In Mere Economics: Lessons For and From the Ordinary Business of Life, authors Carden and Fuller introduce caring Christians to economic thinking. Through breezy prose and pithy examples, the authors connect essential facts of faith to central ideas of economics. In fact, the book’s title is an homage to C.S. Lewis’s (1952) highly influential Mere Christianity – a work that conveys, with crystal clarity, the foundational elements of faith that are embraced by most denominations.
The same is true here: Carden and Fuller lay out the most central economic principles to illuminate issues like poverty, environmental stewardship, and other concerns that Christians take seriously. If your faith tells you that when you serve the poor you are serving your Master, and if economics helps you understand how to care for the poor even more effectively, why wouldn’t you want to know more about economics? The same line of thinking extends to creation care and other issues that lie at the heart of Christian concern. For example, if ‘the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof,’ and economics helps us be more effective caretakers, who wouldn’t want to know more economics?
The book’s outline is sensible, both for readers attracted to the topic as well as professors at Christian colleges and universities who might want to assign it as a companion reader to a traditional textbook. Its 14 chapters make it easily adaptable to a traditional US semester calendar of about 15 weeks.
In chapter one, ‘They Feast on the Abundance of Your House: Hobbesian Horrors and Walmart Wonders,’ the authors address what they refer to as the ‘Progress Puzzle’: How it is that, despite a growing population and a limited endowment of natural resources, humanity has nevertheless enjoyed breathtaking progress and prosperity? This section is reminiscent of the presentation found in Jason Brennan’s (2024) Why Not Capitalism?, in which Brennan lines up some of the most popular claims of market critics and then knocks each down via data.
Having introduced the Progress Puzzle – that humanity is fabulously better off than it was centuries ago, despite having little central planning in place – Carden and Fuller use chapter two, ‘Thinking about the Ordinary Business of Life,’ to lay out the core economic principles around which each of the remaining chapters will be formed. The chapter’s nine core principles include (1) economics is about making choices, (2) people are purposeful in their decisions, and (3) trade must be mutually beneficial because – if it weren’t – people wouldn’t do it. Along with each core principle, Carden and Fuller disarm the most common misconceptions of each; this back-and-forth rhetorical approach is very effective.
With these principles in hand, the authors use chapter three, ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Our Great Economic Problem,’ to explain how human interaction – when voluntary and informed by the price system – leads to the remarkable outcomes outlined in chapter one. In fact, the authors indirectly make the audacious claim that it’s precisely because of scarcity that, over time, we realize the stunning outcomes in chapter one. If people didn’t face scarcity, they wouldn’t make decisions as carefully as they do when the stakes are high. And institutions like property rights lead to good decisions because they lay the penalty of a poor choice at the feet of the person who has the most to lose. The best line: ‘Don’t panic about scarcity anymore than you would panic about gravity.’ They both keep us grounded.
Chapters four and five extend chapter three by considering how far-flung resources, like the individual efforts of billions of individuals – with aspirations known only to them and using tiny bits of knowledge that may also be known only to them – are nevertheless powerfully channeled into a symphony of human activity. And most stunning of all, it’s a symphony with no conductor in charge. The analysis here relies heavily on thinkers like Adam Smith and F.A. Hayek. And chapter six reminds us that profits – if honestly earned – are the reward for serving others well; losses are the brutal consequences of not offering others something they need and want at a price they are willing to pay.
Having outlined this framework, the authors use the remainder of the book to apply it to a variety of policy questions and concerns. Chapter seven describes the inner workings of the labor market and argues that most outcomes are more humane and less outrageous than critics would have us believe, including the ‘gender-pay gap.’ Chapter eight considers whether, in some instances, a large firm that feels like a ‘monopoly’ might serve humanity quite effectively. To use the authors’ examples, Amazon, Google, and Walmart became successful because they served people well. And they can just as easily mess it up if they’re not vigilant (think MySpace and Yahoo!). The authors also note that the monopolies we hate most were often either created by the government or sanctioned by them.
Chapters nine through eleven deal with efforts of policymakers to legislate prices, legislate morality, or legislate production. Here the authors compellingly argue that, even if market mechanisms do not deliver ideal outcomes, they deliver outcomes preferable to those we would observe if government intervened to ‘improve upon’ those outcomes. And, of course, such interventions require compulsion: impeding or frustrating the decisions individuals otherwise would make.
Adding to this cautionary tale of government intervention, chapter twelve introduces the field of economics known as ‘public choice’: the strand of economics that treats voters, politicians, and bureaucrats just like it treats any other human subject, assuming that they act in their own self-interest just like anyone else does. For example, if politicians are motivated more by getting votes than by doing good, they might vote for policies people like rather than what might serve them best. And chapter thirteen returns to the ‘Progress Puzzle’ outlined at the beginning, having made the case – throughout the book – that it’s not really a puzzle at all: free individuals, created in God’s image, pursue creative acts of their own that lead to stunning long-term outcomes for humanity. The chapter also offers policy prescriptions for issues like pollution and resource depletion.
A wonderful feature of each of the preceding chapters is a concluding section that provides an application step for the ideas presented: ‘How Should We Then Live?’ This section of each chapter gives the reader a useful life lesson – something much needed from most economics books. And the final chapter of the book provides a similar point of reflection upon the entire work.
The book is thoughtful, reasonable, and winsome. Yet it’s not perfect.
First, the book seems unlikely to win over readers with grave moral concerns about capitalism. The authors may be right in their hopefulness, yet the style is too breezy to connect with readers uneasy with markets.
Second, every page is full of American cultural references and memes. While most of them connected with me, I see two liabilities: first, you really must be an American born within a specific time frame to be in on the jokes. I fear many references won’t connect with readers the authors are targeting (college students) and won’t connect with international readers, either. Also, you need to enjoy quirky humor to enjoy the book, but that seems like a gamble the authors are willing to take.
Lastly, because the book flows well, it might be challenging for a professor to assign individual chapters as stand-alone reading assignments because of references to earlier material.
Despite these limitations, I nevertheless recommend the book to anyone who thinks that economics isn’t interesting, is only about money, or that it’s not useful to people of faith. Carden and Fuller will likely change your mind.
‘Mere Economics: Lessons For and From the Ordinary Business of Life’ by Art Carden and Caleb S. Fuller was published in 2025 by B&H Academic (979-8-384-50496-2). 320pp.
Victor V. Claar is Associate Professor of Economics and coordinates the economics program in the Lutgert College of Business at Florida Gulf Coast University. He also serves as an affiliate scholar of the Acton Institute, and is a visiting research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.