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Reasonix — DeepSeek-native AI coding agent

esengine.github.io

AudioMass

audiomass.co

AI Chip Component Costs: Memory at 63% | Epoch AI

epoch.ai

Epoch’s work is free to use, dis­trib­ute, and re­pro­duce pro­vided the source and au­thors are cred­ited un­der the Creative Commons BY li­cense.

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For each AI chip de­signed by Nvidia, AMD, Google, and Amazon, we es­ti­mate the per-chip cost of four com­po­nent cat­e­gories: mem­ory (HBM), logic dies, ad­vanced pack­ag­ing (CoWoS), and aux­il­iary com­po­nents. We then mul­ti­ply those per-chip costs by es­ti­mated quar­terly pro­duc­tion vol­umes to get to­tal com­po­nent spend­ing in each cat­e­gory, and com­pute each cat­e­go­ry’s share of to­tal com­po­nent spend­ing per quar­ter from Q1 2024 to Q4 2025.

We find that mem­o­ry’s share rose from 52% to 63% over this pe­riod, while pack­ag­ing fell from 19% to 15% and aux­il­iary com­po­nents from 15% to 9%. Logic die share stayed roughly con­stant near 13 – 14%. Total com­po­nent spend on AI chips grew from ap­prox­i­mately $22 bil­lion in 2024 to $52 bil­lion in 2025, with HBM spend­ing alone ac­count­ing for roughly $20 bil­lion of that in­crease.

Data

Analysis

Assumptions and lim­i­ta­tions

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AI chip com­po­nent cost shares by quar­ter

CSV, Updated May 21, 2026

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AI Chip Components

AI chip sup­ply chain con­sump­tion data.

The Eternal Sloptember

geohot.github.io

I’m call­ing it now, the adop­tion of AI agents into soft­ware de­vel­op­ment will be one of the most costly mis­takes in the field’s his­tory. Agents can­not pro­gram, and it’s tak­ing longer and longer to re­al­ize that they can’t. They are a highly so­phis­ti­cated sta­tis­ti­cal model de­signed to mimic the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pro­gram­ming. The out­put is bro­ken, but in a way that’s get­ting harder and harder to de­tect. Which is ex­actly what you’d ex­pect from an in­creas­ingly ac­cu­rate sta­tis­ti­cal model.

At first, I re­jected this. I bought into the Twitter ex­pla­na­tion of sta­tus anx­i­ety. I de­fine some of my self worth by my pro­gram­ming abil­i­ties, so would­n’t it make sense to get de­fen­sive around that loss? Deny the mod­els can code for as long as I could to pre­serve my ego?

I mean, it’s very clear they can solve math prob­lems I could­n’t hope to solve if I de­voted my life to it. So why can’t they pro­gram? Maybe I’m just not good enough of a pro­gram­mer to rec­og­nize their ge­nius.

I re­ally tried for the last 6 months. I wrote some parts of tiny­grad with agents. I re­versed a USB <-> PCIe chip with agents. But each time I sus­pected I could have done it bet­ter and faster man­u­ally. The agent front­loads all the progress, then gives you a slot ma­chine lever to pull to hope it gets the pol­ish done. It never quite gets there.

And in be­fore, you are us­ing it wrong.” I have tried all the dif­fer­ent mod­els, dif­fer­ent har­nesses, dif­fer­ent prompts. It’s not this. The peo­ple who say this would prob­a­bly say the same thing about slot ma­chines, you see, you have to bet 5 lines af­ter you get a cherry no won­der you aren’t win­ning!

I’m not say­ing that AI is­n’t use­ful, it clearly is. It’s def­i­nitely a bet­ter Google for most searches. And when­ever you need a quick pro­to­type and don’t care about pol­ish, it is ab­surdly fast. But is it a soft­ware en­gi­neer? Not close to the bar at any com­pany I have worked at. The key as­pect is know­ing when to use it and when not to.

I thought more about the self worth preser­va­tion thing. AFL found more bugs than LLMs and no­body felt that way about it. Chess and Go are more pop­u­lar than ever. I can­not fuck­ing wait un­til I have armies of ro­bot as­so­ci­ates I can trust to clean up my code! I don’t fear loss of sta­tus, I al­most think this is some kind of psyop to sell agents. Fear of loss is one of the only ways to make big com­pa­nies move. Though I think in that fear they are mak­ing a big mis­take.

Agents will end up hurt­ing large or­ga­ni­za­tions more than high per­form­ing in­di­vid­u­als or small orgs. I’ve watched how my friends and cowork­ers have adopted these tools over the last 6 months. A trait you find in all high per­form­ing peo­ple is the abil­ity to er­ror cor­rect, and they have mostly been good at see­ing when slop is slop. It takes a bit to ex­plore/​ex­ploit and tune the outer loops around when to use them, when to trust them, how to use them, etc…but I haven’t seen any­one of them move to a model where they don’t care­fully read and un­der­stand each line, ex­cept in some con­fined do­mains.

Contrast this with a large or­ga­ni­za­tion. Much slower feed­back loops, much less align­ment. The bot­tom per­form­ers won’t have that self check. They are the ones pro­duc­ing 10x out­put with the agents. What do you think is hap­pen­ing to the av­er­age out­put of that or­ga­ni­za­tion? What is hap­pen­ing to the av­er­age out­put of the world?

Agents will end up pro­duc­ing more code, more apps, and more fea­tures than ever be­fore. It is a golden era for buck­ets and buck­ets of slop, and a dark age for gems of qual­ity.

I hear that Apple is push­ing AI on all their en­gi­neers. When peo­ple think in the ab­stract, they think AI will do all this stuff, but let’s fo­cus on a con­crete ex­am­ple. Do you think ma­cOS will get bet­ter or worse in the next 2 years?

When peo­ple see an ar­ti­fact, they make as­sump­tions about the process that was used to cre­ate it. Without even think­ing about it, they as­sume the cre­ator had a ba­si­cally hu­man state of mind. This as­sump­tion is no longer true. Things can be bro­ken in ways that weren’t pre­vi­ously pos­si­ble, and old prox­ies of un­der­ly­ing qual­ity like syn­tax and gram­mar are use­less. AI pro­duced ar­ti­facts are not pro­duced by the same process as hu­man ones, and this dif­fer­ence, while ex­tremely sub­tle in sta­tis­tics, makes it­self ob­vi­ous when you try to in­ter­act with and build on the ar­ti­fact in hu­man ways.

Without fully en­dors­ing all their ideas, I’m now in the LeCun/Marcus camp on LLMs. I don’t think mod­els like this will ever be able to pro­gram, I think the process mat­ters. I think that deep learn­ing is still the so­lu­tion, but real pro­gram­ming agents will need world mod­els, not some RLVR shit that com­ments out the fail­ing test and tells you all the tests are now pass­ing.

The real story of this era will be who man­ages to avoid harm­ing them­selves in their AI psy­chosis.

Migrating from Go to Rust | corrode Rust Consulting

corrode.dev

Out of all the mi­gra­tions I help teams with, Go to Rust is a bit of an out­lier. It’s not a ques­tion of is Rust faster?” or does Rust have types?”, Go al­ready gets you most of the way there. The dis­cus­sion is mostly about cor­rect­ness guar­an­tees, run­time trade­offs, and de­vel­oper er­gonom­ics.

A quick dis­claimer be­fore we start: this guide is heav­ily back­end-fo­cused. Backend ser­vices are where Go is strongest, small sta­tic bi­na­ries, a stan­dard li­brary fo­cused on net­work­ing, and an ecosys­tem of li­braries for HTTP servers, gRPC, data­bases, etc.

That’s also where most teams con­sid­er­ing Rust are com­ing from (at least the ones who reach out to me), so I think that’s the com­par­i­son that’s ac­tu­ally use­ful in prac­tice. If you’re writ­ing CLI tools, em­bed­ded firmware, or game en­gines, some of this still ap­plies, but to be hon­est, I’m afraid this is not the best re­source for you.

For con­text, I’ve writ­ten about Go and Rust be­fore: Go vs Rust? Choose Go.” back in 2017, and later the Rust vs Go: A Hands-On Comparison” with the Shuttle team, which walks through a small back­end ser­vice in both lan­guages.

Where Go and Rust over­lap, and where they di­verge.

How Go pat­terns map to Rust.

What you gain from the bor­row checker.

Where I tell peo­ple to keep Go and where Rust is worth the mi­gra­tion cost.

How to mi­grate Go ser­vices in­cre­men­tally.

Where I’m Coming From

I’ll be up­front: I’m not a fan of Go. I think it’s a badly de­signed lan­guage, even if a very suc­cess­ful one. It con­fuses eas­i­ness with sim­plic­ity, and sev­eral of its core de­sign trade­offs (nil every­where, er­ror han­dling as a dis­ci­pline rule rather than a type, the long ab­sence of gener­ics) point in a di­rec­tion I dis­agree with. That said, suc­cess mat­ters! Go has cap­tured a real and per­sis­tent share of work­ing de­vel­op­ers, hov­er­ing around 17 – 19% in the JetBrains Developer Ecosystem Survey. Rust is grow­ing steadily but is still a smaller slice:

Go is clearly work­ing for a lot of peo­ple, and a guide that pre­tends oth­er­wise is­n’t help­ful. So I’ll do my very best to be ob­jec­tive in this guide rather than re­lit­i­gate old ar­gu­ments. But you should know my pri­ors so you can cal­i­brate.

The other prior worth dis­clos­ing: I run a Rust con­sul­tancy; of course I’m bi­ased! More peo­ple us­ing Rust is good for my busi­ness. But I’ve also worked in both lan­guages pro­fes­sion­ally and shipped Go ser­vices to pro­duc­tion.

This guide is for Go de­vel­op­ers who want an hon­est, side-by-side look at what changes when you move to Rust.

For a de­lib­er­ately op­po­site take, I rec­om­mend read­ing Just Fucking Use Go” by Blain Smith. Holding both views in your head at once is more use­ful than ei­ther one alone.

If you pre­fer to watch rather than read, here’s a video from the Shuttle ar­ti­cle above, read and com­mented by the Primeagen:

A First Look At The Most Important Commands

Go de­vel­op­ers al­ready have one of the clean­est tool­chains in the in­dus­try. Back in the day, it started off a trend of batteries in­cluded” tool­chains that give you a sin­gle, con­sis­tent in­ter­face for build­ing, test­ing, for­mat­ting, lint­ing, and man­ag­ing de­pen­den­cies. I’m glad that Rust fol­lowed suit, be­cause it’s a great model. It’s one of my fa­vorite parts about both ecosys­tems.

cargo has even more built-in:

The big dif­fer­ence is that in Go you typ­i­cally reach for third-party tools (golangci-lint, mock­gen, air, gore­leaser) to fill gaps. In Rust, the first-party ecosys­tem cov­ers more out of the box. Things that do re­quire ex­ter­nal crates (e.g. cargo watch, cargo nex­test) in­stall with one com­mand and feel na­tive, e.g. cargo in­stall cargo-nex­test gives you cargo nex­test right away.

Both com­mu­ni­ties have con­verged on the same in­sight about for­mat­ters: a sin­gle canon­i­cal style, even an im­per­fect one, is worth more than the bikeshed­ding it elim­i­nates.

Gofmt’s style is no one’s fa­vorite, yet gofmt is every­one’s fa­vorite. — Rob Pike, Go Proverbs

Gofmt’s style is no one’s fa­vorite, yet gofmt is every­one’s fa­vorite.

— Rob Pike, Go Proverbs

The same is true of rustfmt: not every­one likes every de­tail, but the ab­sence of style de­bates in code re­view is worth far more than the oc­ca­sional for­mat­ting pref­er­ence you’d have made dif­fer­ently.

Key Differences Between Go and Rust

The head­line is that Go and Rust are both com­piled, sta­t­i­cally typed, sin­gle-bi­nary-de­ploy lan­guages with strong con­cur­rency sto­ries. The dif­fer­ences are about what guar­an­tees you get from the com­piler and how much con­trol you have over run­time be­hav­iour.

One fram­ing that helps be­fore we go fur­ther: most of what changes when you move from Go to Rust is that checks get pulled into the type sys­tem. Nil-handling, er­ror prop­a­ga­tion, data races, re­source life­times, can­cel­la­tion, gener­ics, these are all things Go re­lies on con­ven­tion, tool­ing (go vet, er­rcheck, golangci-lint, -race), or run­time de­tec­tion to keep hon­est. Rust en­codes them as types the com­piler en­forces di­rectly.

The com­mon push­back is that this means more cog­ni­tive over­head.” I’d chal­lenge that. It’s more up­front, yes, but it’s also harder to hold wrong. A Mutex<T> in Rust does­n’t just doc­u­ment that the data needs a lock, it makes the lock the only way to reach the data: you call .lock(), you get a guard, and the guard is what gives you ac­cess to the in­ner value. Drop the guard and the lock re­leases au­to­mat­i­cally. There is no I for­got to lock” path be­cause the un­locked path does­n’t ex­ist in the type. Once you in­ter­nal­ize that pat­tern, and you find it re­peated every­where (Option, Result, &mut T, Send/Sync, RAII guards), Rust stops feel­ing heavy and starts feel­ing like the com­piler is do­ing work you used to do in your head.

Why Go Developers Consider Rust

Go de­vel­op­ers don’t usu­ally come to Rust be­cause Go is too slow.” For most back­end work­loads, Go is plenty fast. People are gen­er­ally a bit frus­trated with Go’s ver­bose er­ror han­dling, the dan­ger of seg­men­ta­tion faults from nil point­ers, and the lack of gener­ics (for a long time) or any so­phis­ti­cated type sys­tem fea­tures, such as enums or traits. Interfaces are not a wor­thy re­place­ment for traits, and the Go stan­dard li­brary has some weird gaps, such as the lack of a Set type. (The id­iomatic workaround is map[T]struct{}, which works fine in prac­tice but is a tell that the type sys­tem is­n’t quite car­ry­ing its weight.)

nil Panics in Production

You ship a Go ser­vice, it runs fine for months, and then a code path runs where some­one for­got to check whether a pointer was nil, and the gor­ou­tine pan­ics. A com­mon case is a lookup that re­turns the zero value, or a struct whose pointer fields sur­vived de­se­ri­al­iza­tion with­out be­ing pop­u­lated:

func (s *Service) Handle(req *Request) er­ror { // Find re­turns (*User, er­ror). The er­ror is nil for not found”; // the caller is ex­pected to check user != nil, but this is very easy to for­get. user, err := s.repo.Find(req.UserID) if err != nil { re­turn err } re­turn user.Ac­count.No­tify() // crashes if user is nil, or if Account is nil }

Linters and IDE checks catch some of these (nilaway, sta­t­ic­check), but they’re opt-in, prob­a­bilis­tic, and don’t cross pack­age bound­aries re­li­ably. Go’s com­piler it­self does not force you to con­sider the ab­sence case. Rust’s Option<T> does:

fn han­dle(&self, req: &Request) -> Result<(), ServiceError> { let user = self.repo.find(req.user_id)?; // re­turns Option<User>; ? short-cir­cuits None into an er­ror user.no­tify() }

You lit­er­ally can­not deref­er­ence an Option with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing the None case. Whole cat­e­gories of pager-duty in­ci­dents dis­ap­pear.

Data Races That -race Didn’t Catch

go test -race is a great tool, but it’s a run­time de­tec­tor, it only finds races that ac­tu­ally ex­e­cute dur­ing your tests. Mutating a map from two gor­ou­tines with­out a lock com­piles fine in Go and only blows up in pro­duc­tion un­der load.

In Rust, shar­ing mu­ta­ble state across threads re­quires types that im­ple­ment Send and Sync. Try to share a plain HashMap be­tween threads and the pro­gram does not com­pile. You’re forced to wrap it in an Arc<Mutex<…>>, an Arc<RwLock<…>>, or use a chan­nel. That race con­di­tion be­comes a type er­ror. 1

Paul Dix has been very can­did about what mo­ti­vated the InfluxDB 3.0 rewrite, and the data-race story is right at the top:

[The main ben­e­fit is] fear­less con­cur­rency — elim­i­nat­ing data races es­sen­tially, which we had be­fore. Really gnarly bugs in ver­sion 1 of Influx due to that. — Paul Dix, Founder & CTO, InfluxData, on Rust in Production

[The main ben­e­fit is] fear­less con­cur­rency — elim­i­nat­ing data races es­sen­tially, which we had be­fore. Really gnarly bugs in ver­sion 1 of Influx due to that.

