Capitalism - The American Idol

I am sorry that I have not posted in a while and that now I am breaking off of what I said I was going to post on (I promise I'll start that soon), but I wanted to give a couple quick thoughts on the idolatry of most Americans when it comes to capitalism. As I have watched the political news shows and read articles, the continued assumption is that whatever happens with the Wall Street bailout and our economy, that we must continue to be capitalist. Not only is unfettered capitalism the one thing that we will not let go, it is the one thing that is not even up for discussion.

As I have watched various pundits and read various economists on the subject, the common refrain is that with this infusion of money, then the market can correct itself and continue on building wealth for people. The assumption is that a few bad CEO's made some bad mistakes and it cost the average American trillions of dollars. Now, the problem was that these CEO's happened to control an ungodly amount of the money.

And, through all of this, there has been no questioning of the system that led to this. There are no questions on whether we should begin to question a system that allows for a few people to gather up and hold so much money, enough money that if they fail the U.S. economy comes to a screeching halt. No, this is not questioned. Rather, we continue to believe we can tinker with a system that just is not working - examples being the fact that the U.S. government has had to infuse money into the market multiple times over the last few decades.

A common reason given for why we cannot question the ideology of capitalism is that we are a democracy. However, while not being mutually exclusive, these are very distinct ideologies. Democracy is a method for running a government, while capitalism is an economic ideology. The two play on somewhat different fields. So much so, that, if we happened to elect a socialist (or, even, communist) in an election, the country would take this turn (granting that the elected Congress also went this way). The country would change, but in four years, we'd get another election. Just because we went socialist in the economy does not mean we must go authoritarian in government.

So, I've come to the conclusion that there is not much good reason for keeping the idol of capitalism alive, worshiping it like we do. It is never questioned (in fact, in some churches I have belonged to, questioning capitalism is worse than questioning God). Rather, we continue to be like Israel, bowing down to the Golden Calf (or whatever idols they happened to embrace), telling them how pretty and wonderful they are and the political and social convenience that comes from them. Ahh, too bad we can't learn from a mistake.