Righteous Capitalism
Righteous
Capitalism
by Ian G. Spong
For many people capitalism has become a pariah, a bad word, but is that primarily because they have a narrow definition of capitalism? Is there a broader definition that includes righteous capitalism? That is what this book is about.
Does theology have any contribution to make towards economics, business and government policies? Do the financial principles, the business models and government legislation of ancient Israel and the teachings of New Testament Christianity play a role today in solving world financial problems? That is also what this book is all about.
Contents
Capitalism
Moral Shades of Capitalism
Unrighteous Capitalism
Unrighteous Capitalism and War
Unrighteous Capitalism and Coercion
Unrighteous Capitalism and Legal and Illegal Corruption
Unrighteous Capitalism: Corporate Socialism or State Capitalism
Unrighteous Capitalism and Greed
Greed and Capitalism
Greed and Pride
Greed and Plunder
Greed and Loneliness
Greed and Family Destruction
Greed and Character
Greed and Leadership
Greedy Eyes, Greedy Hearts
Greed and Flattery
Greed and Guise
Greed and Short-sightedness
Greed and other Evils
Unrighteous Capitalism and Extortion
Unrighteous Capitalism Destroys
Righteous Capitalism
The Great Principle of Righteous Capitalism
Righteous Capitalism and Giving
Giving and the Causes of Poverty
Giving and Wealth Addiction
Giving to Employees
Giving is the Job Description of the Rich
Righteous Capitalism and Lending
Lending to the Poor
Lending for Relief instead of Usury
Lending to Fellow Citizens
Righteous Lending Criteria
Lending Usury in Heaven’s Eyes
The Highest Standard of Lending
Righteous Capitalism frees Slaves
Righteous Capitalism and Wisdom
Righteous Capitalism and Money
Righteous Capitalism free of Bribes
Ten Marks of a Righteous Capitalist
Righteous Capitalism is Honest Money
Money is worthless on Judgment day
Righteous Capitalism more than Money
Righteous Capitalism and Pricing
Righteous Capitalism no Love of Money
Righteous Capitalism and Tithing
Righteous Capitalism Money Can’t Buy
Righteous Capitalism not Hoarding
Righteous Capitalism no False Gods
Righteous Capitalism is Generous
Righteous Capitalism Invests
Righteous Capitalism Rewards
Righteous Capitalism releases Debts
Goals of Righteous Capitalism
Love
Relieve and Restore
Imperfect Capitalism
Grace and Forgiveness
Righteous Capitalism with Humility
Capital Ideas
The Main Benchmark
A just compensation
Principle of double honorarium
The One Percent Principle
The principle of clan-sized business
Principles of Righteous Inheritance
The reset principle
Principles of Relief and Restoration
The Principle of Sacrifice
Real Efficiency
Capitalism
To understand righteous capitalism, must we not first understand capital?
When someone says that they are against capitalism, I am tempted to ask them to remove their clothes. Isn’t clothing also capital? Isn’t the food on our tables and aren’t the homes we live in also capital? Capital is sometimes referred to by the income it produces, but a broader definition includes “the money, property and other valuables which collectively represent the wealth of an individual or business”[1]. Aren’t people then somewhat ludicrous if they are against all capitalism? Perhaps what they really mean is that they are against greed.
When the boys and girls on television’s stock market channels claim that America is the world’s last great bastion of free-market capitalism I don’t believe them. If we want real free-market capitalism, we must go to some of the dirty back waters of the third world, where capital is free to operate with impunity and complete disregard for pollution or human life. No, in a civilized country like America, the fairy-tale fiction of a free-market is always balanced by the greater responsibility towards society as a whole.
When those same boys and girls claim that America is a capitalist country and Europe is socialist, I also don’t believe them, because the real experts in the field of economics call both markets mixed economies.
America and Europe have varying mixtures of government and private capital at work. When some of the same people claim that European models have failed, they only point out Greece and Italy and Spain. They completely ignore our own failures like California and Europe’s successes like Germany and Switzerland and Norway, all of which have healthier mixed-market economies in 2012 than America’s particular variety of mixed-market capitalism. Silly arguments come from people with blind parochialism and complete lack of experience of living on the economy in Europe.
In this discussion we will use a broader definition of capital than that of those who are really speaking of greed. Capital includes the shirts or blouses on our backs. Under such a definition, even communism was a form of state capitalism (although a perverted kind). Monarchy was a form of capitalism with one large capitalist, privileged sycophants and a large pool of serfs who may have only owned the clothes on their backs and a few personal items. Even Pharaoh is said to have run Egypt like one huge plantation, with himself being the principal overseer and everyone else subservient. Pharaonic capitalism was actually a variety of monarchial capitalism (both my own phrases). In short, all of human history has been one kind of capitalism or another. There have been abundant cases of evil kinds of capitalism and a few shining examples of incredibly good forms of capitalism.
