Planned Parenthood and Capitalism

[gnjsdad]

I’m starting this thread as an outgrowth of the thread on World News dealing with the recent videos which show Planned Parenthood trafficking in baby body parts. As horriffic as this is, I felt something was missing from the discussion. What was missing was a recognition that a string of economic tranasctions was taking place here. I don’t think people fully realize the implications. There is clearly a market for what PP is doing, and not enough attention is being paid to the other parties to the transaction: the research firms, who operate out in the open, who are meeting PP in the pursuit of “research”. PP’s market in dead baby body parts arises in an economic system in which God and morality have been removed from the transaction.

How many times have we heard that the Church has no business interfering in the market?

Adam Smith, widely regarded as the father of modern economic science wrote Wealth of Nations. Without getting into too much detail here*, Wealth of *Nations is grounded in Newtonian physics, which is the operating system of capitalism. The “invisible hand” is Smith’s version of God’s providence, whereby the rich replace God in taking care of the needs of the non-rich. This ultimately worked out to the benefit of the Whig oligachs who were the descendants of the families who grew rich when Henry VIII looteed all the Church property in England and distributed the proceeds to the families allied with him. Thus began the modern era of capitalism.

My belief is that this type of economic thinking leads directly to the types of transactions that PP and its customers are engaged in, whether they prefer to call them “sales” or not.

I would like to quote from a book I’m currently reading: Barren Metal: A History of Capitalism as the Conflict Between Labor and Usury.

Instead of masquerading as pseudo-physics, economics needs to reembrace its original position within the realm of morality or practical reason. Economics needs to be re-situated within the philosophical tradition which claims that man, as a rational creature, can intervene in the economy and shape it to conform with the Good, in both its final and intermediary stages. Man’s pursuit of reason to achieve the Good is known as the moral law…Economics must be reasonable according to the principles of practical reason, which is to say, morality; it must function according to the norms of justice if the economy is to be effective.

Thoughts?

 

[JCats1]

I totally agree with you. In fact, I’ve been thinking that Capitalism could be the root cause for so many of our nation’s problems. Capitalism is all about consumerism and it’s not just the planned parenthood dilemma that is a result of it. Let’s look at pornography and the sex industry. They’re all saying that sex sells and isn’t that what capitalism is preaching? A lot of people care more about money than the good of life and I feel as if it’s affecting a lot of people in America, driving competition everywhere we turn.

 

[frangiuliano115]

I can’t speak about book learned capitalism but I can add this to the discussion:

Capitalism without God will cause problems. America was founded with God as part of the make up of our nation. Of course, not all men follow God and this will always lead to problems, and being a free nation we don’t force men to follow God (freedom to practice or not practice a religion).

Just want to say that I lived in the U.S. till the age of 53 and have since returned to live where I was born, which is a socialistic state and I can verify from experience that the U.S. is better in every way: Jobs, taxes, health services, schools, laws, judicial system - pretty much everything.

And this does not exclude “sex sells” and all the other things that capitalism bring.

So who was it that said “capitalism, socialism and communism are all bad systems; but capitalism is the best of the three”.

Or something like that.

Gob bless you
Fran

 

[sassypeach05]

The real issue here is that God is missing from the world. I am pretty sure that other countries are likely doing exactly the same thing that Planned Parenthood does here. Thus, capitalism cannot be blame since greed sees no boundaries. You will find greedy people in socialist and communist countries, the only difference is that in capitalism everyone have a better shot at it than the other two.

 

[gnjsdad]

The real issue here is that God is missing from the world. I am pretty sure that other countries are likely doing exactly the same thing that Planned Parenthood does here. Thus, capitalism cannot be blame since greed sees no boundaries. You will find greedy people in socialist and communist countries, the only difference is that in capitalism everyone have a better shot at it than the other two.

Capitalism is a system of state-sponsored usury, that is an economic system where the state enforces the validity of usurious contracts. It is also a system where moral considerations are removed from economic transactions. A transaction is ipso facto just merely because two parties agree to it. Further, the morality of a transaction can only be determined by the marketplace, or, as Smith would say, “sentiment”.

Capitalism is a rationalization of greed, which, as you rightly say, exists everywhere.

Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” posits that multiple avarices combine to produce public good. This is Newton (force and inertia combining to produce the harmony of circular motion as seen in celestial bodies) applied to economics. God and morality are taken out of this process. Given all of this, it’s no surprise to me that PP and its customers are getting away with what they’re doing.

 

[frangiuliano115]

Capitalism is a system of state-sponsored usury, that is an economic system where the state enforces the validity of usurious contracts. It is also a system where moral considerations are removed from economic transactions. A transaction is ipso facto just merely because two parties agree to it. Further, the morality of a transaction can only be determined by the marketplace, or, as Smith would say, “sentiment”.

Capitalism is a rationalization of greed, which, as you rightly say, exists everywhere.

Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” posits that multiple avarices combine to produce public good. This is Newton (force and inertia combining to produce the harmony of circular motion as seen in celestial bodies) applied to economics. God and morality are taken out of this process. Given all of this, it’s no surprise to me that PP and its customers are getting away with what they’re doing.

it’s no surprise to me that PP and its customers are getting away with what they’re
doing

Is it not that PP is “getting away with it” because it’s the darling of the liberal left which they have supported all these years and which fits in perfectly with their idea of where this country should be? Morally, I mean.

There’s more outcry over the 10 commandments being posted on some private or govt building and a Nativity being placed somewhere, either in public or even in private now if it can be offensive to some other religion.

Difficult for the liberal left to admit that PP has gone too far and keep their self-respect.

I don’t believe this is just an economic issue. It’s a moral issue.

God bless
Fran

 

[SWolf]

Capitalism is a system of state-sponsored usury, that is an economic system where the state enforces the validity of usurious contracts.

You mean like the fiat money of the the Federal Reserve? That isn’t capitalism.

It is also a system where moral considerations are removed from economic transactions. A transaction is ipso facto just merely because two parties agree to it. **Further, the morality of a transaction can only be determined by the marketplace, or, as Smith would say, “sentiment”.
**

Wrong. A transaction can be moral or immoral, and the market does not determine that.

Capitalism is a rationalization of greed, which, as you rightly say, exists everywhere.

No, it is a system of voluntary transactions based on division of labor.

Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” posits that multiple avarices combine to produce public good. This is Newton (force and inertia combining to produce the harmony of circular motion as seen in celestial bodies) applied to economics. God and morality are taken out of this process. Given all of this, it’s no surprise to me that PP and its customers are getting away with what they’re doing.

Did the baby consent to getting his organs ripped out? If not, isn’t this stealing of the worst kind? If so, how is that capitalist?

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a Capitalist society, no one or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting our rights, i.e., the task of protecting us from physical force; the government acts as the agent of our right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

Capitalism would recognize the individual rights of the unborn and therefore would be the only social-economic system to protect those rights.

Now when I say “Capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire Capitalism…with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. Unfortunately Capitalism does not exist in the world today so the premise of this thread is moot.

 

[SuperLuigi]

I totally agree with you. In fact, I’ve been thinking that Capitalism could be the root cause for so many of our nation’s problems. Capitalism is all about consumerism and it’s not just the planned parenthood dilemma that is a result of it. Let’s look at pornography and the sex industry. They’re all saying that sex sells and isn’t that what capitalism is preaching? A lot of people care more about money than the good of life and I feel as if it’s affecting a lot of people in America, driving competition everywhere we turn.

No free market = third world country.

I think the debate about PP and capitalism could be disingenuous because certain people, including Catholics, are always looking for excuses to keep voting for anti-life, anti-marriage, anti-religious liberty politicians for their own selfish reasons that are actually quite obvious.

My question to these folks is if you’re not fooling me, what chance to you have to fool God, which, of course, is impossible.

 

[SuperLuigi]

I think you have to be a careful here, because the left is trying to desperately spin this issue and circle the wagons and on this issue I’m getting the usual vibe of people trying to make lame excuses to water down their consciences for their voting habits when conversations like this begin, and I won’t have any of it. :dts:

I also think that capitalism without a conscience doesn’t work well, because it may promote social liberalism that destroys civilization, especially in the cultural rot of the West. :yup:

However, I find a lot of people who argue against the free-markets and for central planning often do not realize that global equality in the truest means they will be sacrificing substantial services and resources, but the reason they argue for such big-government is because they think they’ll be coming out ahead.

