Another important aspect of Third World debt forgiveness is one I have alluded to several times, but we have not yet developed it. And that concerns this subject — who is it, exactly, that is doing the forgiving, and on whose behalf is it being done? And on what authority?
The money that was loaned to these countries was either public or private. If public, it was extorted from the taxpayers under threat of violence. Now if loans of money obtained in this way are subsequently written off, that can only be described as generosity with other people’s money (obtained initially by theft). But if the money is private, then the private bank obtained the money they were intending to loan to the crazy dictators by means of making certain representations to the investors in their bank. Now investments of this kind can certainly go south, and a private bank might be in a position where they have to write off a large number of bad loans. But if this happens, it is the kind of thing that should result in bank closures, resignations from the board, insurance pay-outs to the investors, that kind of thing. It is not simply a matter of “forgiveness” — the directors of the bank don’t have the authority to simply forgive the debt without getting a green light from the people whose money it is. They do have the authority to screw up with the investors’ money; but they don’t have the authority to be generous with it. But if they screw up, then they should be punished by all the market forces you might expect.
But if the private bank forgives the debts, and then turns to the government to underwrite that generosity for them, then we are back in the first coercive scenario. And because we are talking about a lot of money, there is an enormous amount of pressure to go this route — which means that, in effect, we have Christian leaders calling for confiscation and theft here in order that someone else might look like they are conducting an act of generosity there.
This is not an argument against true generosity with one’s own money, by the way. If the Church of England were to cut a check to an Third World country that enabled them to pay off their debt, I would think that was well within their rights to do. I would want them to do it carefully, but if it were done with care, I believe that it really would be magnificent. But if the Church of England, believing in Jesus, pressures a civil government that does not believe in Jesus, so that said civil government will confiscate a thousand pounds from an English citizen who doesn’t believe in Jesus either, in order to write off a bad debt owed by a country at war with Jesus, something seems a little off somehow. It is as though the Church set itself up to mediate disputes between rival biker gangs over cocaine deals gone wrong.
Now this is why the language of egalitarianism so often gets into these discussions. If the problem we are trying to address by means of stealing is actually a problem that is actually a worse crime than stealing, then it can be rationalized more effectively. This is why this issue is so often represented as a matter of justice, and not a matter of mercy. It is hard for an act made in the name of mercy to cover up a rank injustice. It is much easier for strident calls for justice to cover up the injustice. If you are going to rip off an American widow living on a fixed income, it is necessary to do it claiming that you are trying to fight an even bigger rip off. In our current political climate, that will fly — or at least it has so far. That American widow is no longer a victim — she (and everyone who makes more money than the global average) is actually complicit in the oppression. Don’t shed any tears for her.
This is part of the reason why envy is so necessary to this kind of operation. I have noted in a number of places that guilt is a terrible motivator — but in doing so I am referring to guilt as a motive force for Christian generosity. But guilt is not an ineffective tool for manipulating people into accepting the plunder of their goods. “We are not plundering you; we are simply taking back some of what you (and your countrymen) have yourselves plundered over the years.” But the plundering our IRS agents do here takes away a sizable portion of this poor woman’s income. The plundering we do by means of inflating the currency makes her life tenuous and difficult, threatening her ability to continue to live in her home. The plundering she “was guilty of,” the plundering that justifies our treatment of her, was because she had, over the course of her life, been known to purchase inexpensive bananas from time to time, thus implicating her in the behavior of Teddy Roosevelt in Central America.
In all of this, advocates of debt forgiveness as a justice matter are swallowing camels while they strain out gnats.