-redeemer would have felt some degree of moral obligation to make the purchase. But, as we shall see, there were also economic incentives involved.
An Israelite was supposed to serve God as God's designated agent in Old Covenant history. If an Israelite fell under the family authority of a resident alien, this would interfere with his service to God. A covenant-breaker would become an economic intermediary standing between God and the Israelite.
Then why was the resident alien allowed to buy an Israelite? Because he had been economically successful. Verse 47 identifies the nature of his success: "And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee. . . ." His wealth not only enabled him to buy an Israelite; it authorized him to do so. The Mosaic law recognized that covenant-breakers sometimes possess skills that are more effective in meeting the demands of consumers than those possessed by covenant-keepers. These skills may be able to be imitated. By subordinating themselves to the authority of a rich resident alien, the poor Israelite and members of his family were placed in an educational relationship under an economically productive family. The Mosaic law acknowledged that it was better to be under the authority of an economically successful covenant-breaker than to live a life of economic failure, i.e., bankruptcy.
This indicates that God wants His people to be economically productive. He was willing to have covenant-keepers subordinate themselves to covenant-breakers as a means of educating covenant-keepers in the techniques of wealth accumulation. This education was a positive sanction of bondage.
Consumer Sovereignty Nothing is said in this passage that would have prohibited another Israelite from buying the poor man. What is affirmed is that the resident alien could also enter the market. He was authorized by God's law to become a competitive bidder in the market's auction for the poor Israelite's labor services. This raised the market price of these services. Why did God allow this? First, in order to allocate scarce labor services according to the demand of consumers. Second, in order to enable the poor Israelite to become a more efficient economic agent of consumers. He had to become the subordinate agent of a covenant-keeper -- a rich one. He would have to hew wood and draw water in a covenant-breaker's household until the day of his redemption. He would learn from the most aggressive bidder in the local market.
The covenant-breaker, acting as the economic agent of consumers, was allowed to purchase the capitalized labor services of covenant-keepers in order to meet the demands of consumers. The scarce economic resource of labor would then be channeled into goods and services that were demanded by consumers. What this means is that preserving consumer sovereignty in Israel was more fundamental in God's law than preserving freeman legal status of bankrupt Israelites, at least until redemption took place or the jubilee's trumpet sounded. In this case, that which served consumers most efficiently was authorized by God's law. A bankrupt Israelite's legal status as a freeman was not to defended, free of charge, at the expense of the consumer.
The kinsman-redeemer could lawfully buy back the servant's legal status as a freeman, but this involved a risk on his part. He would probably have had to take over the care of the man and his family, for they had no land to return to. Freemanship was not a free gift to a landless Israelite until the day of jubilee. Someone had to pay: the kinsman-redeemer.
The man in bondage retained the right to buy his own freedom: ". . . or if he be able, he may redeem himself." Where would he get the money to redeem himself? Probably from an inheritance. A relative died and left him the purchase price of his redemption.
A Stronger Competitor The resident alien had no obligation to pay a wage to an Israelite who had been sold into bondage. In contrast, the Israelite who purchased another Israelite had to pay a wage (Lev. 25:39-40).(2) In both cases, the bondservant would go free in the jubilee year. Since the buyer was buying an expected stream of net income until the jubilee, which buyer could expect a larger stream of net income? Presumably, the resident alien. He did not have to pay a wage; the Israelite buyer did.
The resident alien was in a stronger bidding position than an Israelite buyer, but the Israelite might decide to outbid the alien in order to avoid the shame in Israel of the sale of an Israelite to a resident alien. Altruism and religious pride have limits, however; at some price, the Israelite bidders would have dropped out of the auction. This means that those Israelites who defaulted on the largest sums would have been most likely to serve in the households of resident aliens. The resident alien could better afford to bid a higher price for purchasing a debtor.(3) Also, in the jubilee year, the Israelite departed without capital from the household of a resident alien. Had he been under the authority of an Israelite, he could have saved his wages. Conclusion: the more money a man owed, the more likely that only a resident alien could afford to buy him to discharge the man's debt. It was therefore better to owe less money than more money, in the hope that an Israelite would buy you in a crisis, out of charity. Charity has limits.
The greater the man's debt had been, the longer his years of servitude. This system of bondage was therefore a model of hell. Greater debts resulted in more burdensome servitude. "And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more" (Luke 12:47-48). The difference was this: Israel had the jubilee year for those Israelites who were heirs of the conquest and who were still members of the ecclesiastical covenant. Hell has no jubilee year of release. There is no longer a jubilee year. Jesus Christ, the cosmic Kinsman-Redeemer, abolished it: definitively (Luke 4:18-21), progressively (through the adoption of gentiles: Paul's ministry), and finally (A.D. 70). Apart from His redemption, there is no escape from eternal servitude.
