Among many conservative Christians in America, there is an assumption that believing the Bible also means believing in the free market and the good of capitalism. But what exactly is a free market and how do we know when it is serving the common good? In this video, Brad Littlejohn and Brad Belschner discuss the evolution of their own views on this contentious subject.
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Video Questions
1:00: Why market failures make pure libertarianism, or a pure free market, impossible—example of externalities.
2:10: Natural monopolies as another example of a market failure.
3:00: Unrestrained free market leads to the strong exploiting the weak.
3:45: Why a simple market vs. government framework misunderstands how markets work; markets are products of government policies.
5:10: Historical diversity among Christian political thought on government role in markets.
6:00: Are free-market advocates critiquing government intervention as intrinsically immoral or simply inefficient? Important to recognize how often our disputes are just pragmatic disagreements.
7:45: Why it’s dangerous to draw black-and-white moral lines on matters of prudent economic policy.