People don’t go to church anymore. They go shopping. Capitalism is America’s new religion. A religion is a set of profound beliefs that one hopes will lead to a better life. The Christian religion has its Ten Commandments which embody some of these beliefs. No one actually practices these beliefs anymore but that does not stop devout Christians from insisting that their commandments should be enshrined throughout America. The only problem with this is that these are not the beliefs that people follow today.
I was laying in bed the other night and thinking about how Capitalism has become the real religion of Americans. I suddenly realized that there was no explicit set of rules, precepts, or commandments that the faithful should follow. There are many implicit or implied rules. The implicit rules of Capitalism are somewhat obvious even if they are not etched on two tablets.
I have decided to take these implicit commandments believed by most Americans and make them more obvious. I recommend that these be put up in bronze or stone or cement in every capital throughout the USA. Following are my Ten Commandments for Capitalism.
- You can never have enough
As they say, “He who has the most toys wins.” You can never have enough. Life is about getting what you deserve. When you do get it, then you need to get more. More money, more cars, more jewelry, more land, more clothes, the more you have, the more people will admire you and declare you a success. Success in America means having more than anyone else.
- Bigger is always better
From hamburgers to houses to car and even people, things in America are getting bigger. People now own 5,000 square foot homes with three car garages, six bedrooms and four baths even though they only have 1.7 children and a spouse. Hamburgers at Burger King weigh about ½ lb. and car engines put out in excess of 500 hp. Americans are the most obese people in the world. Capitalism makes everything bigger and fatter. Hooray for Capitalism.
- Greed is good
Ivan Boesky said it and Americans gave him a standing ovation. Michael Douglas in the movie “Wall Street” paraphrased Boesky’s speech and exhorted his stockholders:
“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”
I could not have said it any better. The greedier we get, the more we get. The more we get, the more we want. The more we want the greedier we get. It is the American way. From politicians to business people to lobbyists, to car salespeople to real estate developers, the stated norm is to “maximize profits.” To hell with the tree huggers and climate change advocates. Success is predicted on greed. Greed is human nature. Greed is not good, it is great.
- Shop till you drop
My half-sister every year gets up at 3 AM on the morning of Black Friday with a map, a schedule of stores, coupons, and snacks. Like a general, she plots out her strategy, enlists her friends and relatives and launches a preemptive invasion. Her goal is to get it before anyone else. “It” does not really matter. The process is what counts. Shopping is the sacrament of Capitalism. You must take your pennies and dollars and put them in the store where you can get the most for your money. Saving is for fools. Shop, shop, shop. Superbowl Sunday is a prime time for shopping since many Americans are glued to their TV sets soaking up ads on what to buy the next time they go shopping. Go to fashion stores, go to thrift stores, go to malls, go to Walmart, go to flea markets, go to garage sales. But for heavens sake, shop until you drop.
- Stuff will make you happy
There is only one reason for all that shopping. It fulfills you. It puts meaning and purpose in your life. Without meaning and purpose, life is shallow. We are all born with a hole in us that must be filled up. You could fill it with religion, education, or philosophy but you can’t touch these things. You can touch a new air fryer and you can soak in a new hot tub. You can call all your Facebook friends on your new I-Phone 98. Nothing is quite as satisfying as stuff at filling the hole in our hearts. Nothing until the next generation of I-Phones or Air Fryers come out. But of course, then you can go shopping for the newest and latest and greatest. You will never be so happy as when you have more stuff than you need.
- Prosperity builds character
Those who believe in the Prosperity Gospel say that the richer you are the better, smarter, and more deserving you are. God rewards good people with money and bad people get lumps of coal in their stockings not just at Christmas but throughout most of the year. God wants everyone to be rich.
Being rich is a choice. Poor people don’t really like money, so they choose to be poor. They do not want to be bothered with having to carry tons of cash and credit cards. Rich people don’t mind carrying all this cash because they have chauffeurs, butlers, and nannies to help with the work. Many people say that “money is the root of all evil.” This is a lie spread maliciously by the Internet to deter people from going after the gold. Jesus said that “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven.” If Jesus was alive today, I think he might be preaching a different message. Something like, “Forget what I said two thousand years ago, times have changed. There are few camels left in life and you can always take a taxi if you have enough money.”
