From time to time, I take on a crackpot in print. I do this mostly for amusement.
My general rules on responding to crackpots are these. First, if he does not have a large audience, I probably won't respond. (I also include an occasional "her.") Second, if the argument is basically incoherent, and if there are not a lot of other people who take a similar position, I don't respond. Third, if the crackpot is known as a tar baby, I don't respond. I don't want to get into a long exchange in which I'm not the final responder. There are some people who are worse tar babies than I am, and I avoid them. Once in a while I will report on some tar baby crackpot, but I'm always careful to provide links to articles written by somebody else who has taken on this particular tar baby. It's the old rule, "Let's you and him fight." I believe in this position when I am making the challenge.
Recently, I was issued a challenge by a well-meaning person who has come across a book written by a certifiable crackpot. This crackpot believes that free trade is illegitimate if it is not fair. This position is held by a handful of economists who are not crackpots, merely muddle-headed. But this guy's position is framed in terms of what he calls kingdom economics.
I have turf to defend. If there's going to be a market on kingdom economics, I want to dominate it. I recognize that a lot of people regard my position as crackpot, but at least I have written about 40 volumes of books on this.
This particular crackpot is self-educated in the fields of economics and theology. He does not understand either field. He is basically reacting against Austrian school economics in general and against me in particular. He has written two self-published books in which he has read materials in which my name is prominent, but you cannot find a reference in his books to me or my economic ideas. You can spot a crackpot when he avoids mentioning the key person whom he is trying to replace in a particular field. In the case of Protestant free market Christian economics, I have a near monopoly. The trouble is, I have not found a way to convert my near-monopoly into monopoly returns. The market is too small. I would like to become the Taylor Swift of biblical economics, but so far the opportunity has eluded me.
To give you a sense of this guy's importance in the marketplace, he only has one comment in the Amazon comments section for his book on biblical law. That comment was supplied by him back in 2004. He gave his book a five-star rating. I've never seen this before on Amazon.
Another tipoff that there is something fundamentally wrong is the fact that the two books of his that I own, one on biblical law and one on economics, have a total of 800 pages, but they have no indexes. There is no Scripture index. There is no topical index. There is no index of names cited. Also, there is no bibliography in either book. Here is a guy who has gone to all the trouble of researching these books in a serious seminary library, plus a major university library, plus he has typeset his books himself, at least from the looks of them, and he has self-published them. But he never bothered to go to the trouble of producing indexes. That would be all right if he were publishing digitally, because there are search engines for digital publications. But this guy has no website or PDF versions.
THEOLOGICAL SCHIZOPHRENIA
He holds a totally schizophrenic position. I have never actually seen this before, and I have been waiting for something like this for almost half a century.
He is a dispensationalist. He believes that the kingdom of God will be set up only after a seven-year period of tribulation. Then Jesus will come with his resurrected saints and His angels to set up a bureaucratic kingdom. It will be international.
Here is his theological problem. According to dispensationalism, there is no judicial continuity between anything that Christian churches or organizations do today and with the worldwide bureaucratic kingdom that Jesus will set up in the future. This is the universal teaching of all dispensational theologians. This is why there has never been a book written by a dispensationalist on Christian social theory. They will not say which Mosaic laws are mandated in the so-called Church Age (today), and how they will operate in the future millennial kingdom. In short, there is total judicial discontinuity. This has been a defining feature of dispensationalism ever since its beginning in the 1830's.
So, this man comes along and is basically saying the entire history of dispensationalism is wrong. There is no discontinuity at all between (1) the Mosaic law, as required in Israel prior to the two captivities, (2) today's Christian era, and (3) the world that Jesus and His angels will set up and enforce after the seven-year Great Tribulation.
No one in the history of dispensationalism has ever taught this before. He is unique. Yet there is not the slightest hint in his books that he is making a fundamental break with all of dispensational theology. You would imagine, reading his book, that this is just conventional, run-of-the-mill dispensationalism.
THE KINGDOM OF KEYNES
He makes it clear in his footnotes that he is operating in terms of standard Keynesian textbooks. There is not a single reference to anything in the Austrian school, the Chicago school, the public choice school, behavioral economics, or anything other than standard Keynesian textbooks. He favorably quotes Keynes' General Theory. He quotes Lawrence Klein's book, The Keynesian Revolution. All of this is done in the name of the kingdom of God.
There is another defining mark of crackpottery: a commitment to the Kondratieff wave theory. We don't find this in conventional economics textbooks. Murray Rothbard refuted that thesis over 30 years ago.
He is a supporter of the Second Bank of the United States. He is an opponent of Andrew Jackson, who vetoed the extension of the bank's charter in 1832. All of this is done in the name of kingdom economics.
THE MEMORY HOLE
In his book on biblical law, the first footnotes in the book are to Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law. I have three appendixes in that book. He obviously knows exactly who I am. He knows who Murray Rothbard is. He knows about Ludwig von Mises. But as far as he's concerned, we are all residents of the memory hole. And that's where he wants us to remain.
THE VICTIMS
The man who contacted me is a foreign missionary. He is out on the mission field. He has found this guy's book on economics. He is convinced that the guy has offered a serious refutation of the concept of free trade. Here is a book that never mentions the balance of payments in the context of trade. He starts with national entities, as all anti-free traders do. He doesn't start from individual decision-making. He doesn't talk about subjective value and the rise of voluntary exchange. No, it's all in terms of national entities and international trade between these national entities. He says that all property must be grounded in land. If the free market is not grounded in ground, then free trade is an abomination.
I asked the missionary who sent me a reference to the book to summarize the crackpot's arguments. He refused. This is sensible. The crackpot's defense of fair trade is incoherent.
So, should I respond for the sake of one missionary's challenge? I decided to limit my response to this article. I don't want to give this guy publicity. I would hate to think of generating a single book sale other than my own.
There is an old statement: "You don't have to eat all of a rotten apple to know it's rotten." In the context of the fall of man, I think this is appropriate. If I took this guy on, I would have to respond with something like a 50-page article. He does not just make individual mistakes. His mistakes are part of a comprehensive package of error: theological and economic.
This is a rotten apple.
We have heard all the arguments for and against free trade. There aren't any new arguments on either side of the debate. What is consistent is this: those who oppose free trade do not start with the acting individual who has a legal right to make a voluntary exchange with somebody else. Always, the fair trade brigade comes in, gets Congress to send somebody out with a gun and a badge, and has that person point the gun at the belly of one of the parties who wants to make a voluntary exchange. This is always done in the name of fairness. It is always done in the name of the free market. But there is always that badge, and there is always that gun. That's the heart of every argument against free trade. Some crackpot can put kingdom lipstick on this pig, but it is still a pig.
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