God is not partial and is no respecter of persons
nooshin July 1st, 2008
There is something clearly wrong in the economic system of the world today and it is the most vulnerable who are having to pay the price. Since the start of 2006, the average world price for rice has risen by 217 percent, wheat by 136 percent, maize by 125 percent and soybeans by 107 percent, (according to a Wikipedia entry on 2007-2008 world food price crisis). These price hikes have sparked a wave of protests around the world: from Haiti to Kenya to Indonesia to Egypt and Ivory Coast.
In an interesting article (Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher, 30 June 2008), the New York Times explains that since 1980 “even as trade in services and in manufactured goods has tripled, adjusting for inflation, trade in food has barely increased. Instead, for decades, food has been a convoluted tangle of restrictive rules, in the form of tariffs, quotas and subsidies….[T]he world is increasingly dependent on a handful of countries…that are still exporting large quantities of food…. [P]oor countries have frequently cut farm assistance programs and lowered tariffs to balance budgets and avoid charging high prices to urban consumers. But they have found that their farmers cannot compete with imports from rich countries — imports that are heavily subsidized”.
In our Economics 101 lectures we were taught about Adam Smith’s ”invisible hand“, about comparative advantage and the importance of free trade. By the time we made it to post-graduate courses, our lecturers could no longer hide the fact that Messers Smith, Keynes and Friedman did not have it all worked out, and that in fact “free market forces” did not have the power to fix everything.
In a statement entitled Valuing Spirituality in Development (18 February 1998), the Baha’i International Community posits an entirely different view of economics:
Central to the task of reconceptualizing the organization of human affairs is arriving at a proper understanding of the role of economics. The failure to place economics into the broader context of humanity’s social and spiritual existence has led to a corrosive materialism in the world’s more economically advantaged regions, and persistent conditions of deprivation among the masses of the world’s peoples. Economics should serve people’s needs; societies should not be expected to reformulate themselves to fit economic models. The ultimate function of economic systems should be to equip the peoples and institutions of the world with the means to achieve the real purpose of development: that is, the cultivation of the limitless potentialities latent in human consciousness.
There is a very useful tool that economists use to measure the inequality of wealth distribution. The Gini Coefficient is a ratio between 0 and 1, with 0 being perfect equality. The map below illustrates the 2007/2008 Gini Coefficient for the world, as based on a recently released Human Development Report by the UNDP. The darker the colour, the more unequal is the distribution of wealth in that country.
Addressing the problem of the extremes between wealth and poverty, the Universal House of Justice said this, in their 1985 message to the world The Promise of World Peace:
The inordinate disparity between rich and poor, a source of acute suffering, keeps the world in a state of instability, virtually on the brink of war. Few societies have dealt effectively with this situation. The solution calls for the combined application of spiritual, moral and practical approaches. A fresh look at the problem is required, entailing consultation with experts from a wide spectrum of disciplines, devoid of economic and ideological polemics, and involving the people directly affected in the decisions that must urgently be made. It is an issue that is bound up not only with the necessity for eliminating extremes of wealth and poverty but also with those spiritual verities the understanding of which can produce a new universal attitude. Fostering such an attitude is itself a major part of the solution.
Unbridled nationalism, as distinguished from a sane and legitimate patriotism, must give way to a wider loyalty, to the love of humanity as a whole. Bahá’u’lláh’s statement is: “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” The concept of world citizenship is a direct result of the contraction of the world into a single neighbourhood through scientific advances and of the indisputable interdependence of nations. Love of all the world’s peoples does not exclude love of one’s country. The advantage of the part in a world society is best served by promoting the advantage of the whole.
It is important for all of us, especially those from more developed countries, to remember our responsibilities to the rest of the world and to not take our material comforts for granted, as if they are somehow our “God-given rights”. The resources of the world are the God-given patrimony of every member of the human race.
God is not partial and is no respecter of persons. He has made provision for all. The harvest comes forth for everyone. The rain showers upon everybody and the heat of the sun is destined to warm everyone. The verdure of the earth is for everyone. Therefore there should be for all humanity the utmost happiness, the utmost comfort, the utmost well-being.
But if conditions are such that some are happy and comfortable and some in misery; some are accumulating exorbitant wealth and others are in dire want — under such a system it is impossible for man to be happy and impossible for him to win the good pleasure of God. God is kind to all. The good pleasure of God consists in the welfare of all the individual members of mankind.
(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity)
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