This means that the greater the debt, the more money the kinsman-redeemer would be required to pay to redeem his relative, or else the longer the man would have remained in bondage. The greater the debt, the greater the price of redemption; the greater the debt, the greater the grace of redemption.
A New Master The Israelite who had been purchased from a resident alien was subsequently to be treated by his relative as a hired servant. He was to be paid a wage: "And as a yearly hired servant shall he be with him: and the other shall not rule with rigour over him in thy sight" (v. 53). This means that the kinsman-redeemer was leasing his relative's labor services, not simply liberating him. The poor man had no land to return to. Until the jubilee year came, he was tied to the kinsman-redeemer unless the latter voluntarily released him.
Then why buy him at all? First, to overcome the shame of the family: to liberate a brother from bondage in the household of a foreigner. Second, to keep the resident alien from profiting at the expense of an unpaid Israelite servant. If the price of labor had risen since the day that the stranger bought the man, the resident alien was reaping an entrepreneurial profit. The unexpected rise in the value of labor services was being pocketed by the foreigner. The jubilee law authorized the kinsman-redeemer to buy the future labor services of his relative, which would run out at the next jubilee. He paid the original purchase price minus the years already served. The value of these labor services was higher than when the alien purchased the Israelite, but the purchase price per year of servitude remaining was fixed by the jubilee law. The kinsman-redeemer was in a position to re-claim from the alien all remaining entrepreneurial profits, should they continue. The tithe on these profits would then revert to the Levites.
The kinsman-redeemer would have had to pay his kinsman a wage. This leads us to the third point: the presence of an economic return. What was the nature of this return? The kinsman-redeemer could always hire labor services on a piece-rate basis. Why, economically speaking, would he commit himself to buying an Israelite, who would be owed a wage? Answer: to reduce his risk. The kinsman-redeemer might buy his relative for the same reason that producers buy goods to put into an inventory. If a producer has very little time to get delivery of the particular resource input, he has to pay a higher price to buy it "off the shelf" -- some seller's shelf. Instead, he puts it on his own shelf.(4) Keeping an inventory is a substitute for knowing the future perfectly, just as holding cash is. If we knew the future perfectly, we could time production and sales so well that we would need neither inventories nor cash in reserve.(5)
By purchasing his kinsman out of bondage, the kinsman-redeemer would have secured a permanent employee for himself until the jubilee year. The relative was still a bondservant who was not allowed to walk away. He was legally tied to the household of his redeemer until he could afford to redeem himself or the jubilee came. But he was at least out from under the authority of a resident alien. He would henceforth receive a wage. He was better off.
The kinsman-redeemer could buy his relative out of bondage at a price commensurate with the years remaining until the jubilee: a prorated price that dropped as the jubilee approached (v. 50). When the alien paid for the Israelite, the redemption price was locked in by civil law. The alien could not readily sell the capitalized services of the Israelite to the highest bidder, who probably would have been another resident alien. The price paid by the original purchaser established the maximum price that a kinsman had to pay to redeem his relative, and this price steadily dropped as the jubilee year approached. It is unlikely that any subsequent buyer would pay the original purchaser more than the redeemer's price, for he would have risked seeing the kinsman-redeemer buy the man out of bondage at a price based on the original owner's purchase price. It was legal for a resident alien to buy an Israelite servant, but the jubilee law placed limits on this market.
Capitalized Value
The terms of redemption were the same for Israelite bondservants as for rural land (Lev. 25:14-16). It was a prorated redemption: the redeemer had to pay only for the time remaining before the jubilee. This means that the purchase price would be averaged on an annualized basis: from the time of purchase to the jubilee.
This means that the original buyer took a risk. If he "bought low," when the expected value of the land's output or the servant's output was low, on the assumption that prices for these services would rise, he could lose his entrepreneurial profit if a redeemer came to claim his right of purchase. The original buyer would be repaid whatever was owed to him based on the original purchase price, not on the new, higher value of the expected stream of services. On the other hand, if he "bought high," when the expected returns were high, and then the value of the services fell, the land or bondservant would be less likely to be redeemed, since the redeemer would have to pay a prorated price based on the original purchase price, which was high. This means that the original buyer was more likely to suffer losses than enjoy profits if the market value of the expected stream of services changed.
