N.B. The following quotes are taken from Naomi Oreskes Introduction.
The problematic assumptions are thus three-fold: (1) that everything is here for our use, and whoever can find and market that use is warranted in doing so; (2) that the system that created these problems will somehow also solve them; and (3) that technology, enabled by science and fostered by the profit motive and consumerism, is the foundation of progress, prosperity, freedom, and even happiness.
What [Pope Francis] rejects is the logic that sees the marketplace as the solution to all problems, that prioritizes profits to the exclusion of other considerations, and that privileges individual desire over the common good.
The failures of communism are taken as total refutation of any attempted intervention in the marketplace, any attempt to guide technological development towards more humane ends. But theirs is the ideology of no ideology. Thus it is significant that the pope’s critique is based not only on theological foundations, but on empirical ones as well. It is based on the simple fact that the system as it currently operates has failed in three important ways. The first is a failure of equity. . . . The second failure is environmental damage. The champions of our current system often say its benefits have simply not yet reached the poor—and therefore we must continue (and even strengthen) the practices that have made the rich rich [sic] until they reach all. . . . The third failure is the spiritual impoverishment of the rich. The cheerleaders of capitalism insist that free markets are not just the best means of delivering goods and services, but the only means that protect our freedom.v In the aftermath of the Cold War, this can be a hard argument to refute, but the pope is a brave man and he takes on the challenge: Our paradigm leads people to believe that they are free “as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume.”
And now for some other voices to round-out our diet:
The claim that capitalism is the cause of our environmental problems is only partially true, at best. Historically, non-capitalist economies, like that of the Soviet Union, have also caused massive environmental damage; and environmental problems like climate change always have multiple causes— such as people’s psychological tendency to discount future costs— many of which have nothing to do with capitalism.
Socrates’s aim is to teach political moderation and philosophical dispassion to his young interlocutors—that is, to incline their minds to wisdom and virtue instead of ambition for wealth, honor, and power.
Liberalism promised the boons of protection from power and equal respect for all, whoever they were. It said little about who was to enjoy such boons. It fell silent about how far “all” stretched. Democracy, by contrast, insisted on liberalism’s boons for everyone. Democratic liberalism, that is, demanded that protection from power—the power of state, wealth, or social pressures—be available to everyone, whoever they were. The “everyone” here included not only majorities—the less educated, the less well-off—it also included minorities, be they rich or poor, upon whom majorities might prey.
A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance.
Although derided by Democratic liberals as a golf-playing do-nothing and by Taft’s followers as a risk-blind globalist, Eisenhower (1890–1969) presided as a skillful chairman over the post-1945 consolidation of American economic and strategic power. As former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and then US president from 1953 to 1961, the changes he made to New Deal tradition were more in pace than direction.
