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Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul
Policy ^ | Summer 2007-08 | Peter Saunders

Posted on 01/10/2008 12:30:53 PM PST by forkinsocket

There is probably nobody in Australia more committed to the proposition that capitalism is bad for the soul than Clive Hamilton. The executive director of the Australia Institute, a green socialist think tank, he is the author of books such as Growth Fetish and Affluenza, which have achieved some influence in Australia and notched up quite respectable sales. His message, aimed mainly at a disaffected intellectual middle class, is that we have become preoccupied with the pursuit of wealth and are increasingly unhappy and unfulfilled as a result of our materialistic lifestyles. Clive believes we have broken our ‘magical relationship with the natural environment,’ and that the pursuit of money is getting in the way of our ability to reconnect with our ‘true selves.'

On 9 September 2007, at Macquarie University, I debated Clive Hamilton on the proposition that ‘capitalism is bad for the soul.’ Our debate attracted around five hundred people. When the Vice-Chancellor put the motion to a show of hands, the tellers judged that the ayes had it, though not by much. This suggests that substantial numbers of people don’t just buy Clive’s books; they also buy his arguments.

The problem for those of us who believe that capitalism offers the best chance we have for leading meaningful and worthwhile lives is that in this debate, the devil has always had the best tunes to play. Capitalism lacks romantic appeal. It does not set the pulse racing in the way that opposing ideologies like socialism, fascism, or environmentalism can. It does not stir the blood, for it identifies no dragons to slay. It offers no grand vision for the future, for in an open market system the future is shaped not by the imposition of utopian blueprints, but by billions of individuals pursuing their own preferences.

(Excerpt) Read more at cis.org.au ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: capitalism; socialism
It is quite the opposite with socialism. Where capitalism delivers but cannot inspire, socialism inspires despite never having delivered. Socialism’s history is littered with repeated failures and with human misery on a massive scale, yet it still attracts smiles rather than curses from people who never had to live under it. Affluent young Australians who would never dream of patronising an Adolf Hitler bierkeller decked out in swastikas are nevertheless happy to hang out in the Lenin Bar at Sydney’s Circular Quay, sipping chilled vodka cocktails under hammer and sickle flags, indifferent to the twenty million victims of the Soviet regime. Chic westerners are still sporting Che Guevara t-shirts, forty years after the man’s death, and flocking to the cinema to see him on a motor bike, apparently oblivious to their handsome hero’s legacy of firing squads and labour camps.
1 posted on 01/10/2008 12:30:55 PM PST by forkinsocket
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To: forkinsocket
His message, aimed mainly at a disaffected intellectual middle class, is that we have become preoccupied with the pursuit of wealth and are increasingly unhappy and unfulfilled as a result of our materialistic lifestyles.

Try starving for a while. Try dying from a broken leg or the flu. Try never leaving the same dirty ass town your whole short life because there isn't a reasonable way to travel. I hate these green fruits. They can go live in the wild circa 1800 if they want to. Leave the rest of us alone.
2 posted on 01/10/2008 12:34:42 PM PST by Jaysun (It's outlandishly inappropriate to suggest that I'm wrong.)
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To: forkinsocket
"preoccupied with the pursuit of wealth and are increasingly unhappy and unfulfilled as a result of our materialistic lifestyles"

Actually, most people are just plain unable to self-entertain in a positive and healthy manner.

All one has to do is study the effects of a socialist society -- Russia -- to know that capitalism is much better than the socialist result -- alcoholism. Socialism breeds apathy. Apathy has led to alcoholism in Russia -- no incentives to better oneself.

Look at the results of the socialistic programs in the United States --> ghettos that breed alcoholics and drug abusers which leads to crime. But you'll also find most people in the ghetto are apathetic.

That's not to say that the middle and upper classes don't have alcohol and drug problems. They do but they pay for the alcohol and drugs --> destructive self-entertainment.

But when you make it in a capilistic society, you'd better be prepared for more free time and learn to self-entertain in a positive and healthy manner.

3 posted on 01/10/2008 12:44:32 PM PST by xtinct (I was the next door neighbor kid's imaginary friend.)
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To: xtinct

***But when you make it in a capilistic society, you’d better be prepared for more free time and learn to self-entertain in a positive and healthy manner.***

Like blowing off steam at a range.


4 posted on 01/10/2008 12:57:08 PM PST by wastedyears (This is my BOOMSTICK)
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To: wastedyears
roflmao --> "Like blowing off steam at a range."

Shooting range --> a positive way to go postal especially if you're imagining the target to be the Hildabeast... Imagine ONLY...

Or, you could choose golfing or gardening...

You cracked me up... :o)

5 posted on 01/10/2008 1:24:54 PM PST by xtinct (I was the next door neighbor kid's imaginary friend.)
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To: forkinsocket

I agree that excess materialism deadens the soul, but I dispute the fact that we ever had a “magical” relationship with nature. Up until very, very recently, man had an adversarial relationship with nature.

