All in a loaf of bread?

Dr. Schindler has forever changed my way of thinking. I go to class on Tuesday afternoons and walk out feeling like my entire life has been flipped upside down...

I am an advocate for buying fewer things at a higher cost for two reasons. One, I want to purchase things of good quality and two, I want to know that whoever made what I am buying has been paid a fair wage. I do not do this because I am a socialist but because I believe that everything has an order. When you buy something, you are buying a way of life (so Dr. Schindler tells us)! In one sense, that seems very overwhelming but in another, there is something beautifully simplistic about it. To buy, for example, a loaf of bread from the family owned bakery of your local community as opposed to a loaf of bread that has been mass produced from the grocery store (one that has been pumped full of preservatives, among other crap, to the point where the only thing "bready" left in it, is its basic appearance) allows us to a promote a Catholic culture that is to say, a culture of love by this one small action. One cannot deny that our economy espouses a self-interest mentality. If man is made in the image and likeness of God (who is Trinitarian) then man must be made for communion and his existence is ultimately, that of gift. What does this have to do with bread you may curiously ask? Hang on for just a moment. Although I am no economist, I just don't see how Catholics who really want to live as people of the beautiudes can support an economy of self interest. (I won't even get into the argument of neo-conservative Catholics, another blog entry maybe). Adam Smith, one of the fathers of American economics, tells us in his Wealth of Nations: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." Is this what we are to expect from humanity? It seems so degrading. Economics built off of self-interest is not concerned with the human person but with efficiency, that is to say, with time and money. I realize that there is more to it than that, that an economy of self-interest is suppose to work mutually towards and benefit the other's self-interest but is this the best we can do? I don't believe it. The point I am trying make is that, according to Dr. Schindler, in doing something as simple as spending the extra bit of money on the loaf of bread from the family owned bakery (or spending the extra time to make it yourself) promotes a more Christ-like economy. We can change the culture one loaf of bread at a time!!