This was even more true of land redemptions. The kinsman-redeemer could re-purchase his kinsman's land from a buyer at a fixed price: whatever the buyer had paid prorated according to the years remaining till the jubilee. He had no wages to pay. When he bought a relative out of bondage, he had to pay him a wage. Not so with land.
What is clear is that the purchase of either rural land in Israel or an Israelite bondservant was a lease agreement. Because of the jubilee year's limits on both rural land transfers and Israelite servitude, this was not a purchase; it was a lease. It was a not a lease with an option to buy; it was a lease in which an outsider -- the kinsman-redeemer -- had the option to redeem the lease. The lease was a rental arrangement in which the redeemer could interrupt the long-term rental agreement by making a prorated payment to the lessor. God was the owner of the land and the Israelites; He set the terms of trade. This price system would have restricted the market for Israelite bondservants and rural land.
Utopian Populists On the fringe of many political movements, both right wing and left wing, are populist utopians who claim that a world without interest on business loans is both morally obligatory and economically possible. This is the economic equivalent of claiming that perpetual motion is possible in this world. It is rarely pointed out that this was the position promoted by John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist in the world in the second half of the twentieth century.(6) Because of the medieval commentators' confusion over interest from business loans (biblically valid) and interest from charity loans to fellow believers (biblically prohibited), they prohibited all interest, which they regarded as a single phenomenon. This religious tradition has led many subsequent monetary cranks -- Protestants, Catholics, and cultists -- to claim that their position is biblical.(7) Let me point out one more time that those people who preach the ideal of a world of zero interest rates cannot defend their system biblically.
Rent is the economic return produced by some scarce resource over a specified time period. The resource may be land, but it could also be labor. What is the present value of this stream of income? We cannot know until we know the rate of interest: the time discount applied by economic actors to all streams of income. The origin of interest is human action: time preference. Rents will, through competition, tend to equal the rate of interest.(8) Thus, the defender of a zero-interest economic system must, if he follows the logic of his system, deny the moral legitimacy of all rental contracts. (There are very few populist analysts who have understood this implication of their system.)(9) But this section of Leviticus clearly affirms the legitimacy of such rental contracts. This poses an insolvable theoretical problem for those people who argue that, biblically speaking, rental contracts are illegitimate. They deal with this problem by ignoring it.(10)
On the Fringe of a Movement
The populist, being a fringe figure, appeals to people on the fringe of a movement who are ideologically committed but untrained in economic reasoning. They have a taste for ideas that are outrageous and even bizarre. They are tempted to push beyond the ideological limits of the movement to which they are loosely attached. If something sounds new, unique, or controversial, they have a tendency to believe it. There are many such ideas in life that deserve a hearing, despite the opposition of establishments. There are establishments in life; indeed, scholarship and science are impossible without establishments. These establishments do suppress the public discussion of certain ideas.(11) But every anti-establishment hypothesis must be examined very carefully in order to determine whether it makes sense logically and also corresponds to the data it seeks to explain. Fringe ideas must be tested. Those who gravitate toward them are rarely able to do the necessary testing. They are true believers, not careful scholars.
Economic analysis involves long chains of reasoning. A recommended policy must be analyzed in terms of its effects, as they spread through the economy. Few people are equipped intellectually or by training to examine long chains of reasoning. Therefore, as Hazlitt says in the opening sentence of Chapter 1 of Economics in One Lesson, "Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man."(12) He then explains why this is the case: "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. Nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today are the result of ignoring this lesson."(13) Crackpot economics always breaks this chain of reasoning.
People who are attracted to populism do not understand that when some writer denies the legitimacy of interest from business loans he is also denying the legitimacy of the economic category known as rent. They do not understand that anyone who denies the legitimacy of interest and rent then must explain how a world without interest would operate. They take the populist's word on faith. Commitment to crackpot economics can easily become a substitute for orthodox religion,(14) or at least a false corollary to orthodox religion.
I will say it one more time: economics becomes crackpot when it claims that the economic world can operate apart from a rate of interest. It is crackpot to the same degree that physics becomes crackpot when it affirms the possibility of perpetual motion.
The Unity of Economics
The phenomenon of interest affects every aspect of economic theory and practice. It is the discount that every rational person places on future goods as against present goods: the free gift of a Rolls-Royce automobile delivered next year vs. the Rolls Royce delivered this afternoon. Better sooner than later, other things being equal. The anti-interest utopian therefore has an intellectual and moral obligation to reconstruct all of economic theory in terms of his radical hypothesis. No one has ever done this, in the millennia in which anti-interest hypotheses have been offered, from Aristotle to the present.
When Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk's monumental History and Critique of Interest Theories was published in 1884, he understood that all of capital theory had to be reconstructed in terms of his theory of interest as a discount of future goods as against present goods. He then wrote The Positive Theory of Capital, equally monumental, which appeared in 1889. Then he spent years writing Further Essays on Capital and Interest, a book defending the first two volumes. Certain problems in Böhm-Bawerk's theory led his student Ludwig von Mises to write Theory of Money and Credit, published in 1912. From there, Mises went on to write Socialism (1922) and Human Action (1949), each book extending his theory of capital, interest, and money. The point is, you cannot legitimately announce that an economy can and should operate without interest payments on business loans and leave it at that. Yet this is what the populist utopians do.
Conclusion The jubilee was the year of redemption in Israel. It reunited judicially the dispossessed Israelite and his landed inheritance. The maximum time limit placed by God's law on Israelite bondservice was therefore the same as the limit on the leasing of rural property: the next jubilee year.
The possibility of immediate redemption was available in both cases: land and labor. The kinsman-redeemer could buy his relative out of bondage by making a prorated payment to the buyer based on the original purchase price. This payment was based on the years remaining until the jubilee: the original purchase price divided by the number of years until the jubilee multiplied by the number of years remaining.
The presence of this law in the Mosaic law indicates how important the ideal of consumer sovereignty is in God's eyes. An Israelite who found himself in dire straits economically could lawfully sell himself to a resident alien. The economic success of the resident alien was legitimate. He had met the demands of consumers. The Israelite had failed to meet the demands of consumers. The resident alien was authorized to buy the Israelite until the next jubilee year. So important were the twin ideals of efficiency and profit that God was willing to see some of His people in temporary bondage to covenant-breakers within the boundaries of the Promised Land. Perhaps these less efficient Israelites would learn to become more efficient producers, thereby improving the options available to consumers.
Because the resident alien did not have to pay a wage to an Israelite bondservant, while Israelites were required to pay him a wage, this law gave a competitive advantage to the resident alien in the market for Israelite bondservants. It made it clear what the consequence of bankruptcy was likely to be: long-term bondage to covenant-breakers.
What was illegal for an Israelite -- the refusal to pay a wage to his Israelite bondservant -- was not illegal for resident aliens. Why not? Because bondage to resident aliens was a model of hell: the wrath of God. It served as a reminder to the Israelites of their need for a kinsman-redeemer. They were all in debt to God. They could not afford to buy their way out of Adam's bondage. Only God's grace of the fulfilled jubilee offered the nation long-term hope, and only God's grace in the interim as their kinsman-redeemer offered short-term hope. God's designated Kinsman-Redeemer is Jesus Christ, who announced the fulfillment of the jubilee principle when He began his public prophetic ministry (Luke 4:18-21).
This law rested on a required wage payment, but there were no specifics regarding the amount of the wage. This made law enforcement difficult for the magistrates, and therefore also made legal predictability difficult for Israelite masters. I conclude that this law was enforced by the Levites, not the civil magistrate. They would have had more leeway in working out equitable arrangements with the masters. This law did not prohibit an evil act, i.e., the legitimate function of civil government. It mandated positive sanctions, and only for Israelite masters. It therefore discriminated economically against Israelite masters. But Mosaic civil law was to be equal for all (Ex. 12:49). So, this must have been an ecclesiastical law.
Summary The jubilee year was the year of universal redemption for freemen.
This law authorized the kinsman-redeemer to redeem his kin out of bondage before the jubilee year.
Anyone who sold himself to a resident alien, or who was sold to one, probably had no immediate access to his family's landed inheritance.
This forced sale was shameful for his family and near kinsmen.
Being under the lawful jurisdiction of a resident alien interfered with covenantal dominion.
A covenant-breaker thereby became a lawful intermediary standing between God and an Israelite family.
This situation was permitted by God in order to reward economically productive people -- the rich -- and penalize the unproductive: the poor.
The poor Israelite was expected to learn from the rich alien: better this than continued low productivity.
Economic education was a positive sanction of bondservice.
The alien's presence in the market for bondservants allocated labor services according to market demand.
The alien represented the consumers economically.
This preserved consumer sovereignty in Mosaic Israel.
This was more important than preserving the legal status of bankrupt Israelites.
The resident alien did not have a legal obligation to pay wages to Israelite bondservants; an Israelite owner did (Lev. 25:39-40).