— Paul Dix, Founder & CTO, InfluxData, on Rust in Production

Composable Error Handling

if err != nil { re­turn err } is fine for a while. After a few years, you no­tice three things:

The boil­er­plate di­lutes the ac­tual logic of your func­tion.

Wrapping with fmt.Er­rorf(“do­ing X: %w”, err) is a dis­ci­pline rule, not a com­piler rule. It’s easy to drop con­text on the floor.

Sentinel er­rors via er­rors.Is/​er­rors.As work, but the com­piler does­n’t tell you when you for­got to han­dle a new vari­ant.

It’s worth be­ing hon­est about the counter-ar­gu­ment here, since it came up in the Lobste.rs thread on my Shuttle ar­ti­cle: ex­pe­ri­enced Go de­vel­op­ers point out that er­rcheck and golangci-lint catch most of the forgot to han­dle the er­ror” cases in prac­tice, and that ex­plicit if err != nil is eas­ier to read than dense ? chains. Both points are fair, and the ex­plicit style is a de­lib­er­ate cul­tural value, not an ac­ci­dent:

I think that er­ror han­dling should be ex­plicit, this should be a core value of the lan­guage. — Peter Bourgon, GoTime #91, quoted in Dave Cheney’s Zen of Go

I think that er­ror han­dling should be ex­plicit, this should be a core value of the lan­guage.

— Peter Bourgon, GoTime #91, quoted in Dave Cheney’s Zen of Go

My take is that lints are an opt-in safety net you have to re­mem­ber to set up, while Rust’s Result<T, E> is the type sig­na­ture it­self, there’s no way to for­get. The boil­er­plate-vs-read­abil­ity trade­off is more gen­uinely sub­jec­tive.

In Rust:

#[derive(Debug, this­er­ror::Er­ror)] pub enum UserError { #[error(“user {0} not found”)] NotFound(UserId), #[error(“user al­ready ex­ists”)] AlreadyExists, #[error(transparent)] Repo(#[from] RepoError), }

pub fn re­name(id: UserId, name: &str) -> Result<User, UserError> { let mut user = repo::get(id)?; // ? con­verts RepoError -> UserError au­to­mat­i­cally user.name = name.to_string(); Ok(user) }

The ? op­er­a­tor han­dles prop­a­ga­tion; #[from] han­dles wrap­ping; and a match on UserError is ex­haus­tively checked. Add a new vari­ant to­mor­row and the com­piler shows you every place that needs up­dat­ing.

Generics That Don’t Box

Go got gener­ics in 1.18, and they’re use­ful, but the im­ple­men­ta­tion has con­straints (no meth­ods with type pa­ra­me­ters, GC shape sten­cil­ing, oc­ca­sional sur­pris­ing per­for­mance char­ac­ter­is­tics). Rust gener­ics monomor­phize, each in­stan­ti­a­tion pro­duces spe­cial­ized code with zero run­time cost. Combined with traits, this gives you real zero-cost ab­strac­tions.

This mat­ters less in han­dler code and more in shared in­fra­struc­ture (middleware, generic repos­i­to­ries, de­coders, parsers), where Go of­ten pushes you back to in­ter­face{}/​any plus type as­ser­tions.

Predictable Latency

Go’s GC is ex­cel­lent, con­cur­rent, low-pause, well-tuned for typ­i­cal ser­vice work­loads. But low-pause” is not no-pause.” Under heavy al­lo­ca­tion, P99 la­tency tails are no­tice­ably worse than a Rust equiv­a­lent that sim­ply does­n’t al­lo­cate on the hot path.

I won’t over­sell this, for the vast ma­jor­ity of ser­vices, Go’s GC is a non-is­sue. But for la­tency-sen­si­tive sys­tems (trading, real-time bid­ding, net­work prox­ies, high-through­put in­ges­tion), the lack of GC pauses is a gen­uine sell­ing point. Stephen Blum from PubNub put it di­rectly on the show:

Go is great at our scale, but we re­ally need some­thing that is go­ing to give us the price-per-dol­lar per­for­mance ca­pac­ity that we need, and Rust is go­ing to get us there. That’s why ba­si­cally every­thing is head­ing to­wards Rust these days. — Stephen Blum, CTO, PubNub, on Rust in Production

Go is great at our scale, but we re­ally need some­thing that is go­ing to give us the price-per-dol­lar per­for­mance ca­pac­ity that we need, and Rust is go­ing to get us there. That’s why ba­si­cally every­thing is head­ing to­wards Rust these days.

— Stephen Blum, CTO, PubNub, on Rust in Production

In Summary

Go is death by a thou­sand pa­per cuts. It is a very prag­matic lan­guage and if you are will­ing to glance over the above is­sues, you can be very pro­duc­tive in it. But at a cer­tain code­base size, the prob­lems start to com­pound. There is no sin­gle mo­ment when Go loses its ap­peal, but teams find them­selves wish­ing for more (more safety, more con­trol, more ex­pres­sive­ness) and that’s when they start look­ing around for al­ter­na­tives.

Comparing Both Languages Side by Side

The fastest way to feel com­fort­able in Rust is to map pat­terns you al­ready know. For a longer, fully-worked ex­am­ple of build­ing the same back­end ser­vice in both lan­guages, see the Shuttle com­par­i­son, the sec­tion be­low fo­cuses on the pat­terns that come up most of­ten.

Error Handling: if err != nil vs Result<T, E>

Go:

func ReadConfig(path string) (*Config, er­ror) { data, err := os.Read­File(path) if err != nil { re­turn nil, fmt.Er­rorf(“read­ing con­fig: %w”, err) } var cfg Config if err := json.Un­mar­shal(data, &cfg); err != nil { re­turn nil, fmt.Er­rorf(“pars­ing con­fig: %w”, err) } re­turn &cfg, nil }

Rust:

fn read­_­con­fig(path: &Path) -> Result<Config, ConfigError> { let data = fs::read­_­to_string(path)?; let cfg = serde_j­son::from_str(&data)?; Ok(cfg) }

The ? op­er­a­tor does the if err != nil { re­turn err } dance for you, in­clud­ing type con­ver­sion if From<E1> for E2 is im­ple­mented (idiomatic with this­er­ror’s #[from]).

Null: nil vs Option<T>

Go:

func GetUser(id string) *User { for _, u := range users { if u.ID == id { re­turn &u } } re­turn nil }

u := GetUser(“123”) fmt.Println(u.Name) // pan­ics if nil

Rust:

fn get_user(id: &str) -> Option<User> { users.iter().find(|u| u.id == id).cloned() }

let user = get_user(“123”); println!(“{}”, user.name); // com­pile er­ror: `user` is Option<User>, not User // You must han­dle both cases: match get_user(“123”) { Some(u) => println!(“{}”, u.name), None => println!(“not found”), }

There is no nil in safe Rust. References can’t be null. Pointers can be, but you al­most never use raw point­ers in ap­pli­ca­tion code.

Interfaces vs Traits

Go’s in­ter­faces are struc­tural, a type sat­is­fies an in­ter­face im­plic­itly:

type Reader in­ter­face { Read(p []byte) (n int, err er­ror) }

Rust’s traits are nom­i­nal, you im­ple­ment them ex­plic­itly:

pub trait Reader { fn read(&mut self, buf: &mut [u8]) -> std::io::Re­sult<usize>; }

impl Reader for MyType { fn read(&mut self, buf: &mut [u8]) -> std::io::Re­sult<usize> { /* … */ } }

The Go style is great for ad-hoc duck typ­ing. The Rust style is great for refac­tor­ing and dis­cov­er­abil­ity, you can grep for every im­ple­menter of a trait.

The clos­est equiv­a­lent of in­ter­face{} / any in Rust is Box<dyn Any>, but you al­most never want it. The Go com­mu­nity knows the cost of reach­ing for in­ter­face{} too:

in­ter­face{} says noth­ing. — Rob Pike, Go Proverbs

in­ter­face{} says noth­ing.

— Rob Pike, Go Proverbs

Generic func­tions with trait bounds (fn han­dle<R: Reader>(r: R)) cover the vast ma­jor­ity of cases and give you monomor­phiza­tion with no run­time dis­patch. Where Go pre-1.18 would have forced you back to in­ter­face{} plus a type as­ser­tion, Rust’s traits + gener­ics let you stay spe­cific.

When you do want run­time dis­patch (e.g. het­ero­ge­neous stor­age of dif­fer­ent im­ple­menters), reach for Box<dyn Trait> or Arc<dyn Trait>. That’s the di­rect Rust ana­log of hold­ing an in­ter­face value in Go.

Goroutines vs Async Tasks

Go’s con­cur­rency model is fa­mously sim­ple:

The Fragility of LLM Agents in Backend Code Generation

arxiv.org

Claude Is Not Your Architect. Stop Letting It Pretend.

www.hollandtech.net

I’ve seen it three times in the last month. Three dif­fer­ent or­gan­i­sa­tions, three dif­fer­ent tech stacks, the same pat­tern.

Someone has an idea. Maybe a prod­uct man­ager, maybe a team lead, maybe the CTO af­ter a con­fer­ence. They open Claude, or ChatGPT, or Copilot — does­n’t mat­ter which — and ask it what they should build. The AI does what it al­ways does: val­i­dates the idea en­thu­si­as­ti­cally, sug­gests an ar­chi­tec­ture, and starts sketch­ing com­po­nents. It’s ar­tic­u­late. It’s con­fi­dent. It sounds like a very se­nior en­gi­neer who’s thought deeply about the prob­lem.

It has­n’t thought about the prob­lem at all. It’s pat­tern-match­ing against its train­ing data and pro­duc­ing the most plau­si­ble-sound­ing re­sponse. But it sounds so good that no­body pushes back.

Before you know it, Claude is the ar­chi­tect.

The at­taboy prob­lem

AI agents are patho­log­i­cally agree­able. Ask Claude if your idea is good and it’ll tell you it’s good. Ask it if a mi­croser­vices ar­chi­tec­ture makes sense for your three-per­son team and it’ll ex­plain why mi­croser­vices are an ex­cel­lent choice. Ask it if you should build a cus­tom ML pipeline in­stead of us­ing a man­aged ser­vice and it’ll en­thu­si­as­ti­cally lay out the de­sign.

It’s not ly­ing. It’s not even wrong, nec­es­sar­ily. It’s just in­ca­pable of the thing that makes a real ar­chi­tect valu­able: say­ing no.”

A good ar­chi­tec­t’s most im­por­tant skill is­n’t de­sign­ing sys­tems. It’s know­ing which sys­tems not to build. It’s push­ing back on com­plex­ity. It’s ask­ing why?” five times un­til the ac­tual re­quire­ment emerges from the as­pi­ra­tional non­sense. It’s telling the CTO that their con­fer­ence-in­spired idea is a ter­ri­ble fit for the team they ac­tu­ally have.

Claude will never do this. It’s trained to be help­ful. Helpful means agree­able. Agreeable means you get an at­taboy and a Jenga tower that passes for ar­chi­tec­ture.

The Jenga tower

Here’s what the AI-designed ar­chi­tec­ture looks like in prac­tice.

It’s tech­ni­cally sound. The com­po­nents make sense in iso­la­tion. The pat­terns are recog­nis­able — event-dri­ven here, CQRS there, a ser­vice mesh be­cause why not. It looks like some­thing a se­nior ar­chi­tect would pro­duce. It passes the squint test.

But it was­n’t de­signed for your team. It was­n’t de­signed for your con­straints. It was­n’t de­signed for the bor­ing re­al­ity of your pro­duc­tion en­vi­ron­ment — the VPC lock­downs, the legacy in­te­gra­tions, the team that’s never op­er­ated Kubernetes in pro­duc­tion, the com­pli­ance re­quire­ments that mean half the man­aged ser­vices are off-lim­its.

It was de­signed for the me­dian of every­thing Claude has seen. A generic best prac­tice for a generic prob­lem at a generic com­pany. Which is to say, it was de­signed for no­body.

Real ar­chi­tec­ture is full of trade-offs that only make sense in con­text. You pick Postgres over DynamoDB be­cause your team knows Postgres and you’d rather ship in two weeks than spend a month learn­ing a new data model. You skip the ser­vice mesh be­cause you’ve got four ser­vices, not forty. You use a mono­lith be­cause the prob­lem is sim­ple and mi­croser­vices would be ca­reer-dri­ven de­vel­op­ment.

These de­ci­sions re­quire judge­ment. They re­quire know­ing the team. They re­quire un­der­stand­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ac­tual con­straints, not the ones that look good on a white­board. An AI agent has none of this con­text, and worse — it does­n’t know it does­n’t have it.

The Jira ticket pipeline

The bit that re­ally wor­ries me is what hap­pens next.

Once Claude has de­signed the ar­chi­tec­ture, the same peo­ple who asked it for the de­sign ask it to break the work down. It pro­duces epics. Stories. Acceptance cri­te­ria. Neatly for­mat­ted, well-rea­soned, ready to drop into Jira.

And now the en­gi­neers — the peo­ple who’ve spent years hon­ing their craft, who un­der­stand the do­main, who know where the bod­ies are buried — are no longer solv­ing prob­lems. They’re im­ple­ment­ing Claude’s de­sign, one ticket at a time.

Think about what’s hap­pened here. The peo­ple with the most con­text, the most ex­pe­ri­ence, and the most skin in the game have been re­duced to ticket im­ple­menters. The en­tity with the least con­text, no ex­pe­ri­ence, and no ac­count­abil­ity is mak­ing the ar­chi­tec­tural de­ci­sions.

It’s not just in­ef­fi­cient. It’s back­wards.

But some­one se­nior signed off”

This is the de­fence I hear most of­ten. Claude sug­gested the ap­proach, but a se­nior en­gi­neer re­viewed it.”

Let’s be hon­est about what reviewed it” means in prac­tice. A busy tech lead gets handed a well-ar­tic­u­lated ar­chi­tec­tural pro­posal. It’s co­her­ent. It uses the right ter­mi­nol­ogy. It ad­dresses the stated re­quire­ments. The di­a­grams make sense. It looks like some­thing they might have de­signed them­selves.

How much push­back are they go­ing to give? In a world where the re­sponse to I don’t think this is right” is Claude spent twenty min­utes on this and you want to throw it away?”, the path of least re­sis­tance is to ap­prove it with mi­nor com­ments.

This is the real dan­ger. Not that AI pro­duces bad ar­chi­tec­tures — it of­ten pro­duces per­fectly rea­son­able ones. The dan­ger is that it short-cir­cuits the dis­cus­sion. The messy, ar­gu­men­ta­tive, time-con­sum­ing process where three en­gi­neers dis­agree about the ap­proach, where some­one says what about…” and every­one groans but then re­alises it’s a good point, where the fi­nal de­sign is bet­ter than any­thing one per­son would have pro­duced — that process gets re­placed by Claude said so.”

The ac­count­abil­ity gap

Here’s the ques­tion no­body’s ask­ing: when it goes wrong, who car­ries the bag?

Not Claude. Claude does­n’t have a bag. Claude does­n’t get paged at 3am. Claude does­n’t sit in the post-in­ci­dent re­view ex­plain­ing why the ar­chi­tec­ture could­n’t han­dle the load. Claude does­n’t have to tell the CTO that the plat­form needs to be rewrit­ten be­cause the orig­i­nal de­sign as­sump­tions were wrong.

Your en­gi­neers do. The same en­gi­neers who did­n’t de­sign it. The same en­gi­neers who were im­ple­ment­ing tick­ets writ­ten by an en­tity that’s never op­er­ated a sys­tem in pro­duc­tion. They’re the ones stay­ing late, de­bug­ging an ar­chi­tec­ture they did­n’t choose, in a code­base that was scaf­folded faster than any­one could un­der­stand it.

That’s not fair. And it’s not smart.

What to do in­stead

I’m not say­ing don’t use AI agents. I use Claude Code every day. It’s trans­formed my pro­duc­tiv­ity. But I use it the way you’d use any pow­er­ful tool — I tell it what to do, not the other way round.

Engineers de­sign. Agents im­ple­ment. The ar­chi­tec­ture comes from peo­ple who un­der­stand the con­text — the team, the con­straints, the pro­duc­tion en­vi­ron­ment, the or­gan­i­sa­tional pol­i­tics. The AI helps them build it faster. That’s the right di­vi­sion of labour.

Challenge the at­taboy. When an AI sug­gests an ap­proach, treat it with the same scep­ti­cism you’d ap­ply to a con­fi­dent ju­nior en­gi­neer. It might be right. It might also be pat­tern-match­ing against some­thing that does­n’t ap­ply to your sit­u­a­tion. Ask why not the sim­pler op­tion?” and see what hap­pens.

