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Is Capitalism Evil?


Pong Messiah
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Yeah. I totally think people on the "religious right" would freak out because Jesus would come into their "temples" and throw the tables around and preach against what people in church do. It's very self-centered - and I think that some people get hired preferentially because of community status through a connection at Church and receive other beneficial perks simply by being a part of this particular social group labeled as a church - and not at all what should be done by God's Christians. Not all Churches are like this and this is gross over-generalization but I have seen some mega churches and others with high Sunday attendance that rarely have a good outreach into the societal issues of their community. I mean what if they spent their Sundays opening up their kitchens and feeding the hungry of their community. Or going door to door and asking "Hey, I see you need help with your roof. I run a roofing business and would like to put a new roof on your house free of charge." instead of tithing? All that money spent and you can hear good music and sit in a majestic vaulted church but when a crisis happens does that church open up to let people stay?

 

Jesus would not be in Church on Sunday's at 11 AM. He'd be out feeding the poor, helping the widow, visiting the prisoner and giving shelter to the lost.

 

And this thought makes some people uncomfortable.

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Now on to a complete other thought concerning Capitalism.

 

Besides the obvious that we need to experience capitalism to embrace being socialist, because otherwise you'll have to accept the ugly truth that there are losers in capitalism. Capitalism encourages competition and because of that it means that there will be winners that make lots of money and then there will be those who do not. The part of society is to decide what to do with the losers - the ones that are not bright enough or motivated enough to go out and be a winner.

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Yeah. I totally think people on the "religious right" would freak out because Jesus would come into their "temples" and throw the tables around and preach against what people in church do. It's very self-centered - and I think that some people get hired preferentially because of community status through a connection at Church and receive other beneficial perks simply by being a part of this particular social group labeled as a church - and not at all what should be done by God's Christians. Not all Churches are like this and this is gross over-generalization but I have seen some mega churches and others with high Sunday attendance that rarely have a good outreach into the societal issues of their community. I mean what if they spent their Sundays opening up their kitchens and feeding the hungry of their community. Or going door to door and asking "Hey, I see you need help with your roof. I run a roofing business and would like to put a new roof on your house free of charge." instead of tithing? All that money spent and you can hear good music and sit in a majestic vaulted church but when a crisis happens does that church open up to let people stay?

 

Jesus would not be in Church on Sunday's at 11 AM. He'd be out feeding the poor, helping the widow, visiting the prisoner and giving shelter to the lost.

 

And this thought makes some people uncomfortable.

I cringe when I think back to all those Sundays sitting in a pew, surrounded by people wearing suits, singing hymns no one enjoys. What a complete waste of time. Even if folks are Christians, that just can't be the best way to go about it.

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Jesus would not have been a capitalist.

 

It's funny how it came down to capitalism/Christianity vs. socialism/atheism. You would think it would be flipped. Jesus would have probably been a socialist.

Add "white and male" to the capitalist side and "women and people of color" to the socialist side, and it gets even funnier.

 

Don't know about Jesus being socialist, but his followers sure were.

 

"And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need."

 

Acts 2:44-45(ESV)

 

By the time of the French revolution, where modern communist philosophy had its origins, one wasn't finding too much of this in the churches. The anabaptists, maybe. Otherwise, no. Rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and also rendering unto Caesar what is God's was an ancient tradition by then. A graven image had been made of Christ's name, while what he stood for was forgotten, and worship and sacrifice to this image had become what the Marxist humanists called "the opiate of the masses."

 

Marx's followers would not make the same mistake. Oh no. We won't get fooled again!

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Relevant: Religious right loves Trump, he loves their money/votes.

NPR LINK

 

Could almost be an Onion article.

Not as far fetched as one might think. Political allegiance comes down less to specific details than to deeper, almost instinctive factors. Libertarians, religious conservatives and full-on racial nationalists disagree on a LOT of particulars, but are united by an instinctive sense that "life is struggle", so to speak. There's a certain tough mindedness about the conservative psyche that is common to both the more puritanical, evangelical sorts AND the more libertine wheeler-dealer types like Donald Trump.

 

The leftist equivalent to this would be like, say civil libertarians and social justice warriors. Their approaches couldn't differ more, but they're united by a generally tacit belief in social solidarity and the ideal of a kinder and gentler world.

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The irony being how so many of the biggest mooching, whining, self-pitying tools are sympathetic to right wing philosophy/politics, while it easy to find dictatorial, cruelly judgmental twits with "Coexist" bumper stickers on their cars.

 

Kinda makes ya wonder how much political beliefs exist not to promote political and/or social goals, but simply to let people see themselves in a certain more flattering light.

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Looking back, I've been a capitalist ever since middle school, when I started my first entrepreneurial venture.

 

I told my mother I didn't want to bring my lunch everyday because lunch boxes were for geeks. Obviously this was before geekdom was cool; it was actual, true geekdom. So she gave me just enough money to buy cafeteria lunch everyday. Back then it was like $1.30 per day. I never cared much for food then and instead of buying lunch, I would save it, maybe buy a brownie for like $0.60 if I was actually hungry, but I was usually interested in stashing it all. Anyways when my stash was big enough, I would go to a convenience store near the school and buy baseball and ninja turtle trading cards. I had a complete set of ninja turtle cards, and I would sell all my extras to my friends who needed certain ones for big money. A quarter a card. This little business I had afforded me enough money to expand my baseball card collection. I had the biggest collection in school.

 

When my parents found all my baseball card albums, they knew they didn't pay for all of it, and asked how I got them. Thinking I was in trouble, I confessed my misappropriation of funds, but my defense was "the money was given to me, it's mine, I can do what I want with it." My parents took some time to consider my punishment, which eventually was mandatory lunchbox lunches. I also had to replace my Armani suit with army fatigues and a red beret.

 

I think my above example outlines four things about capitalism/socialism:

 

-capitalism is not inherently evil, but lends itself to abuse in the form of corruption

-socialism in theory works, but lends itself to being abused in the form of waste

-the inevitable shift from capitalism towards socialism over time, or "socialist revolution"

-both models have given rise to an heightened sense of fashionable dress and keen accessories

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Jesus would not have been a capitalist.

 

It's funny how it came down to capitalism/Christianity vs. socialism/atheism. You would think it would be flipped. Jesus would have probably been a socialist.

Add "white and male" to the capitalist side and "women and people of color" to the socialist side, and it gets even funnier.

 

Don't know about Jesus being socialist, but his followers sure were.

 

"And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need."

 

Acts 2:44-45(ESV)

 

 

I guess you can make an argument that it's a form of socialism, but you have to do some extreme mental gymnastics to get from a small group sharing their belongings to government-enforced socialism. That's like saying because I loaned a friend a book, I'm the exact same as a public library.

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  • 2 months later...

I've read so many "Keep fightin', everybody! We're on the cusp of post-capitalism world!" pieces from my friends in academia over the last 6 months.

 

Of course, they've been saying this for almost 150 years. But there's so much excitement in the air right now, maybe this time it's really gonna happen!

 

Fingers crossed!

 

:pimp:

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  • 4 months later...

A few weeks ago, I read some anarchist who figured that "bigotry and white supremacy were the foundations of hierarchical capitalism."

 

Really? I thought it was the bourgeoisie getting fat off the surplus value produced by the proletariat. Or something. I commented that when the guy studied economics in school, he clearly didn't get good marks.

 

Read the last sentence aloud, and you'll get it.

 

<rimshot>

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