Greed in American society is often named as the cause of the financial crisis and a fundamental aspect of capitalism. Both staunch defenders and firebrand opponents of the free market believe that capitalism is based on the idea that “greed is good.” Conservative capitalist Jay W. Richards disagrees. Writing for the business-cheerleading, neo-conservative magazine The American, Richards argues greed is not good. It’s not even capitalism. 

Capitalism works because it “channels proper self-interest as well as selfishness into socially desirable outcomes,” Richards writes. He quotes Adam Smith, saying that capitalism leads people toward the public good “in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity,” rather than because of it. 

The reason why Richards attacks greed is to defend capitalism from the likes of Jim Wallis and others who argue that people must choose between capitalism and Judeo-Christian values. What Richards doesn’t address is how society can rein in the greed he decries as “not good.” 

Source: The American 

Image by  Peter Taylor , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Writing for Foreign Policy, Reihan Salam declares that the global dominance of men has come to an end.  And what caused this “monumental shift of power from men to women”?  Salam argues that the Great Recession is a “mortal blow to the macho men’s club called finance capitalism.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, men lost 80% of total jobs lost since November.  Men struggle to deal with the mental effects of job loss, and the world increasingly looks to women for leadership:

Indeed, it’s now fair to say that the most enduring legacy of the Great Recession will not be the death of Wall Street.  It will not be the death of finance.  And it will not be the death of capitalism.  These ideas and institutions will live on.  What will not survive is macho.  And the choice men will have to make, whether to accept or fight this new fact of history, will have seismic effects for all of humanity—women as well as men.

Although not all countries will respond by throwing the male bums out, the backlash is real—and it is global.  The great shift of power from males to females is likely to be dramatically accelerated by the economic crisis, as more people realize that the aggressive, risk-seeking behavior that has enabled men to entrench their power—the cult of macho—has now proven destructive and unsustainable in a globalized world.

Source: Foreign Policy

Image by Elsie esq., licensed under Creative Commons.

Friends and family will tell you: Marriage is work. Keeping two people in a fulfilling relationship is difficult, while adultery comes naturally, the CrimethInc Collective write in Briarpatch. The problem, according to the article that "borrows liberally" from Against Love by Laura Kipnis, is that marriage turns relationships into “a domestic factory policed by rigid shop-floor discipline designed to keep wives and husbands chained to the machinery of responsible reproduction.” 

Marriage resembles a market system, according to the article: “your intimacy is governed by scarcity, threats, and programmed prohibitions, and protected ideologically by assurances that there are no viable alternatives.”

Rather than make yourself a slave to the system, the article advocates cheating—and cheating openly. Sure, people will get hurt, but people always get hurt when the status-quo is upset.

Even if you don’t believe that marriage is tool of capitalist oppression, defenses of cheating are proliferating wildly on the internet. The irreverent Jewish site Jewcy recently published an interview with the founder of Shaindy.com, a site designed for “Religious Jewish married people, who are looking for some excitement outside of their marriage.” The founder claims that more than 3,000 chat or messages are sent between the sites members every day.

The idea is reminiscent of this video by Dane Cook on how to keep a marriage alive for more than 55 years:

Image by  Robin Corps , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Sources: Briarpatch, Jewcy 

Marketers are doing some serious soul searching these days. It’s all over the pages of the January-February issue of the marketing industry magazine The Hub, as the people who sell stuff reflect on just what it is they’re supposed to be selling now. There’s a vague recognition that the correct answer is not “the same old crap,” but bold and definitive answers are scarce as the writers struggle mightily to break free of marketing speak and deeply embedded consumerist values. And every one of the essayists closes with a conclusion that only a marketer could concoct:

Spencer Hapoienu writes that marketing is in need of an overhaul in “The Obama Challenge.” Despite the crass subheadline—“One should never waste a crisis … and by all accounts this one will be a doozy”—Hapoienu asks a high-minded question: “Is there a way that every brand can participate in improving the lives of its customers beyond simply selling a product?” He suggests that being greener is a key goal, but undermines his point by positing that Procter & Gamble set the bar for value-added marketing with its repositioning of Pampers a few years ago. (Google “disposable diapers” and “landfill” to find out how much value they add to the planet.) Conclusion: “This time is a new opportunity for marketing to lead, leaving a mark every brand can be proud of, while creating a fan base of enthusiastic and grateful customers.”

