I agree—generally—with Goldberg’s take on the contributions of capitalism. Jeffrey Sachs, the renowned economist, makes a very impressive argument along those lines in his great book, “The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Times.” And even Dinesh D’Souza—who I rarely agree with—makes a convincing argument that when people are lifted out of poverty through economic development they often make certain kinds of moral progress too because they no longer face the temptations that misery and survival mode place of the poorest of the poor. No question about that in my mind and in my experience. Lots to be said for capitalism and the wealth of all kinds it creates. Folks that say they want to help the poor but dismiss market approaches are hard to take seriously.

I think the discussion you’re suggesting is more fruitful than what I consider to be a pretty tired Goldbergian style defense of capitalism—at a time when capitalism is ascendant that approach seems kind of 25 years ago and maybe an example of getting stuck in old timey cultural wars. Seems like intellectual energy is better invested examining how to reform capitalism so it can serve people and societies better than it does presently. The church could and should play a central role in that attempt.

Greenblatt, and social entrepreneurs around the world, are in the thick of re-examining current forms of capitalism and trying to introduce new values into ‘the bottom line.’ I’m in the middle of creating a new organization dedicated to helping social entrepreneurs and social visionaries experiment with new ways to ‘do business’ and I’m very excited because I think that’s one of the cutting edge challenges right now.

I guess a key element in the attempt to reform capitalism is identifying the values and outcomes we’re not comfortable with—or feel are just plain wrong—and identifying other values and outcomes we’d rather see. Maybe excessive ‘atomization’ is a problem, or particularly egregious forms of economic inequality and lack of opportunity, or especially virulent strains of materialism or turning more and more area of life into ‘commodities.’

And of course, part of that process is identifying the ‘trade offs’ we can live with—in the real world no system or approach can deliver everything we might want. Only then are you ready to create practical experiments (pragmatic idealism?) for alternative models of capitalist practice.

For example, some of us think most current examples of “the corporation”—capitalism’s most communal form—isn’t democratic enough (maybe that was one of the real problems with old school socialism too?). How can that be changed? How do you develop management and decision making models that make it more democratic? How do you give shareholders a much greater voice?

To paraphrase a first century guy, ‘Capitalism is made for man and not man for Capitalism.’ It just seems Christians should be in the middle of this critical discussion and effort in a deeper way than we seem to be right now.