Personally I’m thinking Islam (sans its ban on charging interest) is the religion most in-line w/ free market and voluntaryist values. For one thing, they use real money. Also, markets in the Islamic world were some of the freest in history. They didn’t see the problems which arose in Europe and East Asia.
I could care less what religion is the most free market. It’s really irrelevant to what the aims of whatever religion you care to adhere to are.
Satanism for sure. It’s a religion based around a contractual agreement.
Well played.
Actually, the Church of Satan had some rather libertarian-ish views on ethics. It’s been questioned whether Rand was an influence on LaVey, but there’s really no evidence to support this (but it’s fact that Ragnar Redbeards Might is Right was an influence, which "Libertarian historian James J. Martin called it "surely one of the most incendiary works ever to be published anywhere.’ ")
Definitely my faith, Zoroastrianism.
Zoroastrianism […] rejects every form of asceticism, has no dualism of matter and spirit (only of good and evil), and sees the spiritual world as not very different from the natural one, and the word “paradise” (via Latin and Greek from Avestan pairi.daeza, literally “stone-bounded enclosure”) applies equally to both.
Central to Zoroastrianism is the emphasis on moral choice, to choose the responsibility and duty for which one is in the mortal world, or to give up this duty and so facilitate the work of druj. Similarly, predestination is rejected in Zoroastrian teaching. Humans bear responsibility for all situations they are in, and in the way they act toward one another. Reward, punishment, happiness, and grief all depend on how individuals live their lives.
In Zoroastrianism, good transpires for those who do righteous deeds. Those who do evil have themselves to blame for their ruin. Zoroastrian morality is then to be summed up in the simple phrase, “good thoughts, good words, good deeds” (Humata, Hukhta, Hvarshta in Avestan), for it is through these that asha is maintained and druj is kept in check.
Free market emphasis added by me.
Rothbardian Anarcho-capitalism.
Satanism for sure. It’s a religion based around a contractual agreement.
So does satanism look down on fiat currency? b/c islam certainly does.
Rothbardian Anarcho-capitalism.
True, we’re pretty religious. =)
So does satanism look down on fiat currency? b/c islam certainly does.
Dude, you want to run about half naked in a tent, detest civilization, and “do everything yourself”. What does it matter to you about currency or markets - or what is better for them to thrive? You are one step away from saying “square circle”.
Besides all that, in this day and age anything that was worthwhile said in any religion has been absorbed into better clearer grammer long long ago - all it can be in these much brighter and more relevant days is an obvious grammatical error of the worst kind… at best . At worst empty psychologisms, or a sales pitch to low grade rubes or second rate intellectuals who have out thought themselves.
For example, I was praying at the shrine of Non-Aggression today, paying tithes to the LP and supporting the Rothbard Caucus, and religiously watching some Rothbard lectures today. God, if I could have chosen one man live for all eternity…xD
For example, I was praying at the shrine of Non-Aggression today, paying tithes to the LP and supporting the Rothbard Caucus, and religiously watching some Rothbard lectures today. God, if I could have chosen one man live for all eternity…xD
Than you sir a a heretic - a true Rothbardian would never pay tithes to the LP!!!
Than you sir a a heretic - a true Rothbardian would never pay tithes to the LP!!!
Oh, ha, that is true, I will have to switch my alliances at some point, if I get your meaning!
I think Taoism is fairly laissez-faire. Certain varieties of Buddhism are free-market friendly… I think Tibetan Buddhism is. Paradoxically, I think that many of India’s religions are also laissez-faire. despite India’s rampant socialism since being colonized by the Brits. In fact, I take monotheism as symptomatic of a bias towards central-planning and a territorial monopolist of security and law - any polytheistic religion is inherently more tolerant of letting others think what they like. “I believe in Lord Ganesh.” “I believe in Durga.” “Oh, well, that’s fine, Ganesh is Durga’s son.” “Oh really? I didn’t know that.”
I’m not saying that theological dogma, including monotheism, is inherently anti-libertarian. There’s something to be said for the correlation between the strength of cultural boundaries and the respect for property rights and I think this is what you see in Europe. It was a long, hard slog for the Church of Rome to sterilize Europe of its indigenous religions and impose Christianity as a pan-European religion … and they never really succeeded, despite the fact they always talk up whatever success they did have to make it seem like “why, Europe has always been Christian, of course!” The cultures of Europe are notable for their affinity for strong property rights and I believe this fed into the strong localization of Europe. For centuries, the European elites have been trying to break this localization down but, despite all their apparent successes (e.g. the EU), they really have not yet succeeded in imposing their vision of a European monoculture. So, the fact that Europeans have always had a grumpy disposition towards foreign religious ideas may in fact be related to the strong respect for property rights that is an integral part of Europe’s cultural DNA.
