capitalism run amok Archives - Revolutionary Misfit

A Capitalist Conundrum – Capitalism Run Amok – Part 3

October 21, 2016 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

I found myself involved in a Facebook discussion this morning with a couple of really smart cyber-friends concerning what I would consider to be “a capitalist conundrum.”

The discussion was triggered by the meme to the left. It’s basically a slam against “trickle-down” economics, or the idea that if we get out of the way of the rich, that their success will inure to the benefit of the rest of us poor saps. That theory, while it might sound logical, has not shown to be a very viable one in practice.

But the discussion centered more around a comment that implied that there is a disconnect between profits and wages…that the only thing that does and should determine wages are needed skills. That there is a market for needed skills and that market sets the price for said skills. How those skills are then employed, and to what success, is irrelevant to their price.

And that would be correct, according to a standard capitalistic theory of economics. The purpose of the business enterprise is to maximize profits for shareholders, or owners, period. And if it can exploit workers in the process of achieving that purpose, then fine, go right ahead. After all, the workers can opt for another job in which the market for their skills will pay them more, correct?

Well, maybe.

In practice, when one is forced to shop their skills in the marketplace, the results are often not so stellar. That’s why the government often has to extend and re-extend unemployment benefits…to the chagrin of the same business owners whose exploitation is causing the need for extension.

I believe this notion of a disconnect between profits and wages is at the heart of the capitalist conundrum.

After all, what does a business enterprise really consist of? A corporation does not exist in physics, only in law. The activity of a corporate business enterprise is that of the flesh and blood humans that pledge allegiance to it, either as owners, employees, or both. The owners of a corporation are no different in that regard than the factory-line workers.

Let’s put it this way, even in this age of increasing automation, if you take the humans out of the enterprise, there is no enterprise.

Now, if those humans work together efficiently and effectively to the success of the enterprise, why is it that only the owners should enjoy the benefits of that success? Well, because capitalism tells us that things are just that way…

But that doesn’t make it right, or even reality.

It is my opinion that capitalism attempts to impose its own reality upon us. A fictitious version of reality in which profits and needed human skills (or even needed humans) are disconnected. One in which profits are more important than people or the planet they inhabit.

The problem with this capitalist conundrum is that if in the pursuit of profits, workers are exploited in the name of hoarding profits and building value solely for owners (a situation that has been occurring at increasing levels over the last 40 years), then the system breaks down. Workers aren’t as motivated, perhaps rightly pissed. Strikes ensue. Government has to step in with regulation. There are less and less ordinary folks, workers in their own right, able to buy the products or services of corporate America. A recession occurs, maybe even a depression. Revolutionary impulses are fomented. Shots are fired, wars begin, society crumbles.

I may be being a bit over dramatic, but all this has happened before, hasn’t it?

The idea that business enterprises should be able to pursue profits, and exploit workers in the process, without any government interference, lies at the heart of neoliberal capitalist philosophy. It also lies at the heart of the problem we’re now in with inequality rising to never before seen levels.

It is simply not reality to say that wages and profits are disconnected. It might be correct according to a certain brand of economic philosophy, but it is not real world reality. Corporate profit generation requires people and the resources of the planet in which we all inhabit…profits are not disconnected from those things.

A philosophy that ignores the connections between human (worker) and planetary well-being and macro or micro-economic success is not a sound one.

That is a capitalist conundrum and we need to be able to escape from its impact blinding influences.

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Chasing Wind – Capitalism Run Amok – Part 2

October 18, 2016 by costaricaguy 1 Comment

And I saw that all labor and all achievement
spring from man’s envy of his neighbor.
This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Ecclesiastes 4:4

I want to be rich! Ever had that thought?

I have.

But why?

The verse above offers an intriguing and thought-provoking explanation. The explanation is not completely true, because, after all, a man’s gotta eat. But normally we aren’t satisfied with just putting a roof over our heads and bread on the table, now are we?

We want more than that, much more. We want “the good life.”

And that life is usually defined by how many possessions we are able to accumulate. Proof of capitalistic success is always measured in this way. And since the measuring rod is accumulation and consumption, we strive to do so at ever increasing levels.

Enough is never enough.

Greed becomes good.

Envy becomes a positive motivational force.

And all that whipped up into a frenzy becomes, as I am fond of saying, “capitalism run amok.”

Nowhere in the bible is envy considered a virtue and I don’t believe the verse above signifies that envy is “proper motivation.”

