I went to a Reformed Christian college that pushed the idea of using your career or vocation to make the world a better place, promote justice, etc regardless of job title. This sounded nice but unfortunately I became turned off by the idea because the only examples they highlighted were always left-coded stuff about environmentalism and diversity.
Another factor to consider is that because these businesses are local, the failure of the business would embarrass the owner and his family in a way that does not apply to any failed effort by a transplant. The fear of this embarrassment encourages conservative types of businesses and aversion to borrowing.
A lot of folks are advised to buy index funds, mutual funds, etc. through dollar cost averaging over time. It’s a strategy that is financially successful for people. Folks like Warren Buffett and Dave Ramsey have advised this. There is a downside to that. It sends money to big brokerage houses, like Black Rock and Vanguard. Those brokerage houses buy shares of individual companies and investment real estate. As has been discovered in the last decade or so, that led to things going on at companies and in the economy that a lot of Evangelicals probably didn’t like.
I think index investing is good personal advice (wouldn't call Blackrock and Vanguard "brokerage houses"), compared to most of the alternatives that most people consider, and I don't want to disparage it too much. Christians supporting Christians should be more of a norm. But to me, investing in public companies based on their level of alignment with Christian values is rather gimmicky.
The main problem is that passive funds should not be treated as voting shareholders, because they have no stake in the success or failure of any individual company in their portfolios. So instead they vote to virtue signal fashionable leftist ideas. Or, one step removed, they agree to blindly follow ISS and Glass Lewis, who in turn just virtue signal fashionable leftist ideas.
The Republicans have taken some measures to try to reduce the stick the index giants carry. This is a worthy cause that should be pursued more vigorously, and as far as I can tell, the Democrats are completely opposed. Though a bill, the Index Act, has been sitting in front of the Senate Banking committee for over a year.
Forces like CALPERS are also a big problem here. Structurally, it seems that many of the Blue state pension funds don't view themselves as having a primary duty to maximize returns to the pensioners; they would much rather prioritize fashionable DEI/Woke initiatives, enriching certain DEI operatives who exist to milk these initiatives for all they're worth.
Incisive thoughts here. Credit to Aaron for pointing out something all around us, but seldom discussed.
I had heard of Nick Huber, though have never listened to him. But I am actually personally familiar with a young man who has been pursuing a very similar business model in some other SEC towns. And yes, very much an evangelical, megachurch guy.
I hadn't heard of a "sweaty startup", but it's a good term, and very literal in this case. An outdoor business concentrated on working outdoors, in summer, in SEC towns: those boys are sweating. And as Americans grow richer and kids more coddled, there will be a lot of work for young men who are enterprising and unafraid to sweat and put in some hard work to get a local business running.
And it would make sense to me that such men would be disproportionately drawn from the ranks of evangelicals, if only because so much of their unchurched competition is more given to vice, and less likely to be thinking about wife and children from a young age, which we should acknowledge is a very real and traditional motivation for young men to set aside the temptation towards wastrelsy.
But software founders are a weird breed, and that breed is less given to traditional religion in general and traditional Christianity in particular.
This is reminiscent of the old Millionaire Next Door book. Typically nondescript often humble people operating low tech businesses. I still think the origins of the evangelical church in the US has something to do with the kinds of people it attracts, people like Huber et al.
The article mentions that " ... while evangelicals believe business must be conducted ethically, the type of business one is engaged in or how it directly interacts with and shapes the world are not major considerations." I agree with this, but I'm wondering if this apparent lack of interest in how an evangelical's business shapes the world reflects his deep suspicions about the Mammon-like characteristics of culturally elite businesses. He is reflexively repelled by these businesses and never gets to the point of consciously evaluating the ethics of interacting with them. Instead, he chooses businesses that he considers wholesome or at least benign.
Aaron has done a great job in underscoring the evangelical's undersized cultural influence. Maybe rather than trying to work directly with the cultural elites - which would be playing their game - evangelicals should recognize their numbers and deliberately start coordinating their efforts to establish a culture, educational system, and economy parallel to that of the elites. If handled correctly, people would see its merits, and it would likely grow. A cultural transformation like this would be challenging but not impossible.
These businesses, when run ethically and with a bless-your-employees mindset, form franchises that can elevate, in a grass-roots way, a community. I think you are onto something with the local focus - to evangelicals, everything is grass-roots because individuals are all that matter.