- Don’t worry about tomorrow
There is a great song by Van Morrison which goes as follows:
Don’t worry about tomorrow
That ain’t gonna help you none
Don’t worry about tomorrow
That ain’t gonna help you none
You’ve gotta live and take each day as it comes.
A great deal of wisdom is centered around the idea of living one day at a time and not worrying about the future. Too many people fail to live in the present because they are too worried about what will happen tomorrow. Doris Day sang the famous song Que Sera Sera,
When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, what will I be
Will I be pretty
Will I be rich
Here’s what she said to me
… Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be
Capitalism is a system that follows much the same line of reasoning. Don’t worry about the climate. Don’t worry about the weather. Don’t worry about pollution. Don’t worry about water. Don’t worry about the environment. Live for today. Get whatever you can today. You might not be alive tomorrow, so why worry? Remember Alfred E. Neumann from Mad Magazine. His motto was “What, me worry?” We need to worry less. Don’t worry about whether the world will still be there for your kids or grandchildren. Let them worry about it.
- Nothing is more important than money
If capitalism had a beating heart, instead of “thump, thump, thump,” it would go “money, money, money.” Love may make the world go round, but money greases the wheels. Remember the Beatles song “Money?”
Now give me money, (That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want, (That’s what I want), oh, yeah
(That’s what I want)
Money don’t get everything, it’s true
What it don’t get, I can’t use
Now give me money, (That’s what I want)
That’s what I want.
I propose that more people think about money than anything else in the world, including sex. To test my theory, I typed in “Sex” on Google. Then I typed in “Money.” Following are my results:
Sex: 10,590,000,000
Money: 11,920,000,000
Money received 1.33 billion more hits than sex. This result shows what the real priorities of most people are. First it is money, then it is sex.
- Never let anyone get in your way
Let’s be real. Nice guys and good women finish last. If you want to get ahead in business, you must be ruthless. You must be cut throat. You must play ethical roulette (a business version of Russian roulette). Machiavelli and Sun Tzu were too soft. Read the “Mafia’s Guide to Getting Ahead.” You must have no morals or ethics or qualms about being the bad guy. Never do anything illegal or at least get caught doing anything illegal. There is plenty of room for amoral activities that skirt the line between legal and illegal. If in doubt, call a lawyer.
10. Put some money aside for a rainy day
By rainy day, I mean a time in your life when you no longer have any friends, loved ones or anyone who cares whether you live or die. You will be on your death bed waiting for Lucifer to take you to your just rewards. Like Herod, the day will come when you must pay the piper. It won’t matter how much you have in stocks or your bank account.
The devil won’t have a signed contract for your soul but he will not need it. You will have bought and paid for your place in hell many times over. Every dollar, every ruble, every peso, every euro, every yen you coveted will have helped you to earn your place in hell. Your funeral marker on earth may say some nice things about you but down in hell, you will be one of many who sold their soul to the highest bidder.
Jesus wisely said “What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world but suffer the loss of his own soul?” Profoundly put, but alas seldom followed.
After Thoughts:
When I came home recently from a vacation to Europe, I had 5,865 spam messages in my promotions email folder on Gmail. That equals 217 junk emails per day. Never before in history, has so much been marketed and sold to people under the assumption that the marketplace is a dispenser of happiness. I have written a five-part series on the evils of Corporate Capitalism, and I have written many posts about the dangers facing our civilization today from the excess of greed and profiteering which infest and assail too many cultures and societies all over the world.
My spouse Karen felt that many of the things that I was saying in this blog were too harsh. If you felt this way when you read my blog, consider that 162 golf course owners in Phoenix did not want to accept a recent recommendation for a 3.1 percent cut in water usage. (Some Arizona golf courses are pushing back against the state’s plan to reduce water use) They proposed a counter recommendation for a 1.6 percent cut. This on the heels of an unprecedented drop in the water feeding much of the Southwest from Lake Mead and a record drought with significant increases in heat. What have we come to when water for golf courses is more important than water for crops and drinking?
