Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:21-24).
And he (Jesus) looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor woman hath cast in more than they all: For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had. And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said, As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down (Luke 21: 1-7).
And Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the money changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise (John 2: 13-16).
For conservative American Christians there appears to be no greater virtue than wealth. Every political campaign that appeals to right-wing voters focuses on the economy; those individuals most admired by them are the obscenely rich; the long-term health interests of the environment and family members are sacrificed in favor of affluence; those groups most detested by Republicans are the homeless, the impoverished, and the downtrodden. This is in direct contrast the the Christian values that this present-day atheist was taught to believe as a child by my rural, traditional, Lutheran minister grandfather: charity, humility, generosity, thrift, and above all, the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12). I’ve come to understand that people use religion to justify whatever selfish position they want to maintain, and to rationalize whatever happens to them. But it is curious how clear the above passages from the New Testament are with regard to wealth, and how strongly the teachings of evangelicals and television preachers contradict what Jesus was supposed to have said about the rich.
Those who preach the prosperity gospel tell their followers that they deserve their riches because God has blessed them; their wealth is confirmation from the Lord that they are virtuous in his eyes. On the other hand, Christian preachers in low income communities talk of the virtues of sacrifice. They tell their congregations that life on Earth is meant for suffering, and the more pleasure and material goods one does without on Earth, the more one will be rewarded in Heaven. When people die prematurely their loved ones rationalize that those who died have been chosen by God to join their loved ones who died before them in heavenly paradise. People who survive natural disasters that kill many around them often say things like, “God was surely watching out for me.” Although in both these cases, I suspect that survivors’ guilt creeps in to test their faith from time to time, just as the fabulously wealthy must often doubt whether they truly deserve their good fortune, and those who live in poverty must at times question why they have been forsaken. Still, they would deny that they ever question the existence of God.
Using religion to justify wealth, or excuse suffering, or rationalize grief, or explain tragedy all prevent us from dealing honestly with our own emotions, or identifying with the emotions of those around us, or understanding how our own share of the world’s resources affects the rest of the planet. Economics and religion are entangled in bizarre and confusing ways. Consider the Puritan work ethic (associated with frugality, interestingly enough, not luxury), slavery, colonialism and religious missions, the association of communism with atheism and capitalism with Christianity, and the numerous mystical practices where productivity is not a central part of religious practice. Consider Hedonism – the belief that pleasure is the highest good and proper aim of human life. Perhaps Hedonism has certain commonalities with the prosperity gospel, but Hedonists might argue that the nature of the pleasures they pursue make victims of no one, while in a world of limited resources no one can accumulate vast wealth without denying others of essential needs.
How did we reach the point where many in our country believe that the richer you are, the more God loves you? Anthropology tells us that early humans were hunters and gatherers. In my mind, they did not likely have any concept of private property other than whatever personal belongings they could take with them as they traveled from place to place looking for available food and shelter. I imagine they wandered in small groups and when they found a food source – perhaps a stand of wild fruit trees or a deer carcass that they had killed – they stayed until they had either eaten their fill, until another group came and drove them off, the weather changed, or until for some other reason it became disadvantageous for them to remain. So who was the first “entrepreneur” to lay claim to a parcel of land for her or his own profit? What did it look like? Did one individual discover a wild apple orchard alone, and not tell anyone about it until extracting a bribe from the others? Did she or he somehow block access to the orchard and only allow others to eventually share in exchange for special favors? Was this person seen as someone to be admired or scorned? Was this person serving the rest of the tribe or betraying them?
Perhaps it was the invention of a medium of exchange that made the accumulation of wealth possible – a likely unintended consequence of a practical solution for making trade more equitable. I imagine the tribes in the hills had goods that the people along the coast were interested in, and vice versa. Instead of traveling long distances from the hills to the shore, the hill people could meet with people in the valley in between the hills and the shore who could act as intermediary traders, and who also had different goods to exchange. Since availability of some products could vary by season or other factors, the tribes agreed on some objects that had no intrinsic value, but by consensus could be held until the actual products of desire were available. For example, a man from the mountains might have been interested in oysters, but oysters were out of season. So he gave pieces of quartz (using quartz as an agreed upon medium, like gold or silver or turquoise or wampum or puka shells) to a trader in the valley to let the trader know that the quartz represented pine nuts that would be available to the person from the coast in exchange for oysters when oysters were in season. As long as the process was agreed upon and honored, it worked fine. But the use of quartz or some other symbolic medium of exchange set up the potential for someone to horde this material that otherwise had no intrinsic value. (Consider gold. It has no intrinsic worth other than its appearance, and the fact that we have agreed to use it as a medium of exchange and a value standard. Yet throughout history people have killed and been killed for it.) This suddenly gave the horder power over others, upset the balance of wealth, and began a cultural transformation. Was this the birth of capitalism, wherein money could be used to make money, freeing people from having to engage in actual productive work?