The resident alien therefore had a competitive market advantage in the market for bondservants.
The larger a man's defaulted debt, the longer the term of bondservice.
Bondservice was a model of hell.
The greater the debt, the greater the redemption price.
The kinsman-redeemer had to pay his redeemed relative a wage (v. 53).
He was leasing his relative's labor services, not merely liberating him.
The redeemer had incentives to redeem the man: removing family shame and keeping profits away from a resident alien.
The kinsman-redeemer was also buying labor inventory.
The original buyer would therefore not gain maximum profits if labor costs went higher.
The kinsman-redeemer had an advantage in redeeming his kinsman in times of rising labor prices, though offset in part by having to pay wages.
He had an even greater advantage in redeeming his kinsman's land in times of rising land prices: no wages to pay to a relative.
It was legal because God owned both the land and the Israelites; He set the terms of trade.
Populist utopians claim that all interest payments are immoral and economically unnecessary.
A rent payment is the same as an interest payment: the payment for the use of a scarce resource over time.
If interest payments are illegitimate, so are rent payments.
A fringe movement is susceptible to crackpot ideas.
Fringe ideas must be examined carefully: tested rigorously.
Economic analysis is complex: long chains of reasoning.
Crackpot economic analysis always breaks the chain.
Economic analysis is crackpot whenever it denies the inescapable category of interest.
Economics is a unified system.
To assert that economics can do without the category of interest is to make mandatory the complete reconstruction of all economics.
The utopians refuse to begin this task.
Footnotes:
1. I use the word slavery to refer to the permanent enslavement of heathens.
2. See Chapter 30, above.
3. Once the auction price of the bondservant matched the debt he owed, any additional money raised by the bidding process went to the bondservant. This would have placed a loose cap on the bidding, since the additional money could be used by the bondservant to buy his way to freedom. The buyer was then subsidizing a reduced return on his investment: a shorter term of service.
4. Prior to widespread computerization of inventories in the 1980's, and prior to Federal Express and other overnight delivery private mail firms, inventories in American business were larger. The "just in time" techniques of computerized production did not exist, or existed only in a few firms.
5. If no one needed cash in reserve, there would be no cash; its value would fall to zero. Transactions would be by barter only. We cannot really imagine such a money-less world, for it is a world of man's omniscience, which is neither possible nor conceivable (Deut. 29:29). This is a major problem for economic theory, which assumes omniscience in the creation of such theoretical constructs as equilibrium.
6. Keynes wrote that "a properly run community . . . ought to be able to bring down the marginal efficiency of capital in equilibrium approximately to zero within a single generation; . . ." Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (New York: Macmillan, 1936), p. 220. If the marginal efficiency of capital is zero, then the price of capital has to be zero, since the value of any asset's output under equilibrium conditions is equal to the value of the final (marginal) unit produced, which in his example is zero. Zero multiplied by anything is zero.
7. Calvin Elliott, Usury: A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View (Middlesburg, Ohio: Anti-Usury League, 1902); C. F. Parker, Moses the Economist (London: Covenant, 1947), pp. 55-60. For "usury" defined as "interest which is higher than is requisite," see J. Taylor Peddie, The Economic Mechanism of Scripture: The Cure for the World Crises (London: Williams & Norgate, 1934), p. 156. For a critique of Social Credit movement's suggested reform, the abolition of private banking and interest-bearing loans, see Gary North, Salvation Through Inflation: The Economics of Social Credit (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1993).
8. See Chapter 26, above, subsection on "Interest and Rent."
9. S. C. Mooney, a defender of interest-free business loans, is one of the few populists who have understood this. He insists that "it is not lawful for one to sell the use of his property (rent)." S. C. Mooney, Usury: Destroyer of Nations (Warsaw, Ohio: Theopolis, 1988), p. 173.
10. Mooney refused to comment in his book on Leviticus 25:25-28 and 25:47-51. For a critique of Mr. Mooney, see Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), Appendix G: "Lots of Free Time: The Existentialist Utopia of S. C. Mooney."
11. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962).
12. Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson (Norwalk, Connecticut: Arlington House, [1946] 1979), p. 15.
13. Ibid., p. 17.
14. North, Salvation Through Inflation.
If you are interested in receiving Dr. North's FREE monthly e-mail newsletter send an e-mail to:
If this book helps you gain a new understanding of the Bible, please consider sending a small donation to the Institute for Christian Economics, P.O. Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711. You may also want to buy a printed version of this book, if it is still in print. Contact ICE to find out.