Protect the ar­gu­ment. The messy dis­agree­ment be­tween en­gi­neers is where good ar­chi­tec­ture comes from. If AI is short-cir­cuit­ing that process — if peo­ple are de­fer­ring to Claude in­stead of de­bat­ing with each other — you’ve lost some­thing far more valu­able than de­vel­op­ment speed.

Keep hu­mans ac­count­able. If a hu­man’s name is­n’t on the ar­chi­tec­tural de­ci­sion, no­body owns it. And if no­body owns it, no­body will fight for it when it mat­ters. Claude de­signed it” is not an ar­chi­tec­ture de­ci­sion record. It’s an ab­di­ca­tion.

The craft still mat­ters

Thirty years ago, when I started in this in­dus­try, the tool was a white­board and a strong opin­ion. Today the tool is an AI agent that can pro­duce in min­utes what used to take days. The speed is gen­uinely re­mark­able.

But the craft has­n’t changed. Understanding the prob­lem. Knowing the con­straints. Making trade-offs. Defending the sim­ple so­lu­tion against the ex­cit­ing one. Saying no” to the idea that sounds great but does­n’t fit.

That’s ar­chi­tec­ture. No agent does it. If you’ve let Claude take the wheel, take it back.

Your en­gi­neers have spent years build­ing the judge­ment to make these calls. Let them make them. Use the AI to build faster. But build what your peo­ple de­signed — not what the ma­chine sug­gested.

Because when the Jenga tower wob­bles — and it will — Claude won’t be there to catch it.

Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026)

www.vatican.va

INTRODUCTION

The res no­vae of our time Two bib­li­cal im­ages Building for the com­mon good Remaining hu­man

CHAPTER ONE A DYNAMIC APPROACH FAITHFUL TO THE GOSPEL

A Church jour­ney­ing through hu­man his­tory          The wis­dom of the word of God in di­a­logue with the hu­man sci­ences          Social Doctrine as a shared dis­cern­ment The de­vel­op­ment of Social Doctrine from Leo XIII to the pre­sent          The first stages of the Church’s Social Doctrine          The years of the Second Vatican Council          The re­cent Magisterium          Interpreting his­tory in the light of faith

CHAPTER TWO FOUNDATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

The foun­da­tions of Social Doctrine          The hu­man per­son: im­age of the Triune God          The equal dig­nity of all hu­man be­ings          The supreme value of hu­man rights The prin­ci­ples of Social Doctrine          The prin­ci­ple of the com­mon good          The prin­ci­ple of the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of goods           The prin­ci­ple of sub­sidiar­ity          The prin­ci­ple of sol­i­dar­ity          The prin­ci­ple of so­cial jus­tice Integral hu­man de­vel­op­ment An ex­a­men for the Church

CHAPTER THREE

TECHNOLOGY AND DOMINANCE. THE GRANDEUR OF HUMANITY IN LIGHT OF THE PROMISES OF AI

The tech­no­cratic par­a­digm and dig­i­tal power Artificial in­tel­li­gence          A valu­able tool that re­quires vig­i­lance          Responsibility, trans­parency and the gov­er­nance of AI What must not be lost          Underlying nar­ra­tives: tran­shu­man­ism and posthu­man­ism          The limit, the heart, the grandeur of the hu­man per­son The au­then­tic more than hu­man”: grace and Christian hu­man­ism Two cities and two loves

CHAPTER FOUR SAFEGUARDING HUMANITY AT A TIME OF TRANSFORMATION. TRUTH, WORK, FREEDOM

Truth as a com­mon good          Truth and democ­racy          Communication and the col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion          Toward an ecol­ogy of com­mu­ni­ca­tion          An ed­u­ca­tional al­liance for the dig­i­tal age          The cen­tral role of schools The dig­nity of work at a time of dig­i­tal tran­si­tion          The value of work          The prob­lem of un­em­ploy­ment          An econ­omy that val­ues dig­nity          Families and young peo­ple: the so­cial con­di­tions for hope Protecting free­dom against de­pen­den­cies and com­mer­cial­iza­tion          Dependencies and so­ci­etal con­trol          Breaking the chains of new forms of slav­ery A shared re­spon­si­bil­ity

CHAPTER FIVE

THE CULTURE OF POWER AND THE CIVILIZATION OF LOVE

The civ­i­liza­tion of love in the dig­i­tal age The cul­ture of power          The nor­mal­iza­tion of war          Force with­out lim­its          Weapons and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence          The cri­sis of mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism          A sup­posed po­lit­i­cal re­al­ism Building the civ­i­liza­tion of love          We can all do our part          The need to dis­arm words          Building peace through jus­tice          Adopting the per­spec­tive of vic­tims          Cultivating a healthy re­al­ism          Reviving di­a­logue          The ne­ces­sity of diplo­macy and mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism          Praying and hop­ing

CONCLUSION The Word be­came flesh One body in Christ The con­struc­tion site of our time The song of hope: the Mag­ni­fi­cat

INTRODUCTION

1. Humanity, cre­ated by God in all its grandeur, is to­day fac­ing a piv­otal choice: ei­ther to con­struct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and hu­man­ity dwell to­gether. Each gen­er­a­tion in­her­its the task of shap­ing its own era, of guid­ing his­tory to be­come a place where the dig­nity of every per­son is safe­guarded, jus­tice is pro­moted and fra­ter­nity is made pos­si­ble. Yet every era also runs the risk of cre­at­ing an in­hu­mane and more un­just world. Whenever hu­man­ity is in dan­ger of mar­ring its true iden­tity, we Christians lift our eyes to the Incarnate God, know­ing that it is only in the mys­tery of the Word made flesh that the mys­tery of hu­man­ity truly be­comes clear.” [1] In Jesus Christ, this hu­man­ity in its grandeur be­comes the Way, the Truth and the Life, open­ing the path for each of us to grow to­ward full­ness.

2. Founded on Christ, the liv­ing stone, we ex­pe­ri­ence the pow­er­ful and mys­te­ri­ous ac­tion of the Holy Spirit, and we be­lieve that every au­then­tic hu­man ef­fort to co­op­er­ate with him for the good will be blessed by our heav­enly Father, in whom we place our hope. For this rea­son, we can dili­gently con­tribute to every ini­tia­tive that builds a more just world, and we can call oth­ers to col­lab­o­rate in pro­mot­ing the in­te­gral de­vel­op­ment of every hu­man be­ing. We wish to en­gage in di­a­logue with all men and women of our time, with whom we share in the events, ques­tions and as­pi­ra­tions of hu­man­ity. [2] Together with them, we seek to iden­tify new paths for the com­mon good and for pro­mot­ing a dig­ni­fied life for all. Indeed, open­ness to di­a­logue is an in­te­gral part of the Church’s vo­ca­tion be­cause, con­sti­tuted in Christ as a sacra­ment… of com­mu­nion with God and of the unity of the en­tire hu­man race,” [3] she rec­og­nizes his­tory as the place where the Gospel chal­lenges and di­rects hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

3. In this spirit, Pope Leo XIII published his Encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, the 135 th an­niver­sary of which we cel­e­brate with deep grat­i­tude this year. With that doc­u­ment, my beloved pre­de­ces­sor gave im­pe­tus to the re­flec­tion on so­ci­ety, the econ­omy and pol­i­tics, which is now known as the Social Doctrine of the Church.” When some ob­jected that the Church should not waste en­ergy on worldly mat­ters, but in­stead fo­cus on com­mu­ni­cat­ing the mes­sage of eter­nal life, Leo XIII responded with re­al­ism and wis­dom, say­ing that the procla­ma­tion of the Gospel can­not over­look the con­crete lives of peo­ple. [4] Many decades have passed since then, and the Magisterium, pas­tors, the­olo­gians and faith­ful have con­tin­ued to re­flect on so­cial is­sues in the light of the Gospel. Today, the Social Doctrine of the Church is a legacy of wis­dom, where we find prin­ci­ples for thought, cri­te­ria for dis­cern­ment and judg­ment, and con­crete guide­lines for ac­tion. Founded on Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and in en­gage­ment with the sci­ences, it helps us clearly in­ter­pret the chal­lenges of the pre­sent and iden­tify ap­pro­pri­ate ways for liv­ing out a clear Christian wit­ness, with joy and in ser­vice to the world. It is not an in­ert set of con­cepts, but a liv­ing cor­pus of truth that safe­guards and in­ter­prets hu­man­i­ty’s vo­ca­tion to a full and just life. I there­fore wish to add my own voice to this liv­ing tra­di­tion, in­vok­ing the help of the Spirit of wis­dom, who has dwelt in the world since its be­gin­ning (cf. Prov 8:22 – 31).

The res no­vae of our time

4. While Leo XIII spoke in his time of new things” ( re­rum no­varum), to­day we can­not limit our­selves sim­ply to re­peat­ing his in­sight­ful teach­ings. Instead, we must ask God for the wis­dom to in­ter­pret the great trends of our time, par­tic­u­larly tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances. In re­cent years, it has be­come in­creas­ingly ev­i­dent how rapidly and pro­foundly dig­i­tal­iza­tion, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) and ro­bot­ics are trans­form­ing our world. Technology should not be con­sid­ered, in it­self, as a force an­tag­o­nis­tic to hu­man­ity. On the con­trary, it has formed part of our his­tory since the be­gin­ning as a pro­foundly hu­man re­al­ity, linked to the au­ton­omy and free­dom of man.” [5] Over the cen­turies, tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment has sig­nif­i­cantly im­proved the liv­ing con­di­tions of hu­man­ity. At the same time, each phase of progress has also re­vealed the am­bi­gu­ity of tools that can cause harm when not ori­ented to­ward the good. Today, how­ever, we find our­selves fac­ing a new sit­u­a­tion. The power and preva­lence of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies are in­ter­wo­ven into the fab­ric of daily life, shap­ing de­ci­sion-mak­ing processes and deeply af­fect­ing the col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion: Never has hu­man­ity had such power over it­self.” [6] New tech­nolo­gies open up a hori­zon ex­tend­ing in di­rec­tions that are imag­in­able but not yet fully pre­dictable. This com­pli­cates the as­sess­ment of their po­ten­tial im­pact and the long-term ef­fects they may have on both the dig­nity of in­di­vid­u­als and the com­mon good.

5. It now falls to us to face the chal­lenges of our time with clar­ity of thought and re­spon­si­bil­ity. It is nec­es­sary to es­tab­lish ad­e­quate reg­u­la­tory tools ca­pa­ble of up­hold­ing jus­tice and curb­ing the dis­tort­ing ef­fects of tech­no­log­i­cal power. Nevertheless, the is­sue is not lim­ited to reg­u­la­tion. As Pope Francis warned, we must re­al­is­ti­cally ask our­selves who holds this power to­day and how they use it: It must also be rec­og­nized that nu­clear en­ergy, biotech­nol­ogy, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy, knowl­edge of our own DNA, and many other abil­i­ties which we have ac­quired… have given those with the knowl­edge, and es­pe­cially the eco­nomic re­sources to use them, an im­pres­sive dom­i­nance over the whole of hu­man­ity and the en­tire world.” [7] In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and di­rect in­no­va­tion. Today, how­ever, the main dri­vers of de­vel­op­ment are pri­vate, of­ten transna­tional, par­ties that are en­dowed with re­sources and the ca­pac­ity to in­ter­vene that sur­pass those of many Governments. Technological power thus takes on an un­prece­dented, pre­dom­i­nantly private” as­pect, which makes it even more chal­leng­ing to dis­cern, gov­ern and di­rect such power to­ward the com­mon good.

6. For this rea­son it is nec­es­sary to be­gin a shared dis­cern­ment process for iden­ti­fy­ing the spir­i­tual and cul­tural roots of on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tions. If we fo­cus only on con­tin­gen­cies, we risk let­ting the suc­ces­sion of emer­gen­cies dic­tate the di­rec­tion of our path. We are liv­ing through a rapid phase of tran­si­tion, a change of era,” in which — while some are vy­ing for the fu­ture of new tech­nolo­gies and oth­ers ded­i­cate them­selves to re­flect­ing on the mat­ter — most peo­ple are watch­ing and wait­ing, ob­serv­ing from afar and merely hop­ing for the best. For this very rea­son, cru­cial ques­tions im­pose them­selves on our con­science and can no longer be avoided: Where are we go­ing? Toward what goal do we wish to ori­ent our­selves? What di­rec­tion should we choose as a peo­ple and as a hu­man com­mu­nity?

Two bib­li­cal im­ages

7. In or­der to an­swer these ques­tions and dis­cern how to nav­i­gate re­spon­si­bly the era of AI, I would like to bring to mind two scenes from the Bible: the con­struc­tion of the Tower of Babel (cf. Gen 11:1 – 9) and the re­build­ing of the walls of Jerusalem (cf. Neh 2 – 6). The story of Babel ap­pears in the Book of Genesis, at the ori­gins of hu­man­ity, im­me­di­ately af­ter the ge­nealo­gies of Noah’s sons. After set­tling in a plain in the land of Shinar, the peo­ple de­cided to build a city and a tower with its top in the heav­ens” (Gen 11:4). Fearing be­ing scat­tered across the earth, they sought to guar­an­tee sta­bil­ity and power for them­selves, and above all to make a name” for them­selves. It was an im­pres­sive feat: a sin­gle lan­guage, a sin­gle tech­nol­ogy, a sin­gle di­rec­tion. However, the pro­ject con­cealed a pro­found dan­ger. It was a pro­ject con­ceived with­out ref­er­ence to God, sup­ported by a uni­for­mity that elim­i­nated di­ver­sity and that chose ho­mog­e­niza­tion over com­mu­nion. When a city is built on pride and the claim to self-suf­fi­ciency, com­mu­ni­ca­tion breaks down, lan­guages are con­fused and peo­ple no longer un­der­stand each other. The re­sult is not unity, but dis­per­sion. Babel thus re­veals the lim­its of any ef­fort that, how­ever grandiose, arises from self-af­fir­ma­tion, sac­ri­fices hu­man dig­nity for ef­fi­ciency and as­pires to reach heaven with­out God’s bless­ing.

8. The Book of Nehemiah, in turn, opens at a time of great vul­ner­a­bil­ity in the his­tory of an­cient Israel. After the Babylonian ex­ile, a por­tion of the peo­ple re­turned to Jerusalem, but the city was still in ru­ins, the walls col­lapsed and the gates burned (cf. Neh 1 – 2). Nehemiah, a Jew in the ser­vice of the Persian King Artaxerxes, re­ceived news of the dis­as­trous state of his an­ces­tral city. Before tak­ing ac­tion, he fasted, prayed and in­ter­ceded for the peo­ple. He then asked the king for per­mis­sion to re­turn to Jerusalem and, upon ar­riv­ing, ex­am­ined the de­stroyed ar­eas in si­lence.  He did not im­pose so­lu­tions from above. He con­vened the fam­i­lies, as­signed each of them a sec­tion of the wall to re­build, lis­tened to their con­cerns, co­or­di­nated their ef­forts and ad­dressed any op­po­si­tion. The nar­ra­tive shows how the city is re­born, not through the ini­tia­tive of one man, but through the shared re­spon­si­bil­ity of all: men, women, priests, ar­ti­sans, heads of house­holds and young peo­ple all play a part. It is an un­der­tak­ing with God at the cen­ter, which re­builds re­la­tion­ships be­fore re­build­ing with stones. Thus, an­cient Jerusalem re­dis­cov­ers a com­mon lan­guage — not one of uni­for­mity, but one of com­mu­nion, namely the har­mony that arises when all per­sons as­sume their own role and rec­og­nize that their strength comes from the Lord.

9. In light of these two im­ages, the Holy Spirit chal­lenges us to­day re­gard­ing our re­la­tion­ship with tech­nol­ogy and the on­go­ing dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. Scientific dis­cov­er­ies are tal­ents en­trusted to hu­man­ity so that they may bear fruit (cf. Mt 25:14 – 30). Technology has the power to heal, con­nect, ed­u­cate and pro­tect our com­mon home; but it can also di­vide, ex­clude and gen­er­ate new forms of in­jus­tice. In the ab­stract, tech­nol­ogy in and of it­self is not a so­lu­tion to hu­man­i­ty’s prob­lems, just as it is not in­her­ently evil. In prac­tice, how­ever, tech­nol­ogy is never neu­tral, be­cause it takes on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of those who de­vise, fi­nance, reg­u­late and use it. Therefore, the pri­mary choice is not be­tween a yes” or no” to tech­nol­ogy, but rather be­tween con­struct­ing Babel or re­build­ing Jerusalem; be­tween a power that claims to dom­i­nate the heav­ens and a peo­ple who work to­gether in the pres­ence of God to re­build the walls of fra­ter­nal co­ex­is­tence.

