Position Statement

The Moral Capital Framework: A D2P2™ Ethic of Macroeconomics Beyond Neoliberal Orthodoxy

I affirm the free market as a viable engine for innovation, productivity, and human flourishing. I believe in the premise of self-interest as a natural and necessary driver of economic behavior, to the extent that both the market and the individual are properly understood. A more perfect free market requires the fulfillment of its own assumptions: equal access, voluntary exchange, enforceable contracts, and transparent information. When these assumptions are distorted—whether historically or in the present—by state-sanctioned events or legal regimes that undermine human dignity, the market ceases to be free.

Moral Wholeness and the Communal Self

Likewise, self-interest must be framed within an ethic of moral wholeness. I reject the reduction of the self to an isolated, competitive individual in favor of a communal self—one whose flourishing is inseparable from the well-being of others. This is the ethical foundation of my macroeconomic position: “Love your neighbor as yourself” is not a sentimental admonition, but a structural principle. It presumes a self capable of seeing its gain in the gain of others.

Why This Matters

The integration of economics into my work is essential. My research, teaching, and leadership sit at the intersection of theology, ethics, and systems of power. Economics is one of the most powerful moral languages of our time, shaping how people live, labor, and flourish. It cannot be excluded from any serious pursuit of communal dignity, commonly referred to as justice.

My scholarship is grounded in a commitment to dignity—not only as a theological claim, but as a measurable public good. Whether examining the witness of Francis James Grimké or constructing frameworks like Evangelical Emancipatory Homiletics, I consistently ask: What legitimizes power? What distorts it? What repairs it? These same questions apply to capital, labor, and the laws that govern them.

We cannot speak of beloved community while avoiding the arithmetic of disparity. Nor can we preach reconciliation while preserving economic systems shaped by land theft, wage suppression, and intergenerational advantage. The Moral Capital Framework brings economics into moral discourse—so that faith, policy, and scholarship may speak with one voice: not only about what is, but about what ought to be.

Three Economic Distortions

To that end, the framework introduces a set of evaluative tools grounded in what I call the three economic distortions:

  • Income Inefficiencies: Wage and labor structures that suppress human capital and distort value through racialized design or structurally sanctioned segregation.

  • Wealth Misallocations: Property and asset distributions that reflect not earned accumulation but inherited advantage and restricted access through structurally sanctioned segregation.

  • Capital Contaminations: Gains derived from historically unjust or coerced systems—including segregationist regimes—passed forward through legal inheritance and market normalization.

These distortions are not simply ethical violations; they are economic inefficiencies. They lower productivity, restrict innovation, and produce disincentives for genuine merit.

The Way Forward

The Moral Capital Framework is rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship—drawing from institutional economics, post-Keynesian theory, legal anthropology, moral philosophy, and public theology. Its aim is to equip policymakers, economists, and ethicists with a set of actionable inquiries:

  • What qualifies capital as morally legitimate?

  • How should merit be defined in systems built on structurally sanctioned segregation?

  • What role must governments play—not only in regulation but in repair?

  • How might fiscal instruments and historical accounting serve as tools for reconciliation?

I am currently developing a normative tool called the D2P2™ Economic Bill of Rights to formalize these criteria. I believe the legitimacy of a market economy cannot rest solely on metrics of efficiency or growth. It must also be tested by its ability to deliver dignity, equity, and moral coherence across generations.

In sum, I believe in markets. I believe in merit. I believe in self-interest—so long as these operate in truth, and in service of a society where the self is never severed from the well-being of others.