In Wisconsin, where I live during the summer, the residents have been fighting the siting of a CAFO for the feeding of 26,000 hogs. The operators of the “Concentrated Animal Feed Operation” do not care about the water, trees, odors, property values, soil, bacteria, or any other repercussions for their operation. They are only concerned about the ability to make a profit.
The local residents have been fighting this potential development for nearly three years now. It is big money against the little farmer and little land owner who object to the spoilage of their land, water, and lifestyle. The property owners in Barron, Burnette and Polk County Wisconsin are fighting not only corporate money and greed but also elected politicians. Politicians at both the local level and state level, many who support the development of “free enterprise” regardless of the externalities caused by the business operation.
Everywhere I turn, I see greed, waste, and short-term thinking based on profitability guiding human decisions. The sad part is that Corporate Capitalism has become a religion. And whereas faith in the old religions has waned dramatically in the past fifty years, faith in Capitalism to save us from hell has only grown. Like some sort of communicable disease, the belief that Capitalism will provide a heaven on earth has become almost indisputable among a large majority of Americans. I think the time is long past for soft pedaling the dangers of Capitalism. I only hope that it is not too late.
The abyss It is so big that there is no bridging it. None of the sides can see the other side. None of the sides has any common ground with the other side. None of the sides understands the language that the other side speaks. We might as well be earthlings talking to Martians. There is no lingua franca. Many of the “well-meaning” experts exhort both sides to try harder to bridge the gap or to work more diligently to listen to the other side. It seems to be assumed that all it will take to jump the gulf is good intentions. I cry bullshit on this. As the old aphorism goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It will take more than good intentions to heal the wound that infests our country.
The wants advertised on the TV and in the media are never fulfilling. We have a nation of brainwashed consumers who mistakenly think that more toys, bigger houses, more guns, and luxury cars will make them happy. We are a nation on a never-ending treadmill of consumer materialism where like rats we keep spinning the wheel and hoping to find happiness, but happiness never comes, and drugs take its place. 
As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the tensions in society grow ever more divisive. We see more road rage, more senseless shootings, more violence between men and women, less loyalty between employers and employees. The underpinning of society that should be based on human integrity and morality is replaced with an opportunism based on an amoral value system. Whatever we can get as long as we break no laws is considered to be moral. We see most politicians that have no commitment to anything except to collect more money so that they can stay in office. Their highest goal is to help the rich get richer, which of course includes themselves. 
I am not talking about the devil here or about spirituality. I am talking about a kind of insidious propaganda that has been spread by many groups and individuals. In this propaganda, one side of America is labeled as moral, ethical, righteous, and just. The other side is the opposite. The other side is everything negative. The other side is a composite of all the demons and evils that Americans believe in. The other side are communists, fascists, atheists, anti-democratic, anti-patriotic and un-American. One side is good. The other side is evil incarnate. You cannot talk to evil. You cannot discuss with the devil why he wants your soul. You cannot debate with Satan over the values that he has. Heaven and hell do not have weekly discussion groups. The language heard today, and what the media publishes drips with hate, innuendo, and disdain. The language fosters violence. I doubt the Founding Fathers ever conceived that the First Amendment would protect such speech. There are three elements that contribute to a hate speech culture that demonizes the other side: 
Malicious labeling is the name calling that goes on between both sides today wherein each side is labeled. You can hear it on almost every talk show program in America today. Name calling and name labeling. Commie pinko leftists! Intellectual elites! Radical socialists! Racist rednecks! Fascist dictators! Politicians, commentators, newscasters, and radio talk show hosts all use malicious labels to insult and demean those they disagree with. What have we let this country become when we allow such name calling? This kind of hyperbole demonizes the other side and creates a divide that cannot be overcome by rational conversation.
