Humanitarian Reply to a Capitalist - Jersey Flight

CAPITALIST: But I have taken the liberty to bring you back on this special occasion to defend your purist stance on liberal economics, and to defend what your philosophy has wrought in oil-rich Venezuela.  They say only left-sympathizers are receiving food with any sort of regularity.  Would you starve me, Jersey Flight?

FLIGHT: I would most certainly not starve anyone (contrary to the tyranny of all formal Gods). I am a very easy thinker to understand: I care about the well being of people. Neither from the left or the right do I want to see violence. I am not like you my friend, I am not an ideologue, I resist all dogmas which lead to the increase of human suffering. If capitalism, was in fact, the best and only way to minimize violence in the world, then I would advocate capitalism (this is how much I care). But this is not what capitalism does, though it is an advance on feudalism, it is still a system of suffering, it is not the way of intelligent beings. One merely needs to calculate the long term effects of such a system in order to see, that it must eventually, lead to a kind of apocalyptic Armageddon. Slow and foolish creatures calculate the value of something based on the effects which can be immediately perceived, this is because slow and foolish creatures do not have the capacity to calculate beyond impulse. This is exactly the case with capitalism and those who advocate it.

CAPITALIST: There are them that makes and them that takes and that's just the way it will always be.  And we can always tell which of the two is in the ascendency at any particular time by whether or not we are hungry and cold.  That is probably all we can hope for.

Now in the immortal words of General Douglas MacArthur: These proceedings are closed.

FLIGHT: "There are them that makes and them that takes and that's just the way it will always be."

Well my friend, I think we can work with this premise. I agree that there are those who make and those who take, but what comes before all this is the right to the earth (and all take from the earth). He that does not have land must rely on those who do. I'm afraid the issue you are traversing is very much a question of who has a right to the earth and why?

But even beyond this, I wonder why a "maker" would not want to use his ability to help his fellow man as opposed to exploit his fellow man? Does not the ability to "make" presuppose a network of vital nourishment? Last time I checked man is not the kind of creature that can survive (let alone thrive) on his own. Hopefully we all had the benefit of a kind and loving mother... should we not have compassion and understanding for those who were robbed of this vital network of nourishment? All men who stand, create, accomplish anything of value, have and always will be linked to a vital network of nourishment. A wise man seeks to expand this network (not exploit those who lack it) so as to bring about a better world.

If you will think carefully through the reality of your position, you will see that it is not only socially immoral and socially cruel, but it is above all, socially ignorant, existentially ignorant and economically unintelligent. If you have the ability to do better then you ought to have some gratitude, and if you are a moral and caring person, then you must have compassion for your fellow man. He that uses his privilege to exploit his fellow man deludes himself, when he convinces himself, that he has done better because he is better. The idealism of the individual is a delusion! The truth is that his circumstances were more favorable, thereby allowing him to get an edge over those who lacked a fuller experience of the vital network of nourishment. This truth makes us responsible (indebted) to society, not superior to it.

When a lack of compassion... when the value of selfishness rules, when men believe in resolution by violence, the result is hunger, and many other unpleasant human miseries. Suppose the lords of capital saw fit to use their capital to decrease human suffering... this would be a very different world, but alas, this is not the way capitalism works.

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