...the benevolence of the butcher...

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Bush is a Capitalist… pure and absolute; a particular type of Capitalist, one that embraces an absolute free market. It is revealed consistently through the policies large and small which he promotes. He truly, deeply believes that the market and profit will create a better society; a better culture. His Capitalism is not mitigated, as was Smith’s, by the belief that government take a role in those industries that fail to profit entrepreneurs. Bush believes, rather, that education, healthcare, retirement, etc. are all best served by the private sector and implemented most effectively by those who seek profit.

It is a 19th century mindset that has at its core the idea that all those with material wealth have it because they deserve it. If one has inherited wealth, then it was paid for by the labors of one’s predecessors… if one has wealth through investment, business or personal labor, then it is by virtue of industry and personal character that it has been accrued. The lesser classes are just that, lesser, and it is due to the inadequacy of their own devices that they find themselves so. If “they” were of sturdy enough character, then they would rise above their circumstance and accomplish as their betters have … Under the prevail of this thinking, business operates without government imposition. Laws regulating fair wages and much of fair practice disappear, as do those regulations that restrain the natural growth of businesses by placing an undue burden on them by charging them with concern for the environment. This philosophy promotes the interests of business secure in the belief that successful entrepreneurs create jobs and benefit the greater good. The market will demand that business do those things that are in the best interest of all… To impinge on business is to impinge on the welfare of the people.

Add to this an underlying certainty that all things are so because God wills it… Those that have, have because God has decreed it… Those that have not, have not because God wills it and it is justifiably so…

In the United States, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the barons of industry were building their fortunes, free from much of contemporary regulation, we had child labor, we had sweat shops, we had the Triangle Factory Fire (March 25, 1911), we had the Depression, we had slums and poverty on a scale irreconcilable with the precepts of our espoused philosophies… those that became unimaginably wealthy built on the suffering of those that had not… many of their descendants still maintain that wealth – (while many of the descendants of those sweat shop workers, share croppers, and slave laborers have inherited the “wealth” of their ancestors’ “privilege.”)

Our systems are built to benefit the wealthy… to privilege the privileged… it is as much a matter of classism as anything else…

We pretend that it’s the best we can do… Schools funded through property taxes so that the wealthy neighborhoods have the better schools… We can’t possibly afford universal healthcare… but we can afford the war in Iraq. Do the sons and the daughters of the wealthy go to Iraq? Do they, in large numbers, lay down their lives for what our leadership says is worthy of blood? Our greatest protection against a draft is that it will make clear the mechanisms that exclude some from the cost of war. This is the value that is placed on human life… and now many of our middle class are enslaved through a growing debt… We have sold ourselves to the masters of industry for the cost of a disposable culture… We are awash in apathy… and there is a move among some to push education from the realm of contemplation and critical thinking into the realm of trade-school type training… skills without thinking… and all the time education and its benefits become more and more costly so that those who undertake its pursuit are more deeply enslaved…

…and somehow Capitalism, and Christianity have become conflated…

I would advocate for an economic policy fomented upon the theories of John Nash rather than Adam Smith. Until we recognize the value of our true capital, the lives of our citizens, and cease squandering so much of it for the benefit of the few… until then we will continue to build a culture predicated on struggle, meanness, exclusion, and apathy...

mel chin...

January 19, 2006 – April 2006
Mel Chin exhibition...
Station Museum of Contemporary Art
"Do Not Ask Me"

If you're in or around Houston, Texas stop by the Station...

1502 Alabama
713-529-6900

worthy of viewing...

Alabama is on fire...

It saddens me... these fires... What is the reason, ever, for this kind of thing? Raise your voice against injustice... struggle against voices that drown out dissent... but why take vengence on the comfort of others? What is the goal of such acts?

When we will we stop celebrating the accomplishments of the peacemakers and make them instead our own?

Brazil in 1984...

I fear we are slipping into darkness. The “war on terror” which is polarizing appears endless. We allow ourselves to be pulled into a conflict of competing ideologies and cultures. We vilify the “other” and allow ourselves to play the part of the villain.

This vague and formless war, executed by individuals – driven by personalities – proffers a situation conducive to the maintenance of a militarized state. The pundits say Americans are willing to give up some civil liberties in order to remain safe… in a war without a foreseeable end… what kind of culture, what kind of life will we make of this? How long into the future will these concessions continue to erode the thing that we call freedom?

It’s 1984 in Brazil and who knows where the children are?