Wishful Thinking

The 20th century's most influential economist, John Maynard Keynes was always confident he could find a solution to whatever problem he turned his attention to and retained a lasting faith in the ability of government officials to do good.  

Keynes' optimism included the belief that people whose basic economic needs had been satisfied would naturally gravitate to other, non-economic pursuits, perhaps embracing the arts and nature. 

A century of experience, however, suggests that this was wishful thinking.  Neither governments nor culture have fully understood.  One economist has noted, “Reversing consumerism’s financial and cultural dominance in public and private life is set to be one of the twenty-first century’s most gripping psychological dramas.”

The Human Cost of Ideology

Our opinions are often formed by group ideology, and with the flood of alternative facts, objective truth doesn’t seem to change people's beliefs or behavior.  It's particularly difficult to think differently than the common trend.

Interestingly, we're warned that such conformist thinking prevents learning, but if we approach the truth with a little humility, we'll learn quickly and change wisely.

For example, slavery ended in the 1800's, and we rose up to be a righteous people, right? No. Crude slavery continued for more than a century. The ruling elites in Africa used the slaves they couldn't sell to Europe anymore to work locally on plantations and produce the 'legitimate products' that could be sold internationally. At its height in Nigeria, parents were afraid to let their children play outside for fear they would be kidnapped and sold as slaves.

For centuries, extractive policies transferred wealth from colonial regions leaving countries and their inhabitants devastated for generations. The Arab slave trade spanned a thousand years; there were still 300,000 enslaved in Saudi Arabia when it was legally ended in the 1960's.

In our morally adjusted America, slavery evolved into employment at slave-equivalent wages. Child labor moved from the homestead to large businesses.  As the industrial revolution expanded the economy, the elite became stunningly wealthy by the extractive economics of poverty wages. 

Despite attempts to regulate safe working conditions and reasonable wages, harsh and unreasonable labor practices continue today, and the bottom 20% are the most affected.  Employees are expendable in most working environments, and they're available for abuse according to many identified recently.

If the national minimum wage isn't a

living wage in even the cheapest

city in the country, it's not a

 living wage anywhere.

Today's workplace is grueling, stressful, and surprisingly hostile, or so concludes an in-depth study by the Rand Corp., Harvard Medical School, and the University of California published in 2017 by Fox news and others:

• 20% report recent abuse or harassment at work.  Nearly one in five workers - which the study calls "disturbingly high" - say they face a hostile or threatening environment at work, which can include sexual harassment and bullying.
61% of American workers perform repetitive or intense physical work.  This work can include moving heavy loads or maintaining painful positions. More than half are exposed to hazards such as loud environments, extreme temperatures, hazardous materials, or unhealthy air.

All the words have changed, but the moral dilemma remains the same as does the behavior. The justifications we're offered are no more legitimate than those that were offered in the colonial era.  

Ideologically, what are the things we're supposed to have learned? 

From a Christian perspective, what's visible here?  Anything?   

(Decoupling from ideological norms; that's the modern terminology for not being conformed to this world. Disentanglement is another good description. So, how do we pursue that particular goal?)

The Power of Metaphor (and Meme)

Can a metaphor replace a truth?

Metaphor: a figure of speech containing an implicit comparison.  

Over a few years of inquiry, I've noticed that things which are abhorrent can be justified or minimized by the way we describe them, by our metaphors.

Snakes: in Rwanda, Hutus described Tutsis as snakes and treated them as such.
Vermin: Germany’s Reich portrayed Jews as vermin and treated them as such.

For the sake of the nation, it had to be done.  It was necessary, for example, during WWII, to bomb civilians.  In the pursuit of room to live (lebensraum), Germany began bombing Polish cities and towns that weren’t military targets. Japan similarly bombed civilian targets in China.

In response, allied bombing destroyed many cities in Germany and Japan before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Targeting the morale of the nation, we said.  After the war, it was examined and acknowledged that many attacks had targeted innocent civilian populations that were uninvolved in the decision to go to war or in the war effort.  It continues to be troubling.

Manifest Destiny: for our new-born nation, it was necessary to vacate the country ahead of our expansion westward as our manifest destiny required.

Over the decades, the abuse of others has been metaphorically justified.  They’re savage beasts, we said of those we enslaved.  Of desperate migrants seeking refuge, we said they are criminals and rapists, an invasion.

In each case, metaphoric misdirection provided an excuse for violation of absolute principle.

If you inquire into such issues, it often circles back to simplistic, metaphoric justification rather than a principled foundation, and there is no objective answer.

A question for us as individuals and as a culture, then; do we have genuine principles?  Or a confusion, perhaps, of conflicting values?

Either we have an anchor, or we're left to drift with the wind and waves. He said, metaphorically. 😏 Thoughts? Memes?

It's worth remembering, Jesus didn't suggest his followers choose between the ruling parties of their day.

   We're fed a constant stream, not of simple truth, but of someone's preferred interpretation. And it needn't be factual, apparently.

   If we accept it, we dull our own heart. If we join in and play along, we perhaps corrupt our own understanding along with that of others.

   And the most difficult issue, I suspect ... if we give our loyalty to either side, we find ourselves approving of things our Father warned us against. It's worth remembering, Jesus didn't suggest his followers choose between the ruling parties of their day. Both the Pharisees and the Sadducees were a blight on their culture.