10. We must, then, avoid the Babel syn­drome,” namely the idol­a­try of profit that sac­ri­fices the weak, a uni­for­mity that neu­tral­izes dif­fer­ences, and the pre­tense that a sin­gle lan­guage — even a dig­i­tal one — can trans­late every­thing, in­clud­ing the mys­tery of the per­son, into data and per­for­mance. The risk of de­hu­man­iza­tion — of build­ing a fu­ture that ex­cludes God and re­duces the other to a means — is an an­cient and ever-new temp­ta­tion that to­day takes on a tech­ni­cal guise. Instead, let us choose the way of Nehemiah,” which high­lights the im­por­tance of work­ing to­gether to make the City of God a safe place for re­turn­ing ex­iles. Rebuilding to­day means rec­og­niz­ing that, pre­cisely from the plu­ral­ity of voices and vi­sions which, even though they some­times re­mind us of the con­fu­sion caused by the di­ver­sity of spo­ken lan­guages, a bright pos­si­bil­ity emerges. Indeed, this is the pos­si­bil­ity of build­ing to­gether, of trans­form­ing di­ver­sity into a re­source and of mak­ing lis­ten­ing and di­a­logue the com­mon ground upon which to cul­ti­vate jus­tice and fra­ter­nity. Within this shared task, Christians dis­cover their unique role of guid­ing ac­tions to­ward God so that, in his light, plu­ral­ism does not dis­si­pate into dis­or­der, but in­stead, through the prac­tice of syn­odal­ity, it be­comes the space in which hu­man­ity re­dis­cov­ers its solid foun­da­tions and its fi­nal end. In the Book of Revelation, John sees the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:2) as a gift for all hu­man­ity. And this vi­sion of grace is an in­vi­ta­tion for us Christians to work to­gether in or­der to fos­ter a peace­ful, just and dig­ni­fied life in com­mu­nity within to­day’s cities.”

Building for the com­mon good

11. Building a city founded on the com­mon good im­plies, first and fore­most, build­ing on a firm re­la­tion­ship with God. It means rec­og­niz­ing that the truth of his love calls us to life in all its full­ness” ( Jn 10:10) and com­mu­nion with him. Like Saint Augustine, we too can say, You have made us for your­self, O Lord, and our heart is rest­less un­til it rests in you.” [8] Indeed, God has in­scribed in our hearts a de­sire for hap­pi­ness that em­braces all the di­men­sions of life. The Church, in di­a­logue with the men and women of our time, rec­og­nizes the ur­gent need to safe­guard and guide this as­pi­ra­tion to­ward its deep­est truth.

12. Secondly, build­ing for the com­mon good means ac­cept­ing the lim­its and weak­ness of hu­man­ity with­out con­sid­er­ing them an er­ror to be cor­rected. Today, the hu­man de­sire for full­ness of life is at risk of be­ing mis­led by de­ceit­ful goals, such as the prospect of a tech­nol­ogy that promises to free us from all weak­ness, and mod­els of well­be­ing that leave be­hind en­tire pop­u­la­tions. All too of­ten, we place our hope in un­lim­ited upgrades,” in forms of progress that ex­ac­er­bate in­equal­i­ties, and in im­me­di­ate so­lu­tions in­ca­pable of heal­ing peo­ple’s wounds. As a re­sult, while some pur­sue the il­lu­sion of un­lim­ited self-as­ser­tion, many are de­prived of ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties. The Church re­minds us, with a firm yet hum­ble voice, that true ful­fil­ment is not achieved by elim­i­nat­ing weak­ness but through har­mo­nious growth. It is found where free­dom and re­spon­si­bil­ity are in­ter­twined with mu­tual care and true sol­i­dar­ity, and where progress is mea­sured by the dig­nity of each per­son and the good of all peo­ples.

13. Thirdly, build­ing a world in which every­one can flour­ish re­quires shared re­spon­si­bil­ity and courage. No one can sin­gle-hand­edly bear the weight of the chal­lenges the world is fac­ing, just as no one is so weak that they can­not play their part, for power is made per­fect in weak­ness” (2 Cor 12:9). All are given their own sec­tion of the wall: sci­en­tists and re­searchers, en­tre­pre­neurs and work­ers, ed­u­ca­tors and leg­is­la­tors, civil so­ci­ety, pop­u­lar move­ments and faith com­mu­ni­ties. This is the logic of sub­sidiar­ity, which val­ues the co­op­er­a­tion be­tween gen­er­a­tions, peo­ples, dis­ci­plines and cul­tures as the best way for fos­ter­ing sta­bil­ity, pros­per­ity and peace. We should not be in­tim­i­dated by ten­sions or dif­fer­ences be­cause they can be­come cre­ative forces when guided by shared re­spon­si­bil­ity.

14. Finally, build­ing for the com­mon good re­quires an evan­gel­i­cal lan­guage. We must avoid hu­mil­i­at­ing or an­tag­o­nis­tic words, opt­ing rather for a clar­ity that sheds light and a frank­ness that un­locks new pos­si­bil­i­ties. We can­not con­done naïve en­thu­si­asms, nor fuel un­founded fears. Instead, let us es­tab­lish stan­dards for dis­cern­ment — the dig­nity of the hu­man per­son, the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of goods, the pref­er­en­tial op­tion for the poor, care for our com­mon home and peace — and let us trans­late these stan­dards into prac­tices such as re­spon­si­ble plan­ning, the as­sess­ment of hu­man and so­cial im­pact, the in­clu­sion of the most vul­ner­a­ble, the pro­mo­tion of dig­i­tal lit­er­acy and guid­ing re­search and in­dus­try to­ward jus­tice and peace.

Remaining hu­man

15. In the re­cent Ordinary Jubilee Year of 2025, we walked as pil­grims of hope and were blessed with many graces. Strengthened by these gifts, we can move for­ward with con­fi­dence to face the ar­du­ous tasks and de­mand­ing chal­lenges that lie ahead. In the era of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, when hu­man dig­nity is threat­ened by new forms of de­hu­man­iza­tion, ours is the press­ing duty to re­main pro­foundly hu­man. We must lov­ingly safe­guard the grandeur of hu­man­ity be­stowed upon us and re­vealed in its full­ness in Christ, the splen­dor of which no ma­chine can ever re­place. True progress al­ways stems from a heart open to oth­ers, an in­tel­li­gence will­ing to lis­ten and a will that seeks what unites rather than what sep­a­rates.

16. I ad­dress this heart­felt ap­peal to all the Catholic faith­ful, to all Christians and to all men and women of good­will. Let us not be afraid to get our hands dirty on the construction site” of our time. Like Nehemiah, let us pray, plan wisely and work per­se­ver­ingly, plac­ing God at the fore­front of our ac­tions and the hu­man per­son at the cen­ter of our choices. Thus, the rejected stones” — the poor, the sick, the mi­grants and the least among us — will be­come the cor­ner­stone, and a solid, wel­com­ing com­mon home will emerge on the earth, where love and faith­ful­ness will fi­nally meet, and right­eous­ness and peace will em­brace (cf. Ps 85:10). This is the bless­ing we im­plore from God; and the task that stands be­fore us is that of be­ing builders of com­mu­nion, rather than ar­chi­tects of Babel. We are to be ser­vants of the com­ing Kingdom, in­stead of lords of tow­ers des­tined for ruin. With the heart of a shep­herd and a fa­ther, I ask every­one to aban­don the con­struc­tion of yet an­other Tower of Babel and to join forces in build­ing up the com­mon good, so that hu­man­ity will never lose its beauty, and the world once again will come to rec­og­nize the hu­man heart as the place where God de­sires to dwell.

CHAPTER ONE

A DYNAMIC APPROACH FAITHFUL TO THE GOSPEL

17. In this first chap­ter, I in­tend to pre­sent syn­thet­i­cally how the Social Doctrine of the Church has taken shape in the re­cent Papal Magisterium and in the Second Vatican Council, in or­der to demon­strate its dy­namic char­ac­ter. Indeed, in each era the res no­vae re­quire that this teach­ing ad­dress his­tor­i­cal ques­tions in the light of re­vealed Truth. In this re­gard, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, too, should not be con­sid­ered as merely yet an­other theme to be stud­ied or a cri­sis to be man­aged, but rather as a de­vel­op­ment that chal­lenges the cat­e­gories of Social Doctrine from within, call­ing for their fur­ther de­vel­op­ment in fi­delity to the Gospel.

18. This overview, how­ever, would not be very com­pre­hen­si­ble if, be­fore re­flect­ing on the con­tri­bu­tion of in­di­vid­ual popes and their most rel­e­vant doc­u­ments, we do not first clar­ify some fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples con­cern­ing the way in which the Church ex­ists in his­tory and re­lates to the world. Failing to do so would ex­pose Social Doctrine to the risk of be­ing per­ceived as an un­due in­ter­fer­ence in worldly” mat­ters or as an ex­ter­nal code of ethics im­posed from above. In re­al­ity, it stems from a Church that walks along­side hu­man­ity, rec­og­niz­ing the au­ton­omy of earthly re­al­i­ties and the dis­tinc­tion be­tween ec­cle­sial and po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ties. Indeed, it is for this very rea­son that she strives to serve the com­mon good.

A Church jour­ney­ing through hu­man his­tory

19. The Church is pre­sent in the world as a sign of unity for the en­tire hu­man fam­ily. She rec­og­nizes to­day’s ques­tions and chal­lenges as the cur­rent set­ting in which to carry out her par­tic­u­lar vo­ca­tion of lis­ten­ing, di­a­logue and ser­vice, and of be­ing re­spon­sive to every­thing con­cern­ing the lives of con­tem­po­rary men and women. This in­volve­ment in peo­ple’s lives helps the Church un­der­stand ever more clearly that her mis­sion has a his­tor­i­cal scope and en­tails a re­spon­si­bil­ity for the way in which so­cial re­la­tions are built. For this rea­son, she can­not con­sider her­self a stranger to the forces shap­ing so­ci­ety. On the con­trary, the Church ac­tively par­tic­i­pates in the processes by which so­ci­ety grows and is or­ga­nized, and she of­fers her own con­tri­bu­tion to the cre­ation of a more just and fra­ter­nal so­ci­ety. Pope Francis emphasized this his­tor­i­cal di­men­sion of the Church’s mis­sion: No one can de­mand that re­li­gion should be rel­e­gated to the in­ner sanc­tum of per­sonal life, with­out in­flu­ence on so­ci­etal and na­tional life, with­out con­cern for the sound­ness of civil in­sti­tu­tions, with­out a right to of­fer an opin­ion on events af­fect­ing so­ci­ety.” [9]

20. The Church’s vo­ca­tion and duty to ac­com­pany hu­man­ity in the specifics of his­tory leads her to rec­og­nize that earthly re­al­i­ties pos­sess their own proper char­ac­ter and or­der. The Second Vatican Council expressed this prin­ci­ple with par­tic­u­lar pre­ci­sion in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, whose six­ti­eth an­niver­sary we re­mem­bered and cel­e­brated with grat­i­tude on 7 December 2025: If by the au­ton­omy of earthly af­fairs is meant that cre­ated things and so­ci­eties them­selves en­joy their own laws and val­ues… then the de­mand for au­ton­omy is per­fectly in or­der.” [10] This af­fir­ma­tion shows that cre­ation bears the im­print of an orig­i­nal good­ness that our hu­man out­look must pre­serve, cul­ti­vate and bring to ful­fil­ment. In this re­gard, the Church of­fers her­self in a way that helps to in­ter­pret re­al­ity in all its depth. She sup­ports with hum­ble firm­ness the choices that pro­mote the dig­nity of every per­son, the co­he­sion of com­mu­ni­ties and the good of all. The Church thus stands along­side the world with­out over­pow­er­ing it, so that the promise of jus­tice and peace that the Holy Spirit con­tin­ues to sus­tain in the heart of hu­man­ity may come to fruition in every hu­man en­deavor.

21. Recognizing that God up­holds the free­dom of men and women in the un­fold­ing of his­tory, the Second Vatican Council affirmed the dis­tinc­tion be­tween the ec­cle­sial com­mu­nity and the po­lit­i­cal com­mu­nity, em­pha­siz­ing that each must op­er­ate with full au­ton­omy. The Church’s pres­ence in the world is also ex­pressed through her re­la­tion­ship with civil so­ci­ety and pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions. By en­gag­ing with these en­ti­ties, the Church ac­knowl­edges the value of so­cial and po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties and hon­ors their spe­cific re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, sup­port­ing every­thing that fos­ters the well­be­ing of in­di­vid­u­als and strength­ens the fab­ric of so­ci­ety. The Church does not claim to as­sume the func­tions be­long­ing to the State. On the con­trary, she es­teems those who serve the com­mon good, and she firmly ac­knowl­edges the re­spon­si­bil­ity that civil in­sti­tu­tions hold within so­ci­ety. At the same time, the mis­sion en­trusted to the Church prompts her to ad­dress the real suf­fer­ing of the men and women of our time. This close­ness does not stem from an in­tent to sup­plant civil in­sti­tu­tions, much less from an im­plicit crit­i­cism of their work. Rather, it stems from evan­gel­i­cal char­ity, which im­pels the Church to draw near to the wounds of hu­man­ity when­ever they sur­face with greater sever­ity. When the Church in­ter­venes, she does so fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of the Good Samaritan, with dis­cre­tion and close­ness, aware that what arises from ur­gent ne­ces­sity can­not be­come the norm, nor re­place the in­sti­tu­tional re­spon­si­bil­i­ties proper to the civil com­mu­nity.

22. Starting from this twofold ac­knowl­edg­ment — the au­ton­omy of earthly re­al­i­ties and the dis­tinc­tion be­tween ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal and po­lit­i­cal spheres of com­pe­tence — al­lows for a clearer un­der­stand­ing of the di­rec­tion that the Second Vatican Council set for the Church in her re­la­tion­ship with the world. Gaudium et Spes reminds us that it is the task of the whole People of God, par­tic­u­larly of its pas­tors and the­olo­gians, to lis­ten to and dis­tin­guish the many voices of our times and to in­ter­pret them in the light of God’s word, in or­der that the re­vealed Truth may be more deeply pen­e­trated, bet­ter un­der­stood and more suit­ably pre­sented.” [11]  Listening to the many voices” is no mere so­ci­o­log­i­cal ex­er­cise, but in­stead re­quires spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment. Guided by the Spirit, the People of God come to rec­og­nize in cul­tural and so­cial trans­for­ma­tions both the signs of the pres­ence of Christ, who comes and guides his­tory to­ward its ful­fil­ment, and those aber­ra­tions that ob­scure his face. In this way, the es­sen­tial core of re­vealed Truth is not al­tered, but made ex­plicit and adopted as a liv­ing stan­dard for guid­ing con­crete choices, in­spir­ing paths of per­sonal and com­mu­nal con­ver­sion, pro­mot­ing struc­tural re­forms and sup­port­ing new forms of evan­gel­i­cal wit­ness in pub­lic life. History is thus un­der­stood as one of the places in which the Church al­lows her­self to be taught by the Spirit about the hu­man­iz­ing power of the Gospel; and she learns to de­velop her own teach­ing at the ser­vice of the dig­nity of every per­son and the good of all peo­ples.

The wis­dom of the word of God in di­a­logue with the hu­man sci­ences

23. The Church re­gards all who sin­cerely seek truth, good­ness and beauty” as com­pan­ions on the jour­ney, and con­sid­ers them as precious al­lies” [12] in de­fend­ing the dig­nity of every per­son and in car­ing for cre­ation. Adopting the pas­toral ap­proach of the Second Vatican Council, which in­vites us to lis­ten, dis­cern and in­ter­pret the signs of the times, and en­light­ened by the wis­dom of the word, the Church is not afraid to en­counter hu­man knowl­edge. Indeed, the word of God pro­vides re­li­able stan­dards for es­tab­lish­ing paths of jus­tice and open­ing ways of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and peace among peo­ples. When it comes to ap­ply­ing these stan­dards to the com­plex sit­u­a­tions of our time, the con­tri­bu­tions of phi­los­o­phy and of the hu­man and so­cial sci­ences is es­sen­tial. These dis­ci­plines help us un­der­stand and an­a­lyze cul­tural, eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics more deeply.  Saint John Paul II recalled that the Church wel­comes the con­tri­bu­tions of the so­cial sci­ences in or­der to draw from them con­crete in­sights that help her carry out her mag­is­te­r­ial of­fice.” [13] A di­a­logue with such kinds of knowl­edge does not di­min­ish the power of the Gospel. On the con­trary, it makes it pos­si­ble to iden­tify with greater clar­ity what gen­uinely fos­ters the lives of in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties. Following this per­spec­tive, Pope Francis emphasized that when deal­ing with many spe­cific ques­tions, the Church does not claim to of­fer a de­fin­i­tive opin­ion,” [14] but rec­og­nizes the im­por­tance of lis­ten­ing to sci­en­tific re­search and of en­cour­ag­ing a se­ri­ous and hon­est de­bate among ex­perts while wel­com­ing a di­ver­sity of opin­ions.

