Discarding Blindness

Professor J,

To paraphrase the Bible: Money isn't the root of all evil. The love of money is. Capitalism is just a system with no intrinsic morality of its own other than imputed fairness. The system IS corrupted and manipulated in all sorts of ways by those with the most power, but it is the PEOPLE who are amoral, and, in much of what we are discussing, immoral. Conversely, the systems of Communism/Socialism are also just systems and could possibly work given the right circumstances, but in those you have still ended up with a few people holding all the power (and for basically the same reasons), only it has been more despicable since it's been done under the cloak of the Utopian fantasy of making everyone equal. At least for the most part, the Capitalist is honest about profit being his motive.

Taking into account what the Capitalist system has given the world, even with its flaws, nothing else comes close. The fact that the less fortunate are sometimes victims of the system is a weakness in it that needs addressing. More government involvement actually seems counter productive as a solution since it creates the attitude among the general population that there is a government program to help people, letting each of us personally become more selfish in our thinking about those in need.

I don't think any of these economic systems are necessarily evil, Rand of course would say that all forms of Socialist/Communist type systems are evil, but I disagree.  It IS the nature of man reacting to those systems that causes the trouble. All of the world's systems are designed by fallible man and will be therefore inherently flawed.

If we, as individuals, have over eaten or over spent,  we are responsible for that. Does it seem like an unfair fight at times? Yes, especially given the huge amounts of money spent on research for companies to learn how to manipulate the consumer even more effectively, often times even addicting him to a product, but I'm never going to let the individual off the hook for buying a house he couldn't afford, or running up the credit card at Christmas. Is it the toy manufacturers fault that parents can't say no? Whose fault is it that parents aren't teaching their children to distinguish between wants and needs? Who is responsible for teaching a child to value a book more than a cheap piece of plastic? But of course, we see parents who cannot make these distinctions for themselves, often.

It is a colossal effort to grind the massive and powerful gears of the advertising/marketing  machine to a halt and begin to pull the lever back toward thoughtfulness even in one's home, let alone in all of society, but individuals, families, and eventually communities must make the effort.

The "churning" you describe is in so many ways part of the problem. People are never satisfied and as you have referenced before no one in our culture has any sense of "enough". I do see some signs of hope as a result of the hard economic lessons we've all learned the last couple of years. Yet when people come to their senses a bit and pay off debt, reduce spending, and save, here come the economists saying "Oh how terrible, everyone is saving and slowing the recovery!" Wouldn't it be better for it to take longer and for us to have a real recovery based on something other than (as you pointed out) ever increasing consumer spending? And for all the ways that corporate America manipulates the system and works people over, I am going to say that we as individuals allow that to happen. It is a choice to participate in the constant consumption to some extent. The fact that things are made to break down, and not be repaired but replaced, is absolutely true however, and the constant shifting of households from place to place (an expensive proposition every time) does in fact keep many families falling farther and farther behind. The merry-go-round of consumer consumption--working more, and constantly accumulating more debt --has been spinning faster and faster for years. People have been getting thrown off at a rapid rate lately; we are beginning to see some now give things a bit more careful consideration and start to drag their feet to slow the pace.

Our shallow image based priorities are a huge part of the problem. The refrigerator in my kitchen (a big, ugly, outdated monster) is 40 years old; it was built to LAST. I've had people ask me why I don't replace it with one that "looks" better. Not having a car debt was key in my being able to stay home and home school our kids (very important to me). To us, cars are modes  of  transportation; we are not driving them in order to (as Dave Ramsey says) "impress someone (we) don't know for 3 seconds at a stop light". These things are choices made on the basis of our priorities; not being enslaved by debt is somewhere near the top of the list.

While in some cases (planned obsolescence for instance) there is blatant consumer victimization going on, much of what you mention in your post we are complicit in. We are ALLOWING ourselves to be convinced that we need the better car, bigger house, (that trend is in reverse by the way) or to eat out several nights a week.

Not only are things made now intentionally to wear out, but then the company tries to extort money from you in terms of a service policy/agreement. "We'll fix the piece of crap we are selling to you, but you have to pay 'protection' money for it." I ticked my last salesman off when he asked if I wanted to buy the service agreement. "No, what I WANT is for your company to make something we shouldn't both assume is going to break within the next couple of years."

Your comments about workers being exploited and made to feel that it is somewhat necessary to stay ahead of the competition while the corporations and their shareholders benefit, rings so true. It's common discussion among friends that they are taking pay cuts or asked to give up certain benefits for the sake of the company, and then you open the paper and find that the company they work for has made record profits for the quarter.  Deep down we all know we are being had.

Well, of course HERE everything is up for discussion, but you are correct it is definitely the exception and not the rule. Not only are people not willing to discuss things, the immediate reaction is often ANGER that you even would dare have a different opinion. And doesn't Lord Acton have the best quote on this? "Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity".


So all of this has me asking another question: Is it possible, given the ever increasing size and power of corporations and especially global ones with hundreds of subsidiaries, that we could eventually see an economy (perhaps a global one) made up of only a few massive corporations that would wield as much power and influence (or more) as many governments? Or would you say, Professor, that we are already there?