#STRask - What Should a Christian Think About Capitalism?

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Question about what Christians should think about capitalism.   What should a Christian think about capitalism?

You're listening to Amy Hall and Greg Kokel on the hashtag SCR-Ask podcast from Stand to Reason. Thank you for listening. And Greg, this first question comes from Daniel. Daniel? Daniel. I was one of the students who visited you from Norway. My question is, what should a Christian think about capitalism? Well, this is actually a question that you're better suited to answer because you've reflected on this more.

And I'm just going to give kind of a brief thing, and then you could jump in because I know you're jumping at the bit, and you read J. Richards' book. And, excuse me. Anyway, here's the simple thing. Capitalism is not about greed, first of all, any more than any other economic system. That's the first thing. And that's, I'm just saying that because it's so silly that people jump in and say, all those greedy capitalists, we're better. We're socialists. We want to take everybody's money that we didn't earn and give it to ourselves.

We're not greedy. You know, it's just nutty. Now, it doesn't mean socialism's bad or capitalism is good. It means that neither of them, I mean, you can't, I guess what I'm saying is you can't just characterize capitalism as driven by greed. It's driven by a desire to make money, just like every other enterprise of work where people do something to make money. right. And if somebody is using capitalism to make money to provide for their family and

themselves, I mean, why just dismiss it as agreed, the first point? Secondly, capitalism has been demonstrated to lift whole nations out of poverty where socialism has done just the opposite. Do you know how many NGOs there are in Haiti? There's an NGO, non-government organization, one for when this this came out after the what the hurricane or whatever or earthquake there it was probably seven or eight or nine or ten years ago now there was one NGO for every six people and this place has been been in the depths for years and years and years and I remember the people who were you know in government at that time saying um some of the leaders were saying stay away we don't need your money we need jobs we need to build a

job. Come here and start a business to give people jobs. In other words, they understood this is the solution, and the other is a cancer. It takes them backwards. So that's the second thing. And by the way, these are just, when I say capitalism lifts out of poverty and socialism puts people into poverty. This is quantifiable. And the nations in Africa, for example, that denied public aid and decided to build their economy in a capitalistic way, those are ones who have prospered. Okay. Thirdly, capitalism doesn't work. And then I get this insight from you, which maybe you got this from Jay. Probably. Capitalism doesn't work unless somebody is committed to doing something good for someone else. And if you do not do a good thing for someone

else, your capitalistic enterprise will not work. Now, as I think back in my own life, I've had actually very few jobs working for other people. Even this job for 33 years, it's an organization that I founded. Before that, I was a self-employed carpenter, and I had, I also had a window treatment business and different things. I worked for myself as an entrepreneur. In many cases, when I was a kid, I worked in restaurants and stuff like that when I was a teenager, so I have worked for other people, but I found that it was better for me to try to serve somebody else's needs, and if I did that well, I'd make money. And so that's the foundation of it. And you go to Proverbs 31, and there is the Proverbs 31 woman buying a piece of real estate and then selling it

for a profit. And she's making things with her hands, and then she sells them in the public Square or whatever, you know, she is being industrious and she is making things that are good for other people. By the way, capitalism thrives on individual industry. If you, when I say industry, I don't mean like, I mean, industriousness is what I mean. If an individual has a, an enterprise, if you will, a capitalistic enterprise, and they are not industrious, that is, they aren't working hard to get something done that will help somebody else. It's not going to work. You're going to fail. And those companies that really do that

well provide a good service, survive. If somebody else provides the same service better, then the better service survives and the lesser service does not. It's kind of a survival of the fittest after a fashion, you know, but it's economic. And it isn't dog-eat-dog, And it benefits everybody. This is it. It's who can give the greatest benefit. And it galls me when I see these characterizations of capitalism as opposed to socialism or something, when it's just that are so negative and so distorted, they don't reflect the truth. And I have been in, what, six or seven communist countries before the wall came down.

So I was in Yugoslavia. I was in Romania. I was in Hungary. I was in the former Soviet Union. I was in DDR. I was in Czechoslovakia, all when they were behind the Iron Curtt. DDR is East Germany. And look at, we went into the Ukraine, into a restaurant there, and sat there waited to be waited on it.

Nobody came and waited on us. It took forever. Why? Because they didn't, the vendors or the waiters didn't benefit from doing any work. It was terrible. The lines were huge, gargantuan. People were wonderful, but the economic system was awful. And that's what you get.