Tim Manners also starts from a reflective position in “Crisis of Relevance”: “As marketers, we owe it to ourselves, our shoppers and, yes, our country, to take a good hard look at how we may have contributed to the sad state of our economy today.” He suggests marketers need to figure out how to “help solve people’s problems and … live happier lives.” But he too rests his case on specious examples: “Dunkin’ Donuts makes a difference by serving up a workaday pink-and-orange cup of joe. … Kleenex innovated its way to relevance by adding germ-killers to its tissues. … Levi’s innovated its way to relevance by coming up with wardrobe solutions for men.” If overhyped coffee, medicated tissues, and Dockers are the answer to our crisis, we’re in more serious trouble than I thought. Conclusion: “This is a painful moment for marketers, no doubt about it. But it is also a moment when those of us who live up to all our chatter about being relevant will flourish.”

Dori Molitor puts an upbeat motivational-speech spin on things in “Everyone Matters,” which posits that “we all want to know that our lives have a purpose that’s larger than ourselves.” She steps up and criticizes many companies for failing to change their ways, but again her vision of a better world fails to inspire. She notes two recent cases in which retail salespeople helped her and her daughter solve pressing fashion dilemmas: One employee delivered a missing belt to their house after work, and another went “on break” to help her find what she wanted at a competitor’s store. Apparently, the future of retail is low-paid employees doing customers favors while off the clock. Conclusion: “Every ounce of my being believes that the greatest opportunity for brands is to help us live better, more purposeful lives. Treating us like we matter is a huge step in that direction and sometimes it’s as simple as looking us in the eye and being yourself. Humanity is all it takes.”

The Family, also known as the Fellowship, is a shadowy fundamentalist Christian organization that holds unknown influence in the halls of American power, according to writer and religion expert Jeff Sharlet. His new book, The Family delves into the organization, exposing members and their ideology.

The organization practices a form of “Biblical capitalism,” discussed by Sharlet in an interview on Bloggingheads.tv with Will Wilkinson, a research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. In a perversion of both religion and capitalism, members of the Family use the organization to manipulate power for their personal gain. At the same time, members talk about sacrificing themselves to God, turning over all responsibility for their actions to Christianity as a “self-interest proxy.” Sharlet insists that many members are sincere in their beliefs, yet Wilkinson questions how people can be “sincerely self-deluded for self-aggrandizing purposes.”

The kernel at the core of every conventional economic model is alluringly simple: Growth is good. But due in large part to our planet’s finite resources, this premise is fundamentally flawed, the April issue of the Ecologist points out in an enlightening group of stories dubbed “The Earth vs. the Economy” (articles not available online) that call into question everything we’ve been taught about goods and services, supply and demand.

“When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, life was hard, the world vast and the supply depot of nature seemed without limit. . . . How could goods lead to anything but good?” writes Jonathan Rowe in the leadoff article, “The End of Economics.”

“More than two centuries later, that assumption no longer works. . . . The connection between wealth and weal, goods and good, has become increasingly frayed,” he posits. Rowe goes on to construct a withering critique of prevailing economic thought and describe the “epidemic of market-related disease” that is sickening both humans and the planet.

In subsequent articles, ecological economist Herman E. Daly puts forth the framework of a new economic model, and Andrew Simms points out that the current British recession (sound familiar?) may present “a good time for a rethink” of old assumptions. Simms reminds us that such thinking isn’t entirely new, or even all that radical: Forty years ago, he notes, Robert Kennedy famously pointed out that the GNP measures everything “except that which makes life worthwhile.”

—Keith Goetzman

The claim that mass consumerism is killing the planet isn’t new, but perhaps it’s best made by French author Hervé Kempf. In an article from the French-Canadian newspaper Le Devoir translated on the website Truthout, Louis-Gilles Francoeur highlights the relationship between economics and the environment explored in Kempf’s new book, Comment les riches détruisent la planète (How the Rich Destroy the Planet).*  Kempf sees economic disparity and ecological destruction as symptoms of a single disease: capitalism. The system’s rigidity makes it incapable of supporting the changes needed to remedy our present environmental crisis, Kempf believes, and the only solution is to “bring down the rich.”

(Thanks, Adbusters.)

—Morgan Winters

* Correction: Due to an editing error, the newspaper Le Devoir was originally identified as French. It is French Canadian.