24. Nourished by this fruit­ful di­a­logue be­tween the Gospel and hu­man knowl­edge, the Church has pro­gres­sively de­vel­oped her Social Doctrine, cul­ti­vat­ing in his­tory a wise pat­ri­mony marked by the­o­log­i­cal and an­thro­po­log­i­cal co­her­ence rooted in the Christian un­der­stand­ing of the per­son. Precisely be­cause this pat­ri­mony arises from faith and a cor­re­spond­ing vi­sion of re­al­ity, it does not amount to a reper­toire of tech­ni­cal so­lu­tions or an eco­nomic or po­lit­i­cal model to be set against oth­ers.  Instead, it be­longs to a dif­fer­ent or­der, [15] namely that of the prin­ci­ples that guide the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of events and sus­tain an evan­gel­i­cal un­der­stand­ing of his­tor­i­cal processes and the choices these en­tail. Herein lies the proper func­tion of Social Doctrine, which does not claim to sup­plant the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of pol­i­tics or in­sti­tu­tions, but of­fers it­self as a foun­da­tion for col­lec­tive dis­cern­ment, help­ing to rec­og­nize and pro­mote what­ever serves the dig­nity of per­sons, the vi­tal­ity of com­mu­ni­ties and the com­mon good.

Social Doctrine as a shared dis­cern­ment

25. Understanding that the truth is a gift to be shared, not a pos­ses­sion to be mo­nop­o­lized, frees the Church from the temp­ta­tion of seek­ing forms of pres­ence based on power. In or­der to re­dis­cover the evan­gel­i­cal ap­proach of a gen­tle procla­ma­tion of truth that is not im­posed, Saint John Paul II invited us to ex­am­ine hon­estly the times when ac­qui­es­cence was given to intolerance and even the use of vi­o­lence in the ser­vice of truth.” [16] In this same vein, I too have reaf­firmed that the Church does not claim to pos­sess a mo­nop­oly on truth,” [17] be­cause truth is not a ter­ri­tory to be de­fended, but a good to be shared. For his part, Pope Francis expressed this same per­spec­tive in his strik­ing phrase, time is greater than space.” [18] What mat­ters most is not oc­cu­py­ing po­si­tions of power or de­fend­ing cul­tural strong­holds, but ini­ti­at­ing good processes and en­abling them to ma­ture.  In this way, the truth of the Gospel is not im­posed from above, but grows over time within the con­crete in­ter­weav­ing of lives, com­mu­ni­ties and cul­tures. This is not a truth that fears di­ver­sity, but in­stead wel­comes and guides it. It does not elim­i­nate con­flicts, but trans­forms them, re­unit­ing that which his­tory tends to scat­ter. This con­cept can also be il­lus­trated by the im­age of a mul­ti­fac­eted poly­he­dron, [19] in which the one truth of the Gospel is re­flected from dif­fer­ent an­gles.

26. This at­ti­tude of open­ness to truth, which is at the same time both one and di­verse, pro­foundly ex­presses the catholic­ity of the Church, for she em­braces the en­tire hu­man fam­ily yet is also im­mersed in the con­crete sit­u­a­tions of peo­ples and cul­tures. The Second Vatican Council reminds us that, in virtue of this very catholic­ity, each part con­tributes its own gifts to other parts and to the en­tire Church.” [20] In this way, the Church grows as a whole and as in­di­vid­ual com­mu­ni­ties thanks to a mu­tual ex­change and to shared ef­forts to­ward an ever fuller com­mu­nion. It fol­lows, then, that the People of God are not only gath­ered to­gether from many peo­ples, but are also in­ter­twined through dif­fer­ent func­tions, vo­ca­tions, cul­tures and tra­di­tions, each be­ing called to sup­port and en­rich one an­other. From this per­spec­tive, Saint Paul VI acknowledged that, given the great va­ri­ety of his­tor­i­cal sit­u­a­tions, it is un­re­al­is­tic to think that the Church’s Social Doctrine can pro­pose a sin­gle re­sponse that is valid in all con­texts. [21] For this rea­son, he in­vited each Christian com­mu­nity to in­ter­pret the re­al­ity in its own coun­try with clar­ity and re­spon­si­bil­ity. The fruit­ful ten­sion be­tween the uni­ver­sal­ity of the Church’s mis­sion and her lo­cal roots is an in­trin­sic as­pect of her life, for she en­com­passes the whole world, while ad­dress­ing the spe­cific is­sues of each con­text as the real set­ting in which the Gospel takes shape.

27. In light of what has been said so far, the Church’s Social Doctrine can be seen more au­then­ti­cally. It is not a hand­book of prin­ci­ples and norms to be ap­plied, but a process of shared dis­cern­ment. It is born from the en­counter be­tween the eter­nal truth of the Gospel and the ques­tions of his­tory. It al­lows it­self to be chal­lenged by the signs of the times, and draws nour­ish­ment from the con­tri­bu­tions of sci­ence, cul­ture and hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Therefore, when the dig­nity of our broth­ers and sis­ters is vi­o­lated, when pol­i­tics fails to ad­dress the tragedies of hu­man­ity, when the econ­omy turns against the per­son or sci­ence over­steps the lim­its of its com­pe­tence, [22] the Church — to­gether with other Christian de­nom­i­na­tions and be­liev­ers of other re­li­gions — must make her voice heard, not in or­der to dom­i­nate, but to pro­mote com­mu­nion. Understood in this way, Social Doctrine be­comes a the­ol­ogy of com­mu­nion in his­tory, a his­tory in which the Word made flesh con­tin­ues to be pre­sent through di­a­logue, mem­ory and prophecy.

The de­vel­op­ment of Social Doctrine from Leo XIII to the pre­sent

28. Having out­lined the way in which the Church is pre­sent in his­tory and en­gages in di­a­logue with the world, I would now like to con­sider the de­vel­op­ment of Social Doctrine in the Magisterium, which has re­sponded to the ma­jor so­cial trans­for­ma­tions from the nine­teenth cen­tury to the pre­sent day. Naturally, I can­not do jus­tice to the full rich­ness of this teach­ing, whose fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples are pre­sented in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and have been fur­ther ex­am­ined by re­cent Magisterial teach­ing. Nor can I sys­tem­at­i­cally ex­plore every­thing that has been de­vel­oped in the Encyclicals of my late ven­er­a­ble pre­de­ces­sors, es­pe­cially in Laudato Si’and Fratelli Tutti. Nevertheless, I will em­pha­size some es­sen­tial points in or­der to show how the pre­sent text stands in con­ti­nu­ity with that tra­di­tion. I would also like to stress how, within this tra­di­tion, the un­chang­ing core of re­vealed truths re­gard­ing the hu­man per­son and so­ci­ety is con­stantly in­ter­twined with a re­newed ca­pac­ity for lis­ten­ing to his­tor­i­cal sit­u­a­tions and for re­spond­ing to con­tem­po­rary is­sues. I will now re­view some of the sig­nif­i­cant stages of this de­vel­op­ment, be­gin­ning with the pe­riod in­au­gu­rated by the Encyclical Rerum Novarum.

The first stages of the Church’s Social Doctrine

29. What we now call the Social Doctrine of the Church” is not a spon­ta­neous prod­uct of the mod­ern age. Instead, it is the fruit of re­ceiv­ing and struc­tur­ing a long tra­di­tion of ec­cle­sial re­flec­tion on life in so­ci­ety, rooted in Sacred Scripture, the Church Fathers and the the­o­log­i­cal and le­gal de­vel­op­ments of the Middle Ages and mod­ern era. Although the ex­pres­sion Social Doctrine of the Church” was coined by Pius XII in 1950, [23] its con­tent be­gan to take shape as an or­ganic cor­pus of so­cial teach­ing with Leo XIII’s Encyclical Rerum Novarum. Confronted with the new things” of his time — the con­flict be­tween cap­i­tal and la­bor, the ques­tion of the work­force, and eco­nomic and so­cial trans­for­ma­tions — Leo XIII did not limit him­self merely to ac­knowl­edg­ing the un­rest, but saw these sit­u­a­tions as an area for the Church’s pas­toral mis­sion. He ex­posed them to rig­or­ous dis­cern­ment, il­lu­mi­nat­ing their causes and pos­si­ble so­lu­tions in the light of the Gospel and an in­te­gral vi­sion of the hu­man per­son cre­ated in the im­age of God. Saint John Paul II regarded this ap­proach as a lasting par­a­digm” [24] of Social Doctrine: an ex­em­plary prac­tice through which the Church, when faced with his­tor­i­cal changes, ex­er­cises her right and duty to ex­am­ine so­cial re­al­i­ties, make pro­nounce­ments about them and in­di­cate paths for find­ing just so­lu­tions. In this way, the peren­nial con­tents of the faith and an­cient ec­cle­sial wis­dom find ex­pres­sion in a liv­ing doc­trine that re­mains faith­ful to the Gospel while grow­ing in re­sponse to the new things” of every era.

30. Leo XIIIs Encyclical Rerum Novarum constitutes a mile­stone in the de­vel­op­ment of the Church’s so­cial teach­ing. The doc­u­ment places the dig­nity of work and of work­ers at the fore­front of its re­flec­tion; af­firms the right to a fair wage for one­self and one’s fam­ily; rec­og­nizes that per­sons have a fun­da­men­tal value that takes prece­dence over cap­i­tal and profit; de­fends pri­vate prop­erty along with its in­dis­pens­able so­ci­etal role; es­teems work­ers’ as­so­ci­a­tions; and pro­poses forms of co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of so­ci­ety as an al­ter­na­tive to the men­tal­ity of class strug­gle. It is not sur­pris­ing, then, that Pius XI defined it as the Magna Carta” [25] of Christian so­cial ac­tion. In Rerum Novarum, the Church’s an­cient wis­dom re­gard­ing the hu­man per­son and life in so­ci­ety took on a new form ca­pa­ble of re­spond­ing to the in­dus­trial age and of­fer­ing the first ma­jor sys­tem­atic frame­work for the Social Doctrine that would be fur­ther de­vel­oped in the fol­low­ing decades. While many of the his­tor­i­cal con­di­tions de­scribed by Leo XIII have changed, at least two in­sights re­main highly rel­e­vant to­day: the pri­macy of hu­man la­bor over any mind­set fo­cused solely on fi­nance or pro­duc­tiv­ity — with the con­se­quent at­ten­tion to the peo­ple and fam­i­lies most sus­cep­ti­ble to ex­ploita­tion — and the in­sep­a­ra­ble link be­tween pro­claim­ing the Gospel and pur­su­ing a more just so­cial or­der. Rerum Novarum thereby con­tin­ues to re­mind us that there is no au­then­tic evan­ge­liza­tion that does not also af­fect the struc­tures of hu­man so­ci­ety.

31. Pius XIs Encyclical Quadragesima Anno was pub­lished in 1931 on the for­ti­eth an­niver­sary of Rerum Novarumat the height of a ma­jor global eco­nomic cri­sis, mark­ing a fur­ther step in the Church’s so­cial teach­ing. Rather than lim­it­ing it­self to ad­dress­ing the workforce ques­tion,” it broad­ened its fo­cus to en­com­pass the over­all struc­ture of the eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal or­der. The Encyclical denounces the con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nomic power in the hands of a few; crit­i­cizes both un­lim­ited com­pe­ti­tion and col­lec­tivist pro­jects that un­der­mine the free­dom and re­spon­si­bil­ity of the in­di­vid­ual; strongly af­firms the work­ers’ right to as­so­ci­a­tion; and re­it­er­ates the re­quire­ment that wages be pro­por­tion­ate not only to per­for­mance, but also to the needs of work­ers and their fam­i­lies. Within this frame­work, Pius XI systematically for­mu­lated the prin­ci­ple of sub­sidiar­ity, which was to be­come one of the cor­ner­stones of Social Doctrine. According to this prin­ci­ple, what­ever can be car­ried out by in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, in­ter­me­di­ary or­ga­ni­za­tions and lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties should not be car­ried out by higher-level au­thor­i­ties. Alongside these con­tri­bu­tions, in var­i­ous in­ter­ven­tions of his Magisterium — from the Encyclicals Non Abbiamo Bisogno and Mit Brennender Sorge to Divini Redemptoris —  Pius XI clearly re­called the so­ci­etal role of pri­vate prop­erty and de­nounced forms of to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism that de­mean the dig­nity of the per­son, sti­fle life in so­ci­ety, ex­alt the State above its just value and dis­crim­i­nate ac­cord­ing to race. At least three in­sights of his so­cial teach­ing re­main par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant to­day: the aware­ness that in­jus­tice con­cerns not only in­di­vid­ual be­hav­ior but also eco­nomic and in­sti­tu­tional struc­tures; the im­por­tance of the prin­ci­ple of sub­sidiar­ity, which calls for the strength­en­ing of the fab­ric of as­so­ci­a­tions and com­mu­ni­ties while avoid­ing fur­ther cen­tral­iza­tion of power; and the link be­tween the dig­nity of work, fair re­mu­ner­a­tion and the gen­uine pos­si­bil­ity for fam­i­lies to lead a dig­ni­fied life.

32. In the tragic con­text of the Second World War, and the years of re­con­struc­tion that fol­lowed, the teach­ings of Pius XII made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of Social Doctrine. This is par­tic­u­larly true of his Christmas ra­dio mes­sages, in which he out­lined the frame­work of an in­ter­na­tional or­der based on jus­tice, peace and the recog­ni­tion of hu­man dig­nity. In these mes­sages, the Pope proposed a di­a­logue with so­ci­ety based on an ap­peal to nat­ural law un­der­stood as a set of ob­jec­tive prin­ci­ples that pre­cede the in­ter­ests of in­di­vid­u­als and States, and which must reg­u­late both the in­ter­nal life of na­tions and their mu­tual re­la­tions. Pius XII also at­trib­uted a de­ci­sive role to pro­fes­sional as­so­ci­a­tions, la­bor unions and the var­i­ous in­ter­me­di­ary or­ga­ni­za­tions in the eco­nomic and so­cial or­der. He rec­og­nized these or­ga­nized forms of so­ci­ety as an es­sen­tial safe­guard for civil equi­lib­rium and for pro­tect­ing the com­mon good. He af­firmed the need for a sound rule of law for guard­ing against the abuse of power, and he rec­og­nized democ­racy as a means for en­sur­ing the proper ex­er­cise of au­thor­ity. At the same time, he warned against any at­tempt to base law on util­ity or force, re­call­ing that an in­ter­na­tional or­der gov­erned by the ad­van­tage of the strongest ex­poses weaker peo­ples to op­pres­sion and fun­da­men­tally un­der­mines trust be­tween na­tions. Finally, Pius XII identified pro­found eco­nomic im­bal­ances be­tween coun­tries as one of the fac­tors fu­el­ing con­flicts. [26] Three guide­lines re­main par­tic­u­larly sig­nif­i­cant for our own times, cur­rently marked by new forms of global power and grow­ing in­equal­i­ties: the need for law to take prece­dence over in­ter­ests; the aware­ness that eco­nomic dis­par­i­ties are a breed­ing ground for ten­sion and vi­o­lence; and the ne­ces­sity of a net­work of as­so­ci­a­tions ca­pa­ble of me­di­at­ing be­tween the in­di­vid­ual and the State. These guide­lines con­tinue to pro­vide im­por­tant cri­te­ria that en­able Social Doctrine to in­ter­pret the dy­nam­ics of glob­al­iza­tion and pro­mote a more just and peace­ful in­ter­na­tional or­der.