You know, you reward industry in capitalism, and the system punishes foolishness, stupidity, poor service, all of that. It's exactly the opposite in socialism or communism. And so this is why I'm just given general things here. It just frustrates a heck out of me how young people get into this, and they, you know, they think that this is the savior of mankind. It's never been. No country that has practiced this has prospered. And any event, so there's my, I'm all for capitalism, and it's not because I'm greedy. I think it's a successful way to lift everybody up.

You know, the tide lifts all ships. and capitalism lifts all ships. That isn't to say there weren't robber barons and all those kind of screwballs and people that abused the system now, but it's not the system. The system, well, how to, I'm trying to think if this is a, Winston Churchill, who said, yeah, it's the worst system except for every other system, something like that. Yeah, our fallen natures will have problems in any system.

Exactly right. But when you put the injustice into this system to begin with, you're going to end up way worse off. I mean, there's a reason why the communist countries had to keep people in and prevent them from leaving. That's right. What is the wall meant to do? Is it to keep people out or is it to keep people in? And that should tell you something about how the system treats the people. So you hit a lot of the things I was going to say, Greg.

And, but yes, absolutely, Jay Richards' book, Money, Greed, and God absolutely opened my eyes, not just to how to think about this, but I realized how interesting economics is because all it is is the study of human choices. What do we as humans do? How do we flourish? What do our decisions? How do they affect the way that we divide up what our resources here on Earth? It's so fascinating. And so I highly recommend that book. I think to start with, a better term than capitalism is free market because what it is is the ability of all the people to enter freely into their transactions without compulsion.

That's the key to all of this. You have to be – if there's some way like this is why we're against monopolies, if people who are – who prevent other people from entering into, because now you're preventing the freedom of other people to step in when there's a need and to innovate. But at bottom, what this is, it's a system where people can freely enter into transactions. Now, what that means is that they're not going to enter into that transaction

unless they benefit. So what you get are transactions where both sides benefit. Right. Where it's better, I am happy. giving you my money for your product, and you're happier giving your product to me for my money. Right, right. That's how it works. And notice, you can't, in a free system, you can't just say, I'm going to charge whatever I want.

You can only charge what people are willing to pay. And this is why prices are real things. This is why you can't mess with prices. The prices reflect what people are actually willing to pay and what people are willing to make it in order for you to buy it. So you have to meet that goal. Once you start fixing prices and saying, oh, you cannot make this for, you can't sell this for more than whatever, what happens is, then you get too many people trying to buy that item and not enough item, and then you get shortages. Yeah, right, right. Or you can artificially inflate the price, and now you don't get

enough people buying it, and now people don't, they step into create it. So what the prices do, when they start getting higher, you get more people moving into that space to make more. And when they get lower, you get people moving into other spaces to make something else. So the prices are working. They're signaling information about people's choices. No one can figure that out on their own. No, you can't control the market. And I have a couple of illustrations of this.

One, I just want to say something about what things are worth. People say, well, it's not worth that much, you know. A thing is worth, whatever you're going to be. buy the price or whatever, it's worth whatever somebody is willing to pay. You cannot get away from that. Well, that's too expensive. Well, it's too expensive for you, but it's not too expensive for Fred. He's willing to pay for it. Now, if it's too expensive for everyone, guess what happens? Either the price comes down or that company goes out of business because they can't make that widget for a price they can sell it at. Okay? It modifies itself. It regulates itself, all right? And what happens is

governments think they can control the market. So I'm going to give you a great example how this works. And then I want to talk about wealth production because it's all related. So I have a buddy who lives up in San Jose as an apologist. And his dad died and left him his old truck. He might even be listening right now. But he left him his old truck. And he didn't want the truck, so he's going to sell the truck.

So he puts an ad in the paper to sell this old pickup truck, right? And he figured some guy with a gardening business is going to buy it, right? And then he gets a letter from the state. And the state said, I will buy that truck from you for $1,000 so we can spike it and throw it in the dump to lower the carbon footprint. This is a true story. I know this guy personally, all right? And he gets this letter, this state of California doing this silliness, right?

So then he gets a knock on the door. Somebody answering the ad. It's a guy with a business. He said, I want to buy your truck. He said, I'll give you $500 for your truck. And the guy says, my friend says, I already got an offer for a thousand from the government. The guy says, your truck isn't worth a thousand. Right.