We will also challenge the shallow thinking that if private enterprise engages in business that is capitalism, but if government engages in business that is socialism. In this book we will look at both government and private business as forms of capitalism. We will also look at a curiosity called corporate socialism, a form of socialism engaged in by the private sector. In so doing we will seek to thoroughly expand our minds beyond the simplistic ideas of the news media’s propaganda which is aimed at largely ignorant, shallow-thinking masses.
Moral Shades of Capitalism
Why righteous capitalism? The term moral capitalism is simply not good enough for our discussion. Morality changes from generation to generation. It is too inconsistent. For instance, the form of slavery that existed in the southern United States of America was considered to be quite moral by a large portion of the population at the time, even though it existed because of kidnapping in Africa and existing families were often brutally separated. A similar argument could be made regarding our present prison system, but that is a discussion for another day. Our generation considers that early American form of slavery immoral. Righteous capitalism is concerned with absolute standards of morality that do not change from generation to generation.
Kidnapping is always unrighteous. Indentured servitude without hope of release which exists on the basis of an original kidnapping is unrighteous. Enslaving the children and grandchildren
of such kidnap victims is unrighteous. Destruction of families for commercial gain is unrighteous. Using such slaves as sex slaves is unrighteous. Other physical and emotional abuse of those slaves is unrighteous. The list of unrighteous acts could get rather long. Though some considered this to be moral at the time, absolute morality or righteousness will always deem this to be wrong.
We will not be overly concerned with the varieties of capitalism that are outward in form. For instance, we will not be overly comparing liberal market economies with coordinated market economies and so on. This is not primarily a text on economic theory, but the ethics behind economics. We will focus on exploring the benefits of moral-absolute capitalism compared to well-known immoral examples in the market place.
Some may ask what is righteous and what is not? For the sake of argument we will define absolute morality from a Judeo-Christian perspective. Righteousness is then that form of morality which would be so defined by heaven. In such terms then we could say then that there are three shades of capitalism: neutral, righteous and unrighteous. In this book we will examine a number of questions relating to evil and good approaches to capitalism.
Let’s challenge ourselves with some questions relating to legality and righteousness. Does the law of the land always define the difference between righteous and unrighteous capitalism? Why do we naively think that if something is legal it must also be absolutely moral, or that if it is illegal it must also be absolutely immoral? Is everything that is legal also righteous? Is everything that is righteous also legal? Is the law of the land always a good guide to what is righteous?
Let’s challenge ourselves with some questions about the use of capital. Can capital be used for good and evil? For instance, if clothing is capital, can it be used for good as well as bad? Do we consider clothing, as an object of the weaver’s and tailor’s art, to be normally morally neutral? Do the means of manufacture via pollution, slavery or some other evil make the clothing then unrighteous? Could the use be unrighteous after manufacture? Even a neutral object like someone’s clothing can seem right on the surface and yet be a part of unrighteous capitalism at one point in time or another. Can we always separate the two and is completely guiltless capitalism even possible?
Let’s challenge ourselves with some thoughts along the lines of equal opportunity and how it relates to capitalism. What about business opportunities? If business startup laws are just so expensive and complicated that they put the poor at a disadvantage, is that how we create a society of equals? If people are then forced into the black market just to survive whose fault is it? Are illegal immigrants really so evil when they have no way to afford the expensive cost of applying for a work visa or lack the educational or language abilities to navigate a complicated immigration process? Are taxes that molly coddle the wealthy and punish the poor really just and fair?
Let’s challenge ourselves with some questions about crime and righteousness. What is really a crime? We normally think of crimes as always unrighteous, but are they? Jesus was murdered by the Roman state in league with its Jewish client political-religious puppets for a so-called crime against the state, being called king of the Jews. Is a crime then always a form of unrighteous capitalism when society’s laws are corrupt, when they favor the rich and oppress the poor?
What if a law of the land unrighteously oppresses one group and a so-called crime of helping that group is a righteous act according to the laws of heaven, but a crime in the eyes of human laws? What if all decency and righteousness tells us to give water to a person dying of thirst in the desert southwest just north of the US border with Mexico, but the law of the land makes it a crime punishable by imprisonment, because we will have supposedly aided and abetted an illegal immigrant?
What if the law of the land says that church and state must be separated and those who use the pulpit for political talk break the tax law, but church teachings say that a preacher is also a prophet who must preach against evil, even if that wickedness is political corruption? Of course the state would like to shut the mouths of preachers who stand up against government fraud and corruption. What if it would be illegal to own or preach the Bible as it is in some countries, or to preach certain banned Bible passages as it is in others, simply because it is politically embarrassing to do so? What does a higher law than the law of the land demand?
