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Friday, February 29, 2008

Capitalism and War

Over at Inhabitatio Dei, Halden quotes Herbert McCabe on the commonalities shared by war and capitalism, and how the latter seems to evade the implications of its similarity to the former. Essentially, there's this sort of perfect vision of "efficiency" that translates to a capitalistic utopia. This sort of broad brushed image takes place when accountants rule the world (sorry, Bryan) and perfection of any kind is judged by whether debits = credits and not by any real understanding of happiness.

Moreover, I tend to find myself supporting capitalism* to the same extent I would war. I recognize that both are practically necessary to sustain social order...but I don't have to be happy about it.

*There are some problems here with a word like "capitalism" because so many interpret the term differently. I tend to think that capitalism is what happens when Private Enterprise is generally considered to be more important than Private Property. If you're wondering, I personally try to stay with Chesterton here and support Private Property over Private Enterprise. An economy is like a person. If you ask me, "Do you support Roger?", I will say that I support that Roger himself (like Private Property) is a good thing, even if what he's doing and supporting isn't so good. For more of my thoughts/rantings on this, check out the comment box over at Mark's blog.

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