12-Step Wisdom:
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.
1. Capitalism, to be effective (let alone morally good) presumes that I act out of reasonable self-interest. That is often not the case, either for me individually (would any sane individual motivated by her own highest self-interest really consume that much Sprite or chocolate?) or us collectively (as in the great Tulip Mania of the 17th & 18th centuries).
2. Unreasonableness or mania is as much, if not more, a collective as an individual impulse (see tulip mania link above). The theory that collectively, we (the market) will correct each other, is not even theory; it is myth. Time and again, we humans demonstrate a herd mentality which in hindsight, often defies even our own belief.
3. My own personal ‘success’ has been most actively realized not when I acted out of a motive of profit or gain in material or even emotional or spiritual terms. The seeming paradox is actually true: she who has/seeks/desires the least has the most. When I share what I have out of concern not for self but for other, it turns out that I experience the abundance of enough.
4. Ron Paul’s assumption that market correctives are the best way to ‘regulate’ a market or an economy is simply not borne out by the facts. The better axiom seems to be that left to our own devices, we sink to the lowest, rather than rise to the highest, common denominator. Markets create a false sense of time and the concomitant perceived time pressure disallows time for reflection and study, thought and thoughtfulness. Our investing days literally now begin with a bell, as if it were a race. And the race goes not to the studious, but to the swift, or so the thinking goes.
5. History actually does repeat itself. We seem to believe, however, that the repetitions of history are somehow because of something inherent to history itself, rather than to the far simpler explanation that we keep doing the same things, making the same mistakes (see Insanity axiom above). Thus when economic collapse looms, rather than believing that there is something proactive we could have done differently to arrive at a different destination, we seem to believe that it was somehow preordained by history that we would be where we are. This is a great comfort when it comes to examining the self to see what role we may have played in our own demise; but it is of little value in assessing our reality.
6. Private property is a construct, not a reality. The reality for all creation is that natural resources exist for the benefit of all. Water flows freely; the wind blows where it will. And in my own life, the more I cry ‘mine!’, the less freedom I have, because the thing becomes the thing. And when the thing becomes the thing, it turns out that the thing owns me, and not the other way around. That which I hold the most loosely is that which I enjoy the most and ‘profit from’ the most. The concept of property as mine is a construct of fear, the fear that if I do not ‘own’ the thing, you will take away my ability to enjoy or live from what the thing has to offer. Fear is no basis upon which to build an economy, let alone a life.
Our economies are not fates simply handed down upon our heads from on high. Economy is the way we choose to live our lives. In my time and place, the choice offered seems to be no choice at all: get yours however you can without regard to what it costs others in your doing. That’s the other thing about capitalism: it has taught me the Great Lie that the consequences of my acquisition and consumption are simply not my problem, because those consequences are presumed to be not within my control.
Jesus saw things a bit differently: what you do to the least of these, you do unto me. –Matthew 25.36ff.
I don’t have all (or perhaps even any) of the answers; but this I know: I, we, can do better.