I think the lack of general support and encouragement to do bigger things is a piece of the problem, but probably more of the issue is imaginative. We simply don't think about creating something that changes large swaths of society, and certainly never are encouraged to think that we could or should do that in a bigger way than by saving individual souls.
This seems to align with the libertarian impulse to avoid legislating morality - something libertarian has clearly infected us, causing us to only focus on individual decisions. It seems likely theological, but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe the priesthood of the believer has had this effect?
I would think the no debt at all costs mindset of Dave Ramsey (influential in the evangelical space) may have a tangential effect. I would say that his mindset is probably best practice for 80-90% of the population. However if you do want to have that moonshot business, debt will definitely be a factor in a way that I think is implicitly if not explicitly discouraged in evangelical spaces.
Another problem is that the evangelical mindset sees business as just a way to make money, and that money isn't very important, or even is bad. Thus, the vocation of business, a very hard one, is seen as a bad life route-- tho those who have already succeeded and give a lot of money to the church are valued.
We need to go back to our protestant roots and see business as as valuable a vocation as ministry.
My experience in evangelical churches ran from lower class to upper middle class. I'm painting that with a broad brush; I was certainly upper middle class in one lower class church. But the lower class the church was overall, the fewer independent businesspeople of means were in it. It trended to zero fast below congregations with a core of upper middle class members.
You're right, the independent businesspeople in these churches did sturdy but unremarkable things. Plumbing companies. Real estate investing. Niche but lucrative consulting. One guy turned his farm into an event place with pumpkins in the autumn, orchards in the summer, Christmas trees in the winter, etc. All of them started small and grew it through considerable effort.
These people had _money._ Get-things-done amounts of money, and they all quietly got things done with their money, at least locally and especially within the church. One local megachurch in that faith tradition sits on prime land donated by a member who had built a real estate empire. And while we congregants all knew who had the money, from appearances you couldn't tell.
Outside these congregations, these wealthy members are hardly known.
I don't know the private lives of any of the members I mention but the thing I wonder is whether they know they can do is use their capital to influence outside the congregation. Invest in culture-shaping companies. Endow chairs. Fund programs.
I went to a Reformed Christian college that pushed the idea of using your career or vocation to make the world a better place, promote justice, etc regardless of job title. This sounded nice but unfortunately I became turned off by the idea because the only examples they highlighted were always left-coded stuff about environmentalism and diversity.
Another factor to consider is that because these businesses are local, the failure of the business would embarrass the owner and his family in a way that does not apply to any failed effort by a transplant. The fear of this embarrassment encourages conservative types of businesses and aversion to borrowing.
A lot of folks are advised to buy index funds, mutual funds, etc. through dollar cost averaging over time. It’s a strategy that is financially successful for people. Folks like Warren Buffett and Dave Ramsey have advised this. There is a downside to that. It sends money to big brokerage houses, like Black Rock and Vanguard. Those brokerage houses buy shares of individual companies and investment real estate. As has been discovered in the last decade or so, that led to things going on at companies and in the economy that a lot of Evangelicals probably didn’t like.
I think index investing is good personal advice (wouldn't call Blackrock and Vanguard "brokerage houses"), compared to most of the alternatives that most people consider, and I don't want to disparage it too much. Christians supporting Christians should be more of a norm. But to me, investing in public companies based on their level of alignment with Christian values is rather gimmicky.
The main problem is that passive funds should not be treated as voting shareholders, because they have no stake in the success or failure of any individual company in their portfolios. So instead they vote to virtue signal fashionable leftist ideas. Or, one step removed, they agree to blindly follow ISS and Glass Lewis, who in turn just virtue signal fashionable leftist ideas.
The Republicans have taken some measures to try to reduce the stick the index giants carry. This is a worthy cause that should be pursued more vigorously, and as far as I can tell, the Democrats are completely opposed. Though a bill, the Index Act, has been sitting in front of the Senate Banking committee for over a year.
Forces like CALPERS are also a big problem here. Structurally, it seems that many of the Blue state pension funds don't view themselves as having a primary duty to maximize returns to the pensioners; they would much rather prioritize fashionable DEI/Woke initiatives, enriching certain DEI operatives who exist to milk these initiatives for all they're worth.
Incisive thoughts here. Credit to Aaron for pointing out something all around us, but seldom discussed.
