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Article adapted from a letter written to Queen Elizabeth of England in the year 2004 of the Lord. Interestingly, The Economist magazine did a cover story on April 8, 2006 on the subject of Soft Paternalism.
Last Modified date: Saturday, 03 September 2008 (Check back for updates)
Dear one in Christ,
Greetings in the precious name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Savior and Example!
I was reading the following reviews:
- The Laissez-faire policy from Encyclopedia Britannica
- Paternalism from Encyclopedia Britannica
- Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism from SparkNotes.com
- The Wealth of Nations from Encyclopedia Britannica
And was led to the following conclusion. (Inline text from the Encyclopedia and the Notes.)
‘Adam Smith saw humans as creatures driven by passions and at the same time self-regulated by their ability to reason and–no less important–by their capacity for sympathy. This duality serves both to pit individuals against one another and to provide them with the rational and moral faculties to create institutions by which the internecine struggle can be mitigated and even turned to the common good.’
‘The source of the ability to form moral judgments, including judgments on one’s own behavior, in the face of the seemingly overriding passions for self-preservation and self-interest is the presence within each of us of an “inner man” who plays the role of the “impartial spectator,” approving or condemning our own and others’ actions with a voice impossible to disregard. Self-seeking men, he concluded and wrote, are often “led by an invisible hand . . . without knowing it, without intending it, [to] advance the interest of the society.”‘
The first book by Adam Smith (The theory of Moral Sentiments) ‘can also be seen as an explanation of the manner in which individuals are socialized (won) to become the market-oriented and class-bound actors that set the economic system into motion.’
The ideology of classical capitalism expressed in his second book, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), recommended leaving economic decisions to the free play of self-regulating market forces, which was latter to be called the Laissez-faire policy.
‘By explaining that wages and rents and profits (the constituent parts of the costs of production) are themselves subject to this same discipline of self-interest and competition, Smith not only provided an ultimate rationale for these “natural” prices but also revealed an underlying [supposed] orderliness in the distribution of income itself among workers, whose recompense was their wages; landlords, whose income was their rents; and manufacturers, whose reward was their profits.’
(We will see later on whether this distribution is really in order or not.)
‘Max Weber argues that the modern spirit of capitalism sees profit as an end in itself, and pursuing profit as virtuous. Weber’s goal was to understand the source of this spirit. He turns to Protestantism for a potential explanation. Protestantism, [he says], offers a concept of the worldly “calling,” and gives worldly activity a religious character. While important, this alone cannot explain the need to pursue profit. One branch of Protestantism, Calvinism, does provide this explanation. Calvinists believe in predestination–that God has already determined who is saved and damned. As Calvinism developed, a deep psychological need for clues about whether one was actually saved arose, and Calvinists looked to their success in worldly activity for those clues. Thus, they came to value profit and material success as signs of God’s favor.’ It did not occur to them that notwithstanding predestination, which is itself a false doctrine, this kind of attitude is intrinsically conceited!
Christ’s teachings were on the contrary just the opposite. Matthew 16:24–Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Matthew 16:25–“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Matthew 6:19,20–“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Matthew 19:21–Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
What we witness today in the capitalistic world is self-interest, self-preservation and frugality in giving. People have willy-nilly justified today’s system of business, law & order and government to suite their own selfish ends. They have accumulated false teachers to suite what their itching ears want to hear. Selfishness has become virtuous.
‘Once capitalism emerged, the Protestant values were no longer necessary, and their ethic took on a life of its own. We are now locked into the spirit of capitalism’ because it has become useful to meet our selfish ends.
The biblical concept of the “inner-man” that Smith applies to society by incorporating legal institutions is good in essence. But in the context of global economics, there is little application. The governments play into their own country’s capitalists. The International Court of Justice has to take to task governments like the United States and the United Kingdom, which follow unethical immigration policies. They essentially rob the wealth of poor nations.
Spencer Johnson in his book “One Minute Manager” speaks about the 20/80 principle. In applying the principle to the economics of human resources of a nation, 20 percent of the population do 80 percent of the work. Now we all know that America is the “melting pot” of the world. So if the body of a nation is brain-drained or virtually beheaded, then 80 percent of the work of that nation is left undone. Whereas the melting pot has 80 percent more of its work complete, yet having to deal with only 20 percent. So the macroeconomics, if i am not mistaken, is the multiplication of two integrals. This is what i believe, among other things, has contributed to the boom in the United States over the years. Because people there were superior, life became more and more superior and therefore attractive to the immigrant. But America is a democracy and it is true even in a democracy there is a downside. As Lenin puts it, “A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjecting of the minority to the majority.” So the immigrant comes under the subjection of the majority white, macroscopically as well as microscopically. Macroscopically, because his class of immigrants are not white. Microscopically, because he is portrayed as an alien to the majority. All that they (majority) have to do now is manage the brain by feeding it with what it needs–a salary.
‘Smith’s system of “natural liberty,” he is careful to point out, accords with the best interests of all but will not be put into practice if government is entrusted to, or heeds, “the mean rapacity (greed), the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind.”‘ Smith’s fears have indeed materialized. Today the governments of the USA and UK are entrusted to, or heed the interests of the capitalists when it comes to foreign policy. The capitalists twist the arm of the government to import labor at actually the expense of the foreign nations or they threaten to outsource. ‘”Civil government,” Smith wrote, “so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”‘ What the government is trying to secure here is the human capital for the capitalists and at the same time to keep the ratio between the whites and the minorities high within U.S.A.