Another word for envy is “covetousness.”

Exodus 20:17 states that “you shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

That happens to be the 10th commandment.

Hmmm, let’s evaluate this for a moment. Solomon says that “all achievement” (which I really take to mean a “lust” for achievement and more possessions than one really needs) is motivated by envy, or covetousness. The 10th commandment forbids covetousness.

Does that mean that the very root of capitalistic excess is contrary to God’s will?

The paradox is that in the U.S. we often equate “unrestrained” capitalism with freedom. We describe ourselves as the model of a free capitalistic society. Any idea, political view, or policy initiative that imposes even the slightest constraint on our capitalistic freedoms is quickly branded as socialism and its proponent as an enemy to our capitalistic way of life.

But freedom always carries with it responsibility. Is “capitalism run amok” responsible? I don’t think so. I think it’s driven or motivated exactly as Solomon describes in Ecclesiastes. I think it’s motivated by the covetousness expressly forbidden in the 10th commandment.

And where has it taken us? Well in 2008, to the brink of ruin…that’s where.

Now is a great time of examination. Now is a great time for us to step back as a society and take a hard look at who we have become. Now is a great time to exchange the capitalism run amok that has gotten our society into quite a mess for a different more compassionate brand.

One that cherishes freedom, but also recognizes the responsibility it carries.

One that recognizes when enough is enough.

One that recognizes that the blessings we enjoy should be shared, should be spread around.

One that is less concerned with protection of private property and more concerned with promotion of public prosperity.

Post Update: This was written in 2009 at the time of our nation’s great recession. We made it out of that one. Will we make it out of the next one?

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image credit: valhb Flickr via Compfight cc

On Veering Left – Capitalism Run Amok – Part 1

October 17, 2016 by costaricaguy 3 Comments

This post was first written by me on August 8, 2009…

Funny how we change our perspectives as our age, and hopefully our wisdom, increases.

I can remember those law school days at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., during Bill Clinton’s first campaign for president and his heated attempt at dethroning George H.W. Bush (Bush ’41).

I remember watching the debates in the student lounge surrounded by very liberal aspiring lawyers, just brimming at the opportunity to get their hands on some of that federal government largess.

I remember the vehemence I felt about this election and against the prospect of the philandering Bill Clinton and his robotic running mate, Al Gore, actually ascending to presidency.

Well that was then, this is now. Time and experience have gradually shifted my perspective and have me veering left these days…some might even say “far left”!

Why is that, I have to ask myself?

I can only attribute it to my time here in Costa Rica. The opportunity living here has allowed me to be someone “on the outside looking in.”

There are certain things about this place that have brought about this grand paradigmatic shift. First, I would have to say living here has ignited a deeply felt appreciation for nature and biodiversity and also a concern for how over-consumption threatens them. I no longer buy into the argument that human achievement cannot coincide with respect for and care of the environment.

Ignoring the symbiosis that exists between us and our environment and instead religiously adhering to the idea that “people matter more than trees, or the critters that live in them”, has set our planet on a course that threatens exactly what the idea was suppose to promote…humans. You see if we destroy our environment in the pursuit of more consumption and a higher social-economic position, we end up destroying ourselves. Al Gore, and not Rush Limbaugh, was and is right on that one. I didn’t recognize that back at Georgetown, but I certainly do now.

Second, there is a realization that U.S.-style consumption, driven largely by the bizarre notion of “American Exceptionalism”, has placed the country at odds with the rest of the world and set it on a course for disaster.

What do I mean “driven largely by the bizarre notion of ‘American Exceptionalism”, you ask?

Good question. Let me put it this way, the idea on the right seems to be along the following lines; that since the U.S. has done so much good in the world, it is privileged to exploit other nations and peoples in pursuit of a lifestyle that is at a level of luxury that is absurd in comparison to the way folks live in other places, like Costa Rica for instance. In other words, the rest of the world should just look the other way while we consume ourselves, and them, out of existence.

I have in many past posts to this blog cited examples of U.S. intervention into the affairs of other nations in pursuit of this ideal. That it has the right to pursue its own selfish interests, be it for oil (Middle East) or bananas (Central America), within your borders and if you try to stop it, well, then you’re a “communist” and that gives us the right to pressure you with our economic and/or military might, or just take you out altogether.

Third, I have come to realize that pure U.S.-style unbridled capitalism, “capitalism run amok” as I have called it, is as rotten to the core as the communistic or socialistic alternatives that its proponents rail against. The idea that the only thing that matters is “property” is all fine and good for the owners of the property, but how about for everyone else?

