My post yesterday was originally going to be about something else. Mostly about the challenges/criticisms of our system today.
That's vague, and broad, which is somewhat deliberate. It's about more than just 'capitalism' or 'democracy'. And, as someone who's not really a revolutionary, I don't want to sound like I'm totally against capitalism. It's more...more that we segregate out these parts of our society and then wonder why people are unhappy. Lonely. Isolated.
So, first, the obligatory "capitalism isn't necessarily a bad thing" statements. The gist of capitalism is the belief that people will work harder when they can see and keep the rewards for themselves. This is somewhat in contrast with the old feudalistic system. The feudal lord who took everything from the peasants constantly struggled to motivate his people (and it probably was 'his' people, though there have been feudal ladies.) The ones who actually loosened up the obligations and let their people keep some of the surplus encouraged trade and growth. Peasants might earn a little extra that they could sell, which they then turned around and used to buy desirable goods like cloth or pots and pans, or a cow or chickens or something that made their lives a little easier and in some ways helped create even more of a surplus. So instead of having everything owned by a feudal lord who reaped all the rewards you had people who saw tangible results for themselves if they worked a bit harder. Sort of a similar thing with privatization...the village commons only worked if everyone agreed on a process for ensuring there weren't too many herding animals grazing on the common ground. Otherwise they overgraze, the pasture doesn't have enough food for the animals next year, and everyone starves. But if you privatize it, then if someone decides to put too many animals in his yard then he's the only one who winds up starving. Also, the financial system can be a good thing. I kind of agree with the points made in
The Ascent of Money. Access to loans (for houses, school, or businesses) can be a good thing and we do need that.
However. (You knew that was coming). However. No system is an unmitigated good. There are downsides, some of which are not as much of an issue if social norms account for them.
To go back to the issues with our modern society...these criticisms aren't new. They aren't even necessarily outsider views. Some of them are the same criticisms I've heard growing up in Catholic schools. i.e. It can be materialistic, overly focused on shallow and superficial things. Any time I run into someone outside of the United States, I want to emphasize that the TV shows and movies everyone knows don't necessarily reflect what life is like for most Americans. Part of why we like them so much is they show a world different from our own, after all. The United States is still one of the most religious countries in the world, though that's declined a bit. In 2003, 60% of Americans said religion was "very important" and 23% said it was "fairly important". That's over 80% who thought it was important to one degree or another. Sure, pop culture makes it seem like we're fairly secular, but that's more because of the separation of church and state and the understanding that talking about religion in a multi-cultural environment is likely to stir up bad feelings and create problems where you don't really want or need them. That is, you don't need to go proselytizing to people at work or school, and if you try you're more likely to discover people feel very strongly about their own (different) faith and don't take kindly to you trying to convert them. You probably have little to no idea what your co-workers believe, or whether they go to church on Sunday, or a synogogue on Saturday or not. (Unless you must in order to accommodate someone's faith. We had some Muslim employees we had to give a later lunch hour to during Ramadan, so they could eat after the sun set.) What's sort of fascinating is that the jihadists who seem so horrified about America often have the same criticisms that our own Christians have about it. Of course, some of the jihadists seem to see only the college campus atmosphere, which...well...colleges are often when young people break away from their upbringings and go a little crazy. It's generally the most obvious part of college, but there are plenty of students who choose not to go that route...most campuses have churches that serve the college student community, tough though it is when so many of them leave after a few years.
Anyways. I mentioned yesterday that happiness generally occurs when we feel socially connected and find some sort of meaning for ourselves. And yet increasingly we live in a society where we're disconnected, isolated, and have a hard time finding a
meaningful job. (and how meaningful is it to work at a McDonald's? Or get a bad back picking items for shipping every day? Especially when you know most of the benefits go to some overpaid CEO...and that companies seem to begrudge every extra penny they spend on the bulk of their personnel.)
We live in a society that seems impersonal. Bureaucratic. We're all just cogs in the machine, and the machine doesn't seem to care too much about you...if you're not there they'll just find another cog to fill the spot.
It's...dehumanizing.
And we know that it's not like that for others. That for that 1% at the top, they're not bound by all the impersonal bureaucratic crap the rest of us are. Warren Buffet, who is probably one of the best of the 1%, talked in his biography about how he went through a period of bad behavior. Bad grades, stealing from Sears...he was a bit of a delinquent. He was able to get past that and move on to the person he is today. I think most of us know that a young black boy with a similar history would have ended up in juvie and graduated to prison.
I think part of the problem is that we pigeonhole these concepts. Capitalism and business, for example, is a completely separate sphere from our religious and personal life. So we get a hard-headed businessman who gets accolades for cutting costs, and they can go to church on Sunday and consider themselves a good Christian even if the end result is that wages don't rise and people are struggling to get by. (I say that, I'm not entirely sure I like where that's going...as I don't really think businesses should be charities. I'll think more on it later. Also, I was startled to realize how similar my comparison of a feudal lord is to our current business system. After all, the employees whose wages haven't risen faster than inflation wind up with less and less of a surplus to use for other things.)