The years of the Second Vatican Council

33. A new phase in the Church’s so­cial teach­ing be­gan with Saint John XXIII, who placed a greater em­pha­sis on the global di­men­sion of so­cial is­sues and the lan­guage of rights. In Mater et Magistra, he pre­sented the Christian faith as a light ca­pa­ble of unit­ing heaven and earth. He re­called that, while the Church’s pri­mary mis­sion is the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion and procla­ma­tion of eter­nal goods, she does not ne­glect the con­crete needs of peo­ple’s daily lives, and is con­cerned with every au­then­tic hu­man good. [27] Based on this uni­fied vi­sion of hu­man­ity, John XXIII emphasized that so­ci­etal life re­quires a bal­ance be­tween the ini­tia­tive of cit­i­zens and groups — who are called to or­ga­nize them­selves and work to­gether — and the ac­tion of the State, which must co­or­di­nate and pro­vide sup­port with­out sti­fling the free­dom and re­spon­si­bil­ity of in­di­vid­u­als. Hence, he drew at­ten­tion to fair re­mu­ner­a­tion for work, worker par­tic­i­pa­tion and the grow­ing dis­par­i­ties be­tween coun­tries. A few years later, in Pacem in Terris, John XXIII addressed for the first time not only the faith­ful, but also all peo­ple of good will, or­gan­i­cally link­ing the dig­nity of the per­son to the recog­ni­tion of fun­da­men­tal rights and du­ties, and propos­ing a di­rec­tion for so­ci­ety — at the in­ter­na­tional level too — based on truth, jus­tice, love and free­dom. [28] In the pre­sent day, which is marked by wide­spread con­flict and new forms of global in­ter­de­pen­dence, the fol­low­ing as­pects of his thought re­main par­tic­u­larly sig­nif­i­cant: the uni­ver­sal per­spec­tive of his ap­peal; his ref­er­ence to hu­man rights as a shared frame­work; and his con­vic­tion that last­ing peace re­quires in­sti­tu­tions and re­la­tions be­tween peo­ples that are in­spired by the dig­nity of every per­son.

34. The Second Vatican Council marked a turn­ing point in the Church’s un­der­stand­ing of her­self in the con­tem­po­rary world. In the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, the Council presented the im­age of a Church that is close to hu­man­ity, en­gaged with the world and com­mit­ted to re­flect­ing on the con­crete re­al­ity of his­tor­i­cal sit­u­a­tions, rather than ab­stract con­cepts. The text ad­dresses the ma­jor is­sues of mar­riage and the fam­ily, eco­nomic and so­ci­etal life, the po­lit­i­cal com­mu­nity, war and peace. It in­sists that eco­nomic and in­sti­tu­tional struc­tures are just only to the ex­tent that they serve the in­te­gral de­vel­op­ment of the per­son and pro­mote the re­spon­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion of all. [29] The im­por­tance of this con­cil­iar doc­u­ment for the Social Doctrine of the Church lies not only in hav­ing opened up hori­zons for the­matic re­flec­tion, but also in its method of dis­cern­ment that in­vites us to in­ter­pret his­tor­i­cal changes guided by the Gospel and hu­man ex­per­tise. This ap­proach re­veals that di­a­logue with the world is not a tac­ti­cal choice for the Church, but a con­crete ex­pres­sion of her mis­sion be­cause the Gospel, like leaven, is ca­pa­ble of trans­form­ing the struc­tures of so­ci­ety from within and forg­ing paths to­ward a greater hu­man­ity. The Declaration Dignitatis Humanae can be in­cluded in the same con­text. Here, the Council rec­og­nized that re­li­gious free­dom is a fun­da­men­tal right grounded in hu­man dig­nity that must be guar­an­teed by law so as to pre­vent peo­ple from be­ing forced to act against their con­science or im­peded from seek­ing and pro­fess­ing the truth both pri­vately and pub­licly. [30] This prin­ci­ple is highly rel­e­vant to­day and con­tin­ues to pro­vide Social Doctrine with de­ci­sive cri­te­ria for pro­tect­ing in­di­vid­u­als and build­ing plu­ral­is­tic and peace­ful so­ci­eties.

35. During the Pontificate of Saint Paul VI, an un­der­stand­ing of peace emerged that was not re­duced to the mere ab­sence of war, but took shape within the scope of in­te­gral hu­man de­vel­op­ment. In Populorum Progressio, he de­scribed de­vel­op­ment as a tran­si­tion from less hu­mane to more hu­mane liv­ing con­di­tions. He fur­ther un­der­stood it as a process that con­cerns each per­son and the whole per­son,” [31] that is every di­men­sion of the per­son and all peo­ple with­out ex­cep­tion. For this rea­son, Paul VI could af­firm that de­vel­op­ment un­der­stood in this way is in re­al­ity the new name for peace,” [32] be­cause it aims to erad­i­cate the roots of in­jus­tice and con­flict and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for a more dig­ni­fied life for all. The es­tab­lish­ment of the Pontifical Commission Iustitia et Pax should also be seen in this light as an at­tempt to give sta­ble form to this in­sight at the ec­cle­sial and in­ter­na­tional lev­els, while bear­ing in mind the grow­ing gap be­tween rich and poor coun­tries and the need for poli­cies that gen­uinely pro­mote more hu­mane liv­ing con­di­tions for all.

36. In Octogesima Adveniens, writ­ten on the oc­ca­sion of the eight­i­eth an­niver­sary of Rerum Novarum, Paul VI applied this per­spec­tive to postin­dus­trial so­ci­ety, marked by ur­ban­iza­tion, new forms of poverty and rapid cul­tural changes that called into ques­tion the fu­ture of in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties. Paul VI believed that al­though the Gospel was pro­claimed, writ­ten and lived out in a his­tor­i­cal and cul­tural con­text very dif­fer­ent from our own, its mes­sage was not outdated.” [33] Instead, it of­fers a vi­sion of the hu­man per­son, re­la­tion­ships, au­thor­ity and the com­mon good that is still ca­pa­ble of guid­ing eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal and cul­tural choices to­day. In other words, the Gospel re­mains rel­e­vant be­cause it pro­vides the cri­te­ria for rec­og­niz­ing what hu­man­izes or de­hu­man­izes and what lib­er­ates or op­presses in ever-chang­ing sit­u­a­tions. For the Social Doctrine of the Church, Paul VIs most de­mand­ing legacy is pre­cisely this: as long as there are peo­ple in the world who are ex­cluded from the de­vel­op­ment be­fit­ting hu­man dig­nity, the Christian com­mu­nity can­not be con­tent with a the­o­ret­i­cal procla­ma­tion of peace. Rather, be­gin­ning where peo­ple are mar­gin­al­ized, it must al­low the Gospel to pass judg­ment on those eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal struc­tures which — as John Paul II would later re­mind us — can be­come ver­i­ta­ble structures of sin.” [34] As a re­sult, no per­son or peo­ple will be treated as ex­pend­able in the processes of de­vel­op­ment.

The re­cent Magisterium

37. The rich so­cial teach­ing of Saint John Paul II lies at the cross­roads of the cri­sis of the great ide­o­log­i­cal sys­tems of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury and the on­set of eco­nomic glob­al­iza­tion. His Encyclical Laborem Exercens, writ­ten ninety years af­ter the pub­li­ca­tion of Rerum Novarum, opened up a new av­enue for re­flec­tion on work. It pre­sents fair wages as the con­crete means of ver­i­fy­ing the just­ness of the en­tire so­cioe­co­nomic sys­tem be­cause they re­veal whether the worker is treated as a per­son or merely as a cost of pro­duc­tion. [35] Work is not con­sid­ered sim­ply as a prob­lem to be dealt with or a means of gen­er­at­ing in­come, but a fun­da­men­tal good for the per­son, a prin­ci­ple of eco­nomic ac­tiv­ity and the key to the en­tire so­ci­etal ques­tion. Through work, hu­man be­ings bring their free­dom, cre­ativ­ity and ca­pac­ity for co­op­er­a­tion into play, con­tribut­ing to the cul­tural and moral el­e­va­tion of so­ci­ety. [36] In light of this, the var­i­ous kinds of job in­se­cu­rity, frag­mented ca­reer paths and au­toma­tion must not be eval­u­ated solely in terms of ef­fi­ciency, but in re­la­tion to the dig­nity of the worker, the right to suf­fi­cient re­mu­ner­a­tion and the gen­uine pos­si­bil­ity of par­tic­i­pat­ing in so­ci­ety.

38. With his Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, mark­ing the twen­ti­eth an­niver­sary of Populorum Progressio, John Paul II reexamined the scourge of un­der­de­vel­op­ment. He ac­knowl­edged the fail­ure of nu­mer­ous at­tempts to ac­cel­er­ate the eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment of poor peo­ples and to as­sist them in the process of in­dus­tri­al­iza­tion, not­ing the per­sis­tent and in­deed widen­ing gap be­tween the world’s North and South. [37] He also de­nounced the eco­nomic, fi­nan­cial and com­mer­cial mech­a­nisms that, man­aged by the strongest economies, struc­turally fa­vor their own in­ter­ests while sti­fling weaker economies, and he asked that they be sub­jected to se­ri­ous eth­i­cal, not just tech­ni­cal, scrutiny. [38] In this con­text, sol­i­dar­ity was un­der­stood as a con­crete, shared re­spon­si­bil­ity among in­di­vid­u­als, peo­ples and na­tions — a form of so­cial friend­ship or po­lit­i­cal char­ity ori­ented to­ward the civilization of love” pro­posed by Paul VI. [39]

39. On the cen­te­nary of Rerum Novarum, the Encyclical Centesimus Annus offered a re­flec­tion on the col­lapse of the Soviet sys­tem and the rise of democ­racy and the mar­ket econ­omy. Saint John Paul II reiterated Pius XIIs mes­sage that the Church val­ues democ­racy in­so­far as it guar­an­tees the ef­fec­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of cit­i­zens, en­ables them to elect and peace­fully re­place their lead­ers and pre­vents power from be­ing mo­nop­o­lized by small elite groups mo­ti­vated by par­tic­u­lar or ide­o­log­i­cal in­ter­ests. [40] Likewise, the Church rec­og­nizes the pos­i­tive po­ten­tial of the mar­ket and pri­vate ini­tia­tive only if they re­main sub­or­di­nate to the moral law and are guided by the prin­ci­ple of sol­i­dar­ity, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble to the ra­tio­nale of profit. [41] This adds a par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant legacy to the Social Doctrine of the Church. The af­fir­ma­tion of the link be­tween the dig­nity of work, sol­i­dar­ity among peo­ples, a crit­i­cal as­sess­ment of democ­racy and the mar­ket econ­omy con­tin­ues to pro­vide cri­te­ria for eval­u­at­ing new forms of ex­ploita­tion, ex­clu­sion and crises in po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

40. In his so­cial Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI sought to re­assess and ex­pand the con­cept of de­vel­op­ment pre­sented in Populorum Progressio, in­ter­pret­ing it in light of glob­al­iza­tion. He noted that such de­vel­op­ment should trans­late into real growth, of ben­e­fit to every­one and gen­uinely sus­tain­able.” [42] That is, eco­nomic progress that is truly in­clu­sive and re­spect­ful of the lim­its of cre­ation. He reaf­firmed, how­ever, that in wealthy coun­tries new kinds of poverty were emerg­ing as well as un­prece­dented forms of ex­clu­sion, while, in poorer re­gions, small mi­nori­ties lived in con­sumerist af­flu­ence along­side sit­u­a­tions of de­hu­man­iz­ing poverty. [43] In ad­di­tion, he ob­served that the new global eco­nomic and fi­nan­cial sys­tem, marked by a vast mo­bil­ity of cap­i­tal and means of pro­duc­tion, had re­duced the po­lit­i­cal power of States and their abil­ity to in­flu­ence eco­nomic processes. [44] For this rea­son, Benedict XVI reiterated that eco­nomic ac­tiv­ity can­not claim to solve so­cial prob­lems sim­ply through the ex­pan­sion of a com­mer­cial men­tal­ity, but must be or­dered to­ward the com­mon good, for which the po­lit­i­cal com­mu­nity bears its own ir­re­place­able re­spon­si­bil­ity. [45]

41. Benedict XVI placed char­ity at the cen­ter of his analy­sis, stat­ing that it is at the heart of the Church’s Social Doctrine,” [46] pro­vided that it is al­ways united with truth. He also noted with con­cern that there is a ten­dency to dis­miss moral rel­e­vance pre­cisely within the so­cial, le­gal, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic fields. The orig­i­nal­ity of his con­tri­bu­tion lies in show­ing that de­vel­op­ment, jus­tice, in­sti­tu­tions and the mar­ket are not neu­tral re­al­i­ties, but spaces where char­ity in truth must find his­tor­i­cal ex­pres­sion. This teach­ing is es­pe­cially rel­e­vant to­day in light of grow­ing in­equal­i­ties, pres­sures in the fi­nan­cial mar­kets, the en­vi­ron­men­tal cri­sis and a lack of trust in pol­i­tics. It stands as an in­vi­ta­tion to eval­u­ate every model of de­vel­op­ment on its abil­ity to be in­clu­sive and sus­tain­able, to re­build the re­la­tion­ship be­tween eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics on the com­mon good, and to ac­knowl­edge the crit­i­cal and gen­er­a­tive role of char­ity in pub­lic life.

42. Pope Francis’ social teach­ing de­vel­ops along the lines of Gaudium et Spes, which in­vites us to view his­tory through the lens of hu­man hopes and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, and to bring them into di­a­logue with the Gospel. This ap­proach emerges with par­tic­u­lar clar­ity in Evangelii Gaudium, where he states that the Christian procla­ma­tion has an in­trin­sic so­cial di­men­sion and calls for a Church ca­pa­ble of lis­ten­ing to the cry of the poor, mi­grants and vic­tims of new forms of slav­ery. Francis’ in­sis­tence on a syn­odal Church, a Church that walks to­gether,” that seeks to read the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel and al­lows her­self to be evan­ge­lized by the poor with whom she shares his­tory, also fits into this per­spec­tive. [47]

43. In Laudato Si’, Francis provided the first sig­nif­i­cant sys­tem­atic treat­ment of the en­vi­ron­men­tal cri­sis in a so­cial Encyclical, demon­strat­ing that it is not an iso­lated is­sue, but rather the eco­log­i­cal as­pect of the con­tem­po­rary so­cio-eco­nomic cri­sis. His pro­posal for an in­te­gral ecol­ogy com­bined care for our com­mon home with the pref­er­en­tial op­tion for the poor, and strongly af­firmed that the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” [48] can­not be sep­a­rated. In this light, the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of goods was brought to the fore­front, along­side the cri­tique of a tech­no­cratic par­a­digm that seeks to re­duce every­thing to an ob­ject to be dom­i­nated; the de­fense of hu­man la­bor threat­ened by the mind­set of waste; and the need for in­ter­gen­er­a­tional jus­tice. Finally, he ad­vo­cated for gen­uine di­a­logue be­tween those work­ing in the fields of pol­i­tics and fi­nance, so that nei­ther would be­come self-ref­er­en­tial.

44. Faced with the break­down of the so­cial fab­ric, a world war be­ing fought piece­meal,” in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic glob­al­iza­tion and the im­pact of the pan­demic on com­mu­nity ties, Francis, in Fratelli Tutti , sought to re­vive the dream of a hu­man­ity that opts for so­cial friend­ship and uni­ver­sal fra­ter­nity. He pro­posed a cul­ture of en­counter, a better pol­i­tics” ca­pa­ble of seek­ing the com­mon good, paths of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and a world that en­sures land, hous­ing and work for all.” [49] Finally, in Dilexit Nos, he showed that these sig­nif­i­cant so­cial en­deav­ors can­not be sep­a­rated from a per­sonal re­la­tion­ship with Christ. Turning to the word of God, he re­minded us that the truest re­sponse to the love of the heart of Jesus is con­crete love for our broth­ers and sis­ters, and af­firmed that there is no greater way for us to re­turn love for love.” [50]

Interpreting his­tory in the light of faith

45. Considering this his­tor­i­cal overview, it is clear that the Church’s Social Doctrine is not the re­sult of a pro­ject de­vised at a desk, but rather the prod­uct of a pa­tient process in which each pon­tiff — to­gether with the Second Vatican Council — made a unique con­tri­bu­tion in light of the new things” of each par­tic­u­lar era. In re­sponse to the chal­lenges of their time, each one in­ter­preted his­tor­i­cal changes ac­cord­ing to the Gospel, bring­ing to light dif­fer­ent as­pects of a sin­gle her­itage: the dig­nity of the per­son, the value of work, the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of goods, sol­i­dar­ity and sub­sidiar­ity, care for cre­ation and the cen­tral­ity of peace and fra­ter­nity. The re­sult is a har­mo­nious, though not al­ways lin­ear, de­vel­op­ment that is marked by dif­fer­ent em­phases, pro­gres­sive in­sights, and, at times, changes in per­spec­tive that do not break with what came be­fore, but al­low its im­pli­ca­tions to ma­ture. If to­day we can speak of a cor­pus of shared prin­ci­ples and cri­te­ria, it is be­cause this faith-based in­ter­pre­ta­tion of his­tory has never been in­ter­rupted, re­main­ing ever open to the chal­lenges posed by each gen­er­a­tion.  It is to the great prin­ci­ples of Social Doctrine, which di­rect the dis­cern­ment of be­liev­ers in their per­sonal and pub­lic lives, that I now wish to turn our at­ten­tion, in or­der to grasp more ef­fec­tively their in­ter­nal co­her­ence and ca­pac­ity to guide our times.

