Free Enterprise is Human Nature and Divinely Inspired
I’ve lost track of how many people have told me over the years that free enterprise is morally wrong.
I’m sure you’ve heard the same naysayers. Capitalism creates inequality. It encourages greed and putting profits over people. My personal favorite: Jesus himself was a socialist, so shouldn’t we be socialists, too?
I mean this literally: Hell no! Because it’s a lie from the pit of hell that free enterprise is somehow immoral.
In fact, the opposite is true: Free enterprise is divinely inspired by God Himself, and it’s a central part of human nature. We shouldn’t reject free enterprise. We should embrace it in a way that no society has ever done—not even the freest country on earth, America. It’s essential to helping everyone answer God’s call in their life.
When God made humanity, He charged us with a mission that the Bible makes clear: to be fruitful and multiply. That doesn’t just mean we should have big, beautiful, busy families—though it does mean that. It also means that we should go into the world and improve it, too. How? Through our sweat and hard work. Through our creativity and innovation. Through our inherent restlessness with the status quo and our relentless desire to leave our children and grandchildren with a better life.
In a word, we should “co-create.” And who are we co-creating with? The Creator Himself—God the Father, who made us in His image. God was the original entrepreneur—and he created us to be entrepreneurs, too!
Free enterprise is the system that allows us to co-create. It gives us the space and opportunity to discover, develop, and apply our gifts for the benefit of others. It gives us the signal of profit when our entrepreneurship improves others’ lives. By the same token, it gives us the signal of loss when we aren’t doing enough for the sake of others. When we co-create to the best of our ability, we empower our family, friends, communities, and countries to grow happier, healthier, and wealthier. That’s what God wants—for us all to flourish.
Does this mean that we have the green light to be greedy? That we have the right to put profits ahead of people? Hardly.
Rightly understood, free enterprise balances resources and distributes them in ways that uphold human dignity. Anyone who puts profit over people is actually rejecting free enterprise. Ditto anyone who greedily pursues his own good at the expense of others. That’s not free enterprise at all. It’s the kind of destruction that defines the devil—not the co-creation that springs from God.
I’m a Catholic, so I’m fortunate to have a Church that has unpacked this theological truth over the centuries. The seminal text on the Christian faith and economics is Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum. It’s focused on the “rights and duties of capital and labor,” and the central point is that when we avail ourselves of our economic rights, we have a duty to lift up those around us.
Pope John Paul II put a finer point on this defense of free enterprise a century later, in the 1991 encyclical Centessimus annus. He said that the collectivist regimes of the 20th Century—the communists and the socialists—had proven Rerum novarum right, that people would suffer under their denial of human nature. Then Pope John Paul II—who we now revere as a Saint—explicitly commended “an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, [and] private property.” In other words, free enterprise.
And to be clear, this vision of free enterprise is fully aligned with what the Catholic Church calls the “preferential option for the poor.” The Church makes clear that we have a duty to lift up the poor and vulnerable. But that doesn’t mean simply giving money to the government or relying on top-down, one-size-fits-all welfare programs. That’s a rejection of what the Church calls “subsidiarity”—the idea that people closest to problems should take the lead in solving them.
Free enterprise is the only system that accords with Christian teaching. It creates the jobs and wealth that lift up struggling communities. And it generates the profits that can be put to use in charities and non-profits. That’s the best way to serve the poor—not by farming the work out to distant bureaucrats, but by serving them ourselves through entrepreneurship and action.
For the sake of human flourishing and dignity, America today needs more free enterprise, not less. We need to get government out of the way of would-be entrepreneurs, innovators, and workers. We need to get rid of the corruption and corporate welfare that have turned countless businesses away from improving lives. We need to get socialism and collectivism out of our education system, so that kids aren’t taught to hate success and never strive for themselves. We need to do everything in our power to empower everyone around us—so that they can co-create, as God intended.
The sooner we do that, the better our own lives and our society will be. Ignore the naysayers: Free enterprise is the most moral economic system humanity has encountered. But that’s what you’d expect from something that’s divinely inspired.
Tim Busch is the founder of the Busch Firm, Pacific Hospitality Group, and the Napa Institute.
Here is what AI has to say:
“Pope Francis defines true charity as a proactive, structural, and developmental effort—not merely temporary aid. It entails fostering human dignity by ensuring access to education, healthcare, and, critically, meaningful employment, allowing individuals to participate fully in society.
Key Aspects of This Definition:
-Structural Change: Moves beyond temporary relief to address the root causes of poverty.
-Integral Development: Focuses on comprehensive human development rather than just material assistance.
-Dignity Through Labor: Emphasizes that "free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labor" is essential for human dignity.
-Empowerment: Focuses on enabling people to improve their own lives through employment, education, and healthcare.
This perspective emphasizes that charity is an active, ongoing process of empowerment and community development.”
We might also refer back to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations.
