Comments | shereth: The moral imperative of the dollar

shereth

The moral imperative of the dollar

Feb 28, 2014 11:25

On Wednesday, my sister and her husband invited me over to their house after work for the ostensible purpose of providing feedback on some "business" that they are currently engaged in ( Read more... )

Comments 3

soreth February 28 2014, 19:09:13 UTC

Money makes for some very odd mental circuits, sometimes. Personally, I have no desire to be wildly rich, just to be comfortably above the happiness point... and of course you know my opinion on sales. :)

schnee February 28 2014, 20:12:06 UTC

They call it "multi-level marketing", I call it "a pyramid scheme"...

It's something that strikes me as unusually common among the neoconservative religious folks here in the US, that there is some kind of God-given right to make money, or some kind of moral imperative to attain wealth.

I'm oversimplifying, but I think that's due to Calvinism, historically: specifically, the notion that material wealth is the way of the christian god to show his approval of someone's actions. This directly leads to the conclusion that a) rich people are by definition the most moral; b) poor people are, almost by definition, immoral (I say "almost" because in practice, people might also believe poverty or bad fortune to be a Jobian test of an individual's faith); and c) rich people by definition deserve their riches.

This also explains the following:

Even more bewildering and ironic is that the vast majority of the religious neocons who vehemently defend and extoll the virtues of money are, in fact, nowhere near being a part of the 1%.In addition ( ... )

keoniphoenix March 1 2014, 07:39:15 UTC

There is a number of vested interests in the "neoconservative" moment that warrants the offer of the American Dream through really bad business practices. The Republican party itself is a descendent of the Whig Party which is a descendent of the Federalist Party all of which historically were big business protectionists. Though that's been slowly de-emphasized in the modern party, there are still many who come from "Old Money" who cling to those views to protect their business investments. The modern party is starting to be collection of every changing "New Money" but how much of an influence that has on the future of the party is beyond me ( ... )