But we should come to serve rather than be served.

Which is my primary problem with the critics: why is it fine to visit Rio or Mazatlan and be served by the poor, but to never see the reality of how they live?

But there is a contrary position expressed here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2112792/

“De Soto is right to point out the importance of legally sorting out who owns what in the Third World. Secure property rights probably are indeed, as he puts it, the “hidden architecture” of modern economies—or something like that, anyway. On the level of gee-whiz metaphors and moving rhetoric, de Soto deserves a lot of credit: He’s brought an unprecedented degree of attention and funding to the vital and fascinating issue of squatters and informal economies. But he has botched the details, especially by pushing one solution—individual property titles—for all different kinds of poor people in all different kinds of poor places.”

“From the field, the verdicts are rolling in: In some corners of the world, the land-titling programs inspired by de Soto’s work are proving merely ineffective. In other places, they are showing themselves to be downright harmful to the poor people they set out to help.”

But “learn about their conditions” also means “learn about what causes those conditions” — which invariably includes some combination of corrupt governments, lack of property rights and other individual liberties, and stagnant socialist institutions (or, just as bad, crony capitalism — which is of course not real capitalism).

See generally, “Hernando de Soto.”

What would be bad is keeping the poor poor, not becoming richer without harming them (or, indeed, through free trade, enriching all participants).

At the local, personal level – as long as Bill Gates and the like become richer, there’s a “widening gap” between their wealth and mine. This, however, does not harm me in the slightest, and in fact their wealth indirectly benefits me (and everyone else).

Wealth is not zero-sum, and a gap means nothing, morally.

(The Vatican’s strong point has never been economic understanding, of course. I’m unclear how any theology untainted by received Marxism or its equivalents could, given modern economic understanding, confuse wealth and sinful greed.

One would have hoped that they’d have outgrown Mercantilist assumptions (as the Bible is silent on economic theory, they have no theological requirement to stick to false economic doctrines).

One would sadly be mistaken, and the result of following such prescriptions tends to improverish everyone. Which makes for a smaller “gap” between rich and poor without helping the poor’s standard of living in the slightest.)