For good or for ill, I continue to receive reflections from the Believe! Journal sent out bi-weekly by Doug DeVos and purporting to promote the American principles. I’m typically unnerved by something I read in the reflections and often have it in mind to respond. I’ve only actually found the motivation to do so once before, but find myself in a place to do it again now. I recognize that the trigger in both cases, is a trite use of rich, historical documents to justify a narrow ideology. Does a response actually do any good? Probably not. At least not much beyond this: that I actually do learn a lot and often end up encouraged by what I find.
The fact that Busch offers no real justification for his claim of divine inspiration and human nature is troubling enough. However, as I mentioned above, what is most aggravating to me is his trite use of two pieces of Catholic social teaching as support.
I had not read either of these documents before, but had an immediate sense that they weren’t fairly represented in Busch’s reflection. In my reading, far from being focused on rights and duties as Busch suggests, Rerum novarum is focused on “the condition of the working classes.” That is “the pressing question of the hour.” Because of “the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses;” the pope writes that it is “the working classes themselves, for whom We are pleading.”
Pope Leo notices the “hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition.” He recognizes “that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.” The central point, then, is to provide an answer that might alleviate the stress and strain on the working classes, “that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.” Therefore, Rerum novarum is written “in order that no misapprehension may exist as to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its settlement.”
Pope John Paul II, writing 100 years later, wrote that “Rerum novarum criticizes two social and economic systems: socialism and liberalism.” He’s writing shortly after the fall of the Soviet bloc. Communist dictators had given way to popular protests and when the curtain had been lifted, the suffering of the people was found to be significant. There was good reason to question if the system supposedly meant for the people could really benefit them. The contrasting prosperity of the US made it seem that capitalism and democracy had finally won the day. And yet…
Centesimus annus bemoans, how labor was treated as a commodity rather than a source of dignity and how contracts between employer and employee “lack reference to the most elementary justice.” One hundred years had passed, but it was still possible “as in the days of Rerum novarum, to speak of inhuman exploitation. In spite of the great changes which have taken place in the more advanced societies, the human inadequacies of capitalism and the resulting domination of things over people are far from disappearing.” So while these two Catholic documents do, indeed, take a strong stand against socialism, they are no less critical of liberalism. So, what one means by “free enterprise” is what matters here.
In Centesimus annum, Pope John Paul II affirms capitalism as “an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector.” At the same time, he negates a capitalism “in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality.”
Perhaps this is what Busch is trying to articulate when he writes, “anyone who puts profit over people is actually rejecting free enterprise. Ditto anyone who greedily pursues his own good at the expense of others. That’s not free enterprise at all.” But, it’s not at all clear how that greed will be guarded against (though I can guess that he would say voluntarily, as people become Christian). At the same time, it doesn’t seem to me that either pope, or their social teaching, would agree with Busch’s sentiment that free enterprise on its own is divinely inspired and reflective of human nature. Neither would they agree that for human beings to flourish “we need to get government out of the way.” In fact, what I was so encouraged to learn about was the vision that both documents have for the role of the state in alleviating the condition of the working classes.
If Rerum novarum speaks of human nature at all it is in relationship to property. “For, every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own.” Pope Leo sees “the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature.” And this is the “impelling reason and motive” of one’s work: to obtain property. Every person has “the right of providing for the substance of his body.” Of special note is that Pope Leo describes property as a right. That means it’s not a matter of choice or chance or charity. Owning property becomes a matter of justice.
One of the “first and chief” acts of the state is to act “with that justice which is called distributive — toward each and every class alike.” Namely, “justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they create — that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable.”
While Pope John Paul doubtedly affirmed and admired the free market, he wrote that the State, “has the task of determining the juridical framework within which economic affairs are to be conducted.” It was the State that must to its part to “ensure wage levels adequate for the maintenance of the worker and his family, including a certain amount for savings.” While Pope John Paul made it clear that “what is being proposed as an alternative is not the socialist system” but he was demanding that “the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the State, so as to guarantee that the basic needs of the whole of society are satisfied.”
Pope Leo makes it clear that, “the first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.” Echoing this sentiment 100 years later, Pope John Paul concludes that the “principle task of the State is to guarantee this security, so that those who work and produce can enjoy the fruits of their labours and thus feel encouraged to work efficiently and honestly.”
Far from being an interference in a free economy, both popes see the State as a guard against a perverted view of freedom and narcissism “which refuses to be limited by any demand of justice.” Far from being a hindrance to freedom in the marketplace, the State, by ensuring wages that give ready access to private property “affords each person the scope needed for personal and family autonomy, and should be regarded as an extension of human freedom.” The State provides those “material and external helps” not only for freedom, but also because they are “necessary to virtuous action.”
As Pope Leo concludes, “We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.” In doing so, “property will certainly become more equitably divided.” And, in that pursuit of equity the pope assumes that “men would cling to the country in which they were born, for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life.”
While Tim Busch might imagine a world in which individual entrepreneurs voluntarily help their neighbors through charity and philanthropy, Catholic social teaching envisions a strong state that ensures justice, namely a distributive justice that affords as many people as possible the right of ownership. “And the more that is done for the benefit of the working classes by the general laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek for special means to relieve them.”