God and the Problem of Order: The Role of Perfect Information and Absolute Power in Economics, Religion and Law

Abstract

The “problem of order” is resolved idyllically in Arrow-Debreu general-equilibrium models through the assumption of perfect information, where each actor is god-like, omniscient, and where this omniscience results in the veracity of the first theorem of welfare economics, where an equilibrium is Pareto efficient, where no actor, given her original endowments of alienable and inalienable capital, can improve her position. Analogously, in many religions, God is understood to be omniscient; order emerges through God’s ability to sanction malfeasance costlessly. Ideally, a comparable order would likewise be the consequence of the assumption in both economics and religion of an omnipotent principal. In both economics and religion, equilibria serve as idealized, transcendent, critical standards. In the real, immanent, world, where information is imperfect and no power is absolute, the institutionalization of law is necessary to maintain order. Religion has bequeathed to the legal order moral principles that may legitimate the law and make it binding, while economics, as a theory of incentives in the immanent world, models the imposition of legal sanctions, which penalize actors who approach and violate the law strategically. The law is an institutional order, where both constitutive norms and legal rules are legitimated through “religious” values and supported by “economic,” situational sanctions.