Wealth and Poverty, Part 2

I was planning on moving on, but some of the comments from friends made me think a little longer. Understanding our current market culture is so important that I thought I would explain some of my thoughts more fully. I don't want to sound critical of capitalism without explaining where it comes from.

I have said privately to several people that our modern market is becoming the most serious competitor with the church in terms of offering "salvation" for people. Our culture is being formed and discipled by the market every day. As blessed as we are to live in a country that benefits from market capitalism, let me explain why I get the willies when I think seriously about it.

The modern market stage was set centuries ago by philosopher Adam Smith. Smith laid the foundation for modern economic thought with some basic principles that were fine tuned through later years. But modern economics is based on at least two principles: (I know that this is oversimplification, but stick with me)

First, self interest - every person is wired so that they should be allowed to look after their own interest. This individual self-interest is what gives people the drive to make a profit and to innovate in order to thrive. This drive of self-interest should not be hindered by political or social means, but should be celebrated as the way things are and the way that wealth is best generated.

Second, scarcity - there are never enough goods and services yet humans have a desire for more. So the principle of scarcity declares that markets should celebrate this fact; as a matter of fact "the market feeds on an infinite desire that should never be satisfied; it needs lack".(Long, The Goodness of God, p. 258)

So put these two principles together and you get something like - let's celebrate individual selfishness and let create an environment where no one is every satisfied with what they have. Now, that is putting it bluntly and simplistically, but I think it is basically true of our market system. Hence, advertising is nothing else but trying to create the illusion of lack in our lives. We can't live without this product - we are unfulfilled unless we wear these kinds of clothes etc. The marketing game is based on the two principles above and designed to create a perpetual sense of lack - that we always need to desire more. There can never be the point of enough in capitalism , the system always needs us (consumers) to need more. Here is the catch - if we stopped shopping capitalism collapses. (Hence this makes President Bush's comments after 9/11 more telling when he said, "We just need to continue shopping and going about our lives")

So - bottom line - capitalism as a system trains us to celebrate self-interest (is this a Christian virtue?) and bombards us with messages that we should never be satisfied with the things that we have.

This is getting too long, but I wanted to sketch out some of my thoughts on the basic underpinnings of market capitalism. I think I will wait before I post my next thoughts - should we as a church endorse this program? How would we opt out even if we wanted to? If we can't opt out, then what can we do? I will be talking more to this in the future. I would invite comments to this post in order to stimulate thought.