Only last week we heard the Census Bureau predict an America of greater racial diversity by 2050. How did they jump into that conclusion without conceiving a strategy of immigration policy that will stem outsourcing. The idea is to keep the minority population as diverse as possible to pit one minor against the other and thus get the upper hand being a white. So import the cream, that is, brain drain China and India because it can’t afford to take too many from there due to the size of those nations. And then import Hispanics and Africans for low income jobs in equal number to pit them against the Chinese and the Indians when it comes to voting because America being a democracy, everyone has equal weight.
Through 2003-2004 we have been watching in Lou Dobb’s Report on CNN, the Exporting of America as he calls it. Corporate America is outsourcing service jobs at an alarming rate to cheap foreign labor markets like India. It is also outsourcing manufacturing jobs to China at an alarming rate. Together of which has increased the Trade Deficit of the United States by trillions of dollars.
In this global scenario there is no question that large concentrations of workers–men, women, and children–are crowded together in oppressive physical conditions and working long hours for low pay just so that an American capitalist can take a fling at his fantasy or vanity. One in ten people in America itself are now suffering from clinical depression. ‘Smith wrote with discernment about the intellectual degradation of the worker in a society in which the division of labor has proceeded very far; for by comparison with the alert intelligence of the husbandman (farmer), the specialized worker “generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to become.”‘ The idea is to make them so specialized and stupid that they do not realize how valuable they are in the overall scheme of things. ‘In the past two centuries managers of industry have taken, in general, two broadly different positions regarding management’s social responsibilities.’ But these have been limited to the society that they operate in, which is the American neighborhood without taking into consideration the contribution of foreign neighborhoods, which send high caliber immigrants to American neighborhoods each year.
Laissez-faire with Protestant Ethic:
‘In this view the owner or manager has no responsibility for the welfare of the workers outside the immediate plant situation. As i have said earlier, a person’s station in life is a reflection of his intrinsic merit [or rather predestination] in the eyes of God; the wages and other labor costs incurred by the firm are the result of competitive market conditions. In this view, then, the owner’s or manager’s responsibility to his employees begins and ends with operating the firm in such an efficient manner that it is able to meet competition in the marketplace, and, if all business managers similarly followed a policy of intelligent self-interest, the broad social interests of society would be better served than by any other policy. The executive most inclined toward a laissez-faire viewpoint is likely to concede that there are some social problems that are not resolved by private initiative in pursuit of enlightened self-interest. However, there are [owners]/ managers with this view of the world who tend to take a defensive position regarding the responsibilities of their firm beyond the gates of the plant. They [nevertheless] recognize that popular opinion and government policies and programs may require them to take on activities not dictated by immediate material interest, but the tendency is to do what has to be done to keep out of trouble with the outside world and nothing more.’ This policy is well suited for the self-interest of a state, which has immigrants at its shores all the time.
Paternalism:
‘The other stance begins with the assumption that management has a social responsibility to the communities in which its plants are located. If one states the situation in this general way, hardly a management spokesperson today would deny this social responsibility.’ The Ford Motor Company is a case in point, which announced last week that all dividends from stock owned by the Chief stock holder will be distributed among the employees. ‘Yet, when one gets beyond rhetoric, one finds a wide variety of views as to what actions–if any–management should take. In assessing the present scene, one might do well to examine the historical evolution of conceptions of management’s social responsibilities.’
‘The rise of unions in the mass production industries of the United States in the 1930s helped to persuade executives that a paternalistic approach to labor and community relations was no longer feasible. Extensions of management’s social responsibilities were now achieved through collective bargaining. Still, these broader benefits, such as pensions and health insurance, were limited to the workers and their immediate families. There was a tendency to assume that any responsibility for the welfare of the community as a whole should be assumed by government.’
Many corporations today have several billions of dollars in turnover. CEO’s get paid in millions each year to maintain the status quo. The orderliness of the distribution of income between the landlords, manufacturers and laborers cannot be right because tests can prove that there is only little disparity–if any–between the IQ of an owner/manager and an average worker. Even if exponential reward structure were made on the populace, it would still be inconsistent with the status quo.
No doubt the United States of America was originally white. Or was it? At least everyone assumes that and government policies are tailored with that assumption. But most of the big corporations are global players today. Therefore they have global societal responsibility. The global watchdog, the United Nations, which is really a puppet of the developed world, has taken a silent stance at such matters because it has no authority given it. It follows the same policy of “allow-to-do” (laissez-faire).
Thus developed nations, through their capitalist corporations, exploit–if not behead–developing nations because people and capital is induced to move to those areas.
This is nothing but global anarchy for the above reasons mentioned. The irreparable damage is to the tune of a multiplication of two integrals for each nation in question, which I am sure, will be in zillions of dollars.
Noah did not see the great flood that was to come. It was faith alone that enabled him to build the Ark. Today, we do not see Christ face to face. So it will be faith alone that will move us to prepare a Throne (that is, one body culminated at the neck) for Him (the Head), for the great judgment day and the millennial rule. (For details, see the vision that sprang from out of a revelation about a sharp two-edged Sword: Agape TiE ® / Totally Integrated Environment®.)
Let us pray!
No sooner did i think of writing here the model prayer that our Lord had taught us and went to look for the exact words in my Bible (NASB Life Application Study Bible) from the Gospel according to Matthew, thus said the LORD (my eyes fell on): Matthew 21:42-44; 12:18-21. This took place at around 7:20 PM on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 according to the Gregorian calendar, on the island of St. Christopher in the basement apartment that we are renting from Rona & Lee Graham which is on Pelican Drive in Bird Rock.
Carefully,
(Thus says the Lord: Matthew 23:16-22)
Caleb Motupalli
