Torah and economic approach

[Tag-MehirTzedek]

Would like any and all sources dealing with this issue, no biases and throw everything in even if agreed upon or disagreed upon. "right" "left" or "middle", discussion on Torah and economics (and Please
 STAY ON TOPIC)

[muman613]

The Torah insists that all business transactions be fair and balanced... Cheating and Corruption are both frowned upon.

This is based on the several commandments concerning 'weights and measures'...

http://www.chabad.org/search/keyword_cdo/kid/18178/jewish/Honest-Weights-and-Measures.htm

Proper Measures

We learn in the Torah portion of Kedoshim:1 “Do not falsify measurements, whether in length, weight or volume. You must have an honest balance, honest weights, an honest dry measure, and an honest liquid measure.”

The Gemara explains2 that although in any case one is guilty of theft when one sells something weighed with a false measure, the Torah states this command explicitly. This is to teach us that the prohibition is not only against using false measures, but against even the making of a false measure, though it is never used.

Thus the Rambam rules:3 “Whoever retains in his house … a false measure … transgresses a prohibitory command.” So too with regard to the positive command, the Rambam states:4 “It is a positive command to see to it that one’s scales are extremely well-balanced, and to ensure that they are so at the time of manufacture.”

Clearly, then, the violation of the prohibition does not begin when a person uses false measurements to defraud someone; it begins from the very moment the false weights are made and kept in the person’s house.

With regard to all other aspects of thievery, the transgression only begins at the moment of theft. Why does the law against false measurements differ from all other laws of theft; why does a person transgress just by making or having an object that may eventually be used dishonestly?

In all other instances, when a person steals from another there is only a single intent: to seize something that belongs to the other. Here, however, two things are happening at the same time. On the one hand, the sinner is “weighing and measuring” — he is expressing an intention of dealing honestly with his fellow man. Yet he is using a false measure — the very same instrument that he uses to engender trust!

The Torah therefore prohibits even the making and keeping of such a measure, though it is not used for fraud. For the point of the “laws of measurements” is not so much that of seeing to it that one does not cheat others — that is simple theft and is already prohibited. Rather, it is to negate such deceitful dispositions and tendencies within the person himself.5[/quote[

[muman613]

This article disccusses some of the Torah's views on Economics..


http://www.torah.org/learning/business-ethics/tzav.html

The Challenge of Wealth

Parshas Tzav
By Dr. Meir Tamari

Shimon bar Yochai taught, “The Olah is only brought for evil thoughts”. Said Rabbi Levi, “This is explicit in the verse ‘HaOlah (that which cometh) into your mind, shall not be to worship wood and stone’ (Ezikiel, 20:32)” (Midrash Rabbah, Vayikra 7:3). “The Olah atones for non-fulfillment of positive mitzvoth (like the person who forgot to give charity or to put on tefillin) or for a negative mitzvah related to a positive one (the injunction against closing ones hands not to give charity), both errors only in thought” (Talmud Bavli, Yoma 36a). It is clear that there is punishment for the sinful thought process. “You shall not covet” is after all one of the Ten Commandments and it is obviously aimed at thought crimes.

Such thoughts are the primary factor in all our actions since ‘the thought is father to the deeds’. This is particularly the case in economic immorality. The desire for wealth is a positive and beneficial one and that desire is the force which motivates people to produce and to acquire wealth and economic assets. It brings in its wake progress and prosperity, Our Rabbis’ once caught the Evil Inclination and imprisoned him. They thought that now only good would motivate Man, only to find that there wasn’t even one fertilized egg to be found and people were simply not making any effort to develop the world and to engage, amongst other things, in economic activity. This means that thoughts about other peoples’ wealth or standard of living would be a positive thing because it would encourage us to try and emulate them. However, that is only one side of the coin. The down side of those thoughts is that the chase after an ever rising standard of living often causes us to achieve unethically, what we can not obtain through ethical means. The slippery slope of greed is constant and greed is after all one of the main sources of business immorality. In Pirkei Avot (Chapter 5, Mishnah 13) the rasha is defined not as one who takes another’s possessions, but as one who lusts after them, saying “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is (also) mine”.

The Rambam codified the legal situation of these thoughts insofar as economics and business are concerned. “One who covets and exerts social or any other kind of pressure on the owner to sell, even though he pays market price, and there is no punishment since there has been no illegal action, nevertheless his atonement requires a korban. (Hilkhot Gezeilah VeAveidah, Chapter 1: Halachot 9-11)

The problem is how to punish one for these thoughts, or for that matter how is somebody supposed to know that another person has such thoughts. The example given by the Codes is the story of Navot and his vineyard, as described in 1 Kings, Chapter 21. Navot had a vineyard adjacent to the home of the King Ahab in Jezreel, which the King coveted. His pressure on Navot to sell it to him or to exchange it for a far superior vineyard was of no avail. The King, in the language of the Tanach, was depressed, refused to eat or drink and turned his face to the wall in a monumental sulk. His non-Jewish queen, Jezebel, promised to get the vineyard for him; and so cure him of his frustration. She brought trumped up charges of blasphemy against Navot, and on the evidence of bribed witnesses, Navot was found guilty and put to death. His property, including his vineyard became the property of the Crown. When King Ahab went to take possession of the vineyard, which he had coveted, he was met by the Prophet Elijah who challenged him, saying, “Hast thou murdered and also come to take possession?”. First comes the coveting, then the pressure on the owner to part with his property, and if he does not do so it leads to murder.

These thoughts are always influenced by the standard of living of the surrounding society and the high pressure persuasion of the advertising industry in both the written and electronic media. More becomes better than less and we are convinced that we never have enough. The average person finds it almost impossible to withstand these pressures whereby wants, which are unlimited, are translated into needs. Then we have to devote more time and more effort to find the means to fund our new requirements. We become slaves then to our needs and have to satisfy them either through moral and legal means; where these are insufficient, we will do so through immoral and unethical ones.

These pressures do not absolve us from unethical or immoral thinking in the economic sphere; they only make it more difficult for the individual to withstand them.