Revista OEconomica

Tudor Constantin BĂLAN - Cycles of Freedom: Are Our Rights Today Permanently Secured, or Are We in a Transitional Phase? The Cases of Great Britain, the United States, and Russia

Marius-Cristian PANĂ, Adela BĂLAN - Economic Freedom and Prosperity: A Comparative Analysis of Welfare Determinants at the International Level

Ana Octavia ALBU - When Accurate Forecasts Still Produce Waste: Demand Shocks and Over-Forecasting Risk in Food Retail

Adrian-Ioan DAMOC - The Persian Pivot and the Reconfiguration of Geopolitical Realism: Iran and Venezuela in Strategic Competition among the United States, China, and Russia

Emmanuel Olusegun STOBER - Coercive Diplomacy in the Gulf and the Limits of the Strike-Forward Strategy: Toward a Middle-Power Coalition for Regional Stability

Sorin-Nicolae CURCĂ - On the Informational Entropy of Economic Shock

Florin DĂNESCU - The Banking Sector as Critical Infrastructure in the Logic of Hybrid Conflict: Post-2014 Legislative Convergence in Central and Eastern Europe and the Case of Romania

Alexandru POPOVICI - The Contribution of the Music Industry to GDP and Employment: A Comparative Analysis

Mohammed AL-NASSERY - Implications of the War in the Middle East: An Analysis of the Economic, Security, Humanitarian, and Political Dimensions

Mihai LĂCĂTUŞ - GDP as a Means, Not an End: Inequality as the Missing Variable in Fiscal Policy Design – A 60-Country Analysis of Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being

Articles on Issue Theme

Filip Mihai ZGUBEA

Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti

Alexandru TAŞNADI

Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti

Marius ZAMFIRA

Biserica Sfântul Vasile Cel Mare - Victoria

This article is based on the results of the dialogue between science and faith, which deepens in more and more segments of the society. The central idea of the article starts with reversing the sheet of values through which things are judged. The virtues of Christian life are abandoned and the decision-making behaviours are aligned to evil, tyrannical passions: greed, pride and envy. Considering the corporate management to be “scientifically organized”, it sees in the “spirit of envy” also encouraging greed, the two “engines” of the free market economy competition. The authors highlight the harm, suffering and sorrows that are the result of promoting these passions amid the current global crisis. Through a Christocentric approach of the tensions from the social reality, the article emphasizes the fact that the current global crisis is the expression of the “fall of man”, of the disproportionate development of our world: scientific knowledge “up” and the morality of its application “down”. Among the effects of crisis, in what concerns the human being, the so-called “culture of discard” is propagated. According to the World Report on risks in 2014, income inequality is the main source of social unrest. In his message to the World Economic Forum (22 to 25 January, 2012, Davos), Pope Francis I said: “I ask you to do in such a way so wealth is in the service of humanity and not to govern it”. The genesis of the global crisis is of “spiritual and moral nature”, which means that our return to the Christian values, to a life in Christ, is considered by the authors a way that must pass through the Divine Triad: Faith, Love and Hope.

ŒCONOMICA no. 1/2014

Keywords: global crisis, greed, envy, suffering, culture of discard, World Economic Forum, poverty

JEL: Z12

“The Spirit of Envy” and The Progress of Economy [“Spiritul invidiei” şi progresul economiei]

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