But that's what the government was going to pay for him to destroy the truck that this guy can use. Now, notice what happened. The government's intervention to do something nice, artificially inflated the cost of old-used cars to make it more difficult for young, I mean, up-and-coming people trying to make a living to make a living. It made it more expensive for them because of this silly thing they were trying to do. Look at how they influenced the market for bad, all right? Now, the other, I'm sorry, you want to add to that? Notice, too, that people place different worth on things. So if you have a high price and somebody wants that and they pay for that, what happens is it goes to the person who wants it the most.

Yeah. And so then you don't have, if it were way lower, people might say, oh, yeah, I'll, I'll buy that. Why not? It's so cheap. And then someone who really wants it doesn't get it. So what happens is the prices also divide the products because we have a limited number at any given time. And they figure out who wants or needs it most. And then who doesn't.

And that's kind of how it gets arranged. Now, Jay Richards, and don't forget what you were going to go, but he tells his story of a teacher who handed out all these toys, different toys in her classroom and asked how much people were happy with it. And the score was, you know, I can't remember. It was lower. And then she says, okay, now you can trade it with people freely. You can't make them trade with you. And then at the end, the satisfaction level was greater for everyone in the whole place because they were able to freely move them around so that they made it to the way the place

where it was needed or wanted the most. So anyway, go on. I was going to make a point about wealth. Wealth is not a zero-sum game, okay? It isn't a fixed amount of wealth that has to be divvied up. But if one person gets it, then the other person doesn't get it. That's zero-sum. You've got 100 things.

You give 50 to one person, then there's not, there's only 50 left, okay? That isn't the way wealth works. I'm not talking about money right now. Many is just the medium of exchange of something that has value. I'm talking about wealth, okay? Here's standard reason. We have 33 years almost into standard reason here, and there was when there was no standard reason.

And now we have built all of us over the last 33 years something of value that gives value to people that generates income and, well, people are giving money, but that's because they're receiving. I mean, there's a give-take relationship. That's the way it works with our strategic partners in our community. But notice that there's a huge amount of value with this organization and things that we produce and give to other people that did not exist before May 1, 1993. So just before I got married, I wanted to go down to Mexico and fish in one of those great

bass fishing lakes down there. Okay? Now, these are big reservoirs that are meant to control floods and all that other stuff, but they hadn't been managed at all. They didn't have the resources. So some Americans went down there and said, look, we're going to stock it with bass, and we're going to stock it with shad or whatever, the forage base and everything. And we're just going to nurture these lakes until they get really good fishing.

And then people will come from the states and bring their American dollars, and they will spend American dollars to fish in these lakes, and we will hire your guys in these local villages as guides on our boats to go fish. and they did that. And it worked out really, really great. In fact, it worked out too great because then the local people started complaining that the Americans were stealing from them.

This is our lake. And look at you're making all this money off of it. And so it was a big hubbub about that whole thing. Notice what took place, though. There was nothing there before. There was no value except for the water. And then someone came in and invested capital and created wealth.

created a financial flow of money into the community, helping the people, and also helping those who put the capital up to create the thing. Now, this hubbub, you know, happened because of the wrong kind of thinking. Who created the wealth? It was the people that was the capitalist who was investing money with the hope of getting a profit by doing something good for the community and providing a service that I liked as a bass fisherman. and a lot of other people liked.

All those people flying into Mexico, all those fishermen, and using all the facilities and spending their American dollars there, it's great. It was a win, win for everyone when there was nothing there before. Now, everybody is winning.

It happened because of free market, capitalism. And it would not have happened under a socialistic system. There are so many, many reasons why a socialistic system fails. And let me, let me go back again to, and I'll come back to that in a second. Let me go back again to kind of ideas, basic ideas behind the free market. And you mentioned this one, Greg, and this is huge. It requires serving others. And because the system requires serving others, even if you are a greedy person or a not nice person, as long as you're

playing by the rules, you still have to serve others in order to make money. So it actually channels even bad motives into serving others. This is really important. You cannot, if all choices, if they're not coerced, then you have to convince them that they need and want your product and you have to serve them no matter what you're like. Next, capitalism requires virtues. It requires trust. I read it. There's a book by Vishal Mongawadi, the book that made your world. And I think he tells this story in there because I heard him tell this in person one time, but I think he tells this in the book, too.

