Sounding Gough

Beautiful

Even the Free Market is Totally Depraved- or why Calvinists should be for regulation.

Alan Greenspan, champion of the free market said, "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms." link

In other words, he has learned that even with total freedom, humanity will succumb to sin.

Let me explain. The free market is based on the idea that the market is such that if we just let it run unfettered it will be strong and healthy. The problem with this is that the market is not a machine. It is something driven by humans.

A line of Christian theology, articulated well by John Calvin, says that humans were given complete free will but chose sin. Even though humans are created in the very image of God we are corrupted, or totally depraved, because of sin. So even with perfect freedom we will not choose good or God. Therefore, God needed to intervene and that is where Jesus comes in.
The free market philosophy, if applied to theology, would say that we don't need intervention and that if everyone pursued their own self-interest then we would level out and reach a spiritual equilibrium.
What we have found out is that the free market, if completely free, would not reach an equilibrium. It would not because the level of greed and corruption among the drivers of the market, you and I and the CEO's, is unlimited.

I will not say that regulation is the perfect solution. The problem there is that regulators are depraved too. However, when we come up with laws and a system of checks and balances then we are able recognize and challenge our tendencies toward corruption.

Think of it as the street you live on. What if every law was suddenly taken away and you and your neighbors were told to work out your own rules and laws. You might all start out agreeing on some basic principles. But pretty soon a neighbor might realize that paying for trash removal is a waste when no one could stop him from just throwing the trash in the street, or even in your yard. Or even worse, you might return home to find your locks changed and a neighbor claiming your house. You then depend on other neighbors to enforce right of property but then it becomes a case of who has a bigger gun, etc., etc.,  So everyone gets together to come up with laws and a way to enforce those laws, and everyone contributes to an outside party to enforce them. That is regulation.

So as I see it. We need to be regulated. We need laws and we need checks and balances. Left to ourselves and our own self-interests we will always crash and burn.

There is no real America

John Stewart's humor helped calm my total outrage of the irresponsible and border-line fascist speak about who is a real American or not. This kind of talk is the talk that comes from someone desperately insecure, fearful, and who has no real ground to stand on. Instead of offering substance they fall into the "us or them" mentality and prey on people with weak minds who fall for groupthink tactics. It was used in 1930's Germany and as laughable as it may be it is dangerous and disingenuous.

The fact of the matter is that there is no "real" America. There are just Americans, and even that is not a "real" designation. There are people. People who are striving to live together in community despite great diversity. People who all have the same basic needs despite how varied their wants may be.

There seems to be a real difference in the culture today and I would sum it up by saying you are either: One who enjoys, is comfortable, or is at least tolerant, with living in a world full of differences, diversity, multiplicity, and some chaos or, you are one who is so drawn towards order that you have little tolerance for divergence from one singular direction. You might say that one admires the trunk of the tree and the other admires the branches.
My cousin drew my attention to a scientific study to whether there are genetic predispositions to either way. If so, perhaps we should accept those differences and discover a way in which both may work together for the greater good.