If someone says they are for socialism, for instance, or even a move towards it, ask him/her if they’d like the White House and Congress running Facebook The Daily Show, Apple, CAF, Direct TV, and determining how much they get paid instead of their employer.

 

[frangiuliano115]

I think you have to be a careful here, because the left is trying to desperately spin this issue and circle the wagons and on this issue I’m getting the usual vibe of people trying to make lame excuses to water down their consciences for their voting habits when conversations like this begin, and I won’t have any of it. :dts:

I also think that capitalism without a conscience doesn’t work well, because it may promote social liberalism that destroys civilization, especially in the cultural rot of the West. :yup:

However, I find a lot of people who argue against the free-markets and for central planning often do not realize that global equality in the truest means they will be sacrificing substantial services and resources, but the reason they argue for such big-government is because they think they’ll be coming out ahead.

If someone says they are for socialism, for instance, or even a move towards it, ask him/her if they’d like the White House and Congress running Facebook The Daily Show, Apple, CAF, Direct TV, and determining how much they get paid instead of their employer.

Also so Zoltan Cobalt post no. 8:



I enjoy people who have not tried socialism explain to me why it’s so great!

God Bless
p.s. How about Michael Moore coming to Spain, England or Italy the next time he has a tummy ache??

 

[gnjsdad]

Did the baby consent to getting his organs ripped out? If not, isn’t this stealing of the worst kind? If so, how is that capitalist?

My point exactly. If you read the history of how it came about and study the philosophical underpinnings of the system, one can’t help but come to the conclusion that capitalism is theft.

It was born in theft and plunder. It continues to steal labor and all surplus value. And it is the mechanism whereby market decisions to transact dead baby parts take place.

This is what happens when economic transactions are divorced from justice and morality.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

My point exactly. If you read the history of how it came about and study the philosophical underpinnings of the system, one can’t help but come to the conclusion that capitalism is theft.

It was born in theft and plunder. It continues to steal labor and all surplus value. And it is the mechanism whereby market decisions to transact dead baby parts take place.

This is what happens when economic transactions are divorced from justice and morality.

Actually Capitalism was an alternative to theft and plunder.

But. since Capitalism currently does not exist…what economic system are you talking about?

 

[SWolf]

My point exactly. If you read the history of how it came about and study the philosophical underpinnings of the system, one can’t help but come to the conclusion that capitalism is theft.

It was born in theft and plunder. It continues to steal labor and all surplus value. And it is the mechanism whereby market decisions to transact dead baby parts take place.

This is what happens when economic transactions are divorced from justice and morality.

How is labor “stolen”? You mean taxes?

 

[gnjsdad]

How is labor “stolen”? You mean taxes?

Capitalism is a system of state sponsored usury, meaning that the government enforces the validity of usurious contracts. This is “enshrined” in the United States Constitution, under which the government is empowered to protect the creditor class and look out for it’s interests as opposed to the debtor class. Since there are obviously many more debtors than creditors, the Constitution politically divides the debtor classes (checks and balances) making it much harder for them to unite against the creditors.

Now usury has always been understood by the Church as a form of theft. The usurer, in taking compound interest, takes something to which he is not entitled.

Taxation under this system definitely qualifies because the taxpayers ultimately wind up paying the usurious interest on money the government borrows. Another way the government tries to deal with what is ultimately a moral problem is to debase the currency, but this won’t work in the long run, due to the unnatural way that interest works. Compound interest inevitably creates unrepayable debt.

Capitalist systems also steal labor by not paying a living wage. Cheap labor is the mother’s milk of the system; hence a major contributor to the illegal immigration problem.

 

[gnjsdad]

Actually Capitalism was an alternative to theft and plunder.

But. since Capitalism currently does not exist…what economic system are you talking about?

Systems of state sponsored usury exist all over the place, the US being the most prominent.

Capitalism IS theft and plunder.

 

[frangiuliano115]

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a Capitalist society, no one or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting our rights, i.e., the task of protecting us from physical force; the government acts as the agent of our right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

Capitalism would recognize the individual rights of the unborn and therefore would be the only social-economic system to protect those rights.

