THE BENEFITS OF CAPITALISM

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (6/15/10)

As I was listening to one more Republican tout the benefits of capitalism, I thought he surely had suffered a disconnect from reality or had gone stark-raving mad. Apparently, he hadn’t heard of the financial meltdown brought on by those Wall Street capitalists who actually don’t produce anything of value or Toxic Tony and his cohorts at BP (British Petroleum) who didn’t have any contingency plans when things went south.

As it turns out, BP and Toxic Tony like to cut corners so that their profit margin with be greater. That’s nothing new. It’s called greed, one of the least admirable of our emotions and one of the seven deadly sins. We’ve gradually been getting sleazier and more toxic goods from China for years because they are cheaper to produce in China. Good old cutting corners.

Cutting corners, save in executive compensation, is one of the hallmarks of capitalism, the theory being that the less spent the greater the profit. However, when less spent involves the destruction of the environment or poison in our toys, the word profit transmogrifies in sociopathy.

Legally, corporations are persons, but they are persons without souls. Now, I’ve met a few soulless persons in my life, people with dead eyes, and, literally, they’re as scary as hell. So are corporations, the spawn of capitalism. If we have to have them, we should keep them changed to regulation. Remember those deadened eyes of sociopathic capitalism and think Republican.