The Thinker And The Simpleton

The Thinker. Samuel Huntington died. However one felt about his views, no one could dispute their predictive power. Interestingly, he saw Orthodox (Christian) civilization as one of the eight world civilizations that stood in opposition to "Anglo-Protestant" Western civilization.

The Simpleton. The Russian media has jumped on the present trend of blaming Russia' s economic problems on America in focusing on the predictions of crackpot, Igor Panarin. Panarin, a professor in the foreign ministry's academy, predicts the collapse of America in 2010.

The Incarnation As Scientific Truth?

Fr. Stephen's blog had a pretty good discussion going on until some feller got confused about the difference between theological and scientific propositions.

If I Had A Hammer...

Jesus' carpentry career involved submission to economic laws also in the ordering of His production structure according to the capital goods available to Him. The capital goods were arranged pursuant to a recipe, otherwise known as technology.

Maybe He used a hammer, maybe not.

If I Were A Carpenter...

Tradition tells us that Jesus was a carpenter. This was probably His most visible submission to the laws of economics. I wonder about how Jesus went about His trade. For example:

Was He a sole practitioner?
Did He employ others, such as laborers or other carpenters?
Did He run a big carpentry operation?
Did He make a profit?
Did He furnish his services at cost?
Did He charge nothing for his services?
How did He deal with this competition, i.e., other carpenters vying to provide the same services?
Did He undercut the prices that his competition charged?
If He undercut his competition's prices, did He drive them out of business?

From my standpoint, the Incarnation gets to be a pretty complicated affair.

Perry's Back

Thank heaven. And, I like the new direction of his thinking. I hope he continues in this vein for a long, long time.

I celebrated the occasion by sounding off about my peeps.

Metaphorical Economics

I apologize for my absence, but I have been knee-deep in current events. It's hard to believe, but folks are interested in what I have to say.

If circumstances were more positive, however, their interest in my particular opinion would be much smaller. There's a natural human tendency, during more fortunate times, to ascribe one's economic success to skill, rather than to the generalized smiling of an expanding economic pie.

Randomness stymies overreaching.