Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the root of all evil isn’t love of money, but of power… because money is power. Power of one over another leads to every crime, atrocity and tyranny in history. The answer then is as simple as the problem… simply limit the power of one over the other. Everything’s easy once you figure out the trick, the hard part is to discover it… and we haven’t. The alternative argument, the one Thrasymachus gave in Plato’s Republic, is that justice, law, and institutions exist to advantage the strong against the weak. His mindset was much the same as Margaret Sanger and the eugenics movement… that the strong should survive at the cost of the weak. The Christian worldview is quite different, that despised ethos posits… the strong should help the weak to become strong.
Political power of one over another has resulted in horrible large scale atrocities, as when Alexander razed Thebes, Tamerlane’s unspeakable atrocities against the Hindus, up to the total erasure of Armenians from Nagorno Karabackh. Unlimited political power is always sold as the solution to all our problems, just put them in the hands of enlightened, wise and caring experts, and with enough money, they can solve anything. They put a man on the Moon for heaven’s sake! Or so goes the spurious logic. Which the idealist gobbles right up. The pragmatist, however, looks at the history of power, limited and unlimited, and, judged by outcome, he rejects the argument. Because he understands history repeats. Unlimited power in the hands of politicians is as evil as it is in the hands of slavers.
Slavery is another perverted manifestation of power, it’s an ongoing atrocity, a crime against humanity that was discredited by Christianity. Then the taint Christianity gave it was spread across the world by colonialism. Only in a few places is slavery openly plied today. However, there’s no place that slavery isn’t covertly practiced. There could be people enslaved down the road from you, or me, and how would we know? A few decades ago slavery in the US for any reason was almost unheard of. Anyone caught was severely punished and human trafficking was considered up there with murder and rape. Because such crimes are often connected. When the political establishment exploits power, folks weak in moral character will follow… and exploit the vulnerable. Plus, human trafficking is now protected.
The unequal power dynamic of a business and the employees is storied and well documented by socialist writers. Which doesn’t make them wrong, it simply forces us to keep their Bacon’s cave and marketplace in mind. This power dynamic grows as the number and quality of jobs decreases. The unions were supposed to address the inequality of power, especially in corporate settings where it’s most pronounced. The unions however, had unchecked power in their realm and so instantly became corrupt. Falling in with the Mafia and the communists, the unions destroyed the very jobs they sought to protect. Showing in both cases, the unions and businesses, that abusing power proved more destructive to the abuser than the abused. Though abusing power is often an end in itself.
I’ve read that psychopaths love to get into positions of power where they can abuse people without the victims being able to fight back. Such people seek out unequal power dynamics and leverage them to their own advantage. Managers, for example, who exploit power provide negative value to the company. Slavery, while being a crime against humanity, is also caustic to innovation. Slaves don’t innovate… because the lash is their motivator, not self-interest. The armed robber uses the power of a gun even as the State’s monopoly on violence has delivered the most heinous atrocities yet. This leads me to conclude that it’s the power of one over another that’s the problem. The solution then is to limit power, ruthlessly, overwhelmingly, and decisively… so it stops limiting us.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