I do not think that the Founding Fathers of our nation believed that Government was evil. Certainly, they felt that there could be too much government intrusion on the rights of the populace. They invoked certain safeguards to protect both human rights and states rights. Nevertheless, they did not demonize government and not a single one of the Fathers ever referred to government as evil. Edmund Burke, the famous English conservative said, “The government that governs best is the government that governs least.” He never said, “government was evil.” It has become common place to hear refrains denigrating the role and necessity of government. This steady drumbeat of antigovernmental rhetoric has created a group of people that have no value for government and who support the idea that government should be abolished.
A few years ago I began to wonder why groups like the KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, Antifa, The Proud Boys and many other such groups advocating violence against the government were not labeled as Terrorist Organizations. I asked a lawyer this question and he replied, “it is all politics.” I found that almost all the groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “hate groups” were designated as “extremist groups.” This means that they are not illegal, and they have the right to organize, march, rally and basically spread their hate across America. In 2019, The SPLC listed 940 hate groups across the USA. If any of these groups was labeled as a “Terrorist Group,” they would be on the same list as the Taliban, Boko Haram, The Mafia, Mexican Cartels and Al Qaeda. What is the difference between an extremist group and a terrorist group? It might surprise you to learn that a terrorist organization is defined as follows:
If this definition does not apply to the groups that tried to storm the US Capital on January 6th, 2021, I do not know what does. Just yesterday the Canadian government labeled the Proud Boys as a Terrorist Organization. This delegitimizes the group and takes their rights away. For Canada, it is a start. I am wondering when we are going to get started in the USA on such an effort. The First Amendment was never construed to allow hate speech and the advocating of violent actions to overthrow the government. Why do we not have the political will to outlaw these groups? We seem to have little compunction in penalizing Black groups like the Black Lives Matter Movement or the Black Panthers. We have a different standard when it comes to White Supremacy groups. 
The newspapers, TV and the Internet are today the major carriers for the hate and vituperation that has spread across America. On one side of the divide, we find the NY Times, the Washington Post and CNN News. On the other side, we find the NY Post, the Washington Examiner and Fox News. There are countless other purveyors of extreme and fanatical views. Each side reeks of headlines supporting nonobjective views and biased reporting. If objective reporting ever existed in the USA, it has been murdered and buried by the most pervasive media to ever exist. The media carries the hate and violence that is created by politicians, pundits, radio commentators and hate groups and ensures that it gets widely disseminated. Without the media, much of the divide would never have occurred. Hate needs a platform to be spread and the media is more than happy to host anything that it believes will sell itself and its advertising. 
There is a war on sex by politicians. There has always been a war on sex by politicians. It is the longest running war in the history of the world. It is not a gender war but a political war. The goal of political warfare is to alter an opponent’s opinions and actions in favor of the state’s interests without utilizing military power. Such warfare has been waged by the state against sex since the dawn of humanity.
Men want to control the reproductive rights of women. It has taken the #metoomovement to start some noticeable changes in attitudes towards the rape and sexual harassment of women. Politicians are the most notable hypocrites when it comes to the rights of women to determine what is rape and what is not rape. Ministers do not lag far behind in this hypocrisy. I could list hundreds of cases of politicians and ministers being outed for sexual harassment of women. I am sure that you have seen enough of these cases in the news recently. Nevertheless, male politicians occupy a special zone when it come to their belief that they have an unrequited right to a woman’s body. Control is power and power is politics. Sex is war. Women who want the right to determine how their bodies are used are combatants in this war of sex.
The battleground against mixed marriages and sex between opposing races and ethnic groups has now shifted to the issue of Gay sexuality. I think the issues surrounding Gay rights clearly support the thesis that power is at the heart of many laws respecting sexuality rather than economics. (Economics does play a role and we will look at this role soon.) At the present time, there are no explicit statewide laws in 27 states to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations. — 
Sex and Economics:
I read Reich’s book “The Function of the Orgasm” while in graduate school. I was struck by his ideas and the realization of how suppressed sexuality is in our society. We do not treat it as we would any other normal human need. Instead, we pass many laws governing what is right and what is not right, and we allow Madison Avenue to shanghai sexuality for the use of manipulating the rest of the country into buying junk and stuff that we do not need.
Aging Capriciously 