Clayton -
Hinduism is such an intricate and complex religion, on a whole I don’t know where to begin. Though, if you come across some in their explanation it’ll come off as polytheism, but behind it monotheism dressed as polytheism, as all the gods/goddesses are variants of Brahma, which is the supreme lord, or soul.
You’re pretty right about Europe. It’s only been Christian for about 1,000 years (which really isn’t that long), and during that period Christianity had to form itself to the views, beliefs, attitudes, and culture of Europeans at the time (literature like Beowulf is probably more Heathen than it is Christian in attitude and views). A lot of practices were still carried on, but with a Christian veil (so to speak). The school system has done a pretty good job of keeping Europe Christian. I remember in my world history class we’d talk about all these cultures and empires, but oddly enough when discussing NW Europe it’s coincidently during the age of conversion that we start off on, and you never hear a word about pre-Christian Europe (besides some Vikings, good propaganda, make it seem everyone in pre-Christian Europe was an outlaw, don’t discuss culture, lore, and lines of kings and kingdoms). At the most we’d discuss the movements of various groups (Danes, Angles, Saxons, etc.), but like any school it’s remembering what group was placed at this part of the map at this year in history, and nothing else.
Things like this lead me to have some bias towards Christianity
There is no clear answer, because most religions are over thousand years old and have created many variations and different emphasis through the years. Every religion has certain free market aspects, example Lutherans have hard work and savings, Catholics in Southern Europe respect their family more than the state, protestants of Switzerland belive wealth means place in heaven, etc. And those are just variations of christianity. Islam had much more free market-oriented version going on in middle ages, but times change. You can find support for the metal currencies even from the Bible, Islam is not the only religion which has been pro-gold centuries ago. But sound money is not the only branch of free market ideas.
So does satanism look down on fiat currency? b/c islam certainly does.
Dude, you want to run about half naked in a tent, detest civilization, and “do everything yourself”. What does it matter to you about currency or markets - or what is better for them to thrive? You are one step away from saying “square circle”.
So what makes you think there’d be no means of exchange in a postciv world? MoE arise naturally and I would expect people to still value gold. That said I’d much rather praise a religion where free markets are championed than promote religions where there not.
The Mormons seem to be pretty free-market, pro-sound money, although you wouldn’t know it by the two running for office on the federal level. But considering Utah is the only state in the Union to declared gold and silver coins legal tender, and willing to cock their snoot at the Fed, I think that places them somewhere in the running.
It depends on the particular interpretation in question of a given religion; there’s more variation in free-market friendliness between different sects of Christianity than there is between Christianity and Islam in general, for instance. If one were to take the commandments as gospel, so to speak, then all Abrahamic religions are incredibly free market, simply by virtue of ‘thou shalt not steal’, and the existence of a State being reliant on theft. People who read socialism into Christianity generally lack a proper grasp of nuance; they’re unable to understand that, whilst the Bible may advocate virtues of charity, giving to the poor, etc, it doesn’t advocate the use of violence to take from the rich and give to the poor, and the difference between the former and the latter is the difference between charity and socialism. So whilst it might be correct to say the Bible supports a society where people give a large portion of their income to the poor and share the products of their labour (like voluntarism), it would not be correct to say the Bible advocates a society where such redistribution occurs non-voluntarily through violent wealth transfers. “There is no compulsion in religion”, in the words of Mohammad; it may be ‘bad’ for somebody not to do something, but that doesn’t justify the use of force to control their behaviour, as charity performed under duress is not charity at all. Islam does have a form of mandatory tax, the Zakāt, which might be considered incompatible with free market values, but then I think some interpretations view that tax as voluntary, and the scale of it can also vary widely, as there’s no exact percentage set by the Koran (this site is a good reference for market-friendly interpretations of Islam: http://www.minaret.org/).
Esoteric (as opposed to exoteric) Taoism is explicitly free-market in a sense, in that there are passages literally stating ‘the smaller the government, the better’ and ‘the less rules and regulation, the better’, but it’s also anticapitalist in other ways, discouraging competition and material progress (since if people were perfectly contented, they’d have no need or desire for material improvement). Equally, esoteric Buddhism is not supportive of violence, hence not conducive to a strong state, but also generally discourages material pursuits as leading ultimately to dissatisfaction, so is not compatible with the free market in that sense. Jainism is entirely pacifist, so anti-statist in that sense, but that also prohibits the use of violence for the defence of private property, so I’m not sure how that’d function (I guess technically a free market could exist without the recourse to violent defence of property, if everybody had complete respect for and belief in other people’s property). Most religions are ultimately rather market friendly, I guess, as most religions discourage violence (at least amongst the in-group), and the state is an inherently violent entity. My personal opinion is that Objectivism is the most market friendly, since it’s basically just free market capitalism turned into a religion, and Juche (the national religion of North Korea) is the least market friendly, for obvious reasons 
+1 Chydenius