{"id":495,"date":"2013-06-12T05:30:20","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T09:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godonomics\/?p=495"},"modified":"2013-05-09T11:39:43","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T15:39:43","slug":"knight-rider-and-garage-sale-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2013\/06\/knight-rider-and-garage-sale-economics.html","title":{"rendered":"How Knight Rider and a Garage Sale Can Prepare You for economic challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Godonomics: What Would God Say to Alan Greenspan? Part 1 of 6\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XnBK9_U3UJ0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>You can learn alot at a garage sale. You can teach your family valuable life lessons at a garage sale. \u00a0I once sold all my Star Wars collection (now worth a fortune) at a garage sale for pennies on the dollar.\u00a0\u00a0 I once sold a Knight Rider car for a quarter&#8230; And who wouldn&#8217;t pay me Two million dollars on ebay for that&#8230;. Well, maybe\u00a0 not.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Through the process of garage saling,\u00a0the kids learned a lot about the two rails of economics: Price and Quality.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They also learned that people can and should be paid fairly, NOT equally.\u00a0\u00a0 They learned how free market capitalism forces you to put others&#8217; needs ahead of your own.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s start with the\u00a0most important lesson we can teach our kids: Price and Quality.<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/201\/2011\/04\/mcewen.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-147\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/201\/2011\/04\/mcewen.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"250\" \/><\/a><\/h6>\n<p>Every purchase that we make engages an internal\u00a0mechanism that assesses price and quality. When you the\u00a0customer assesses that the price of an item is worth the quality being offered, the buyer will engage.<br \/>\nAs my kids watched people pull into the driveway, they realized that stuffed animals they priced at $7.00 were not &#8220;worth&#8221; seven dollars to the customer.\u00a0\u00a0 So, they had a decision to make.\u00a0 Would they wait for a different clientel or change the price?\u00a0\u00a0 They had to put the needs\u00a0of the\u00a0customer ahead of their own.\u00a0\u00a0 This is important in teaching all of us to make smart purchases.<br \/>\nIn life, we must assess the quality of an item and see if it&#8217;s worth the price.\u00a0\u00a0 Often we choose a cheaper product, like the eliptical I bought from Walmart 2 years ago. The cheaper product wears out in less than 2 years because of the inferior quality.\u00a0\u00a0 It would have been a wiser purchase to spend more on price to get a quality that lasts longer.<\/p>\n<p>As for &#8220;fair wages&#8221;, how do you determine that?\u00a0\u00a0 How donyou teach your kids gratefulness and work ethic? When the garage sale ends and $500 is in the profit box, how should a family divide the profits?\u00a0\u00a0 There are several ways to do this Biblically.\u00a0 First, each person determines what they sold. Whatever they sold, they own the profits.\u00a0 This comes from a Biblical ideal called Property Rights. In this scenario, each of us gets the money from the items that belonged to us.<\/p>\n<p>Property rights are critical to Biblical economists and any just system. When God led the Hebrews out of Egypt, He gave them the ten commandments. Twenty percent establish property rights: &#8220;Do not steal someone else&#8217;s donkey&#8221; (Why? They own it)\u00a0 or &#8220;Do not envy someone else&#8217;s house&#8221; (Why? it&#8217;s theirs).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In garage sale economics, you do not pay everyone equally.\u00a0 You pay each person <strong>fairly<\/strong> according to their property rights and profits.<\/p>\n<p>Another economic lesson to be taught at the garage sale is a principle called differentiation. This is a merit-based system where you pay each\u00a0person according to their work and productivity.\u00a0\u00a0 My son helped get ready for the garage sale and labeled some of the &#8220;product,&#8221;\u00a0 but was away at Boy Scout Camp\u00a0for the actual sale. He should therefore not share in the &#8220;booty&#8221; as much &#8211;\u00a0since he did less work.\u00a0\u00a0 My daughter helped prepare for the sale and worked the whole day babysitting her baby brother and selling the stuff.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My wife did the monsterous effort of organizing most of the &#8220;family&#8221; posessions.\u00a0\u00a0 So, in keeping with the Biblical command to pay people fairly, not equally,\u00a0 my son got the least (inspiring more effort and incentive next time).\u00a0 My daughter was rewarded for her effort by being paid more.\u00a0\u00a0 My wife was paid the lion share&#8230; Keeping me happily married.\u00a0\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>In the parable of the talents, God gives out talents in seemingly &#8220;unfair&#8221; distribution. One person gets 1.\u00a0 Another 5.\u00a0 Still another 10.