He talks about how he was at some village in some European country where someone was selling milk and they had, you could go to their barn. and you could just put the money into something and take the milk. And that was able to work. Self-service. It was able to work because of virtues and trust. That made it work smoothly. You know, in Wisconsin, where I go, there are lots of firewood stands outside of residences where kids have chopped up a bunch of wood and they put it in or $5 a bundle and it's on the honor system, but the kids make some money.

So imagine, he says this would not work in countries where you didn't have that. kind of societal trust and that honesty and those virtues because the free market thrives in the midst of virtues. It works well with that. It works with human flourishing. You mentioned also it's not a zero-sum game. And this is actually how I got into this topic in the first place because one time, Jay Richards was speaking at a, we used to do, Sandrese and used to do these. Master series of Christian thought. Yes. Yeah, Hope Chapel and Hermosa v. That was a long time. And so Jay Richards was there. He's probably talking about intelligent design or something.

But he gave this throwaway line about how the economics only works because materialism, that is naturalism. I'm not talking about wanting goods. I'm talking about the idea that there is only matter. He says it only works because that is not true. Because he said what's happening. and you talked about creating wealth, we're putting something into the system. What we're putting in is the fact that we're made in the image of God and we are creative. We create new things.

We solve problems. We take the resources and we make other things out of them. And we're putting energy and ideas and products into the system. This is why it's not a zero-sum game. The pie is always growing when you have people who are invented. and doing things like that. You also touched on this one. It upholds human dignity because people get rewarded for their labors.

You're not taking their unjustly taking things away from them and just handing them over to others. People get the reward of their labor. And this is a very Christian idea. It also brings prices down because we talked about how you have people stepping in, doing it cheaper, finding ways to innovate so they can get a lower price so they can make money. It all works together to create more resources, more cheaply for more people. I mean, just think about in our country all – think about 60 years ago what people had in their homes and what they have now. I mean, it's a whole different world, and the reason why is because of innovation and free market and decisions people are making that are driving the innovation and the production.

and the production. Just think of Elon Musk. Now, there's a lot of people don't like him because of the political role he played last year. But I'm just thinking about him as an innovator and what we have that makes our lives so much better. And a lot of people drive those cars. I mean, Ellen Schleeman swears by him.

He's got two of them, you know, and John Neuiz drives one. And they're probably, if we can figure out a way to make electricity, that's cheap, you know, the future is, that's where the future is anyway. But that happened because somebody had ideas, and they were free in the market to be rewarded for the successful use of that. By the way, they also make, he makes, you know, like whole roofs out of solar shingles.

You get a whole solar shingle roof. And they have now the little thing, I'm going to put it on our cabin this summer, where, you know, what is it, SpaceX thing for broadband? and I'll have broadband in my cabin, you know, so I could do shows from there, that kind of stuff. It's just amazing. Now, think about the alternative. D, E, I, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Now, that all sounds really nice, except for when you look closely at what it amounts to.

The equity means everybody ends up at the same place, no matter what they do. That's the whole idea. And we have to diversify and get all these different folks all in there, not based on their capability of adding productively to the enterprise, but because of things that are inconsequential like their sexual desires, their gender, or their race. That's what diversity is. Okay. And then, of course, the inclusion is part of that diversity thing.

But it's all with the idea is we're going to make everybody equal at the end. Not at the beginning, equal opportunity. It's going to be equal at the end. And this robs people of their desire to improve things. because it says you do better, we're going to take it away from you. We're going to give it to somebody who's not doing much. That is the thing. So in a free market system, people see someone who's doing well, and they think, how can I provide a service and do that?

In a socialistic system, you see someone doing well and you say, how can I get that person's money? Because they owe it to me. You stole from me kind of attitude. And notice, this is at root. This is envy. Yes. This is. Yes.

Now, I'm not saying that in a free market system, people shouldn't give money away, that charity is always a good thing. I'm not discounting that. But being envious of someone else and figuring out ways to take their money is not charity. That is envy. And that is wrong. So I imagine some people are saying, well, but only rich people can afford those things. Sure, now. But think about all the things.

this goes back to what I was just saying. It sometimes things take a while to make it to everybody, but they start off. People are paying more. And then this time goes on, more people innovate and figure out how everyone can have it. Most everyone in this country has a smartphone now. Can you imagine 60 years ago, people in a lower economic situation wouldn't have anything remotely like that. No, I mean, just it's amazing. But everyone is elevated over time and everyone is better off now. So think about this. Would you rather have a system where everyone is better off, even if someone is better off, more better off than you are, you're still better off than you were 10 years ago? Or do you want to have a system where everyone is the same? There's no – and this is crazy. I have no problem with people having a lot more money than I do. What did I care if I'm doing better off than I was doing before?

