It seems that a theologically based economic system is sought. I was present in the early 70s when Father was vigorously urged to endorse capitalism, the most successful economic model thus far, but refused to do so. Although a theistic religion should decry capitalism as inherently evil, I believe that it should be accepted for now because in the present reality, commonly described by Christians as "fallen", the alternative, socialism, would be worse. I will unpack that sentence, describe how American capitalism has developed to deal with its evils, and, finally, I will note political reality in this century and speculate briefly on the possibilities of 2021, suggesting what needs to be done.
1. Capitalism is inherently evil because it
virtually forces good people do bad things. An example is the British colony of
Georgia, founded by idealistic men to be a plantation society where slavery was
forbidden and where there would be no great disparity of wealth. However, after
some years a neighboring colony, due to having acquired vast quantities of
slaves as cheap labor, became able to profitably sell cotton at a price
significantly lower than that in Georgia.
Faced with bankruptcy, the Georgians reluctantly and sorrowfully began to
purchase Africans as slaves: they reasoned that if they went bankrupt, others
would populate the territory and face the same decision. The more common
example is the good-hearted-mom-and-pop store whose prices are undercut by a
neighboring store that profitably treats
its workers badly.
2. The alternative to capitalism is set forth in
Exposition of the Divine Principle,
written in Korea in the 1950s
with revisions in the 1990s proposed by a small team in America and approved in
Korea, and whose core contents are considered to be revelation. After stating
that people will inevitably yearn for a socialistic society, the book
repeatedly sets forth socialism as the eventual ideal society and, in one chapter, clearly identifies the society of "mutual interdependence,
co-prosperity, and shared values" as socialistic. However, while this prophecy will surely
eventually be realized, it assumes people having realized God's first and
second blessings to human beings. The
model for the eventual socialism is the human family. In the family, the
parents, connected to God, hold all the
power and use this to ensure the well-being of each and every child. In our
present reality, evil spirit people very much too often find persons on earth
with whom they can form a common base,
and very much too often those persons succumb to their temptations. Accordingly,
the relatively few persons who would necessarily hold all the power in a
socialism today would be corruptible. Even the Libyan socialistic dictator
Muammar Qaddafi, who led an ascetic life, eventually became corrupt.
3. It is widely proposed and almost universally
accepted that a capitalistic society in which some work in inhumane conditions should be modified by governmental intervention in the economy, even
though this surely leads to inefficiencies in production. This takes the form
of the welfare state, best envisioned by Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, along with
vigorous regulations of commerce along the lines first proposed by Republican
Sen. Robert A Taft of Ohio in the early 1950s.
a. The
welfare state (whose godfather was the dissolute but deeply compassionate British
prophet John Maynard Keynes) depends, first of all, on subsidies given not only
to individuals who have suffered directly or indirectly owing to the
selfishness of others, but also to those who otherwise would become a drag
sooner or later on the economy. These subsidies almost inevitably turn into
bribes, allowing governments to put
pressure on the lifestyles of individuals, thus subverting the core virtues of
the Bill of Rights.
b. Even
before the welfare state distorted relationships between the government and
individuals, American federal society, designed to resolve commercial conflicts
between states, brought distortion of the relationship between the government
and the individual states by the manipulation of international trade and
immigration. This set states or groups of states in opposition to each other
and has strained the federal system. After After Pres. Truman announced the Cold War, the federal Department of Defense became a huge purchaser of goods. By promising to purchase from a company in a lawmaker's jurisdiction, an administration was able to persuade the lawmaker to vote on a different issue or issues as the administration wished. When Pres. Eisenhower was ready to turn over the government to a Democrat, he warned of the "military-industrial complex". When that Democrat president was ready to turn it over to a Republican, he also warned of that complex. In other words, it was a particular party's military-industrial complex. Pres. Trump applied this strategy in selecting tariffs to impose. Further, when tariffs that he had imposed had a major negative impact upon workers is a particular state or area, he used the welfare state tactic of giving them special subsidies.
c. A
major weakness of the regulated state, beyond the cost of the huge
bureaucracies required to administer it, is that for every regulation there are
people seeking loopholes in it. In 2008,
a small group of well-intentioned bankers, exercising their duty to seek
profit, found a loophole in a regulation, and unintended consequences reverberated
around the world including staggering amounts of fatalities and impoverishment.
A remedy for this would be the employment of a person with a rare highly-developed
critical mind, armed with an appropriate algorithm, able to find loopholes in
regulations before they were published. (My second son is such a rare
individual and, armed with algorithms developed by a niche company, is sent
from company to company to find flaws in proposed business plans before they
are put into execution.)
4. Even before 2008, increasing numbers of
Americans recognized that, owing to deficiencies in our federal-intervention
society combined with globalization of commerce based on new technologies, our economy and, in fact, the global economy,
which had been dominated by the United States which bribed other nations to
comply with policies set by international organizations dominated by our
nation, was spinning out of control.
The 2008 crisis, strangling
the flow of capital essential in a market society, increased anxiety amongst
our populace and led to the election of the strongman who promised to control
everything based upon his own self-declared abilities.
a. As
an elected official in our democratic republic, Pres. Trump is dutifully
exercising his responsibilities to seek reelection and, in this, is expected to
sideline any values he holds and pander to the values of those he deems likely
to support his reelection, again distorting human rights. If he is reelected
and facing term limitation, he may govern quite differently, for example
legitimizing law-abiding undocumented residents, which, early in his term, he
urged congressional leaders to do, promising to absorb any criticism.
b. If
Joe Biden is elected, he will face the same old challenges.
c.
During Pres. Obama's administration, congressional action to resolve
important issues was frustrated by intransigent Republican leadership, and a
compromise bill on immigration was blocked by the additional insistence on the
part of the Democratic leadership to include more generosity than Americans
were willing to exercise. What needs to
occur is the election of lawmakers willing to compromise.
