The point of economic activity is to make our lives easier - to economize our time. It is nonsensical to consider its purpose to be anything other than to reduce the efforts for the actors involved. Unfortunately, many of us are Tom Sawyers at heart. It's the human condition to want to take the greatest advantage of everyone else in our society while having to do the least. Worse, we want to be told "good job" for our lack of effort. We want to be given our Lion's share - but this tendency to idleness allows some people to take theirs.
We think of ourselves first - it's natural. I mean we were hunters and gatherers just like the other animals for much of our evolution. We developed bonds with our mates, kin, and tribe as we lived in the "Garden of Eden" of Africa. We pondered why we were here, but we lived in a land of plenty.
We have always been social creatures and as we grew in number, so did our collective intelligence and the scarcity of resources, and the complexity of our social interactions intensified. We tried to make sense of why things were happening in order to survive, we taught one another that you drown if you sink or that the gods and priests will smite you for heresy x or y.
By working together, man dominated his environment. However, it is hard to imagine our Adams were much nobler than our genetic cousins, the chimpanzees. In fact we know tribes of us exerted dominance over other tribes: hunting down, raping, killing, and enslaving them. Sometimes we even ate our vanquished, as if we needed to make the point perfectly clear that all those who could not resist us belonged to us. And that there is another fine example of the human condition - we can survive feeding off of the labors of others as long as we can dominate them.
Anyway, as the number of these tribes grew - likely social communities of about 150 due to our average cognitive abilities- some developed mutually beneficial inter-tribal relationships. They began accounting favors for one another with jewelry - works of art symbolizing friendship and good will. At times some became interdependent. As we recognized the benefits of such relationships, we began to see the benefits of dividing our labors as a useful tool for economic security - essentially, it made it easier to survive to collaborate. However, these associations were unlikely to ever be "free" for very long. It's good to remember it has always been other men who defined who was free and who was a slave. I believe women are acutely aware of this reality. Alphas conspire and collaborate to get the support to make the rules - and those whom those rules favor always seem quite appreciative. That is until it seems better to be the alpha and get to set the rules yourself and you can find the support to pull off the "transition".
Genghis Khan is likely the best example of the human Alpha Male. No other man has ascended to such dominion nor has as many directly descended progeny as Genghis. He convinced those who became his underlings - either by force or cunning - to support him to manifest his destiny of controlling the Earth and Sky. Their loyalty was rewarded.
He came to rule most of Eurasia with the largest empire man had ever seen. It's likely he was able to pull this off because he didn't care to micromanage. He demanded fealty and found willing servants to reap the rewards of creating the empire Genghis deserved. And though we may not admit it to ourselves, every man has the desire to become like Genghis. It's literally in our genes, and, let's be honest, we all like when people do what we tell them to.
There's something inside us thirsting to dominate more and more - to gain more and more authority and power - and for no one to be able to hold us accountable for it. We seek the right to behave that way because we seek ourselves. The Romans aspired to be the Dominus - all seek the right to use and abuse all they see fit. Women have long been subjected to this animalistic male tendency. We want to be told we're right to tell other people how to live their lives. It's the white man's burden, after all.
We have always tried to tell each other how we had to live at every level of relationship. We follow religions to praise gods in our image, whose justice is as incomplete as our justice, and we support the rulers who agree with us. We've rarely hesitated at taking away the rights of those who disagree with us. This is the point of politics - to make each other behave - and the the thought that we prefer being told what's right and wrong rather than having the integrity to think about it critically ourselves is maddening. But hey, it's nice to root for the winning team. Go Pats, right?
Today, those with the deepest coffers are our kings. They finance the elections of the voices they want to hear on TV. They pay to get them elected by financing the campaigns. Modern political power is built on passing laws to protect their "special interests", as we've come to call it. Coincidentally, American Interests are always worth protecting as matters of National Security.
Today, those who own the most "wealth" as it is defined by your regional State-Capitalist regime are given the right to create credit and loan out money to those who can make them even more money. And since The People don't get to choose their money due to the genius of modern "Representative Democracy", a rather ironic contradiction in terms, The People are forced to live in an "economy" where they work jobs that profit their masters in order to earn enough money to survive. All for the sake of math working out on a ledger to tell those that already have the most wealth that they now have more wealth. But if your not living for profit, what's the point? We founded this country for the Pursuit of Happiness, did we not?
Happiness: When you have enough wealth that people's lives are dedicated to increasing your wealth because that's the only way they're worth keeping alive.
If there is one thing that Capitalism has proven, it's that men would rather have an economy where we have the chance to be kings than face the reality that it will always come at the cost of enslaving everyone we love - because hey, at least someone else might have to serve us one day.
We want to be the Alpha. I think we need to evolve beyond that.
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