Can I as a poor, destitute person, who has not had the good fortune to have been borne with a silver spoon in my mouth, place my confidence in your altruism, Mr. Property Owner? I seriously doubt it.

The fact is that if you are so fortunate as to have accumulated great wealth during your lifetime, and I am all for honest achievement and believe the government should not get in the way of that, then yes you do have a responsibility to care for those that have not been so fortunate or blessed. AND if you won’t exercise that responsibility on your own, then government should step in and do it for you.

Why?

Because there are actually some things that matter more than the right to private property. And those things that matter more are PEOPLE and the PLANET in which they inhabit.

The right-wing of the powers that be in the U.S. have long been so obsessed with guarding capitalistic notions of private property that they have forgotten that those latter two things matter just as much, perhaps even more.

Maybe that is changing a little now…we shall see.

Post update: The recent election (and the rise of Donald Trump) is proof that nothing has really changed and that perhaps, it’s gotten worse.

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The High Price of a Free Market

March 21, 2015 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

My last post made the point that we are living in a state of rising inequality and a root cause of that is a society that has become increasingly money-driven, and not people and planet driven.

Everything is done in the name of self-interest and very little in the public interest.

And the things proposed to be done in the public interest are decried as being too expensive, or, worse, socialistic.

I did not, however, mention a word that looms large in my argument…

capitalism,

or, better, capitalism run amok.

The reason that our system has become completely “money-driven” as opposed to driven by an interest in the betterment of people and planet, is partly because of our deeply entrenched notions of a “free market” society.

We regard the free market as an indispensable hallmark of our freedom.

But I am here to tell you that a free market, really isn’t free at all.

We all pay the high price of a free market. And the “freer” that market is, the higher the price we pay. Tweet it Out!

And that price is called greed.

Here’s the thing. We have so embraced the notion that capitalism and the free market are inherently sacred in our society that we shun any idea that might tend to regulate them, or apply brakes to their sometimes careless and wreck-less forward motion.

Oh no, that’s socialism, we gasp in unison!

This idea is ingrained into the culture of American thought, as if it was enshrined in the minds of our founders…

When the truth is that our founders were very anxious and worried about just the sort of situation that has now reared its ugly head…

The situation I like to call “capitalism run amok”,

or, a system that has become wholly and completely driven by economic self-interest.

That’s what is feeding this growing inequality that we’re witnessing rise to levels not seen since the roaring 1920’s…the decade just before the advent of two seminal events in our history…

The Great Depression, and

World War II.

History has a way of repeating itself.

Capitalism and the free market are simply economic ideas, and pretty good ones, I might add.

However, they are not religiously inspired notions, as many seem to believe.

They are not God-breathed expressions of how man should govern his affairs.

The sort of capitalism run amok we are now seeing unfold is largely based on the idea, espoused by Milton Friedman, that man is wholly governed by self-interest…

that his economic decisions will always be made in that light.

And that it’s best for government to get out of the way of his doing so…

That’s what will move society onward and upward to greater evolutionary levels.

It’s as if there’s an invisible hand guiding such unregulated self-interest, so that in the end, the common good of all will prevail.

Well, truths are only truthful when based on a solid foundation of observable facts…

And I believe what we have observed, especially as of late, is that a system that is purely subservient to self-interest, will be one in which greed grows to uncontrollable proportions.

So that money is the driving force behind most of what’s done.

We go to wars to make money.

We build jails and incarcerate our citizenry to make money.

We educate our children to make money.

We care for the health of our populace to make money.

We worship according to our faith to make money.

We run for office and exercise our duty as “public servants” to make money.

We basically, to put it harshly, become a system of capitalistic whores.

We sacrifice our national character on the alter of the “free” market.

I propose that it’s high time we dethrone the word capitalism from it’s lofty heights in our political and cultural lexicon.

That we begin to evaluate not only its virtues, but also its vices.

Because, in my humble opinion, when it comes to action that is public interested, rather than self-interested…

or impact over interest, as I am fond of saying…

the relentless pursuit of money in an unbridled free market becomes an imposing barrier, or impact blinder.

Our society becomes corrupt…we lose the capacity to govern ourselves in the name of the public good.

And that seems to be exactly what’s happening.

We pay the high price of a free market…greed…

and our society becomes increasingly vulnerable to ultimate collapse.

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