Now here’s a difficult question: Can loyalty to an individual business be at odds with allegiance to one’s country, when devotion to country would mean loyalty to the whole market place and not just one small part of it? Let’s say that we own a monopoly which creates wealth for itself but to the detriment of the country as a whole. Are we then traitors to country because the very nature of our business hurts national well-being, whether intentional or not?
All businesses are instinctively protective of self. It’s a jungle out there. Eventually, a business becomes large enough to harm other businesses. That’s the nature of monopolies. Is allowing business to get large enough to hurt other businesses, by its very nature often more unrighteous than righteous? As businesses grow, they can influence the flow of goods in the market for good or evil, such as demanding lower prices from vendors to the hurt of those same vendors. It’s not just organized crime that seeks to exclude competitors from the market. Power corrupts does it not?
The Supreme Court recently made a decision to allow greater influence by wealthy corporations, without the balance of such influence by the poor and middle class. Even though corporations are not persons when it comes to voting, they are considered to be persons when it comes to lobbying. The employees of large businesses are not asked their opinions, so such lobbying only represents the muscle power of the chiefs of large corporations. Such an unrighteous decision only exacerbates the already disproportionate influence that the wealthy have in Washington.
Large businesses thus have greater power to lobby for unrighteous laws which protect them and stop competition from smaller businesses and the wider marketplace. If so, do such actions qualify to be called free-market capitalism, when it seems to be protectionist capitalism or crony capitalism? Is this also a form of legal corruption and therefore unrighteous capitalism? Are small time capitalists then sometimes forced to break or bend the law just to survive and feed their families to get around unrighteous laws created at the behest of unrighteous big time capitalists?
Unrighteous Capitalism
What is unrighteous capitalism? The story of one European city is a metaphor for the dark side of capitalism. Venice is a case study in the results of unrighteous capitalism. Once an affluent, open economy, the rich destroyed it through greed. Venice lost its wealth because the super-wealthy eventually created laws to stop the middle and poor classes from having opportunities to advance in the business world. It was class warfare. The rich made war on the rest and won, but in so doing they destroyed themselves within a hundred years as well.
America was formed to escape the restrictive social classes of Europe, but currently ours are more restrictive than theirs. The poor and middle class cannot afford the educational costs that guarantee top jobs. It costs as much as a house to get a degree from America’s top schools. America has dropped to 17th in the world for education. Finland and South Korea top the list of the world’s best education.[2] Part of the reason is the value given to educators and ease of access to education.
Some people claim that too many poor people are dependent upon the government for help. Yet, many wealthy have also been dependent upon government for unfair tax breaks and government bailouts. Righteous capitalism does not give us the privilege of hard-heartedness towards the poor.[3] Half of Americans will experience poverty at some time. Declining unions have led to reductions in everyone’s wages. Now a quarter of Americans earn poverty-level incomes. People without a high school diploma are 3 to 5 times more likely to be poor than college graduates. Fathers leaving their families make it 3 to 4 times more likely for those families to be poor. Only about a third of disabled people are able
to find work. Women experiencing domestic abuse are twice as likely to be unemployed. Women, minorities, children, immigrants, the disabled and female-headed households face far greater poverty rates. Loss of job, declining wages, poor education, fathers leaving, having children and disability are major causes of poverty. The job of a righteous capitalist is to feed the hungry.[4]
Just like in Venice, many of today’s wealthy are destroying the system and the freedom that gave them their riches.[5] More and more of us work as poorly paid peasants to greedy corporate oligarchs. National salvation is found in God and the command to love as we shall explore in the second half of this book. Unrighteous capitalism uses business models of self-interest instead of love of God and neighbor.[6]
Simply put, unrighteous capitalism is the evil side of business. Righteous capitalism is the good side. Let’s look at some of the results of immoral business practices. We will look at war, coercion, corruption, corporate socialism, state capitalism, greed and extortion. We are all familiar with stories of these things in both business and government.
Unrighteous Capitalism and War
On the dark side of capitalism is war for profit, sacrificing our young men and women for the love of money in battles for market advantage rather than national defense. In a speech delivered in 1933, Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, described some wars as mere unrighteous capitalism in action.
His speech has become reading material for many military leaders over the years. Among other things he said, “Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”[7] At least 21,000 new billionaires and millionaires were created by profits from World War I. Many wars are started to protect private investments at huge cost to the American tax payer. “But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.”[8]
Under the guise of patriotism, turning blood into gold, war profits for private corporations can amount to anywhere from 20 to 1800 percent above peacetime earnings. To save on war costs, when historically soldiers could have shared in the profits of conquest, we have found that medals are a cheaper reward. Our young people now fight for inexpensive trinkets and pitiful monetary reward.