On the Capitalist System and Small Business Owners

America has been almost wholly given over to capitalism, a system which enriches few, impoverishes as many as it enriches and which is presently attempting to dismantle our cherished liberties. William Wordsworth in an excerpt from his poem England, 1802, says it best. 


The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.


It's very difficult to deny that wealth has become associated with social affluence and status in America, 2011.  We hear wealth praised every day in the media, not directly of course, but what else is all the political pandering about 'making the economy safe for entrepreneurs' about. These entrepreneurs or small business owners who the Republicans (and even some Democrats) pander to are the wealthy or those trying to obtain wealth through the founding of a business, which according to almost all Republicans will always be small and harmless, integrated into the community and owned by your next door neighbor. 


The truth is this, there is not one aspect of being a business owner (small or large) that ennobles a person. As Wordsworth says, "Plain living and high thinking are no more." If anything business ownership makes a person more susceptible to the vices of greed and envy and perhaps other vices such as gluttony and pride. Though I am obliged to credit capitalism with attempting to eliminate sloth by rewarding people for their labor. Yet even then, the capitalist system does not encourage people to take an interest in their work merely for the sake of the work but instead encourages them through the distribution of the filthy lucre we call money. 


Some weeks ago (September 7th) Ron Paul, a candidate whom I respect more than other Republicans, argued in the Republican presidential debate that government organizations like the TSA should be dismantled and the industry deregulated, allowing pilots to carry guns and private security firms to monitor passengers boarding planes. This suggestion received a great deal of applause from the audience. The American public, or at least Republicans, seems convinced in this instance as well as in the bigger picture, that businesses do a better job of providing services than the government. In the sense that they could possibly make the process more efficient, saving time and money, I agree. 


Imagine for me a deregulated industry and a private security firm doing the job of the TSA. Inevitably, these unregulated goons working for the airline would racially profile customers. Free from the oppressive jackboot of government regulation, there would be no incentive to prevent this racial profiling. We have also to think of what this private security firm would do with our data and information. Would they be given access to the no-fly lists generated by the state department, or national security databases? Would they store the naked images taken of us as we passed through a scanner where they could be hacked or leaked? On the whole the only thing which would prevent any of this from happening or offer any redress would be an extensive litigation process which no one wants to undergo. 


Let us remember that regulations (nasty rules which bind the noble hands and feet of America's entrepreneurs)  conceptually include laws that make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex, race or religion when hiring an employee or selling a product to a customer. The concept of regulation also includes laws which prevent entrepreneurs from firing pregnant women who recently gave birth or paying men doing the same job more than women. Regulation (from the mouth of Ron Paul himself) also includes the minimum wage. Imagine eliminating the minimum wage which is not even a proper living wage. The poor would only become poorer, but businesses, driven by their bottom lines, would thrive as they do in China today.


The simple matter of fact is that the American dream is devoid of moral virtue. There is no incentive in the capitalist system for morality. Capitalists, entrepreneurs, small business owners (by any name) are of necessity driven only by one direct motive, profit. Doing what is right will not always be compatible with making money. It is this role which the government fulfills, to protect the poor and the middle class from the oppressions of the world's new feudal lords, entrepreneurs. 


As Wordsworth says in the most famous stanza of England, 1802:


IT is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flow'd, 'with pomp of waters, unwithstood...
...Should perish; and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever...*

Americans, the inheritors and guardians of that freedom, which is by no means exclusively British or even western, might take a note from Wordsworth and not "change swords for ledgers and desert the student's bower for gold." While we yet have the power at the ballot box, we should not exchange our ideals for economic prosperity and our moral virtue for a system that is servant to the bottom line. 

*For the full text of the poem go to: http://rantingstan.blogspot.com/2008/10/english-poetry-england-1802.html

I wish to add that although I initially wrote this in an earnest spirit, it no longer represents the fruit of my thinking in its entirety. I will leave it up because I believe that it conveys to my readers a picture of the progression of my thought.