Basically half the people I know have a dream of how they’d like to bless others, as their full-time job.
Their major obstacle?
The best way they help others… doesn’t pay the bills.
It reveals yet another massive problem with shareholder capitalism:
Shareholder capitalism only rewards work that
MAKES MORE PROFIT FOR SHAREHOLDERS.
Why do you think family farms are under siege from government after government? Because folks like Bill Gates want to robo-farm that land.
That’s why bankers get paid more than food producers, fund managers get paid more than homebuilders, and landlords get paid more than anyone who actually creates and contributes new things to society.
We will literally die without farmers and homebuilders, yet landlords, bankers, insurers, and shareholders — a vast parasite class we can happily live without — devour an increasing percentage of the world’s resources.
What an insane, evil, materially destructive way to structure a civilization.
Imagine someone wants to spend their life:
caring for disabled people
looking after elderly people
fostering children
mentoring troubled teenagers
working with addicts
teaching kids with special needs
doing humanitarian work
Much of that work produces enormous social value.
It’s a real, material blessing that improves civilization and knits us closer together.
But the beneficiaries of these blessings often can’t afford to pay the workers.
That’s a serious problem that needs fixing.
What should be rewarded — resource monopolization or societal contribution?
Call me crazy: Earnings should come from producing things people genuinely need, not from monopolizing things.
The only way to grow rich should be through a.) making stuff or b.) helping others. Monopolizing resources for a heavy extraction toll should leave you broke.
So how do we get there?
We need to completely re-think money creation, banking, ownership, bargaining power, scarcity, capital returns, and ability to capture economic rents.
1.) Make finance a utility of service, not a weapon of power
Banking and finance must serve the productive economy, instead of what we have right now, which is the productive economy serving finance.
2.) Change taxation from taxing work to taxing extraction
Governments tax us for doing stuff, not for owning stuff. That needs to flip.
We need to stop taxing:
labour
entrepreneurship
useful construction
And start taxing:
land holding
monopoly profits
resource extraction
pollution
financial rents
speculative gains
economic rents
In other words: Tax what society wants less of, and don’t tax what society desperately needs more of.
If you want more nurses, don’t heavily tax nurses.
If you want more houses, don’t heavily tax housebuilding.
If you want less land speculation, tax land speculation.
If you want less pollution, tax pollution.
We need to make exploitative profits impossible to capture.
The harder it is for society to function without your work, the more society should be willing to pay you.
3.) Give workers substantial ownership of the productive companies they already create all the value for
We need to transition out of a shareholder economy in favor of company structures where there are no shareholders to exploit profits off the backs of the workers who do the actual work… co-ops, partnerships, not-for-profits/for-benefits, etc.
What is our goal here?
Like, seriously, what are we doing here? What is our civilization’s goal?
Shareholder capitalism’s goal is unapologetically clear and legally binding: Increase shareholder value.
Environment be damned. Workers be damned. The future be damned. Collect as many money points for shareholders as quickly as possible so they can build bunkers and hyperyachts and space ships to escape the hellscape they’re creating.
What should society’s goal be?
Probably something like:
Guarantee dignity and material security for all; make socially necessary work highly rewarded; decimate unearned rents; reward genuine innovation and contribution; prevent resource monopolization from becoming a perpetual claim on everyone else’s labour.
This isn’t impossible.
If physics allows it — which is does — then it is possible.
There is a way to structure an economy to realize these outcomes.
Currently, we live under the shareholder market economy system.
We need to transition to a democratic economy in which rentier shareholder capitalism has been systematically dismantled and productive, caring, contributive work has been deliberately made economically powerful.
But it won’t happen if people keep voting for the establishment, buying from the establishment, and being exploitative shareholders themselves…
Buy books that will make you smarter:
A God Named Josh will help you see Jesus like you’ve never seen him before (even if you’ve been going to church for 40+ years.)
A Devil Named Lucifer will teach you how to resist Satan and actually use him to advance the kingdom of God.
A Year of Living Prayerfully will make you laugh in the moment and smile for years afterward.
Your friends and fam will thank you for getting them copies, too.
Invite Jared to speak at your church/conference/event
Choose from topics including Christian economics, the sin of interest, debt and jubilee, landlording, building wealth, true generosity, the real Jesus, myth-busting the devil, prayer, and more. Contact via JaredBrock.com