It’s a familiar and old game. Put less in the package and charge the same price. It’s been happening with cold cereal and coffee for a long time. It’s been ages since that “pound sized” can of coffee actually weighed a pound. This picture from a 2014 Boston Globe article displays a table full of pairs of food packages, all of which display an old larger version against a new smaller version which nonetheless looks very much the same.
It’s a very old game. In Micah 6:9-16 we hear God through the prophet condemning the wickedness of Israel in the form of dishonest, deceptive weights and measures. In a time with no standardization of such things the problem was even more acute. Verses 10 and 11 spell out at least a couple different ways folks were deceived. One was through a “scant measure.” If a basket is used to measure grain or flour, its flexible sides can be squeezed inward to make the measure smaller. Another way was through a set of varying weights for one’s scales, maybe one set for buying and another for selling.
Micah’s culprits once again are “the wealthy” in verse 12, and their dishonesty in buying and selling is termed “violence.” They are doing violent harm to the people they exploit through deceptive measures. People are actually going hungry because they do not get full measure for the prices they pay for food.
God’s response in verses 13 to 15 is some poetic justice. Those guilty of this deceptive harm to the poor will themselves eat but still feel hunger, try to save only to have their savings evaporate in time of war, and plant crops without reaping any benefit from them.
We may be tempted to skip over passages like this because we don’t find much of a “spiritual” message in them, little to uplift or point us toward the love and grace of God. But just a little pause and reflection reveals that it just is God’s grace and love which makes Him care so much about such things, care so much about just trade and honest dealing, whatever our business may be.
Once again, the Scriptures drive us into the realm of the political, suggesting that matters like trade agreements and regulation of business are not spiritually neutral. God’s call for justice in Micah 6:8, our text for last week, shows us that we cannot approach these matters from a purely pragmatic standpoint, without reflecting on how our laws and treaties affect people everywhere. And this week’s text drives that home, in case we missed the point, specifically apply God’s requirement of justice to business practice.
There’s little comfort or even hope in these verses by themselves. That’s reserved for the next and last chapter in Micah. But it’s enough for this week to remember that God is looking out for those who suffer injustice, which is comfort if we are the sufferers and fair warning if we are the perpetrators.
Recently Verizon has been trying to get out of a deal with the City of New York to provide fiber Internet to the whole City. Verzion is trying to say that they’ve met their obligations because there is fiber that runs past all the homes and businesses, they (the owners) just have to pay to have more fiber run from the main trunk to the property (at the cost of thousands of dollars to the owner).
It seems like justice still has no place in business.
I say there’s no place for justice in business, then I remind myself of the case of Turing Pharmaceuticals who tried to abuse their ownership of the distribution rights of a drug to treat some nasty parasitic diseases. They raised the price from 13.50 to 750 a pill. Now a competitor has release a similar drug which they are selling for a dollar.
the libor scandal in the finance industry is a perfect modern example of what micah is warning against.