CUA's Business School's First Conference, Part III | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: The remarks by (and reaction by MSW) ot the talk by Edward Hadas are interesting. Essentially, he said to behave ethically in the Catholic mindset or the collectivist government will do it for them. Libertarians saying the word collectivist imply that this would be bad. As a collectivist, I would respond that the Popes are much more willing for a governmental role in providing real equality than most in the government do, aside from Bernie Sanders. I suspect if I had been asked to give a presentation on a collectivist response to capitalism, the crowd would either throw things or run from the room.
The third afternoon speaker was Samuel Gregg of Acton. As you might guess, no one from Catholic Worker or the Green Party was on the agenda (MSW lists Catholics for Choice - although I suspect that they would be better received than my suggestions). Once you invite Ave Maria, there is no where to go up up. Gregg wrote a book called The Tea Party Catholic - I guess you can go lower. He spoke on the dangers of crony capitalism (a libertarian code word for monopoly gone too far). Gregg does not get the joke he is making - that all capitalism is crony capitalism because it restrains both product markets (making them less free) and labor markets (subverting them to hierarchy and despotism). His audience were simply stealth crony capitalists who don't think what they are doing is at all wrong. Perhaps it is apt that this is at CUA and that confessions were offered - sadly the biggest sinners did the teaching.
CUA Law's George Garvey spoke on organized labor (and exception to what I just said) and how it relates to solidarity and subsidiarity, with state functions growing as these have declined - sadly in my opinion, President Bush tried his utmost to kill those functions too.
CUA Business School Dean (and conference organizer) Andrew Abela spoke at some point (chronology by either MSW or me went away long ago). His vision is to have this be the Pope's Business School, although I am not seeing how these speakers lead to that end. Having a course on marriage and family (is it mandatory?) may stop a CEO from not considering a candidate who was getting divorced because he would be "distracted" (except that in my experience, MBA students, like MPA students, while being oriented to the issues will not be making corporate policy until much later in their careers, if ever). Abela spoke on putting virtue in "hiring, coaching and evaluation and leadership" in his course of study. Again, new MBAs, if they do these things, must listen to policy, not what they learned at CUA. He cites a Koch Industries practice as an example. You can fill in the blanks from there yourself, although I have two words to describe this - tone deaf. He also mentions Hobby Lobby, which is funny to advocate libertarianism in one breath and religious hierarchism the next (in reiterating that corporations are people - more so then the employees). Of course, that is the schizophrenia which is Catholic thought on the right.
One of MSW's major complaints about the Conference was no Q&A. Of course, I am not sure how adding input from conservative or libertarian businessmen would have added anything - and if MSW tried to talk as a member of the media, I am sure the police in attendance would have removed him. The other is that no one seemed to mention Catholic Social teaching (including the latest piece which follows the tradition of not saying nice things about business ("The Economy kills). Again, if MSW had mentioned this, the police would have escorted him out. The sad fact about any Catholic University is that it runs on donations from people like those who went to and were pandered to at this conference - of course, this may or may not say anything about what happens in class. Those are hiring and admissions decisions, although it is telling that none of the CUA teaching faculty spoke.
No comments:
Post a Comment