Stewardship Schmoowardship

There are many things that are exasperating about the soi disant stewards of the environment, but the central exasperating thing about them lies right at the heart of their claim. This is especially true of Christians who tell us that Jesus requires us to be “stewards of the earth,” and that being green is a spiritual value.

And so it is. The problem is that the greens always turn everything brown. And here is why.

The Greek word for steward is oikonomos, the word from which we get economy, and economics, and all the rest of those dismal words. A steward provides household law; he is the one who keeps track of things, or is supposed to.

The ability to give a reckoning, to give an account, is right at the heart of stewardship. Now when modern Christians talk about “stewardship of the earth,” they are almost always talking about cultivating feelings of general benevolence, coupled with good intentions that desire a good and green outcome. This cultivation is expressed by making a law in favor of the contemporary cause de jure, without any regard for what this does everywhere in the system. This is like a bookkeeper who makes an entry in the ledger in one place, without any awareness of the fact that this will affect his columns of numbers everywhere else in the ledger. He eventually turns the page, and is surprised, astonished, flummoxed. He promises congressional hearings, the kind of hearing that is guaranteed always to leave the real culprits alone. This is because the real culprits are the ones holding the hearings, which is kind of convenient, come to think of it. The last thing these people have on their minds is an accounting, and the last thing they are prepared to do is give an actual accounting. But that is what stewardship is.

Apart from a genuine free market, it is not possible to give an accounting. In a nation where the resources (and the environment that contains those resources) are all managed by the government, stewardship is a conceptual impossibility. This is because when the markets are not free, nobody knows the true price of anything. When no one knows the true price of anything, this removes intelligent incentives, and creates a host of perverse incentives. The only kind of stewardship possible is legal, perverse stewardship, or illegal, honest stewardship. Remember, the rule of law is not “making something legal.” The rule of law is a constant, and it governs the refs as well as the players. If refs can change the rules of the game in the course of the game, that is not the rule of law, not even if the ref blew his whistle when he did it.

Imagine a gigantic yard sale, covering five suburban yards. Suppose further that none of those working the sale were allowed to put a price tag on anything, most things were still for sale, and those that were not for sale were put off limits, according to their whims, by about three policemen who were wandering back and forth through the sale, swinging their billy clubs. Now, get a megaphone, stand on a nearby porch, and urge everybody to “be good stewards.”

Hernando de Soto has shown, in his The Mystery of Capital, that Third World nations have plenty of resources, plenty of wealth. It is available and near at hand. What they don’t have is the rule of law, and the attendant concept of clear title. When no one has clear title, there is no basis for the generation of wealth, and no basis for stewardship of the resultant wealth.

What I am about to say may seem a bit radical, so let me begin with a biblical illustration of the principle. The Bible says that a man who does not discipline his son hates his son (Prov. 13:24). This hatred is objective, measured by the results. It is not subjective, that is, it does not key off the emotional state of the father who is doing this awful thing to his son. He is probably a bleeding heart, not a “hater.” But he still hates his son.

In that spirit, with that qualification, it has to be said that environmentalists hate the environment, in just the same way that statists and liberals hate the poor. They talk like nobody’s business. Their phylacteries are wide, and they give lengthy prayers in the synagogues. They are the worst. They tie heavy burdens on the backs of others, which neither they nor their cronies are willing to bear themselves. They are false. They are wrong. They are hypocrites. And Christians who parrot their line are in rebellion against the very idea of stewardship. They hate it; they don’t want to give an accounting of just how it is that they destroy the environment, and bring about the extinction of species. They don’t care. All they want to do is roll their eyes when you come in and ask to see the books. Books? We don’t want books! We don’t want to reckon, we don’t want to count. All we want is a law that guarantees a fine result, with birds chirruping in the trees.

But stewardship looks at the results. A review of stewardship asks to see the books. But these fuzzy benevolence stewards wants an accounting department that never has to add up any numbers. Numbers are tiring. Numbers make my head heart. Numbers aren’t very green. Right. And people who think like that are terrible stewards.

Every resource in the world has a true price. That is the price established for it by the hand of God when men and women are trading peacefully, and not thieving from one another. The legalization of this thievery, which many professing Christians are muddled enough to advocate, destroys the rule of law, and introduces thuggery to the management of the yard sale. They want to make it legal for the cops to club anyone who tries to sell something that would be bad for global warming. Later on, this afternoon, they will be clubbing those who sell items that will accelerate the undeniable threat of global cooling. They don’t care about the results, just so long as they get to club somebody.