I had heard of Nick Huber, though have never listened to him. But I am actually personally familiar with a young man who has been pursuing a very similar business model in some other SEC towns. And yes, very much an evangelical, megachurch guy.
I hadn't heard of a "sweaty startup", but it's a good term, and very literal in this case. An outdoor business concentrated on working outdoors, in summer, in SEC towns: those boys are sweating. And as Americans grow richer and kids more coddled, there will be a lot of work for young men who are enterprising and unafraid to sweat and put in some hard work to get a local business running.
And it would make sense to me that such men would be disproportionately drawn from the ranks of evangelicals, if only because so much of their unchurched competition is more given to vice, and less likely to be thinking about wife and children from a young age, which we should acknowledge is a very real and traditional motivation for young men to set aside the temptation towards wastrelsy.
But software founders are a weird breed, and that breed is less given to traditional religion in general and traditional Christianity in particular.
This is reminiscent of the old Millionaire Next Door book. Typically nondescript often humble people operating low tech businesses. I still think the origins of the evangelical church in the US has something to do with the kinds of people it attracts, people like Huber et al.
The article mentions that " ... while evangelicals believe business must be conducted ethically, the type of business one is engaged in or how it directly interacts with and shapes the world are not major considerations." I agree with this, but I'm wondering if this apparent lack of interest in how an evangelical's business shapes the world reflects his deep suspicions about the Mammon-like characteristics of culturally elite businesses. He is reflexively repelled by these businesses and never gets to the point of consciously evaluating the ethics of interacting with them. Instead, he chooses businesses that he considers wholesome or at least benign.
Aaron has done a great job in underscoring the evangelical's undersized cultural influence. Maybe rather than trying to work directly with the cultural elites - which would be playing their game - evangelicals should recognize their numbers and deliberately start coordinating their efforts to establish a culture, educational system, and economy parallel to that of the elites. If handled correctly, people would see its merits, and it would likely grow. A cultural transformation like this would be challenging but not impossible.
These businesses, when run ethically and with a bless-your-employees mindset, form franchises that can elevate, in a grass-roots way, a community. I think you are onto something with the local focus - to evangelicals, everything is grass-roots because individuals are all that matter.
I think the lack of general support and encouragement to do bigger things is a piece of the problem, but probably more of the issue is imaginative. We simply don't think about creating something that changes large swaths of society, and certainly never are encouraged to think that we could or should do that in a bigger way than by saving individual souls.
This seems to align with the libertarian impulse to avoid legislating morality - something libertarian has clearly infected us, causing us to only focus on individual decisions. It seems likely theological, but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe the priesthood of the believer has had this effect?
I would think the no debt at all costs mindset of Dave Ramsey (influential in the evangelical space) may have a tangential effect. I would say that his mindset is probably best practice for 80-90% of the population. However if you do want to have that moonshot business, debt will definitely be a factor in a way that I think is implicitly if not explicitly discouraged in evangelical spaces.
Another great example. Ramsey's advice is very culturally resonant with evangelicals.
Another problem is that the evangelical mindset sees business as just a way to make money, and that money isn't very important, or even is bad. Thus, the vocation of business, a very hard one, is seen as a bad life route-- tho those who have already succeeded and give a lot of money to the church are valued.
We need to go back to our protestant roots and see business as as valuable a vocation as ministry.
Nothing in the Gospel suggests that our goal in this life should be material prosperity or worldly power and influential.
My experience in evangelical churches ran from lower class to upper middle class. I'm painting that with a broad brush; I was certainly upper middle class in one lower class church. But the lower class the church was overall, the fewer independent businesspeople of means were in it. It trended to zero fast below congregations with a core of upper middle class members.
You're right, the independent businesspeople in these churches did sturdy but unremarkable things. Plumbing companies. Real estate investing. Niche but lucrative consulting. One guy turned his farm into an event place with pumpkins in the autumn, orchards in the summer, Christmas trees in the winter, etc. All of them started small and grew it through considerable effort.
These people had _money._ Get-things-done amounts of money, and they all quietly got things done with their money, at least locally and especially within the church. One local megachurch in that faith tradition sits on prime land donated by a member who had built a real estate empire. And while we congregants all knew who had the money, from appearances you couldn't tell.
Outside these congregations, these wealthy members are hardly known.
I don't know the private lives of any of the members I mention but the thing I wonder is whether they know they can do is use their capital to influence outside the congregation. Invest in culture-shaping companies. Endow chairs. Fund programs.