By the time history began to be written, and also according to archeological evidence, human culture has been shaped by an imbalance of wealth. Aristocracy, royal families, wars, and the rise and fall of nations can partly be attributed to nature but also are caused by and and a cause of the quest for and the lopsided accumulation of wealth. Earlier I made the association between colonialism and religious proselytism. One wonders if religion was not an excuse, or perhaps a rationalization, for one culture to overrun another in order to gain access to natural resources that could be exploited for the further accumulation of wealth. The western hemisphere and Africa are examples of how western European countries with ocean access used the military, the clergy, and the entrepreneurs in collusion to overrun continents and destroy cultures in the interest of exploiting their people and natural resources for the purpose of amassing wealth.
Amassing wealth perhaps creates a distinction between two different views of free enterprise. Free enterprise is a concept synonymous with American culture, and many argue that one of the main motivating forces behind the American Revolution was to establish a nation founded on a free enterprise economic system. I cannot hear the words without thinking of the line from Bob Dylan’s song “My Back Pages”:
Equality, I spoke the word as if a wedding vow, Ah but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.
I believe Dylan is talking about a word being used so much that it has lost its meaning, but it is unacceptable to step back and question what the word actually means, and what your commitment to the ideal really means, and if there really is an ideal to begin with. Free enterprise as defined by those who advocate for low taxes, few regulations on businesses, relaxed government oversight of mergers, monopolies, and markets, has actually destroyed free enterprise for the average American, while allowing a very few to accumulate untold wealth. It’s extremely difficult, for example, for anyone to start a small business anymore in an environment where they would have to compete with a giant corporation. When I was a child Mrs. Smith had a small grocery store on the corner. Many afternoons in the summer we’d visit her to drink the lemonade she made and eat the cupcakes she baked. There are few such corner grocery stores now. We all know of similar examples. When I need a plumber, an electrician, or an HVAC service I seek out what looks like a local, individually owned business, but there are fewer and fewer of them. There are a handful of giant plumbing organizations in Denver, for example, that dominate the market, and even some of the outfits that appear to be family owned are subsidiaries of these giant organizations.
In Denver one exception to my generalization (and I’m sure there are others) is the brewing business. It has been exciting to see small brew pubs springing up all over my neighborhood ever since I moved in ten years ago. But there is a twist to this. Some of the more successful ones are bought up by larger international beer companies that are themselves such complicated conglomerates that when one drinks a beer with a certain label these days it is nearly impossible to know what shareholders reap the eventual profits. So microbreweries now have several paths to success (complicated by the pandemic, which I will not address right now). Some have chosen to remain small and local, banking on the success of attracting regular local customers on a steady basis. Others have expanded their facilities and beer production, marketing their bottled and canned beers beyond the communities, with the hopes of eventually being purchased by an international brewery. For example Lagunitas out of Petaluma, CA was purchased by Heineken, Dogfish Head out of Milton, Delaware was purchased by Sam Adams, New Belgium out of Ft. Collins, CO was purchased by Kirin, Firestone Walker out of Paso Robles was purchased by Duvel Moortgat, a well-established Belgian brewery. Still, there are five or six small, locally owned brew pubs within walking distance of my house that I believe are independent, and I hope stay that way. I will also be watching with curiosity what happens with local distilleries, since Colorado also has many great local whiskeys that may or may not remain independent.