   So how do we see the truth with some measure of objectivity, some measure of clarity? And how do we choose our own path? Is there a downside if we do nothing?

   It's perhaps time to take a deep breath and remember the goal of a united people, a virtuous nation, and principled governance.  Now perhaps, remind your friends as well.

Capitalism’s Grandfather

Like every ‘ism’, Capitalism emerged slowly over many decades. It came into an economy that had been controlled by Feudalism and then Mercantilism for centuries.

In the 12th century, Feudalism was the norm in Europe. Most workers were serfs for the landed nobles. Less than 5% of folks lived in towns, but things changed. By the late middle-ages, urbanization, production, and trade became more important giving rise to Mercantilism, i.e., trade between towns, between regions, and eventually between countries.

Mercantilism ran hand-in-hand with Colonialism as countries sought to increase their wealth and power through restricted trade and resource extraction. World trade routes and attempts to ensure exclusive access were fought over continuously, and wealth flowed to the top of the economic ladder.

Capitalism, emerging just in time for the Industrial Revolution, was best described by Adam Smith who clearly saw that the restrictive trade practices were impediments to development and change. He envisioned a free market, and it opened the world to capitalism.

Tycoons (and robber barons) amassed great wealth quickly, passing by the aristocracy as industries and productivity grew. Industrial Capitalism tended to benefit more levels of society than just the aristocratic class. Wages increased, helped greatly by the formation of unions. For the first time in history, common folks had the hope of becoming comfortably self-sufficient. A middle class was born, and economic growth began to lift more and more folks from the lower class into the dream.

Through deregulation beginning in the 80's, the financial sector became the key player in our economy.  Banks, now bigger than countries, rule a complex international financial system.  Some economists refer to the move from banks as money storage to the broader credit, exchange, and investment options as Financial Capitalism.

A capitalist economy is unconcerned about fair dealing. Scruples are not included in the plan, and mutual benefit is not guaranteed as the market manages itself. Players must choose wisely or lose.

While wealth tends to flow to the top, the consumer is the essential part of the equation. Attempts along the way to improve the lot of the consumer have been controversial.  Although modern economics requires a consumer base able to buy, pure capitalism would let those at the bottom of the ladder just fall off and disappear. That’s the moral inadequacy of capitalism.

Political Capitalism, by the way, is just the rhetoric of governance that supports industrial and financial growth. While perhaps constrained by other principles like liberty and opportunity, governments are inordinately influenced by corporations and the wealthy elite along this evolutionary economic path.

Reagan 1981-89, G. Bush 1989-93, Clinton 1993-2001, G.W. Bush 2001-09, Obama 2009-17

In the last thirty years, we have seen modern capitalism turn away from the middle and lower classes while focusing primarily on national wealth and market dominance.

Despite shortcomings, most political theorists and economists argue that, at least for now, capitalism is the essential component of an efficient economy.  With few exceptions, governments around the world agree in some measure that capitalism is essential to economic progress and security. Even Russia and China.

Those same governments agree that more is required and each attempts to mitigate the downside of capitalism; some effectively, some not so much.

Capitalism isn't the gospel, by the way, just the current 'ism', and like its predecessors, it has flaws.  Each 'ism' attempts to fit a particular circumstance of population density, productivity, and resource allocation, and each 'ism' is left behind when a better solution is needed.  The likely fail point today, perhaps, is the rapidly accelerating inequality seen in larger economies.

So for now, we need capitalism, and we perhaps prefer limited federal government and a free market. Does that address all of today's issues adequately?  

Or are there emerging risks and costs that need our collective attention? 

One of Many

It was just one of more than fifty occasions in history where tens of thousands were driven out and killed.  Each time, it was pretty much the same.

They'd lived there for generations, tending to kids and crops and some communities as large as 80,000 citizens.  They had governments and trade and civil society.  Then the invasion began and the holocaust followed.

Many did their best to respond appropriately, but they were often treated viciously.  Driven from their homes, many fought back and were killed along with their families.  As refugees, they fled, leaving everything behind.  When they wouldn’t leave fast enough, they were herded at gunpoint for a thousand miles and one in four died along the way.  Massacres, chaos, and death fill the timeline, and millions died.

The invaders claimed to be Christian, perhaps because the church had bent a bit in their favor.  They swept across territories and civilizations, and destroyed everything human in their path.  After more than two centuries, the remaining descendants of the indigenous peoples were finally granted citizenship, and more recently, equal rights like white folks had always had.  

Today, perhaps few grasp why those original Americans might have a different view of this country built by self-proclaimed discoverers, a land they claimed, ordained to be theirs by a gracious and loving God who let them murder the inhabitants, slaughter children in their mother’s arms, …. 

Today, we've either dealt with issues like these in our history or not.  Many still don’t understand the animosity of folks whose lives are affected by how we behave as a nation.  Many don’t understand refugees and what they face.  They just presume to be adequately informed.  The impact of such ignorance persists for generations in the character and values (or lack thereof) of a culture.

Note the problematic comparisons.  When Germany wiped out Jews and Poles, it was wicked.  When Russia did the Holodomor, it was wicked.  When Japan invaded China and did it, it was wicked.  But when colonists came to the Americas and did it, it was ....  well, the South American invasions and wars were wicked, but the North American ... slaughters, torture, and forced removals from their ancestral territories were ....  

While the truth is available, it is generally ignored or brushed aside.  As we celebrate our birth as a nation, not everyone sees the same story.