Ending Poverty

Heretical Ideas

Posted by David Richins

sheepYesterday was my 33rd birthday. It gave me an opportunity to reflect on my life thus far. As I was thinking, I realized something about myself.

I’m idealistic.

I’ve always known that I was idealistic, but now I’m really grasping the extent of it, and I’m realizing that my idealism has been the source of a lot of inner conflict.

The conflict comes from the stubborn belief that I can and should try to change other people’s views and behaviors. And I’ve been unsuccessful at doing so.

More than five years ago, I started writing articles and making videos about my opinions. Some of what I have produced has been appreciated by others, but the only person that I’ve really been able to persuade is my wife. So I would say that my effort to persuade has been a complete failure. However, I can say that over the last five years, I have achieved greater clarity when it comes to my own thoughts.

I can appreciate that I could be wrong, and that other people have valid ideas too. But as time has gone by, I’ve become more entrenched in my own ideas. That has caused me to feel very isolated, because there aren’t really any groups or ideologies that I want to align myself with.

The heart of the conflict is that deep down, I’ve wanted to be appreciated for sharing unpopular ideas.

I’m not trying to drum up sympathy, or wallow in self-pity. Somehow it just feels better to be completely honest with myself.

So what ideas am I talking about? Well, I could list many, but here are a few that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

1. Working for money in the context of employment should not necessary for survival.

Money is a social institution. To work for money (and depend on that employment for survival) means that one person has to be subject to another person. I think that everyone should have the tools and means to be independent. I’m not advocating that we do away with money or with work. I’m saying that there’s something wrong with the employment relationship. In today’s system, if there were no social safety nets the unemployed would starve.

2. Everyone should own capital.

A corollary to #1. Before the industrial revolution, if you owned land it was possible to be almost completely self-sufficient. The land was capital. Capital refers to assets that have the potential to produce a return. Instead of working for money, we should be applying our capital to good use and living off the return.

3. We should help everyone obtain capital through entrepreneurship.

Since we’ve squandered our inheritance, we have to earn it back somehow. The opportunity to own capital isn’t going to come from the corporate world or through wealth redistribution. We have to create the opportunities from scratch. We need to band together and help each other succeed as entrepreneurs.

4. You should never let your money work for you, unless you are unable to work. You should work alongside your money.

To expect a financial return on an investment means that you intend to take from the system without contributing. That won’t get us anywhere. We must avoid anything resembling speculation and invest for the dividends, not capital gains.

5. All debt is bad.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Debt is slavery. Perhaps some debt is unavoidable, but it should be avoided whenever possible. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a Jubilee every seven years to cancel existing debts.

6. Equity is the only type of business financing we should use. Alignment should be the goal.

Equity means ownership of productive assets. That’s capital. Ownership is the only structure that can truly create alignment – a condition in which all the parties involved are working toward the same goal. But ownership doesn’t guarantee alignment – just look at the modern corporate structure with detached shareholders.

7. It’s wrong to be either liberal or conservative. We must be both.

This one almost always meets resistance.

The core value of liberalism is compassion, or the divine right of each individual. The core value of conservatism is karma, or the law of the harvest. The two values are at odds with each other, but both are necessary and must function together.

Well, I think that’s enough for now.

The Hard Truth about Economic Inequality that Both the Left and Right Ignore

Link shared by David Richins

Inequality is increasing almost everywhere in the post-industrial capitalist world. Despite what many think, this is not the result of politics, nor is politics likely to reverse it. The problem is more deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized.
…
The role of the family in shaping individuals’ ability and inclination to make use of the means of cultivation that capitalism offers is hard to overstate. The household is not only a site of consumption and of biological reproduction. It is also the main setting in which children are socialized, civilized, and educated, in which habits are developed that influence their subsequent fates as people and as market actors.

To use the language of contemporary economics, the family is a workshop in which human capital is produced.

Read the full article here ->

Economic Treadmill: Why We Are Destined to Burn Out

Link shared by David Richins

What is deceptive, especially in the West, is our assumption that repetitive and mindless jobs are dehumanizing. On the other hand, the jobs that require us to use the abilities that are uniquely human, we assume to be humanizing. This is not necessarily true. The determining factor is not so much the nature of our jobs, but for whom they serve. “Burnout” is a result of consuming yourself for something other than yourself. You could be burnt out for an abstract concept, ideal, or even nothing (predicament). You end up burning yourself as fuel for something or someone else. This is what feels dehumanizing. In repetitive physical jobs, you could burn out your body for something other than yourself. In creative jobs, you could burn out your soul. Either way, it would be dehumanizing. Completely mindless jobs and incessantly mindful jobs could both be harmful to us.

Despite all the stresses we deal with in our lives, we feel that we are running towards nowhere, very much like running on a treadmill. I believe this is because the whole nation, the whole economy, is on a treadmill. In analyzing our economic growth, we focus on matters that are actually irrelevant to our feelings. We falsely believe that technological advancement, increase in production, and providing greater choice would make us happier, but we have more indications to the contrary.

Read the full article here ->

Henry James on the Mosaic Code

Quote shared by David Richins

“It was a commonwealth based upon the individual – a commonwealth whose ideal it was that every man should sit under his own vine and fig tree, with none to vex him or make him afraid. It was a commonwealth: in which none should be condemned to ceaseless toil; in which, for even the bond slave, there should be hope; and in which, for even the beast of burden, there should be rest. A commonwealth in which, in the absence of deep poverty, the many virtues that spring from personal independence should harden into a national character – a commonwealth in which the family affections might knit their tendrils around each member, binding with links stronger than steel the various parts into the living whole.

It is not the protection of property, but the protection of humanity, that is the aim of the Mosaic code. Its sanctions are not directed to securing the strong in heaping up wealth as much as to preventing the weak from being crowded to the wall. At every point it interposes its barriers to the selfish greed that, if left unchecked, will surely differentiate men into landlord and serf, capitalist and working person, millionaire and tramp, ruler and ruled. Its Sabbath day and Sabbath year secure, even to the lowliest, rest and leisure. With the blast of the Jubilee trumpets the slave goes free, the debt that cannot be paid is cancelled, and a re-division of the land secures again to the poorest their fair share in the bounty of the common Creator. The reaper must leave something for the gleaner; even the ox cannot be muzzled as he treadeth out the corn. Everywhere, in everything, the dominant idea is that of our homely phrase: ‘Live and let live!’ …

And if we seek beneath form and symbol and command, the thought of which they are but the expression, we find that the great distinctive feature of the Hebrew religion, that which separates it by such a wide gulf from the religions amid which it grew up, is its utilitarianism, its recognition of divine law in human life.”

Read full text here ->

1 2 3  Scroll to top