Just Whom and What does the economy serve anyway?

Have we just witnessed the death of the free market, laissez-faire economic philosophy that has ruled our country for so long? The one that brought us so close to a corporate/governmental fascist state that we might as well have all started polishing our jack-boots, to march together as good Christian soldiers as to war, to keep the world safely in the hands of the multinational conglomerates, whose only moral and legal duty is to amass profit any way they can? Well, I sure hope so.

To me, the most telling moment was when Alan Greenspan told the members of the House committee that was grilling him that he had miscalculated and had thought that “self-interest” would keep the banking industry honest. He might as well have said, “That’s how Ayn Rand told me it would work.” Greenspan studied with Rand as a young man, and brought this quasi- religious faith in free markets, and hero worship of the wealthy Atlases, to his reign as head of the Federal Reserve. Along with this, he also had a hatred of unions and a conviction that the working class should be kept in check, living from paycheck to paycheck, in order to be the workforce that supplies the brute strength to build the palaces and temples of the free market demi-gods to whom all praise and deference must be given.

To hear him say, “Oops, I got it wrong” was devastating to the cult of the Free Market and the practice and philosophy that has ruled our economic life as a nation for the last thirty years. The story went something like this: If everyone simply puts their own self-interest first, things will naturally sort themselves out. The cream will rise to the top and be able to hire lots of willing servants (the middle class) to do the cream’s bidding, and as for the poor… well, fuck the poor. And if the poor weren’t such stupid, lazy bastards, they wouldn’t be poor. And so it went… The evil genius of it was that through demagoguery and playing on people’s prejudices and fears, the servants were persuaded to support this system of class warfare and vote against their own interest for decades.

As it became increasingly clear that the foundations of the system (infrastructure, health, education, environment) were beginning to crumble, the mantra became, “Cut taxes!” Cut taxes for the Atlases and demi-gods that have risen to the top because of their genetic and moral superiority. Then they will be able to hire more servants to man their castles and build their yachts and fight their wars… And, by the way, fuck the poor–they deserve it! And so it went for many dark years. And, by the way, this was freedom and let freedom ring in Jesus’ name. Amen.

To hear George W., preaching at the economic summit in Washington a few days ago, about the virtues of this system that has to be bailed out to the tune of a trillion dollars and counting, is like having a medieval pope say that if we just paid a few more indulgences, and prayed at the bones of a few more saints, the black death would go away for sure. Well, the bones and indulgences didn’t do shit. And in this massive void, left by the Church’s gross ignorance and self-righteous blindness, arose the beginnings of modernity and the scientific paradigm.

Are we at a similar point in our economic and cultural evolution? Could be. Could really be. First, we must ask the question whom and what should the economy serve? To me the answer is obvious: The economy should serve Life. Life should not serve the economy, as that is idolatry of the worst sort, and leads to economic collapse, great suffering and environmental devastation. As Teddy Roosevelt said, “Unregulated capitalism leads to absolute corruption.” The goal of a healthy capitalism is to circulate wealth, economic wealth, intellectual wealth, artistic wealth, and spiritual wealth, with the goal of building a strong, secure, vibrant, enlightened middle class, because without that sort of middle class, the institutions of a healthy democracy cannot survive. And we have come damn close to losing it. In addition, the structures and systems must be in place in all four quadrants to bring the poor into that healthy middle class.

And you might ask, “Well, what about the rich, you commie?” Well, what about the rich? Can they or should theses Atlases be preserved in our healthy democracy? Good question. One Supreme Court justice put it this way: “You can have great wealth or democracy, but you can’t have both.” Why? Because if too much wealth is concentrated in the hands of too few, democracy becomes absolutely subverted and corrupted and you end up with the best government that money can buy.

All that is to say, I have no problems with wealthy individuals per se, it is just that the right to accumulate wealth unchecked in the hands of a few should not be absolute, and should be balanced by other values and needs. Just as we as men cannot have our lives run by the dictates of our penises, so ambition and greed must be balanced and checked by higher values. Or, trust me, absolute chaos results.

In a healthy, capitalistic democracy, we balance the rights of the individual against the common good. And how we choose that balance will make us either slaves or free, just or unjust, inspiring or downright depressing. We now have a chance for a new New Deal. The world is watching us with fascination and hope. History and the generations to come will be our judge.

P.S. In the early eighties, I read Milton Friedman. He and Ayn Rand were the gurus of Reaganomics and the mess it turned into.  I remember being caught up in Milton’s ideas until he gave Hong Kong as his model of what a totally free market could achieve. He lost me. Drugs and prostitution run by Triads, in conditions of overcrowding that had this Texas boy running scared. Milton lost me there.

Freedom without discipline is bondage. Great wealth in the face of great poverty is a sin, and spiritually damaging to all. Unless we want a future in which the police travel through poor areas shooting down feral, glue-huffing children as they would rabid dogs (as has been done in Brazil), we have got to take care of business. Wake up, Atlases! With great wealth and abilities comes great responsibility. Let us, as free men and women, take the pledge. No one of us is saved until we are all saved. And no one of us is rich until we can all live in dignity.