I couldn’t be happier for you, the kiddo’s and Jewel (and yes, waaaaay better looking than Alice, Ha). The pictures look great. A perfect fit!

I have two words: Moronic and Nazi.

If we don’t learn from history, we will be like all those that never learned from history – despondent, shackled, and broken.

Capitalism : The New God

Trinity:

Individual Satisfaction – Father

Exploitation – Son

Purchasing power – Holy Spirit

10 Commandments

* I will make sure I maximise my profits at the cost of everything else
* Individual satisfaction must be 100% satisified even if it means I cheat on my marriage, destroy my childrens lives and end up divorced
* Exploit whoever you can for whatever you can, its survival of the fittest
* You are what you can afford
* Love thy cheap goods even if you don’t know they came from a child sweat shop
* Thou shall not worship false Gods: socialism, communism, et al
* Thou shall be faithful and not lie with another man’s wife unless our wife failed to deliver for a few days or I see someone else I want in the street round the corner, like the latest purchase from that tv store down the road I just had to have as it was 50 inches wide not 45 like the one I have already.
* Individual success and power are everything crush all enemies that stand in your way.
* Avoid giving money to charity it is rescuing and people should be responsible for their own problems even if they are not self inflicted or were originally caused by our neoliberal economic and political policies.
* Lend support to wars and support dictators if there is cheap oil or cheap access to valuable resources to be gained as our country has to be the most wealthy and powerful.

New Testament Most Important of all these Commands not love thy neighbour :

Love myself and everyone else can have the breadcrumbs that fall from my table

12 Disciples – Enablers, Message Delivery Systems, Promoters

* World Bank & IMF
* Companies that exploit developing nation producers with low and unfair prices
* Advertisements that promote materialism with irresponsible marketing messages
* Pride
* Greed
* Ego
* Vanity
* Banks that don’t support and help small businesses, yet provide huge overdraft facilities to big organisations who really do not need that support .
* Lenders who throw credit cards at people that they can’t afford to have or use
* Banks that wont lend to people who actually need the money and provide the financial support they are supposed to so these people turn to loan sharks and charge huge profitable fees for bounced Direct Debits and unauthorised overdrafts.
* Politicians with delusions of grandeur that want to control the world
* Judas Iscariot – Enlightened invididuals that try to inform people (whistleblowers)

The Evil One

Devil – Socialism and anything resembling socialist systems

Lord’s Prayer

Our Individual Satisfaction

That art all over the world
Hallowed be thy buy one get one free
Thy autumn sales come, Thy supreme shopping experience be done
On earth as it is in the stores
Forgive us for missing the winter sales and we will forgive the stores for closing on Sundays
Give this day our daily buying
Lead us into cheating, sleeping around and not looking after our children
Let us not be tempted to really care about other people
Deliver us from socialism
For thine be the kingdom, the power and the glory, for as long as we practice this awful economic concept

Amen

Note: writers note this is a criticism of capitalism in an attempt to make a few points and is no way shape or form supposed to represent the real bible and the Word of God within it.

Copyright @ Jill Barraclough 2009 Please feel free to circulate this article with the copyright notice, authors name, contact details and Note above included. Writer can be contacted @ loventruth@hotmail.com, or jillb@jillb.me , or website is http://www.jillb.me.

There are necessary and sufficient conditions to what makes it correct to say of some economic system or other that it is capitalism. That some system has as a necessary condition that force ought not be used by one party against another is not a sufficient condition to call that system capitalism. Of course, Rick apparently endorses the following:

“The capitalistic system in its inner essence, is little, if anything, more than a man’s free right to work, to choose his work, and enjoy the rewards of his efforts. In my estimation, it is a most precious thing and it is indispensable to the liberty and freedom of which America boasts.”

So, on Ricks view, the conditions that make some system or other a capitalist system are that:

(1) Force is not used by one party against another
(2) People have a free right to work
(3) People have a free right to choose their work
(4) People have a free right to enjoy the rewards of their labor

All those conditions can be satisfied by an economic system and that system will not be capitalism because capitalism by definition includes the condition that private owners participate in a market for profit.

Additionally, since Rick seems to want to hold fast to a sort of moral ideal of capitalism, a correct sketch of capitalism includes the observation or condition that all trade ought to be trade of equals. That is to say, under a capitalist system equals are traded for equals. Of course, It’s obvious that the system doesn’t work in the ideal and that people are cheated, but capitalism described in the best light includes the condition that there ought to be no cheating. In any event, profit is a necessary condition of a capitalist system, and since surely Rick doesn’t believe that one ought to cheat to get that profit, there must be some non-cheating way to generate profit.

If you don’t see the problem, then you don’t properly understand what capitalism. If equals are being traded for equals in the ideal capitalist system, how is profit (a necessary element of a capitalist system) generated? Profit is generated by another necessary condition of capitalism–a large class of folks that do not own any means of production.

This class of people–the working class–must sell their labor at a fair market cost in order to survive. Note that still, to fairly characterize capitalism, this does not violate the equals for equals principle because the fair market value of raw labor is simply the cost of the commodities it takes to replenish the laborer and keep him alive. The capitalist buys their labor-power and employs that labor-power for longer than it takes to produce the value necessary to provide the stuff necessary to keep the worker alive. The extra is profit. The worker sells his labor to the capitalist for, say, 8 hours a day. The nature of the capitalists business is such that a worker working at an average rate is able to generate the value needed to keep that worker alive after, say, 4 hours of work. The worker still has 4 hours left according to the contract he entered into with the capitalist, and that 4 hours is pure profit for the capitalist. There simply is no other way to generate profit in the ideal capitalist system. Of course, in reality its even worse (or better depending on how much God loves this system) since profit is generated by extracting value from the working class and by cheating.

Since a necessary condition of capitalism is the existence of a large class of people with no ownership of any means of production, an appropriate question to ask is how that class of people came to be. In order for capitalists to justify capitalism, a popular response is that that class of people just happens to be all the lazy people of the world throughout history. It just happens to be the case that the majority of the earth’s population is just to stupid or lazy or both to have gotten any of the earth’s means of production through the earth’s history. History, fortunately, does not support that thesis. Rather, a large class of people without ownership in the means of production is created after thousands of years of force, war, and violence, where the guy that can use the most force, gets the most land and property. Over time, land and property gets concentrated in the hands of a very few. This, remember, is all pre-capitalist. Capitalism doesn’t create a landless class. A capitalist system simply needs it in order to generate profit.

I’ll conclude with the prayer that Rick ought to say every night before he goes to bed. “Dear Heavenly Father, I thank thee for aiding kings, tyrants, dictators, and Cain for taking more than they need by violence or threat of violence. I thank thee for keeping most of the worlds land and property in the hands of a very few; for this, thankfully, established a necessary condition of thy divine economic system–capitalism. I thank thee that constitutions and statutes protect those that own the means of production from those that don’t. In Jesus’ name. Amen”

If you are convicted ~ those opposed to the church will surely intensify their efforts to use all LDS quotes coming from YOU against the only true and living Church – which is blatantly unfair to “faithful LDS” everywhere.

If there isn’t there an appropriate way to try and make $$$ without bringing the good name of the gospel into it – don’t do it.