[MD] Sin

[Case]

[Ham]
Let me be the first to congratulate you on a beautifully crafted essay which
would make a fine sermon for a Sunday morning service.  It offers everything
that a minister needs to link the Christian idea of charity (or the lack
thereof) to the biblical notion of Sin -- ad hominen appeal, historic
credibility, personal relations, descriptive detail, the inhumanity of
neglect, and passionate prose.  Indeed, the only thing it misses is a
connection to Capitalism.

[Case]
I think the connection to capitalism was crystal clear. In a forum devoted
to an analysis of Value it is a bit ironic that one should be chastised for
appealing to Value. You have proven so resistant to reason in the past I
figured why not try a different approach.

[Ham]
I think it is a mistake to judge an economic system in terms of morality.

[Case]
By what standard would you judge an economic system? I submit that an
economic system is nothing if not a vehicle for determining and apportioning
Value. The biggest problem with ours is that it places a numerical Value on
all Values. Ford can conduct cost benefit analysis weighing the benefit in
saved lives against the cost of fixing a gas tank. Pharmaceutical companies
weight the cost of research against the number of persons afflicted with an
ailment.

[Ham]
The goal of these systems is not to be "moral" but to provide suitable
incentives and a workable scheme for the harvesting and/or creation,
production, and marketing of needed commodities.  As such, they have no
direct relevance to the altrusim, charity, or humanitarian concerns of their
constituents.  Communism and Socialism might be considered exceptions, since
they are controlled by the state bureaucracy (or autocrat) whose
responsibility includes a number of social programs involving education,
health care, welfare, rehabilitation, etc.

[Case]
You confuse society at large with its economic system. A society is composed
of any number of institutions each with its own Values. Our institutions of
government are designed to mediate among conflicting Values. There is
nothing in the framework of the American government that enshrines
capitalism. There is nothing in it that supports the worship of the
individual you preach here either. The Sin of our system of governance is
that we have allowed economic forces to seized control of all of our
institutions. Wealth is a power for which our founding fathers provided no
checks or balances in our system.

[Ham]
On the whole, wealthy people in the U.S. are a compassionate and generous
lot.  But I think it has been demonstrated that as privately-owned,
free-market  entrepreneurs have been converted to state-subsidized
conglomerates, the capital available for humanitarian aid has shifted from
the private sector to government. The more government is involved in
business and commerce, the higher the taxes, and the greater the demand for
government services.  We see this happening in the Scandinavian countries
and Britain, and to a lesser extent in the U.S. (although there is no
question that it is the direction we are heading).

[Case]
On the whole government shirks its responsibility to its citizens by
surrendering its duties to private interest. You act as though public
expenditure is not a part of the economy. Taxes dollars pay the salaries of
teachers, researchers, astronauts, physicists, judges, firemen and soldiers.
These are not dollars wasted they are dollar invested in infrastructure,
institutions and people. 

For someone who disavows the importance of chaos and chance you certainly
seem to have a lot of faith in its ability to regulate an economy.

Exactly what credentials do you have that allow you to past judgment on the
peoples of Europe and Africa. 

[Ham]
The upshoot of this "progressive" movement is that Government has become the
source of humanitarian aid by default.  And politicians have a penchant for
using humanitarian projects as a power base to secure their own office.  As
a consequence, huge appropriations marked for international disaster relief
or HIV prevention, for example, often don't reach the target populations,
and there is little tracking to follow up the distribution of funds.  This
bureaucratic "ineffectiveness", rather than a lack of charitable concern on
the part of private citizens, may be one of the underlying causes of what
you've described so poignantly as "Sin".

[Case]
Progressive movements arise from neglect. When the institution established
to meet public needs fail people have turned to government for redress. 

When climate change in the Midwest turned farmland into a dust bowl and
thousands through no fault of their own were left to starve. 

When half of the citizens of our country could not participate in the
affairs of state because of their sex. 

When states in the south denied citizens the right to vote and relegated an
entire race to marginal status. 

When the free market allowed industry to side step the true cost of doing
business by dumping toxins into the earth, waters and sky. 

You whine about the cost of foreign aid and yet you see no waste in blasting
off cruise missiles at a million dollars a pop. A B2 bomber runs about $2
billion and we just can't have too many. You insult public service as
inefficient and pretend that public problems can be solved through the good
graces of people whose sole mission is keeping score with dollar. Such
hypocrisy beggars the imagination.

[Ham]
I needn't point out that your sympathetic human story is spun around several
of the reasons for poverty that I suggested to Steve; namely, mental and
physical disability, unstructured goals, (parental) immaturity, drug (and
alcohol) disorientation, irresponsibility, time in prison, criminal
(promiscuous) behavior, and (quite probably) low self-esteem.  Unfortunately
that is a sad fact of life.  That "poor stupid lazy people are out there" is
also a fact of life.  For human beings, as well as lesser creatures, life is
a struggle to survive.  But the fact that some people are better constituted
or more capable than others for survival cannot be blamed on Capitalism.

[Case]
I don't blame capitalism I blame you; you personally, for sanctimoniously
proclaiming that a man who can not work because he is distracted by
unwelcome voices in his head is unworthy of compassion. I blame you for
judging a woman raped by her uncles at the tender age of 10 for having low
self esteem. I blame you saying tough tittie to anyone who's Value does not
measure up to your standards.

Capitalism is what it is. Measured statistically I suppose we are all faring
better than most and we could all have an easier time hitting the mark if we
just abandoned all pretense of giving a rats ass about people who are
unwilling or unable to be like us. We can starve them to death at home, blow
then up abroad and build fence to keep out any survivors. In your perverse
incarnation of Darwinism call it thinning the herd.

[Ham]
Could you possibly give us an update on this story, Case?  You've
successfully sparked my interest in knowing what happens to Brandy, Joey,
and Julie.

Thanks for a heart-tugging reality tale.

[Case]
If you want an update get in your car. I guarantee they aren't 15 minutes
from your house and I bet you don't even need directions to find them. Look
for a soup kitchen or emergency shelter. Spend an evening in the parking lot
of your local hospital's ER. It won't take much of your time and you can see
the past, present and future versions of those kids skip, then stumble then
crawl right past your window. Hell, for $10 you can probably find a
capitalist entrepreneur ready to sell you a piece of the American dream.