In 1987, Pope John Paul II criticized the fraction of the 1% long before big tech’s new billionaires burst onto the 21st century scene.
122. Development must not aim at the amassing of wealth by a few, but must ensure “human rights – personal and social, economic and political, including the rights of nations and of peoples”.[Sollicitudo Rei Socialis 33]
The point is that everyone needs access to the marketplace. Will everyone be as fruitful? Hardly. But every person is involved in some way in the economic efforts of the human race.
The right of some to free enterprise or market freedom cannot supersede the rights of peoples and the dignity of the poor, or, for that matter, respect for the natural environment, for “if we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all”.[Laudato Si’ 95]
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