While Chinese economists are studying Christian roots of the capitalist system American believers have more doubts about it. A new survey claims that significant ammount of Christians rethought their view on the capitalist philosophy.
According to the survey, conducted by Public Religion Research Institute, only 38% believe capitalism and the free market are consistent with Christian values while 46% believe the two are at odds. Half (50%) of women believe that capitalism and Christian values are at odds, compared to 37% of men.
What in this survey is interesting for me that even among Republicans, the political party with the numerous defenders of the free market system, only 37% say Christian values and capitalism are at odds, and nearly half (46%) say the two are compatible.
I think diligent and careful observers of the market cannot agree with the practices that led to the current financial crisis. Is it the begining of the end of the Max Weber protestant work ethic? Popularity of the recent movie based on the free market defender Ayn Rand's book seems to suggest that it is not. It maybe however a good time to think whether there is a third way between the socialism and capitalism.
About two decades ago an economist Louis Kelso noticed that key to the just economic system is a private property, a capital, owned by the every consumer - a rich and poor one.
You live in a great democracy. If the logic of capital acquisition is to buy capital assets on terms where they will pay for themselves in a reasonable period of time, AND THAT IS ITS LOGIC, you can persuade the government of your country to adopt - and implement - a national economic policy that recognizes your human right to acquire capital out of its own income.
Ownership of a reasonable holding of productive capital, legitimately acquired, is the prize of the great Industrial Revolution.If the Industrial Revolution, at its outset, and as an ever-ongoing phenomenon, is sustained by the efforts of all citizens of every society, then every human being who lives in a democratic country should insist and work for the establishment of an institutional infrastructure through which he or she, over a reasonable lifetime, can acquire and own a reasonable holding of productive capital.After all, when governments help their citizens to become capital workers as well as labor workers, the government is also cooperating with Nature, as it should.
- It is enabling its citizens to augment their democratically-held labor power with capital power.
- It will reduce, even eliminate, welfare costs, redistribution and subsidies.
- It will make its people more productive and make it easy for them to pay taxes.
- It will raise the quality of their lives.
- Capital is the keystone of the life support system of every post-industrial society.
- Every family and every single individual needs to legitimately acquire and own a reasonable part of that life support system - so that the principles of free market economics will work in the post-industrial age.
Two-Factor Theory: the Economics of Reality; How to Turn Eighty Million Workers Into Capitalists on Borrowed Money, and Other Proposals
The New Capitalists: A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of Savings
The Capitalist Manifesto
