OPINION: How to embrace AI and be happy

MBA graduates, business owners, corporate and government leaders could learn a thing or two from a 30-page historical document that dates way back to 1891.
Even the new pope has learned a thing or two from it.

Cardinal Robert Prevost (now Pope Leo XlV) grew up on the southside of Chicago, a place folk singer Jim Croce called then the “baddest part of town.” The 69-year-old American pontiff chose his papal name after 19th century Leo XIII for good reason.

Leo XIII wrote the important encyclical Rerum Novarum, which translates to “Of New Things” on the importance of work, just wages, and the dignity of the human being at a time when the new thing was the great industrial revolution. In explaining his choice of taking the name Leo the new pope pointed to the rise of the robot.

Said Pope Leo XIV in Italian: “Today the Church offers to everyone the treasury of social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labour.”

That treasury comes principally from the 1891 Rerum Novarum that should be included in every ethics course. Here are my three highlights:

1. Private property ownership is necessary

Leo XIII pounded socialists on this issue and would be very unhappy with today’s globalist, ultra-rich World Economic Forum types who embrace the vision that everyone but them should “own nothing and be happy.”

In fact, Leo Xlll argues that the first principle to alleviate the suffering of the masses is to allow private property. Property rights foster dignity and responsibility, enabling families to thrive independently. Today, as A.I. reshapes job markets, owning tangible assets — like a home or small business — provides a buffer against economic volatility. For instance, a freelancer displaced by A.I. automation can rely on personal property to rebuild, preserving their autonomy and contribution to society.

Leo XIII argued that private property ownership is natural and necessary. With community ownership “the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the levelling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation. Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit.”

He also noted that “Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them.”

2. Give power to the people

Subsidiarity, a core principle in Rerum Novarum, holds that decisions should be made at the most local level possible, empowering individuals and communities while limiting overreach by higher authorities.

In other words, global entities have no business in municipal governments, dictating how they should conduct their business. Local governments know their own people best.

4. Usury is evil

Greed in the form of usury comes down to the disordered human desire to profit off the misery of others.

Wrote Leo XIII: “It has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men.”

Usury includes paying and treating workers little better than slaves or lending money at a burdensome interest rate. A loan paid back with interest can be extremely helpful to the one who takes the loan to build the new barn. But a lender can cross the line. Credit card companies charge 22 % interest and make a lot of money off desperate people who have never learned to manage money and have all their credit cards maxed out, paying only the interest each month. If our federal government cared about usury it could easily slash credit interest to 10 % or less.

Governments today practice their own form of usury by snatching over the course of a lifetime almost half of a worker’s earnings through income tax, property tax, sales tax, gas tax, and so on. Yet they still manage to provide shoddy service.

The common thread in this papal document is that we must consider the needs of others. Man finds meaning and happiness in serving others, just as good leaders serve their people and good people serve their leaders.

Technology and work must serve man, not dominate him.

Patrick Meagher is editor of Farmers Forum and can be reached at editor@farmersforum.com