Dear Robert Tracinski: sola pecunia

I read your article confessing the sin of idolatry by way of mammon. I might recommend confessing your sin in the box where absolution can be administered. It is a great and wonderful hospital for us who are spiritually sick.

Mammonism is serious business, just ask the business cronies that lobby government to write laws in their favor. I would assume you would be against such kleptocracy but this is what is expected when the culture believes we are saved by money alone or as you put it: “Money is at the center of a system of production and trade. And that is why, as you observe, money is at the center of capitalism.”

Firstly, “money is the center of a system” to something so personal and communicative as work sounds silly. What can money do if I take a grand and put it in the center? It does nothing until a human person acts on it. Many economists hail Robinson Crusoe on the island of Tobago as some kind of archetype of homo economicus. As much as economists use the example, I have never heard the story of Crusoe coining money and something as important as the center of a system; I would think he would not be able to survive without it. I have floated in the waters of Pigeon Pointe in Tobago and as I surveyed the crystal clear waters, stood on the black sand, and held my Stag I did not find the center of his system to be money.

Secondly, “of a system” is another issue that needs to be questioned. As a person, I tend to reject systems that put persons second or millionth. Whenever someone puts something other than the human person at the center of any human system, it does not take long before people suffer at the expense of that idol. As a free person because of grace I see this for what it is, ideology.

Thirdly, how can money be the center of a system when it is only a medium? Money is a medium of exchange but if it is a medium how can it also be the center? You may be wonderful at numbers, but you may need some help in geography because things cannot be in two places at one time. Money is medium or means of exchange, but this begs a question, “A means to what?” or actually in this case, “A means between whom?” Money is a means between two people.

Later in the post you mention food production, it’s relation to capitalism, and the resulting gluttony. Food production is vitally important to man. Man needs food to survive. But you laud this endeavor of increased food production as a result of capitalism. However, when I study the history of food production here in the States, I recognize heavy involvement with the State in areas of regulation and subsidy. As an apparent money centered capitalist, this may be exactly how you conceive the system of working, which is cronyistically where people with money get to have special privileges. A few paragraphs later, you deplore people who put their capital to work by paying off the government. I hope you take time to consider this example you provide of subsidy and its fairness because going a little further in that train of thought you will see that it is justice that must be present in the center of capitalism, not money. If justice is present, then we find the human person is the center not an ideology. If money is the center, then do not be upset by cronyism because the kleptos are only trying to make more of that stuff you proclaim is the center by cornering the market.

I am glad you mention the sin of gluttony, it is a sin not mentioned enough in this culture of consumerism which is a vice that battles temperance. I am not surprised by this result of gluttony in a money center system though. When the only thing that saves a person is money, then people will fill themselves with all kinds of superstition around the belt like sex and pockets below the belt and food at the belt. As the pope has consistently stated we live in a world of waste and gluttony is but one more example of it.

Yes, lifting people out of poverty is related to private property rights. However, capitalism is but one method of obtaining property. Something I find many money-centered capitalists think is that “if people just had private property rights, then they would be saved.” Often forgotten is the infrastructure or culture of these peoples. The first step is not private property rights but a change of heart or conversion so that these people understand the value of human dignity. Ownership of property is important but if the people do not believe that a person is the center of the economy then why are we surprised to see someone make mammon the center and use it at the expense of the innocent?

Why is the pope so concerned for the unemployment of the youth and disregard for the elderly? Well that is because in a money-centered system, they are discarded. The youth are competition to present day fortunes and so are aborted or wasted. The elderly are also competition to present fortunes and are euthanized in body or euthanized in spirit via asylums. The youth do not receive work and so their labor is not able to be stored which is what capital is, stored labor. The money-centered thinks capital is the primary shaker of the economy but they forget that labor proceeds capital.

You see, when money is the center of a system, people become slaves to it. It no longer has its cooperative effect because others become competition rather than persons. Competition, like money, is a good thing but cannot be the center of the economy. A friend of mine said “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” but place first the USD and make slaves of us all.

In the end, perhaps it is not to Pope Francis you should confess. There are multitudes of people around the world that suffer from those that put money in the center of systems. These people are not included because they do not have capital.