At the small scale level---family farms, small business, community banks, cooperatives---the capitalistic system works quite well. But when the financial/economic system becomes dominated by big corporations, big banks, Wall Street, the system, far too often becomes, as Jesus puts it, a den of robbers.
Enter Nick Hanauer, author of The Gardens of Democracy, who asks Americans to rethink their model of capitalism around the concept of a garden, not a machine. In summary fashion, Nick outlines what is wrong with American capitalism and how it should be changed. Remember, Hanauer is a venture capitalist.
Machine view: Markets are efficient, thus sacrosanct.
Garden view: Markets are effective, if well tended.
Machine view: Regulation destroys markets.
Garden view: Markets need fertilizing and weeding, or else are destroyed.
Machine view: Income [and wealth] inequality reflects unequal effort and ability.
Garden view: Inequality is what markets naturally create and compound, and requires correction.
Machine view: Wealth is created through competition and by the pursuit of narrow self-interest.
Garden view: Wealth is created through trust and cooperation.
Machine view: Wealth = individuals accumulating money.
Garden view: Wealth = society creating solutions.
If we are serious about creating wealth, our focus should not be on taking care of the rich so that their money trickles down; it should be on making sure everyone has a fair chance---in education, health, social capital, access to financial capital---to create new information and ideas.
Freedom without responsibility ends up as self-interest, greed; freedom with responsibility combines love and justice with freedom. Nick doesn't use the words community, love and justice often, but the following statement imply such:
"We're all in it together."
"Freedom is responsibility."
"We're all better off when we're all better off."
"True self-interest is mutual self-interest."
"With inalienable rights come inalienable responsibilities."
These comments remember me of Gal. 5:13: "You were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather, serve one another in love." From atomized individualism to networked interdependence.
Recirculation of wealth is as necessary to the economy as recirculation of blood is to the body.
In reading The Gardens of Democracy, I realized that capitalistic theory says little about economic oppression, the rich oppressing the poor. Instead, supposedly 'the market' efficiently distributes goods and services to the people; implied is that the poor must be lazy, ignorant, unskilled. Unacknowledged is that the rich benefit from 'trickle up'. The system is rigged in favor of 'trickle up', a form of oppression.
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