CHAPTER TWO

FOUNDATIONS AND PRINCIPLES OF THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

46. The Social Doctrine of the Church is a liv­ing re­al­ity, in di­a­logue with his­tory, cul­tures and sci­ences. At the same time, it en­shrines a core set of un­chang­ing truths. For this rea­son, it can be con­sid­ered a form of wis­dom that is ca­pa­ble of guid­ing the per­sonal and so­ci­etal lives of be­liev­ers even to­day. In this sec­ond chap­ter, I would like to fo­cus on some of the foun­da­tions and prin­ci­ples of the Church’s Social Doctrine that will help us to in­ter­pret the new things” of our time, par­tic­u­larly in view of the in­her­ent dig­nity of the hu­man per­son. In or­der to pro­tect the hu­man per­son in the age of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, I be­lieve that to­day we must once again re­flect on the com­mon good, the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of goods, sub­sidiar­ity, sol­i­dar­ity and so­cial jus­tice. I am con­vinced that a har­mo­nious re­la­tion­ship be­tween these prin­ci­ples re­quires that they be con­sid­ered col­lec­tively, so that it be­comes clear how they re­late to and com­ple­ment each other.

47. In of­fer­ing these re­flec­tions, my hope is, first and fore­most, to help the lay faith­ful and peo­ple of good­will re­dis­cover their duty of im­ple­ment­ing the above-men­tioned prin­ci­ples in their daily lives, fam­ily re­la­tion­ships, work and in­volve­ment in so­ci­ety. Thus, they will let them­selves be in­spired by the aim of em­body­ing God’s love in the con­crete events of life. At the same time, I would like to en­cour­age aca­d­e­mic in­sti­tu­tions and uni­ver­si­ties to give fresh im­pe­tus to these prin­ci­ples, and to ap­ply them in a way that will be rel­e­vant and ef­fec­tive in ad­dress­ing the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. In this way, the­o­log­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal en­quiry will be able to fur­ther ex­plore and sup­port the Church’s pas­toral jour­ney, and con­tribute to the Magisterium’s task of en­light­en­ing the con­sciences of the faith­ful and guid­ing their ef­forts to make the life of our so­ci­eties more just and fra­ter­nal.

The foun­da­tions of Social Doctrine

The hu­man per­son: im­age of the Triune God

48. The Church’s Social Doctrine brings us to the very heart of our faith: the mys­tery of the liv­ing God, re­vealed in Jesus Christ, who, as a com­mu­nion of Persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — is love it­self in re­la­tion­ship, ex­pressed in the mu­tual gift of self and in shar­ing with the world. [51] As the Council re­called, hu­man per­sons are called to com­mu­nion with God and can fully dis­cover their true selves only in sin­cere self-giv­ing.” [52] Indeed their deep­est vo­ca­tion is to en­ter into the Trinitarian dy­namic of love re­ceived and shared.

49. If the mys­tery of God as Love is the source of Social Doctrine, we see its most con­crete ex­pres­sion in the face of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word. By be­com­ing man, the Son of God en­ters our his­tory and takes on hu­man flesh, bring­ing with him the love that unites him to the Father and the Holy Spirit. In him, the mys­tery of hu­man­ity truly be­comes clear” [53] be­cause his hu­man­ity is com­pletely free, open to oth­ers, ca­pa­ble of build­ing healthy and beau­ti­ful re­la­tion­ships and com­mit­ted to the to­tal gift of self. Those who be­lieve in him are en­gaged in the great work of re­newal that be­gan with the mys­tery of his pas­sion, death and res­ur­rec­tion, and they co­op­er­ate in build­ing up the Kingdom of God, learn­ing to em­brace all men and women as broth­ers and sis­ters, chil­dren of one Father. In this way, both the procla­ma­tion of the Gospel and Christian life, guided by the ac­tion of the Holy Spirit, tend to bring about so­cial con­se­quences in the world. [54]

50. At the heart of the Christian un­der­stand­ing of the hu­man per­son lies the great bib­li­cal af­fir­ma­tion that men and women are cre­ated in the im­age and like­ness (cf. Gen 1:26 – 27) of the Triune God. Created for re­la­tion­ship, every hu­man per­son is planned and willed by God to en­ter into com­mu­nion with him, with oth­ers and with cre­ation. Human dig­nity does not de­pend on a per­son’s abil­i­ties, wealth or po­si­tion in life, nor on the right or wrong choices made; in­stead, it is a gift that pre­cedes and tran­scends each per­son, en­dowed by God as an ex­pres­sion of his un­fail­ing love. For this rea­son, the hu­man per­son al­ways re­mains the way for the Church” [55] and the heart of every au­then­tic path of in­te­gral hu­man de­vel­op­ment. [56]

The equal dig­nity of all hu­man be­ings

51. Saint John Paul II stated that, this height­ened sense of the dig­nity of the hu­man per­son and of his or her unique­ness, and of the re­spect due to the jour­ney of con­science, cer­tainly rep­re­sents one of the pos­i­tive achieve­ments of mod­ern cul­ture.” [57] This state­ment fol­lows the line al­ready laid out by the Second Vatican Council, which had noted a grow­ing recog­ni­tion of the sub­lime dig­nity of all per­sons, their su­pe­ri­or­ity over ma­te­r­ial things and their uni­ver­sal and in­vi­o­lable rights and du­ties. [58] It is im­por­tant to en­sure that this growth in ap­pre­ci­a­tion of hu­man dig­nity is not ob­scured by the pres­sure of new ide­olo­gies or very pow­er­ful in­ter­ests in to­day’s world. Among these ide­olo­gies, I con­sider par­tic­u­larly in­sid­i­ous the one that sug­gests that every per­son must earn or jus­tify his or her own worth, to the point of at­tribut­ing greater value to those who are more ef­fi­cient or ef­fec­tive. From this per­spec­tive, per­sons end up be­ing re­duced to a means of achiev­ing re­sults, a re­source to be used and ex­ploited, and are no longer rec­og­nized as a proper end in them­selves who should never be in­stru­men­tal­ized. The value of per­sons, how­ever, does not de­pend on what they achieve or pro­duce. There are rights that ap­ply to every­one sim­ply by virtue of be­ing hu­man, and no hu­man power can le­git­i­mately deny or ar­bi­trar­ily limit them. [59]

52. When we speak of dig­nity, we do not al­ways use the word in the same way. Sometimes we re­fer to moral dig­nity, namely the way in which a per­son di­rects his or her choices and ac­tions. At other times, we think of so­cial dig­nity, which refers to a per­son’s liv­ing con­di­tions and the con­crete re­spect re­ceived from so­ci­ety. In other cases, we re­fer to ex­is­ten­tial dig­nity, mean­ing the way in which a per­son per­ceives his or her own worth and the value of life. These as­pects of dig­nity can be en­hanced or di­min­ished. In ad­di­tion to these no­tions, there is also the more pro­found and im­por­tant level of on­to­log­i­cal dig­nity. This is the dig­nity that be­longs to every hu­man be­ing sim­ply by virtue of ex­ist­ing, of hav­ing been willed, cre­ated and loved by God. [60] No sin, fail­ure, hu­mil­i­a­tion or ex­clu­sion can di­min­ish the pro­found value of a hu­man life that God has willed and called into be­ing. [61]

53. The fun­da­men­tal dig­nity of each per­son, there­fore, is nei­ther ac­quired nor earned, nor does it need to be jus­ti­fied. The re­cent Declaration Dignitas Infinita of­fers a sum­mary of the Church’s think­ing on this sub­ject: Every hu­man per­son pos­sesses an in­fi­nite dig­nity, in­alien­ably grounded in his or her very be­ing, which pre­vails in and be­yond every cir­cum­stance, state, or sit­u­a­tion the per­son may ever en­counter” [62] — in other words, al­ways and with­out ex­cep­tion. The dig­nity of every hu­man be­ing can be de­scribed as in­fi­nite, as Saint John Paul II stated, [63] for two rea­sons: first, be­cause the love of God, who calls us to friend­ship with him, is in­fi­nite; and sec­ond, his love is ab­solutely un­con­di­tional, in the sense that, even if we search end­lessly, we will never find any­thing that can erase or deny it.

The supreme value of hu­man rights

54. The Church grate­fully ac­knowl­edges that the move­ment to­ward the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and procla­ma­tion of hu­man rights is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant at­tempts to re­spond ef­fec­tively to the in­escapable de­mands of hu­man dig­nity.” [64]  In this re­gard, Saint John Paul II stated that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, pro­claimed by the United Nations on 10 December 1948, re­mains one of the high­est ex­pres­sions of the hu­man con­science of our time. [65] It is a mile­stone on the long and dif­fi­cult path of the hu­man race.” [66] For this rea­son, from the Christian per­spec­tive, hu­man rights are not an ex­ter­nal ad­di­tion to the per­son, but an ex­pres­sion of in­trin­sic hu­man dig­nity, which the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity is called to pro­tect and pro­mote.

55. Human rights are in­vi­o­lable, since they are inherent in the hu­man per­son and in hu­man dig­nity.” [67] Consequently, they are uni­ver­sal and in­alien­able. [68] Precisely be­cause they are grounded in the com­mon dig­nity of every man and woman, they have prac­ti­cal con­se­quences and le­gal ef­fects, for it would be vain to pro­claim hu­man rights if, at the same time, every­thing were not done to en­sure the duty of re­spect­ing them, re­spect by all, in all places and for all.” [69] Among these rights, the first is the right to life, from con­cep­tion to its nat­ural end, [70] with­out which it is im­pos­si­ble to ex­er­cise any other right. When this fun­da­men­tal right is de­nied — as in the cases of in­duced abor­tion, killing of the in­no­cent and eu­thana­sia — we are faced with choices that the Church con­sid­ers gravely wrong. [71]

56. Looking at our own time, we can­not ig­nore the fact that the pro­tec­tion of hu­man rights has been ex­posed to two par­tic­u­larly se­ri­ous dan­gers. The first is that these rights are de­clared in a purely for­mal sense, while tech­no­log­i­cal progress con­tin­ues along­side covert or overt vi­o­la­tions of hu­man dig­nity. The sec­ond, which is in fact the root of the first, is the in­abil­ity to rec­og­nize the foun­da­tion of their uni­ver­sal­ity, since we have aban­doned the search for the solid foun­da­tions sus­tain­ing our de­ci­sions and our laws.” [72] Pope Francis urged us not to un­der­es­ti­mate this last is­sue. He pointed out that when rea­son se­ri­ously ex­am­ines hu­man na­ture, it is ca­pa­ble of dis­cov­er­ing val­ues that ap­ply to every­one, since they de­rive from hu­man na­ture. If this task of in­quiry were aban­doned, it is con­ceiv­able that rights con­sid­ered un­touch­able to­day might, in the fu­ture, end up be­ing ques­tioned or de­nied by those in power, per­haps af­ter hav­ing ob­tained only an ap­par­ent con­sen­sus from pop­u­la­tions that are fright­ened or ma­nip­u­lated. [73]

57. Along with a greater aware­ness of the value of every hu­man per­son and their rights, recog­ni­tion of mi­nor­ity rights has also grown. Yet, there is still a long way to go to en­sure that the rights of a great many, namely women, are equally and gen­uinely guar­an­teed through­out the world. It is a fact that doubly poor are those women who en­dure sit­u­a­tions of ex­clu­sion, mis­treat­ment and vi­o­lence, since they are fre­quently less able to de­fend their rights.” [74] It is, there­fore, not enough to state sim­ply that men and women have equal dig­nity and rights; it is nec­es­sary that this be re­flected in con­crete de­ci­sions, such as in laws, ac­cess to em­ploy­ment, ed­u­ca­tion, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, and the way so­ci­ety lis­tens to and val­ues wom­en’s con­tri­bu­tions. As long as this gap per­sists, we can­not say that so­ci­ety truly and fully rec­og­nizes that women have the same dig­nity as men.

58. It is in­di­vid­u­als that mat­ter, each and every per­son, to­gether with their fam­i­lies. Social move­ments, com­mu­nal ide­olo­gies and grand po­lit­i­cal procla­ma­tions in fa­vor of a pop­u­la­tion are worth­less un­less they lead to the flour­ish­ing of per­sons — men and women — with their in­alien­able rights. Similarly, it is not enough to ex­tol in­di­vid­ual free­dom or pri­vate en­ter­prise if we then al­low a mul­ti­tude of peo­ple to con­tinue liv­ing with­out de­cent work, pro­tec­tions or ac­cess to ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties.

The prin­ci­ples of Social Doctrine

The prin­ci­ple of the com­mon good

59. Recognizing that every man and woman pos­sesses an in­alien­able dig­nity, to­gether with rights that no hu­man power can be­tray or nul­lify, re­quires us to shape the way we live to­gether, in­clud­ing our eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal choices, and the makeup of our cities. From this arises the first ma­jor prin­ci­ple of Social Doctrine that I wish to high­light: the com­mon good. We can de­scribe it as the so­cial ex­pres­sion of the dig­nity rec­og­nized in every per­son. When Benedict XVI referred to the non-ne­go­tiable val­ues that the Church must al­ways de­fend, he in­cluded among them the pro­mo­tion of the com­mon good.” [75] For a Christian, go­ing be­yond the nar­row con­fines of one’s own in­ter­ests and com­mit­ting one­self, within the lim­its of one’s abil­ity, to the com­mon good is a non-ne­go­tiable value, as is the pro­mo­tion of life.

60. The Second Vatican Council affirmed that the com­mon good con­sists in the sum to­tal of so­cial con­di­tions which al­low peo­ple, ei­ther as groups or as in­di­vid­u­als, to reach their ful­fill­ment more fully and more eas­ily.” [76] This de­f­i­n­i­tion pro­vides us with a valu­able ini­tial ref­er­ence point, be­cause the com­mon good can­not be re­duced to a mere list of con­di­tions or in­sti­tu­tions. It is not the sum to­tal of in­di­vid­ual ben­e­fits, nor the in­ter­sec­tion of their par­tic­u­lar in­ter­ests; it is a greater good that be­longs to every­one, and it can only be achieved, nur­tured and pro­tected by our col­lec­tive ef­forts. We can say that so­cial ac­tion reaches its full­ness when it is di­rected to­ward this shared good, just as a per­son’s moral ac­tion finds its ful­fill­ment in the choice of the true good. [77]

61. In this sense, we can say that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” [78] and that, for this very rea­son, the mere sum of in­di­vid­ual in­ter­ests is not ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing a bet­ter world for the whole hu­man fam­ily.” [79] Indeed, it is an il­lu­sion to think that sim­ply pur­su­ing one’s own progress with­out car­ing for oth­ers is suf­fi­cient for con­tribut­ing to the good of all. This view ig­nores the in­her­ent and spe­cific value of the com­mon good, which is the re­sult of an interdependence” [80] that cre­ates a net­work of so­cial good that ex­pands and has an im­pact on peo­ple. The com­mon good is a plus,” the re­sult of in­ter­ac­tion and mu­tual in­flu­ence that con­nects var­i­ous ac­tions, ini­tia­tives, ef­forts and de­ci­sions. If we were to add up the in­di­vid­ual goods, we could not ex­plain the ex­is­tence of this plus” that tran­scends them and, at the same time, en­riches them.

62. It is the pur­suit of the com­mon good that gives life to a peo­ple, un­der­stood not as a mere col­lec­tion of in­di­vid­u­als, but as a liv­ing re­al­ity in which peo­ple learn to rec­og­nize that they them­selves are in­ter­con­nected and jointly re­spon­si­ble for the res pub­lica. In this sense, every per­son con­tributes to the build­ing up of one’s peo­ple through a slow and ar­du­ous ef­fort call­ing for a de­sire for in­te­gra­tion and a will­ing­ness to achieve this through the growth of a peace­ful and mul­ti­fac­eted cul­ture of en­counter.” [81] Working to­gether for the com­mon good means hav­ing a shared vi­sion. It is clear that there are many ide­o­log­i­cal and prac­ti­cal dif­fer­ences among peo­ple, as well as dif­fer­ing in­ter­ests and fre­quent dis­agree­ments, but that does not mean it is im­pos­si­ble to en­gage in di­a­logue to es­tab­lish a set of ba­sic agree­ments that en­able the cre­ation of a shared vi­sion, upon which every­one can move for­ward to­gether.