Plus, they do a lot of great things for society. Sure, sure. So anyway. That concept is called Spread the Misery. Rush Limbaugh came up with that term. But here's where the concept of the gap between the rich and poor is such a misleading concept. And it goes right to what you're saying. Let's say Fred makes $100,000 a year and Bert makes $50.

It's called Bert and Ernie. Ernie makes $100,000 a year, and Bert makes $50,000 a year. What if they both doubled their, there's a $50,000 spread between them? What if they both doubled their income? So now Bert gets $200,000, and Ernie gets $100,000. They both doubled down. Wow, they're doing great. Except the difference between them now is not $50,000, it's $100,000.

Oh, my goodness. Look at the gap. between the rich and the poor, it's spreading and spreading. It's absolutely meaningless. What matters is the individual circumstances, and as you just pointed out. But I hear this all the time, the gap between the rich and the poor. Why is that relevant if everybody's making more or doing better or benefiting from the system who is investing properly in the system?

When I say investing, I don't mean like investing money. I mean investing themselves productively in the enterprise so they can, you know, all labor, there's profit, right? And you can look at how the free market has affected poverty. Just go online and you can find all sorts of things to see how people have been lifted out of poverty because it's the only system that creates wealth. A socialist system only distributes it. That's right.

It doesn't create. The government doesn't create anything. Nothing. Even when they're creating so-called jobs, just the point. Those jobs are being paid for by taxpayers. They are not being paid for by something, by wealth. created, like doing certain, you know, it's, it's, it's, anyway, I'd want to get into that, but I just was making the observation.

We, and, and I'm not even in the, because we're, we're way over, but I think there's also things that play into this in terms of the role of the government and what the government is supposed to do. We actually did a show on principles for Christians when they're voting, and so we go through some really basic ideas of what is the government, what is it meant to It's meant to keep order. It's meant to make it possible for us to engage in these free activities. It should be limited for many reasons. Anyway, I'm not going to get into all that, but I do want to close with this idea.

Okay. And that is that sometimes people can describe things in a way that makes them sound nice. but the actual result of that policy is harm to people. You cannot just get a surface level, well, isn't it nice if we give all this money to the poor? Well, that has implications for where does the money come from? What are the incentives you're creating? How are you hurting their human dignity? Who should be giving to the poor and how should they be doing it in ways that uphold their dignity

and actually lift them out of poverty and make a difference in their lives in the long run. And encourage virtue and not vice. Right. So there is a lot that goes into it. You cannot just get a surface level explanation of something and think it sounds good without finding out, does it actually do good?

So I do recommend Jay Richards' book, Money, Greeting God. I also recommend the Acton Institute. It's an ecumenical organization. It began with a Catholic priest, but there are Protestants involved and even other religions involved. But they look at religion and liberty and economics. And so if you're interested in learning more... As part of the Christian worldview. As part of the Christian...

Well, mostly, yes, that's the focus part of the Christian worldview, although there are people from other religions who will do things on their website. But so how does the Christian worldview and human flourishing fit with these ideas? of free market and what are the arguments for that and what are the actual results of policies? How do we truly help the poor? Because the question here is not who cares about the poor. The socialists care about the poor. So even if it has all these damages, then I'm going to go with them. Well, actually, both sides care about the poor, especially if you're talking about Christians.

the question is, what is the best way to help the poor? That is the real question. And this is why it comes down to how do humans truly flourish? How do we truly create wealth and how do we truly help others and how which system works the best with human nature and also works to go against the fallenness? because we've already discussed ways that the free market protects people from our fallen nature. When you have a system that's where people in power are moving money around and that's it, there's no check there. And that's when you end up with corruption and stealing and embezzlement and waste and fraud,

just all sorts of things. So there's a lot to think about, Daniel. That's a great question. It is a great question, and we went way over. But I really appreciate and I recommend those resources to you. And also, thank you for visiting us from Norway. We had a whole group of students that came here, and that was great. They come every year, different students, but the same group.

And it's always an enjoyable time with them to listen to their questions. And also to know that we're able to reach people outside of our own area. I mean, that's just always amazing to see. All right, thank you so much, Daniel. Send us your question on X with the hashtag STR Ask, or you can just go to our website at sDR.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.