The real value of money

I am reading an interesting book at the moment called "More Sex is Safer Sex: the Unconventional Wisdom of Economics" by Steven Landsburg. Landsburg looks at a variety of different statistical situations or dilemmas and examines the economical side of them, often then offering his own take on the cost/benefit analysis and what that means the "right" answer is. It is an interesting read for a couple of reasons: one he occasionally gets sidetracked onto his own issues and beliefs (fairly conservative with a strong belief in a lack of government involvement) but also because he presents some intriguing arguments into why some people should be having more sex, or why Scrouge before he gives his money away is helping more people than after he gives it away. For someone like me with little economic background I end up mostly having to trust his economic arguments because I do not have the expertise to refute him. It is good to occasionally be forced to trust what other people are saying reather than consistently trying to assert your own opinion. I also think it is a good exercise to look for flaws based on what another person thinks and not refute them simply by saying what you think instead.

It raises an interesting question to me though ... does money really determine the value of things as much as we think it does. Landsburg is seemingly aware of outside values ... he points to the fact that a person has a child inspite of all the negative economic effects of it and in fact rejoices in the birth of the baby. He is also aware that people marry for more reasons that simply economic gain or beauty of the potential partner. I think he struggles how to fully quantify that for his analysis. For the child he is simple ignores it, focusing instead on the cost/benefit to the rest of the community, assuming that the parent is already coming out ahead. But is money really the best measure of value? Or maybe the real question are there some moral absolutes that are more superceding the econmic value of something.

One argument that Landsburg looks at is child labor in third world countries. He seems to make the point that child labor is helping the families, that no one would willing subject their child to such work unless it was the only way to make enough for the family. He feels that those of us in the first world can afford luxuries like not having our children work, but that even in our own past it was necessary for children to work, and work a lot to make enough to thrive. By prohibiting child labor we are actually further impoverishing these countries by further limiting their means of production and thus ability to get richer, like we got richer. He points to the fact as wealth increases, child labor decreases, and seems to feel this will be a self-correcting system. I mean, the arugment could be made and in some ways has been made that slavery was a response of the south to remain economically competitive with the north during th 1850s, was it wrong of people to say that work should not be done by slaves? Is it possible to take some ethical values and impoes them on an economic system, for some of us to say we do not believe such a practice is moral right and we are not willing to be a part of it. Now, Landsburg is right that if we take such a stance we need to be aware of its effects ... if we are decreasing the potential of a country in some ways maybe there are other ways we need to work to improve it. At the same time, that does not mean we should feel that a simply economic analysis tells the whole story.

What I love about Landsburg's book is that he challenges me to think and pushes me with some hard "facts" that in the end remind me, my faith is not about facts, or simply things we can measure in real world dollars or units, it is tied to something greater, it is connected to a God that goes beyond money to offer us something of real value. We as Christians are challenged to look at the world as it is, and decide what ways our faith calls us to act differently, or live differently, regardless of what the economic pressures tell us.