Recently, music icon, multi-millionaire, and U2 lead singer Bono said that the key to beating extreme poverty is “entrepreneurial capitalism.”  

I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is… entrepreneurial capitalism. 

Some Christians argue, because Scripture doesn’t prescribe a particular economic system and early Christians cared for the poor by sharing what they had, that the Bible is more in line with socialism. It’s not. 

The Bible never compels the redistribution of wealth, nor does it reduce people to mere objects of charity.  The free-market system is imperfect but sees people as independent subjects with freedom and moral choice. It’s lifted about 50 million people per year out of starvation-level poverty. No other system in the history of the world can compete with that.