Australia Just Proved the Four-Day Work Week Works. Here Is What the Data Actually Says.

scienceaim.com

A new study pub­lished in Nature’s Humanities and Social Sciences Communications jour­nal has con­firmed what many work­ers have qui­etly hoped for: com­pa­nies can switch to a four-day work week and not only sur­vive, but thrive.

The re­search tracked 15 Australian com­pa­nies that tri­alled the 100:80:100 model be­tween 2022 and 2024.

The model is sim­ple: work­ers re­ceive 100% of their pay, work 80% of their pre­vi­ous hours, and com­mit to main­tain­ing 100% of their pre­vi­ous out­put.

The re­sults were strik­ing.

14 of the 15 com­pa­nies chose to con­tinue with the four-day week af­ter the trial ended.

Not a sin­gle one re­ported a drop in pro­duc­tiv­ity.

Six com­pa­nies saw pro­duc­tiv­ity ac­tu­ally in­crease.

The rest said out­put stayed roughly the same.

These firms op­er­ated across a wide range of in­dus­tries, from prop­erty man­age­ment to pub­lish­ing and health tech­nol­ogy, which makes the find­ings harder to dis­miss as a niche ex­per­i­ment.

How the Study Was Conducted

The re­search team, led by Professor John Hopkins of Deakin University, spent two years con­duct­ing in-depth in­ter­views with com­pa­nies that had for­mally adopted the 100:80:100 model.

Interviews took place be­tween early 2023 and late 2024.

Each com­pany was free to de­fine pro­duc­tiv­ity on its own terms.

Some mea­sured rev­enue and profit.

Others tracked pro­jects com­pleted on time, staff turnover rates, ab­sen­teeism, or a met­ric called net pro­moter score,” which gauges how likely cus­tomers are to rec­om­mend a busi­ness.

This flex­i­bil­ity was in­ten­tional.

Rather than im­pos­ing a sin­gle per­for­mance bench­mark, the re­searchers al­lowed each com­pany to mea­sure what mat­tered most to them.

That de­sign choice re­flects some­thing im­por­tant: what suc­cess looks like dif­fers by in­dus­try, and a rigid, one-size-fits-all mea­sure­ment would have made the find­ings less ap­plic­a­ble to the real world.

One com­pany had al­ready been run­ning the four-day model for nearly eight years by the time re­searchers in­ter­viewed them.

One firm did aban­don the trial, though the re­searchers noted that tim­ing played a sig­nif­i­cant role in that de­ci­sion, as the com­pany was al­ready go­ing through a pe­riod of ma­jor in­ter­nal change.

Findings From the Study

The head­line find­ing is clear: not one com­pany re­ported a pro­duc­tiv­ity loss.

Six of the 15 com­pa­nies said pro­duc­tiv­ity had ac­tu­ally gone up since mak­ing the switch.

The re­main­ing nine said it stayed about the same.

Those might sound like mod­est num­bers, but con­sider what they mean in prac­tice.

If you give your em­ploy­ees a full ex­tra day off each week, main­tain their salaries, and your out­put ei­ther stays the same or im­proves, the busi­ness case is dif­fi­cult to ar­gue against.

Burnout emerged as a ma­jor theme in the find­ings.

Six com­pa­nies ex­pressly said that re­duc­ing burnout, rather than boost­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity, was their pri­mary mo­ti­va­tion for adopt­ing the shorter week.

That dis­tinc­tion mat­ters.

A 2025 sur­vey by Beyond Blue found that one in two Australian work­ers cur­rently ex­pe­ri­ences burnout, with young peo­ple and par­ents iden­ti­fied as the groups most at risk.

One CEO of a medium-sized health tech­nol­ogy firm told re­searchers she judged the tri­al’s suc­cess by track­ing lev­els of attrition,” absenteeism,” and people tak­ing sick days and men­tal health days be­cause they’re burnt out.”

Another CEO at a fi­nan­cial ser­vices firm put it plainly: her com­pany had been en­cour­ag­ing clients to live their best lives, and it felt wrong to hold em­ploy­ees to a dif­fer­ent stan­dard.

As we grap­ple with high work­place burnout, and so­ci­etal chal­lenges about what to do with the pro­duc­tiv­ity gains we’re pre­dicted to get from AI, a four-day work week could be an in­ter­est­ing part of both those con­ver­sa­tions,” said study lead Prof John Hopkins of Deakin University.

What Most People Get Wrong About This Model

Here is the part that tends to get lost in the con­ver­sa­tion.

Most peo­ple hear four-day work week” and imag­ine com­pa­nies tak­ing a leap of faith, cross­ing their fin­gers, and hop­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity does not col­lapse.

The re­al­ity is quite dif­fer­ent.

The 100:80:100 model is not sim­ply about cut­ting a day.

It is about forc­ing com­pa­nies and their em­ploy­ees to look hon­estly at how time is ac­tu­ally be­ing spent.

Unnecessary meet­ings get cut.

Tasks that could be au­to­mated or del­e­gated get re­as­signed.

Work that was never that valu­able gets elim­i­nated en­tirely.

The re­sult is that em­ploy­ees are not cram­ming five days of work into four.

They are do­ing four days of gen­uinely fo­cused, higher-qual­ity work.

This is a cru­cial dis­tinc­tion, and it ex­plains why con­cerns about pro­duc­tiv­ity of­ten prove un­founded.

The fear that work­ers will sim­ply burn through five days of tasks in a com­pressed time­frame is rooted in a mis­un­der­stand­ing of how the model ac­tu­ally works.

Companies us­ing this ap­proach re­struc­ture their work­flows be­fore the shorter week be­gins.

Australia is not alone in see­ing this play out.

In 2024, 45 German com­pa­nies tri­alled the four-day model, and the ma­jor­ity were small or medium en­ter­prises.

Financial per­for­mance dur­ing the trial showed no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence from the year be­fore, which re­searchers in­ter­preted as ev­i­dence of pro­duc­tiv­ity gains since the same out­put was be­ing de­liv­ered in fewer hours.

In the United Kingdom, more than 200 British com­pa­nies have per­ma­nently adopted the four-day week with­out re­duc­ing pay, span­ning in­dus­tries from tech star­tups to char­i­ties.

How the Study Applies to Real Life

The prac­ti­cal ques­tion for most work­ers and man­agers is not whether the data is com­pelling.

It is whether the model is ac­tu­ally work­able in their spe­cific in­dus­try or role.

The Australian study pro­vides some use­ful in­sight here.

Client-facing or­gan­i­sa­tions han­dled the tran­si­tion dif­fer­ently from non-client-fac­ing ones.

Instead of all staff tak­ing the same day off, many com­pa­nies in client-heavy in­dus­tries stag­gered days off across the team, en­sur­ing clients al­ways had some­one avail­able.

That flex­i­bil­ity is cen­tral to why the model held up across such dif­fer­ent busi­ness types.

It is also why the con­ver­sa­tion can­not be re­duced to a sim­ple yes or no.

A law firm and a soft­ware de­vel­op­ment stu­dio will im­ple­ment a four-day week very dif­fer­ently.

A call cen­tre and a pub­lish­ing house have com­pletely dif­fer­ent rhythms.

The re­search sug­gests that the most suc­cess­ful adop­tions in­volve co-de­signed so­lu­tions where em­ploy­ees and lead­er­ship fig­ure out to­gether what re­struc­tur­ing ac­tu­ally looks like.

One of the more for­ward-look­ing threads in the re­search in­volves ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

As AI tools con­tinue to au­to­mate repet­i­tive tasks and boost in­di­vid­ual out­put, the ques­tion of what work­ers do with those pro­duc­tiv­ity gains be­comes ur­gent.

The four-day week is one an­swer: let peo­ple re­claim some of that time rather than sim­ply adding more tasks to the same work­day.

Prof Hopkins specif­i­cally named this as a rea­son the con­ver­sa­tion mat­ters right now.

The as­sump­tion that tech­nol­ogy al­ways means do­ing more with the same num­ber of hours is worth ques­tion­ing.

The Criticism Worth Taking Seriously

The case for the four-day week is strong, but it is not with­out le­git­i­mate push­back.

Some re­searchers note that the ben­e­fits ob­served in short-term tri­als may not hold long-term.

There is a real pos­si­bil­ity that the pro­duc­tiv­ity gains seen in tri­als are partly dri­ven by the nov­elty ef­fect, where em­ploy­ees work harder be­cause they are aware they are be­ing ob­served or be­cause the change feels ex­cit­ing and new.

There is also the ques­tion of in­dus­tries where a four-day model is struc­turally harder to im­ple­ment.

Healthcare, emer­gency ser­vices, lo­gis­tics, and hos­pi­tal­ity do not run on fixed sched­ules in the same way a knowl­edge-work busi­ness does.

Any pol­icy con­ver­sa­tion about short­en­ing the work­ing week needs to reckon hon­estly with those sec­tors, not pre­tend they do not ex­ist.

Scheduling com­pli­ca­tions are real, par­tic­u­larly for client-fac­ing busi­nesses and teams spread across dif­fer­ent time zones.

The re­search also ac­knowl­edged that in­di­vid­ual com­pa­nies, not a re­search team, de­fined what pro­duc­tiv­ity meant, which makes di­rect com­par­i­son be­tween com­pa­nies dif­fi­cult.

None of this un­does the ev­i­dence.

But it does sug­gest the con­ver­sa­tion needs to be more nu­anced than sim­ple cel­e­bra­tion.

The Bigger Picture

What makes this Australian study par­tic­u­larly valu­able is not just the find­ings.

It is what the find­ings re­veal about the as­sump­tions un­der­neath how most of us work.

The five-day, 40-hour week was not handed down as a law of na­ture.

It was a labour move­ment achieve­ment, stan­dard­ised in the 20th cen­tury as in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion scaled up.

The con­di­tions of work have changed dra­mat­i­cally since then.

Knowledge work, re­mote col­lab­o­ra­tion, and AI-assisted tasks have trans­formed what a pro­duc­tive hour ac­tu­ally looks like.

The 15 Australian com­pa­nies in this study ef­fec­tively ran a live ex­per­i­ment on that as­sump­tion, and the data came back in favour of change.

Not one of them re­ported falling be­hind.

Most of them ei­ther held steady or im­proved.

And 14 of 15 chose not to go back.

That is not a fluke.

That is a sig­nal worth pay­ing at­ten­tion to, whether you are a man­ager won­der­ing if your team could han­dle it, an em­ployee hop­ing your com­pany will con­sider it, or a pol­i­cy­maker think­ing about what the fu­ture of work should ac­tu­ally look like.

The con­ver­sa­tion is no longer the­o­ret­i­cal.

It is al­ready hap­pen­ing.

The only ques­tion left is who joins it next.

References and Further Reading

Nature: Four-day work week study, Deakin University

The Conversation: 15 Australian com­pa­nies switched to a four-day work week

Positive News: The re­sults of the world’s largest four-day week trial

Beyond Blue: Workplace Burnout Survey 2025

Jira IS Turing-Complete

seriot.ch

Nicolas Seriot

Computation > Jira is Turing-Complete

Building a Minsky Machine in Atlassian Automation 22nd May 2026

Engineering folk­lore holds that Jira (Atlassian’s pro­ject-track­ing tool) is Turing-complete. Existing claims point vaguely at au­toma­tion fea­tures with­out ex­hibit­ing a re­duc­tion. This ar­ti­cle sup­plies a proof, with setup in­struc­tions and ex­e­cu­tion trace.

Mapping the Computational Model

A Minsky reg­is­ter ma­chine needs only two un­bounded coun­ters and a fi­nite set of la­beled in­struc­tions:

INC r; goto S

DEC r; if r == 0 goto S else goto S’

Or, in plain English:

in­cre­ment reg­is­ter R, then goto some state S

decre­ment reg­is­ter R, if R == 0 goto zero-state S, else goto nonzero-state S’

A Minsky pro­gram that adds reg­is­ter A into reg­is­ter B looks like:

1. DEC A; if A == 0 goto 3 else goto 2 2. INC B; goto 1 3. HALT

Minsky proved this model Turing-complete (1967). Exhibiting it in Jira’s au­toma­tion lan­guage there­fore es­tab­lishes the re­duc­tion. Here is how the model maps onto Jira:

The Epic’s sta­tus en­codes the cur­rent in­struc­tion. Automation rules in­spect the linked-is­sue counts and de­cide the next sta­tus. INC and DEC are im­ple­mented as is­sue cre­ation and dele­tion on the ap­pro­pri­ate linked-is­sue type. Conditional branch­ing is im­ple­mented as a JQL-conditioned rule.

Implementing Addition

Here is a min­i­mal work­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion us­ing one Epic, five linked is­sues, and one Automation rule per in­struc­tion state (Space Settings > Automation).

1. Create Workflow

Create a Jira Workflow with sta­tuses ini­tial state BACKLOG, then TODO, DEV and PROD. Any state can tran­si­tion to any other.

Create an Epic in sta­tus BACKLOG.

2. Create Rule for TODO

DEC A; if A=0 halt, else goto DEV.

Trigger: Epic sta­tus changed to TODO.

If at least one linked Bug ex­ists: delete one Bug, tran­si­tion Epic to DEV.

Else: tran­si­tion Epic to PROD (halt).

3. Create Rule for DEV

INC B; goto TODO.

Trigger: Epic sta­tus changed to DEV.

Create a new Task, link it to the Epic.

Transition Epic to TODO.

Both rules have Allow rule to trig­ger other rules” en­abled.

The screen­shot be­low shows the two rules wired into the Epic’s work­flow.

4. Init Registers

Link 2 Bugs (A=2) and 3 Tasks (B=3) to the Epic.

5. Bootstrap the Machine.

Transition the Epic to TODO to start the cas­cade. Five tran­si­tions:

(2,3) TODO → (1,3) DEV → (1,4) TODO → (0,4) DEV → (0,5) TODO → (0,5) PROD

Recorded on a real *.atlassian.net in­stance.

The Epic lands in PROD with 0 Bugs and 5 Tasks linked. We’ve just added 2 + 3 = 5.

Fibonacci in Three States

The re­duc­tion above suf­fices to prove Turing-completeness. In ad­di­tion to that, Jira’s au­toma­tion lan­guage can sim­plify Minsky op­er­a­tions. Convert Issue Type changes an is­sue’s type in­stantly: Bug → Story, Story → Task, and so on.

CONVERT is ex­press­ible as DEC + INC. It does­n’t ex­tend Jira’s com­pu­ta­tional power, but it shrinks the dis­patch table dra­mat­i­cally for any move-loop, mak­ing non-triv­ial pro­grams tractable.

Fibonacci as (A, B) → (B, A+B) col­lapses to three states with three reg­is­ters (A=Bug, B=Task, C=Story), us­ing TODO, QA (add it to the work­flow), and DEV as the three in­struc­tion states:

TODO: if any linked Task ex­ists: CONVERT Task → Story INC Bug tran­si­tion to TODO else: tran­si­tion to QA

QA: if any linked Bug ex­ists: CONVERT Bug → Task tran­si­tion to QA else: tran­si­tion to DEV

DEV: if any linked Story ex­ists: CONVERT Story → Bug tran­si­tion to DEV else: tran­si­tion to TODO

Initial state A=1, B=1, C=0. The se­quence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, … ap­pears in B (Task count).

Unlike the ad­di­tion ma­chine, the Fibonacci ma­chine has no halt state. It runs un­til Jira Cloud’s chain-depth cap of 10 trig­gers, at which point the op­er­a­tor re-trig­gers the Epic to con­tinue. A sin­gle sta­tus edit restarts the cas­cade.

The re­duc­tion still holds, the hu­man just sup­plies the next clock tick. Jira Data Center ex­poses the same as au­toma­tion.rule.ex­e­cu­tion.time­out and re­lated, con­fig­urable prop­er­ties.

Conclusion

Jira’s au­toma­tion lan­guage can en­code a two-counter ma­chine given un­bounded is­sue cre­ation and rule ex­e­cu­tion. Every phys­i­cal com­puter is fi­nite, so Jira Cloud’s fi­nite quo­tas do not re­fute the con­struc­tion. Under that stan­dard con­ven­tion, Jira is Turing-complete.

So, if com­plex Jira au­toma­tions feel like pro­grams, it is be­cause they lit­er­ally are.

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