Ultimately, what motivates international companies to buy out local breweries? It is clear that Coors, Budweiser, and Miller have made millions by convincing Americans to buy cheap, flavorless beer that you can guzzle for a quick buzz without competing with that cheeseburger to enhance the fat belly. Do they now want to stifle the competition that is making rich, diverse, interesting beer that should be consumed slowly and enjoyed for the flavor? Or do they want to learn from the young entrepreneurs who have infused American business with a new sense of creativity? Time will tell, but I can say that during the spring, summer and fall I ride my bicycle from my home near downtown Denver out to Golden, past the Coors brewery, and the smell of stale hops and rotting malt in unappealing. When I go back toward my home past Hogshead Brew Pub on 29th Avenue and Joy Ride in Edgewater I love the fresh scent, the atmosphere, and the crowds. I just hope these places stay local and independent.
There clearly are some products and services that are best provided by single entities, but maybe these should be tightly regulated, or better yet, public entities, as in owned by the taxpayers and regulated by elected representatives. Do you really want a certain hidden percentage of your utility bill to line the pockets of shareholders who sit on the board to make sure that operating costs are kept low at the expense of meeting the needs of customers? Wouldn’t you prefer to be the one, as a ratepayer and a consumer and a voter, to make those decisions? And on the other end of the spectrum, as convenient as Amazon is, do you have friends, relatives, or friends of friends who have struggled to keep open their bookstores, clothing shops, bike shops, and music stores in the face of online shopping? I know this has been complicated by the pandemic, but if these traditional entrepreneurial opportunities are closed to young people from now on, where will they focus their creative, independent, ambitious energy?
And of course there are many reasons why large corporations need to be tightly regulated. When I was studying business in graduate school we were taught that a company’s first obligation was to its shareholders. This contradicted what I had learned as a high school student in business classes – that those business that succeeded made customers their top priority. If a business places shareholder interests first then they will sacrifice long-term goals for immediate returns. Cost cutting will pre-empt infrastructure investment. Worker concerns like salaries and benefits will always be secondary to the ratio of revenue over operating costs. And if no one is making you clean up your air pollution or you toxic waste, you are simply going to ignore them.
The business world uses two other mantras religiously, but then fails to adhere to their own dogmatic preaching in practice. The first is competition. Capitalists continually use this to argue against communism and socialism, and especially recently against government-run health care. It is competition, they argue, that keeps businesses lean and efficient, forces them to innovate and strive for flawless customer service, and avoid complacency. Why then is our capitalistic culture dominated by mergers and acquisitions, where competition is stifled and competitors are successfully squashed by being bought out? So many American industries and services are now dominated by fewer than a handful of corporations who are really free to arbitrarily raise prices and change products and services at will, leaving customers with no recourse. The other mantra is economies of scale, the flip side of competition. It is argued that the larger a business is, the more it can reduce costs through increased production, buying power, etc. While for-profit monopolies will cite this to justify their market advantage, they argument ceases when it might be applied to government-run services such as healthcare, utilities, or waste management. In these cases it is fashionable to claim waste and inefficiency in government without acknowledging the contradiction.
So how can the United States break up large monopolies that are not accountable to the consumer and rob individual entrepreneurs of opportunities? How can America educate itself economically to better understand what goods and services can best be provided by small businesses vs. large corporations vs. public entities such as local, state, and federal governments? Colorado is considering a state healthcare option. Huge dollars have been invested to wage a campaign against this initiative, a large part of which is in the form of advertisements telling the public that the state plan will raise costs, limit choices, and reduce quality. The ads do not disclose who is paying for these claims, not where the information comes from, but chances are it is misinformation that will be successful in defeating the measure. How can progress toward the greater public interest be made when part of the money that we pay for products and services goes to feeding us misinformation about how alternatives to these goods and services are not good for us?
And how to we transform ourselves into a fair and just society when religious leaders, who are seen as the voices of truth and ethics, are telling us that God loves the selfish, and that the poor, the sick, and the victims of natural disasters are simply suffering the fate that God has chosen for them? I don’t have an ultimate answer but I believe we start by making sure that all Americans receive a free and appropriate education, and that public education is funded in a way that does not slight poor communities while rewarding affluent communities (who are likely to send their children to private schools anyway). I wonder if the trend we have seen in my lifetime toward monopolistic corporations and a turn away from a charitable ethic in religion is tied to a devaluing of education? Surely they are correlated. Is there a cause and effect?