The preamble to the United States constitution says, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Do we believe it?
Society is interesting. I am just a curious observer, not a qualified economist or sociologist, so you can take my thoughts with a grain of salt (which I'm sure most of you do anyway). The way I view society is like a giant machine. Each individual part is significant and has value and meaning, but each individual part differs from another. When everything is put together, the machine works and performs its function. But every now and then the machine breaks down, and we have the choice of repairing it or replacing it.
For the drafters of the US constitution, repairing was not an option. They had to find a way to build a new society only using the leftover parts of past societies and their intuition. I'd say they did a pretty good job with what they had. As we've tested it, there have been catches and glitches, but no major break downs, and many people claim that the US has the longest standing Democracy (err...Republic) ever. They're close, but Iceland has us beat by about 2000 years.
Something the founders did not fully consider when writing the constitution was the economic cost of their little nation. Pretty much all machines need oiling. It helps all of the moving parts last longer and run smoother. The oil we add is eventually either used up in the process or we drain and discard it before replacing it with fresh oil. Do we ever give a second thought to that oil? Do we consider recycling it somehow, or disposing of it properly? Or do we just let it sit in an oil can and forget about it?
Who is the oil of our society? Who do we throw into the gears of our massive machine without a second thought and then collect their remains in 5,000 miles time?
Our capitalist society has done much to shape the world and the US into what it is, but have we considered the economic cost?
There is a brilliant article written by Albert Einstein called "Why Socialism." In it, he discusses the predicament that the world finds itself in. By the time the article was published in 1949, the world was in the midst of a emerging global economy. It was new and exciting. But we found ourselves at a crossroads. Einstein describes it as the chance humanity had to evolve past the "predatory phase" of human existence. He describes humans as a dichotomy between a solitary being (one who seeks primarily for the benefit of themselves and those close to them) and a social being (one who seeks to find peace, solace, and comfort along with their fellow human beings). Capitalism is very much an attitude of the solitary being. One with power and means exploits another for personal gain. This isn't surprising, though. Capitalism has been the economic staple since humanity stopped living together as nomads. It was developed in a time when the Venn diagram depicting the similarities and differences of the solitary being and social being was essentially a circle.
Capitalism was probably the right choice for the early United States. But a lot of things have changed since then. Our rickety, little machine has turned into a monstrous conglomeration of everything that we are. It has sub-systems that run in other countries, it spews out fossil fuels and waste like there's no tomorrow (which there may not be soon), it produces little baby machines that it tries to plant around the world, and it goes through a lot of oil.
Is it not time to redesign the machine? Our constitution starts with some of the most powerful and influential words in politics, "We The People." The US was founded on the idea that all men were created equal, and thus everyone's voice should have significance, yet we live in a world that is ruled by the few who are fortunate enough to have money and power. It should be our prerogative and our duty to harness the power of our democratic republic and ensure that the collective noun in "we the people" truly represents the collective.
Thanks for reading.
"Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home, and of bread. Only in such a society is real...liberty possible." -Bernie Sanders