Bootstrapping together: Religion and Economics

I am an ordinary human being, I am no genius and I am completely anonymous. There are thousands or millions of people like me who aspire for a better financial freedom in their life, a good life, free to do whatever we please within the boundaries of our own morality and culture. So in a way, our aspiration of good life, achieved by economic well-being needs to be within our framework of our own religion.  Sometimes a narrow framework developed from misinterpretation of religious sayings restricts our economic activity but mostly, in the context of modern 21^st century it is not. While at a personal level there is no dialectics between economics and religion it is there at a macro level. If a religion is organized one with a mandate to convert and spread, then economic power might become very useful in achieving that objective. After all, morality and culture can only have a meaning when one survives. The fundamental instinct of every human being to survive can only be appeased by economic success, but all these attainment loses significance if there is no morality and culture to give it a meaning. In a way, economy is needed to pull a man out of poverty but not enough to dissolve his wretchedness. It is also not self-sustaining as an unhappy man will not perform well enough to climb into high echelons of economics and endure there.

On our planet there are multiple religions and each having many followers choosing to live their life in one way or the other. It is their religion; their belief is what gives meaning to their life. The economic judgments that these individuals make to live their life according to their faith is what micro decisions are about. A company doing business need to be cognizant about these and act accordingly so that it can achieve its mission, whatever may be, profit maximization or social welfare. Collected together these micro decisions become broad economic behavior. For centuries, we have seen various religions endeavoring to spread their faith, and increase the number of followers, which was the indicator of that religion’s power or influence level.  All these lead to dynamics of macro demand for goods and services, say certain product maybe of high demand in Saudi Arabia but may not be worth that much in England. Presently world religion are either organized (like Christianity, Islam) or personal (like Hinduism), this fragmentation also have a profound effect on the individuals behavior and thus in turn macro demand/supply curve. Also throughout history, we have seen many cases where the society – not only internationally, but also domestically - is under dispute among polarized rival religions, sometimes they lead to holy war and destroy the economy. At the other extreme, a tolerant society promoting diversity, at an international or national level can lead to a happy ending with a synergy effects. Economic growths is either, about increasing the size of the Roti via higher productivity or make a new roti with a different taste so that there are two roti’s instead of one. So yes, religions do have a deep impact on economics and that is manifested by defining an individual’s morality framework that subsequently influences the culture and behavior.

Religious practices impose an immediate trade-off, as they require time and resources that are then unavailable for an alternative way. However there are many alternative ways, each and every religion have their own chosen way. For every opinion there is route. Also for the atheist, there is a way, the way to find the meaning of life and live in joy, fulfillment and freedom. The fundamental aspect that is common to all forms of religion or no religion is that they prescribe rules of behavior, or practices, which constrain followers, with varying degrees of strictness. All of them have a common goal, which is to give a better life to an individual. This is also the very reason for the existence of the subject of study of economics. Its approach is not through prescriptions on human morality but through efficient allocation of resources. This work best when there exists diversity, increased choices provides numerous ways to arrange resources for higher productivity or building a new economic engine. This, I think is the cause of affluence of the modern society. Twenty first century society is much more multicultural, multi religious than in any other in known human history.

The other side of the argument is that if the world had only one religion, can we say we would have been economically better off. My answer to it will be ‘no’ simply because we will be ignoring the all the other possibilities. Diversity is the key, while choosing a particular way to live a life brings coherence, along with it, it is also important to be aware of multiplicity of evolution and ready to absorb newer, different ideas (be it religious or economic) that might enhance our way to live life.