Kraichgauer wrote:
AngelRho wrote:
The Bible supports capitalism if capitalism is done right.
The Bible pushes for people to SERVE others. If you go out to eat at a restaurant, your are waited on by a SERVER, who is a type of servant. When you get your food, you show your APPRECIATION for your meal by compensating the establishment for the cost of the food and for their SERVICE. That's what capitalism is when done Biblically.
When you go to your job every day, you go to provide a SERVICE to your company who, in turn, compensates you for your time and productivity. Your company in turn SERVES the community by providing products and SERVICES that community needs. The community shows them appreciation for their goods and services by giving them money in order to support their continuing SERVICE.
The most successful and wealthiest capitalists out there don't really care about money. They enjoy what they do and simply wish to keep doing it. Money is just the icing on the cake. If they cared about money so much, they'd do everything they could to avoid spending it...which means they wouldn't hire employees, they'd cut overhead and inventory to the bone, and they wouldn't invest in the people they seek to sell to. All monetary income does is help keep the winners winning. If you want to win at capitalism, nobody is going to stop you. Your only hindrance is the level at which you are WILLING to work and sacrifice to make things happen. Approach work with the attitude of dedication to your passion and willingness to passionately SERVE your community and the money will pour in. There's no magic formula...just work. If you don't like work and you aren't passionate about anything, and if you're content to play video games all day, complain because you have a college education and doors still aren't opening, feel sorry for yourself, and just let the government take care of you and dictate what you can/can't do, then you're not going to enjoy a free market capitalist system. If you like to win, capitalism is for you.
Actually, plenty of successful practitioners of capitalism do in fact sacrifice the well being of their employees for the sake of the all mighty dollar. Think only of the outsourcing and downsizing by major employers that have left the American working class devastated. Walmart, while forcing their employees to work through the holidays, has started a collection for food - that is, for employees to donate food for themselves!! !! ! While McDonald's and Burger King literally pay their employees starvation wages - and suggest they remedy this by working two or more jobs.
While I agree one hundred percent that the Bible prescribes the proper way for employers to behave, few of them today actually follow it. They make money out of worship of the dollar, not out of love for work or service to others.
Oh, I hate Walmart. And I used to work for McDonald's, so you're not telling me anything new there. But you DO have to take Walmart and McDonald's at the value of what they are: Great STARTER jobs for people who need a break. They are a means to an end, not ends unto themselves. Which is not to say that some passionate person who has a deep love for Walmart and McDonald's couldn't be hugely successful in those companies, but you'd really have to want it pretty bad. I'm not sure I would understand why anyone would want to, but to each his own.
When I worked at McDonald's I worked plenty overtime WHEN I worked only to have my hours severely cut in subsequent weeks. I didn't care to get another job, but those are the kinds of jobs that allow you to pick up extra jobs if you need them. There's nothing wrong with that, I just wouldn't want to make a permanent lifestyle of it. Right now I'm experiencing unusually high turnaround in my piano students, and there's this florist/consignment shop I pass by on the way to and from dropping off the kids at school that puts up a "help wanted" sign from time to time. Given how things aren't going that well for me at the moment, a temporary, seasonal gig might just be what I need.
And I'm fully aware of how corporations trample their employees at the base entry level. My wife recently left a bank job like that. But not all employers are like that.
The thing is, why would you WANT to work for someone like that? People, usually highly educated people, look at the big corporations as their big breaks without considering that they already have their executive structure and aren't looking to change it. The quickest way to becoming a CEO is start your own business. But you won't make much money or get very far if you fail to recognize your role as public servant.
14 Nov 2013, 2:02 pm
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