Member-only story
Wealthiness Is Next to Godliness
Don’t believe it. I think the eye of the needle and the camel thing still rings more true.
Capitalism can work for a limited time. The more it is constrained and intelligently controlled the longer it can last. But capitalism has a ‘use by’ date beyond which it becomes perverted and dangerous. From the beginning, our version was so ill-managed and conducted with such ignorance that it began corrupting our environment and social conventions over 250 years ago with the advent of the industrial revolution.
As if unfettered capitalism wasn’t enough, neoliberalism reared its ugly head in American politics in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was an economic ideology adopted and used by wealthy individuals, notably the Koch brothers, to counter what they saw as “woke” policies in government and society — civil rights laws, Vietnam war protesters, hippies, OSHA, drug use, consumer protection laws, and unions. That sort of thing.
Neoliberalism facilitated bribery to become legal and institutionalized in the U.S., culminating in the Supreme Court case “Citizens United” of 2010 which allowed unlimited, anonymous political campaign contributions.
Neoliberalism heralded the fall of democracy and the rise of oligarchy.