Zen-ish Thoughts About Hammers and Capitalism

Capitalism is neither good nor bad in the same way that a hammer is neither good nor bad. You can use a hammer to build someone a home, or to bash in their skull.

Capitalism is simply a financial system. Like every other financial system, it has good uses, and limitations. One of the biggest sources of trouble in the United States is that we treat capitalism as if it is an all-encompassing system of life, and not just a financial system. People do heinous things and then say, “Don’t take it personally, or hold me accountable. It’s just business”, as if it is correct for business to be a morality-free zone.

People sell food that is destroying people’s health, because it is more profitable than selling healthy food. People sell healthy food at inflated prices because not eating adulterated food-substitutes that erode one’s health is considered a luxury.

Like religion, capitalism doesn’t have to be bad, but it is often used in ways that abuse rather than uplift. In both cases, the list of abuses in endless and egregious.

Capitalism is just a financial system, not an everything system. People have more than just financial needs. So capitalism must be kept in check or it will predictably work against people’s non-financial needs.

Capitalism is passionately accompanied by the idea that it must be entirely unfettered, that the government must not interfere with free markets, as they will be self-correcting in the most efficient way possible. One must be willfully blind to the entire history of capitalism to believe this. The path of capitalism is strewn with horrible lives, dead bodies, and damage that is literally on a planetary scale.

To begin setting the record straight, there is no such thing as an unregulated market. A market can be regulated for the benefit of kings, oligarchs, White Protestant males, Islamic leaders, the State, or the people. No market has ever been not-regulated, nor is it possible. Even to absolutely "not-regulate" is a form of regulation, one that favors those already most wealthy and most willing to harm others. That assessment is not a political opinion. It’s a basic fact about the financial system called capitalism. That’s how it works when left to its own devices. That’s why we must regulate it with intention, so it doesn’t trample on non-financial things that also matter, many of which matter more than money.

Here is a nearly invisible, very insidious way that the so-called “free” market in the US is regulated. This is proudly supported by the same people who insist that the market must not be subject to government “interference”. Your tax dollars are spent on subsidies for certain crops, corn being the exemplar we will use in this essay. This is “for the poor farmers – the bedrock of America”. This because we can’t allow our own food supply to collapse, for the country to become dependent on imports for something as vital as food. Okay, but it’s regulation. It’s government interference with the free market. So, having admitted that, let’s stop pretending that government action in the market is strictly forbidden. It’s not even forbidden by the people whoo say it’s forbidden. In fact, they love it.

Through the 1950s and early 1960s, American auto makers argued that seatbelts were uncomfortable, unnecessary, or would deter buyers. They worried that acknowledging the need for seatbelts was an admission that their products were unsafe. They claimed the additional cost would destroy the auto industry, ruining an American strength and eliminating many thousands of jobs. And of course, as we all know, capitalism must not be regulated. Estimates are that tens of thousands of lives have been saved every year since the government passed regulations requiring seatbelts – interfering with the allegedly free market by regulating it. I think tens of thousands of prevented deaths per year is more important than money. Do you?

Let’s get back to government manipulation of the agricultural market in the form of subsidies for corn. Corn feeds livestock. Corn is used in the production of ethanol (a fuel). Corn is used throughout the entire food supply chain, largely in the form of corn syrup. Corn is mostly grown in the Midwest, foundationally important in federal elections. Corn subsidies, rather than going to poor farmers, primarily go to large-scale, mechanized producers (who just happen to also be political donors). Corn subsidies reward yield volume over quality, agricultural diversity, dietary diversity and quality, soil depletion, land use, or water consumption.

So, congresspeople have both a self-serving interest and a public interest in stable corn production by large corporations. Apparently, under those circumstances, we love government interference with “free” markets. We just don’t call it that because that sounds all communistic and socialistic and evil.

Here’s some evil for you. Those subsidies make corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup so cheap that capitalistic companies wanting to maximize profits at any cost, even their own customers’ health, put it in as many processed food products as possible, to addict people to the sweetness and – oops – make a significant contribution to the obesity and poor health dominating lives in the wealthiest nation on Earth. But, remember this above all else, capitalism must not be directed by government, you know, except when it’s good for elections or big businesses. And who cares who is harmed either by capitalism or by the ways it is manipulated by the government – it’s just business. Don’t take it personally.

The fact is, you know of many ways the government imposes itself on the so-called free market, many of which devastate individuals, communities, the health of people generally, and the health of small businesses. The fact is, you know of many ways the government interferes with the so-called free market, or selectively does nothing, in order to garner votes, sow division, punish the poor, destroy the planet. You are just constantly re-trained to not see it, or to forget about it, or to see it as exceptional, like bank bailouts, and not suitable for uses that help actual people who are not wealthy.

In Zen, we learn that we must always begin with the unvarnished facts, to the greatest extent we can unvarnish them. The central fact about capitalism is that it is a tool, like a hammer, that can be used to build, or to destroy. The central non-fact – lie – about capitalism is that it must be, or ever has been, unfettered. We must more wisely choose how to use it, or we will surely continue to be used by it, to the benefit of the abstract idea of capitalism, at the expense of real human lives.

In a nutshell, capitalism is not bad. By design it is willfully ignorant and dangerous, so we are recklessly irresponsible if we allow it free reign, and obvious liars when we pretend that the government is not already manipulating it immensely. In the end, this essay is not about hammers or capitalism. It’s about the people who wield them.