Just about any form of spirituality cautions us to be careful of prosperity. Humility is encouraged, poverty is a virtue, prosperity leads to temptation. That's a gross oversimplification, but there's a grain of truth behind it. To approach it from the Christian perspective, because that's the one I'm most familiar with, we all the time hear that the Bible says, "Money is the root of all evil." The actual quote, in 1 Timothy 6:10, says "THE LOVE OF MONEY is the root of all evil."
Money is just a tool, like a hammer or a guitar pick or an AK-47. The tool isn't evil, but its operator can be. And some tools lead to temptations that can hurt people. Hypothetical situation; an angry looking man is walked straight toward you, a nasty look in his eye. Would you rather he was carrying the AK-47, or a five dollar bill? And no whining about paper cuts!
What the Apostle Paul is saying in his letter to Timothy is that, when money itself becomes the goal, you're off the rails. We want prosperity because it makes our lives more comfortable, and usually makes it easier to do the things we wish to do. When the work the tool is needed for is done, the tool gets put away until the next time its needed.
So there. It's okay to prosper. Just keep your head. Now, what's that got to do with politics?
Have you ever heard the phrase, "zero sum game?" That's an economic concept that suggests that there's only so much. If Bill Gates has fifty billion dollars, somebody else doesn't have that much. If that were true, then there'd be the same number of dollars in the country as there were when George Washington took office. The problem with making more dollars out of thin air is that they become less valuable. But it's still not a zero sum game, because there's more of value than there was back then. Back when five dollars would buy an AK-47, they didn't exist. So it's okay to print more money, as long as more stuff of value is being made also.
Another faulty political concept is that, in every financial transaction, there's a winner and a loser. Isn't that a cheery thought? For instance, you buy a car. Either you, or the dealer, is getting ripped off. But why is that? Does the car not meet your expectations? Does the dealer refuse to honor the warranty if something goes wrong with it? Yeah, that sometimes happens, but you still have a recourse, in court if necessary. So did the dealer get ripped off, and you're the evil profiteer? Then how did he get that nice big building and all those salesmen? And for that matter, all those cars to sell?
Think about all the transactions that you participate in. You get stuff to make lunch with. Gas for your car. Maybe you work in retail and sell these things to others. Or maybe you help manufacture things that other people buy. And the company you work for pays you to do it. Or you work for yourself, providing a product or service for a fee. Are you evil because you charge enough to cover your overhead and keep some for yourself? Are you more evil if lots of people buy things from you, and you make a lot of money? Are you robbing all those people?
Again, money is a tool. Some people can use their tools to manipulate or hurt, but that's not inherent in the process. Capitalism doesn't even really require money; it can involve barter. I play guitar. I could write you a song, or perform for you, in exchange for food, heating oil, or whatever else you've got that I need. Money is just a widely-accepted medium for determining value. Let's say I charge you $150 to perform. For that, I could get maybe 50 gallons of heating oil, or groceries for my family for a few days, or part of a car payment. The promise of regular payments gets me a car. Whatever the medium for assigning value, what's to say who the winner and/or loser is in any of these transactions?
Like it or not, capitalism works. It's probably the original economic system. It's the simplest; I have something you want, you give me something I want in return. A transaction between two parties. It's not without its problems, though. If one person is cleverer than the other, and suffers from that love-of-money thing, then a situation arises in which there can be a winner and a loser. A-a-a-nd here comes the loser, bearing an AK-47. I'll, er, be right back. Good luck.
I happen to be a big Star Trek fan, in all its various forms. It envisions, not only the technological advances that could come about in the next three or four hundred years, but the utopian society we will be living in. One with no money. One in which everybody will be able to do what they are passionate about, and will be given the materials to do so. The assumption is, for every guitar player, there will be people who love to make guitars, to cut, store, and provide wood, to grow and harvest the wood, to make the strings and other parts, and so forth. It's a very cool concept, and actually has the potential to work if everybody is on board.
But this raises another very basic, and very important question; what about human nature? One could argue at length about whether or not human nature is basically good or evil. It raises an interesting dichotomy at the core of political thought. Liberal, progressive, secular, humanistic concepts are supposed to be about freedom and equality, based on the concept that human nature is good. But countries that have this basic concept as a template tend to be the most restrictive. Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that human nature is essentially evil. And yet conservative, Christian, individualistic, capitalistic political thought focusses on freedom from restriction, especially in the area of business.
Which brings us to another basic truth; conservativism and capitalism are thought to be bad because they allow corrupt people the freedom to behave, uh, corruptly. Nice, restrictive socialism keeps them from acquiring all that tempting money and allows them to find their basic, good, nature. In the Star Trek universe, Bill Gates would be a happy, humble computer repairman. He could creatively innovate for a publicly-owned company that would give its products away to people whose burning urges led them into all sorts of endeavors that computers could help them with. Like blogging. Or designing peaceful uses for AK-47s.
Yeah, right.
Anyway, you can think or believe what you wish, but this is part of why I'm a conservative. Prosperity, for myself and for the country as a whole, is easier with a free-market economy. But people, I believe, are basically flawed and need a certain amount of oversight by the government to curb their worst instincts, so I'm not a libertarian.
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