\u00a0 Then he rewards them in an unequal, but fair way. They are compensated for their faithfulness and stewardship. The lazy one who didn&#8217;t use his &#8220;1&#8221; is rebuked and his &#8220;1&#8221; is given to the faithful man who had 10.<\/p>\n<p>If we can teach our kids and ourselves these lessons, we will instill in them a sense of hard work, other&#8217;s focus, understanding of how merit raises work later in life, as well as the power of capitalism to change lives.<\/p>\n<p>Free market capitalism is the archenemy of poverty.\u00a0 For those who watched Knight Rider, KITT (The car who talked to David Hasselhoff in that nasal voice) had an arch enemy named KARR (so much for good screen writing in the 80&#8217;s).\u00a0\u00a0 KITT defeated KARR time and time again.\u00a0 In the same way, free market capitalism defeats poverty, releases liberty, and spreads generosity everytime it is tired.\u00a0\u00a0 This week, 549 kids were fed for over a year using the power of capitalism.\u00a0 Church goers donated money they earned from their own savings and profits to buy meals for starving children. They gave of their time and energy to impact others.\u00a0\u00a0 The group, Feed My Starving Children, also brought products produced by children in Hatti and Phillipines and sold them to us.\u00a0\u00a0 They created a market so that the starving children and families could PRODUCE and PROFIT from their work.\u00a0\u00a0 These funds blessed the families and allowed them to do more than eat. By creating a market for their products, these families could profit begin to build up savings to change their future.<\/p>\n<p>I talked to a business guy last week who began a pizza company in Cincinnati. This company sells pizza in a tough part of Cincinnati and uses all of it&#8217;s profits to fund other ministries to the needy.\u00a0 The more successful the business runs, the more needy and poor are helped. Rather than a one time donation or fundraiser, he has created a self-sustaining generosity machine through the power of others-focused capitalism.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He inspires many business men and women he meets to brainstorm new ways to turn their business skills into money machines to help the poor and hurting.<\/p>\n<p>For more information, check out\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.godonomics.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.godonomics.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.godonomics.com\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.godonomics.com\/images\/godonomics-header.png\" width=\"600\" height=\"162\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; You can learn alot at a garage sale. You can teach your family valuable life lessons at a garage sale. \u00a0I once sold all my Star Wars collection (now worth a fortune) at a garage sale for pennies on the dollar.\u00a0\u00a0 I once sold a Knight Rider car for a quarter&#8230; And who wouldn&#8217;t&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":353,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,86,79,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalismsocialism","category-property-rights","category-self-sufficienct","category-work"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How Knight Rider and a Garage Sale Can Prepare You for economic challenges - Godonomics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Knight Rider and a Garage Sale Can Prepare You for economic challenges - Godonomics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&nbsp; You can learn alot at a garage sale. You can teach your family valuable life lessons at a garage sale. \u00a0I once sold all my Star Wars collection (now worth a fortune) at a garage sale for pennies on the dollar.\u00a0\u00a0 I once sold a Knight Rider car for a quarter&#8230; And who wouldn&#8217;t&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2013\/06\/knight-rider-and-garage-sale-economics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Godonomics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-06-12T09:30:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-05-09T15:39:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godonomics\/files\/2011\/04\/mcewen.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"chadhovind\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How Knight Rider and a Garage Sale Can Prepare You for economic challenges - Godonomics","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How Knight Rider and a Garage Sale Can Prepare You for economic challenges - Godonomics","og_description":"&nbsp; You can learn alot at a garage sale. 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He graduated from Moody Bible College in Chicago, majoring in pastoral ministry and communication. His love for ministry and creativity can be seen in many forms: leading teams, expository teaching, acting, and video production. He has served as pastor at two high-impact churches in Georgia: Cumberland Community Church and New Community Church. Chad received an M.A. in Ministry from Moody Graduate School in 2008. He loves volleyball, movies, and hanging out with his wife Beth and their three children.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.godonomics.com\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/author\/chadhovind"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}