Now when I say “Capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire Capitalism…with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. Unfortunately Capitalism does not exist in the world today so the premise of this thread is moot.

AMEN.

I’d love to know where gnjsdad lives. Probably the good ole’ U.S. of A.
Wonder how he’d like spending the rest of his life in, let’s say, Cuba.

Easy to talk the talk
But can we walk the walk??

God bless you

 

[gnjsdad]

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

I assume you’re referring to the Lockean interpretation of property rights, which was developed in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. Locke’s idea of the absolute nature of private property rights was a throwback to the pre-Christian era of pagan antiquity, especially the Roman system. Locke basically ignored centuries of Scholastic thought on the nature of property. The Scholastics taught that there is no absolute right to private property ownership; there is always a public dimension to property ownership.
Zoltan Cobalt:

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a Capitalist society, no one or group may initiate the use of physical force against others.

I’m sorry, but these statements are belied by history. The first modern capitalist state was Henry VIII’s England. Henry rebelled against the Church and appropriated all the Church property in England. This act of plunder inaugurated the modern capitalist era. The beneficiaries of Henry’s act became the first “owners of private property”. Elizabethan England set up the most advanced police state of its age in order to protect the plunderers. The plunderers’ power wasn’t consolidated until the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, when the Whig oligarchs put down the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland. It was during this rebellion that ethnic cleansing was introduced, when the capitalist Whigs tried to make good Protestants out of the Highland Scots who clung to the old way of life. The same tactics were used in the New World against the French Arcadians and Indians. So, the history is not as benign as you present.
Zoltan Cobalt:

Capitalism would recognize the individual rights of the unborn and therefore would be the only social-economic system to protect those rights.

As I have said elsewhere, capitalism as it exists in reality, is grounded in Newtonian physics, where morality has no place.
Zoltan Cobalt:

Now when I say “Capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire Capitalism…with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. Unfortunately Capitalism does not exist in the world today so the premise of this thread is moot.

Your imaginary form of capitalism can’t be found anywhere because state and economics cannot be separated. Just because it’s not as you imagine it should be does not mean it does not exist in another form.

 

[frangiuliano115]

“Your imaginary form of capitalism can’t be found anywhere because state and economics cannot be separated. Just because it’s not as you imagine it should be does not mean it does not exist in another form.”

To gnjsdad:

Your above reply to Zoltan Cobalt is interesting because this is the same argument I’ve heard as to why communism won’t work - There is no REAL communism being practiced anywhere in the world.

Because man is an imperfect creature and can take any idea and change it and twist it to fit what is going on at the present time. So going all the way back to Henry VIII as you discuss in your post is taking your idea way off to never neverland.

I can only hope that you would look at reality instead of book idealogy (Chesterton didn’t like ANY form of economic system if I remember correctly) and check out which population on the earth has had a better life.

But then you’ll tell me that we’ve used up the resources of the planet and how wicked that is and how unfair that others haven’t had this opportunity. So I can’t win and this whole discussion becomes an intellectual exercise - which is fine too. Not that I want to “win” but isn’t it obvious from how people live who has the best economic system??

Getting back to Planned Parenthood. Every system will be immoral in some ways because MAN is immoral. Do we throw out everything? And replace it with what?

As we’ve seen since 2008 all three systems have failed. Instead of looking back at the past, I’m wondering what’s waiting for us in the future.

The only perfect system is the one Jesus will bring with Him when he returns.

God bless all

 

[SuperLuigi]

=gnjsdad;13182740]Systems of state sponsored usury exist all over the place, the US being the most prominent.

If it’s so awful here, why stay? Over 200 other choices…

Capitalism IS theft and plunder.

No it’s not. It’s a system that utilizes natural law and human potential to the fullest. It should be used and properly regulated. :yup:

Per the catechism:

2424 A theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic activity is morally unacceptable. The disordered desire for money cannot but produce perverse effects. It is one of the causes of the many conflicts which disturb the social order.204

A system that “subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups to the collective organization of production” is contrary to human dignity.205 Every practice that reduces persons to nothing more than a means of profit enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and contributes to the spread of atheism. "You cannot serve God and mammon."206

2425 The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modem times with “communism” or “socialism.” She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.207 Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for "there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market."208 Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.