While I drank my coffee this morning, I stumbled upon the above post in my Facebook
feed. As the various commentators, myself included, argued the benefits of
sharing verse stealing from one another, of which evidently socialism and
taxation are forms, it became very clear to me that the issue at hand isn’t
socialism vs. capitalism, but the very fact that Americans are children wanting
to play with a very grown up idea, and failing miserably.
I
love money. I’ve always loved money. I studied economics as my undergraduate electives
and fell in love with money even more while pursuing my MBA in International
Business. While I stuck with technology as a career, and then eventually
homemaking, I continued my love of money, or more importantly, the story of
money. I regularly read books written by economists just for fun. To me, money is beautiful, not because
supply-side economics looks nice as an equation, but because money is the
truest historian of humanity. Money is our scribe.
If
you want to know who you really are as a person, then study your bank
statements. Where do you spend your money? Whom do you spend it on? Why? How do
you feel about your purchases? How did you earn your money? How do you feel
about that? Do you ever take the time to
think about this? If you do, you will know more about yourself than any shrink
will ever tell you. Money never lies. Money is pure. Money will tell you the
story of your heart.
Go
deeper, look at each purchase and ask, what’s behind it. What did it take for
that car to be in your garage? What resources were needed? What amount of
labor? Where was it built? Why do you need it? What does it say about you? The
story of money is rich, and deep, and never, ever false. What you see might make
you uncomfortable, but it’s still the truth of who you are as person, both
emotionally and intellectually, at the time the money is spent.
Follow the money and you shall know the
truth.
Money
tells the story of our society. A peek at the government budget for the United
States of America tells us who we are as Americans—fearful, warmongering,
self-interested juveniles set on the acquisition and hording of money and
profits at the expense of human lives. Why would I say that? Because any country
that spends more than half of its resources on war is afraid. And people who are afraid don’t make very
good capitalists.
Capitalism
is the golden jewel when it comes to money. Free trade allows humans to invest,
invent and imagine. A strong merchant class allows the flow of information in
and out of a society. A strong labor class allows for the creation of high
quality products to improve the lives of the community. This ideally happens
within the structure of freedom. The freedom to choose your craft or trade, the
freedom to acquire capital and investments and the freedom to spend your money
according to your values. When viewed this way, what could go
wrong?
There
are three components to the creation of goods—raw materials, labor and capital.
Where do we get our raw materials? From the earth. Where do we get our labor?
From humanity and technology, which has been invented by humanity. And where do
we get our capital? From banks, family members, profits, venture capitalists, Kickstarter campaigns, crowdfunding, rich guys with nothing better to do and the sale of stocks. When a human is
empowered and living from a place of ingenuity, these three things are in
balance. The higher the person or society moves up Maslow’s hierarchy, the
clearer their thinking and the ability to plan long term kicks in. This is
what capitalism requires—healthy adults who are secure enough to see the bigger
picture and operate from a place where the relationships between raw materials
(nature), labor (humanity) and capital (money) are in harmony. One is not
focused upon to the detriment of the other.
A
person who lives in fear, who’s afraid of losing something, whether it’s their
yacht, their stock options, their job, their house, their hot girlfriend, or
even their national identity or status among peers, will not be able to keep
the three in balance. And since capital eventually produces profits, which is
what remedies the person’s fear and insecurities, then that is where the short
term, fearful human will focus. How do I get more capital? How do I pay my
investors and still make a buck? How can I implement a system of trade laws
that maximizes capital so I can have never ending growth? This person will not
consider what happens to nature when its resources are over-mined for
production, nor what happens to their workers when benefits are reduced in
order to increase the bottom line. Capitalism
becomes CAPITALism.
Many
Americans claim the government should stay out of the economy. But yet when
business leaders pay the government to create labor and environmental laws that
enable them to make more money, that’s progress. Why? Why is it progress to
operate from the mindset of a child? A toddler can’t understand why he needs to
share. His parents show him that. Sharing
isn’t about taking from the 1% and giving back to the 99%. It’s about
implementing capitalism in a way that keeps all three things, nature, labor and
capital in balance.
And
it takes an adult mentality to do that. America, unfortunately, doesn’t have
what it takes. We’re the selfie-stick culture. The mine, mine, mine culture.
The individual reigns supreme culture. America has become the place where
adults think its fine to throw a tantrum in public because they’re tired of
being politically correct. America is a place where on one hand, Donald Trump
is a contender, and on the other Hillary Clinton deserves to be the president
because she’d be the first female president, and she's wanted it all her life. Seriously? Donald Trump is the trope of
our time and who cares if Hillary is female and has wanted to be president all her life? Both
of these candidates soothe the American insecurity and fear of not being good enough.
Which is a problem, because unruly children often require authority to behave, and historically authoritarianism is the opposite of freedom. So we're at an impasse--on the one hand we're a democracy that requires a capitalistic economy and on the other hand we still can't manage to stop bullying one another on the playground, which requires someone of a higher authority to step in and tell us how to behave.
Which is a problem, because unruly children often require authority to behave, and historically authoritarianism is the opposite of freedom. So we're at an impasse--on the one hand we're a democracy that requires a capitalistic economy and on the other hand we still can't manage to stop bullying one another on the playground, which requires someone of a higher authority to step in and tell us how to behave.
Capitalism requires a certain emotional and
intellectual advancement from its people. Money itself has always required
this from us. To me, money isn’t the root
of all evil, it’s the refusal to grow up and see the connections between all of
us that causes all the evil in the world. Money is just the messenger.
And
everyone knows you shouldn’t kill the messenger.