My own impression is that many people are unhappy because:
1. They don’t care about anyone but themselves
2. They don’t believe in anything greater than themselves
3. They are spoiled. They have never really been challenged or had anyone hold them accountable for anything

The other side of the equation is the almost 24/7, electronic workplaces we’ve built. There is not sanctuary from work anymore.


6 posted on 01/10/2008 1:40:13 PM PST by rbg81 (DRAIN THE SWAMP!!)
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To: forkinsocket
[an anti capitalism book] notched up quite respectable sales

A bit ironical. Why wasn't the book being handed out free?

7 posted on 01/10/2008 1:44:32 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Beat a better path, and the world will build a mousetrap at your door.)
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To: forkinsocket
Capitalism lacks romantic appeal. It does not set the pulse racing in the way that opposing ideologies like socialism, fascism, or environmentalism can. It does not stir the blood, for it identifies no dragons to slay.

Ayn Rand was a Capitalist romantic. Also see Michael Ledeen's rapturous praise for "creative destruction," turning Schumpeter's economic term into a redemptive process.

Both are moralistic, seeking to purify humanity of its tawdry materialism and selfishness, and appealing to our ‘higher instincts.’ Both are apocalyptic, claiming to be able to read the future and warning, like Old Testament prophets, of looming catastrophe if we do not change our ways. And both are utopian, holding out the promise of redemption through a new social order based on a more enlightened humanity. All of this is irresistibly appealing to romantics.

You'll see all sorts of moralistic "poor/middle class people are lazy!" or "wealthy people are our betters!" moralism among more ideological capitalists. Capitalist raptures are also pretty utopian. It's Marxist analysis that stops at Captialism without proceeding to communism. Freeing the shackles from human productivity, some argue, will usher in a golden age where robots will do all our work, or something like that.

In the parable of the three talents, for example, the master rebukes the servant who buried his money, but praises those servants who invested and created more wealth—which is precisely what modern capitalism is about.

...but that's not what the parable of the talents is about! This is dumb literalism.

Nobody planned the global capitalist system, nobody runs it, and nobody really comprehends it.

Okay, this is just laughable. The International Monetary Fund can play investment banker and economist for its friends and enemies, planning economic systems for whole countries according to the latest policy fads. The author suggests we have no global ruling class who can manipulate the system in their perceived self-interest or according to their own favored ideologies. George Soros comes to mind, and our international debt cedes a lot of control to foreign governments.

Further, one problem with global capitalism is that capital is highly mobile, while labor is not. Thus factories are placed within a mile of the Mexican-US border to take advantage of disparities in labor laws and other regulations. Those with no loyalty to their neighbors and their country can clean up, while those who do retain such loyalty go out of business.

8 posted on 01/10/2008 2:05:36 PM PST by Dumb_Ox (http://kevinjjones.blogspot.com)
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To: forkinsocket
But the best explanation for the intellectuals’ distaste for capitalism was offered by Friedrich Hayek in The Fatal Conceit.(29) Hayek understood that capitalism offends intellectual pride, while socialism flatters it. Humans like to believe they can design better systems than those that tradition or evolution have bequeathed. We distrust evolved systems, like markets, which seem to work without intelligent direction according to laws and dynamics that no one fully understands.

Nobody planned the global capitalist system, nobody runs it, and nobody really comprehends it. This particularly offends intellectuals, for capitalism renders them redundant. It gets on perfectly well without them. It does not need them to make it run, to coordinate it, or to redesign it. The intellectual critics of capitalism believe they know what is good for us, but millions of people interacting in the marketplace keep rebuffing them. This, ultimately, is why they believe capitalism is ‘bad for the soul’: it fulfils human needs without first seeking their moral approval.

I was very interested in my reaction to my 50th HS class reunion. It was first of all a gathering of adults. It was only secondarily a gathering of people whom I had known as children. And I had known them primarily in the context of school, which is a context in which people got sorted by their interest in, and aptitude for, academics. Take them out of that artificial context and they are just people, and whatever their teachers had thought of them years ago was of absolutely zero consequence.

And any other thought was just intellectual pride. The very misplaced intellectual pride that it always had been .


9 posted on 01/10/2008 2:07:33 PM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters except PR.)
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To: Jaysun

...these green fruits.


“Green fruit” is really apropos:
immature
bitter
lacking appeal
apt to cause intestinal upsets

I agree with you that they haven’t a clue.


10 posted on 01/10/2008 2:52:23 PM PST by reformedliberal
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To: forkinsocket

Take care of physiological needs first, then if any time is left go for the higher Maslow needs.


11 posted on 01/10/2008 2:54:42 PM PST by RightWhale (Dean Koonz is good, but my favorite authors are Dun and Bradstreet)
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