The End of the Consumer Church in America

[InnocentIII]

Hildebrand:

That cannot be done. But you must know the origin of our current economic system.

I am not opposed to a market capitalism that seeks the common good, along with profits.

The Protestant Revolt was a revolution of the “well to do’s”. They desired to do whatever they damn well pleased (and I stress damn because those who seek to do what they damn well please damn themselves). They did not want to be controlled by the Church. They did not want to serve the common good. They stole Church lands (monasteries, hospitals, etc), grabbed more power and wealth. Self-centered/selfish rugged individualism in the West traces it main roots to the Protestant Revolt (and beyond).

Our American economy is a heretical Protestant economy with a growing social welfare state within it (both of which are not the best things). This does not mean we have to give up and withdraw from it. Most certainly not, we are the light of the world and must become true beacons of the true way of serving God and the common good.

Neither does not it mean we must settle for a heretical system that highly rewards and concentrates wealth and power in the hands of those whose interests are greed, lust, pride, avarice, and sloth – all at the expense of the common good.

I understand fully, you cannot go directly and quickly from one system to another, or else you will face what was experienced in Russia after they went from communism to capitalism (an atheistic economic system to a heretical protestant economic system). Gradual and planned changes are needed.

I am for trade, “capitalism” (ownership of property, right to own land/business, commerce, etc), and free markets - of the past. Close to the kind of system that existed during the Middle Ages. I appologize if I was not clearer before, but when I use the term capitalist/capitalism, I am using it in reference to the libertarian sense (a capitalism without the thought of the consequences).

I would suggest you study the history of Florence, Venice and Genoa in the Middle Ages - all good Catholic towns, all running capitalist economies long before the Reformation was even thought of. I would also suggest you look at the Church condemnations of the radical Franciscan movements of the 14th century who wanted a system that sounds remarkably like yours. The Middle Ages was a period of great poverty and suffering for all but especially the poor. It was capitalism they generated the wealth that enabled all of us, even the poor to have a standard of living that our medieval forebears would have considered unachievable outside of heaven. Capitalism certainly preferred Protestant individualism but its roots lay in Catholic Italy and Flanders.

 

[InnocentIII]

Hildebrand:

And if we don’t seek justice, we will be heading that way.
What is the alternative to a moral economy? Some may say we can keep our current morally troubled economy. Don’t forget things change. The sins of our economic system results in much outcry and consequently many people embrace socialism and the social welfare state. In the long run, it is much better to make slow gradual changes towards a more moral (capitalistic) economy than to slowly slouch into socialism.

I think we can all agree that this nation is closer to socialism than it was 100 years ago and we are not making progress in the opposite direction, especially with the “New Deal” and the “Great Society”.

This is silly. You don’t create a moral economy by banning the economy. You create a moral economy by changing people just like Christ did. If nobody wants to buy pornography then selling it will soon stop because there would be no profit in it. Prohibition was an attempt to make people moral by removing immorality (in this case the demon drink). Not only did it fail to make people moral it actually caused many otherwise moral people to become immoral by illegally drinking. Prohinition did more to damage the moral fibre of the country than 200 years of freely available alcohol had done. I repeat in an imperfect world attempts to dictate virtue are doomed to failure.

 

[Hildebrand]

InnocentIII:

I agree 100%. However this is called competitiion not co-operation. Schools compete for parent’s vouchers by offering the highest quality of education for the lowest price.

I don’t know how things are run in Australia, but here in the States each diocese has a superintendent of Catholic schools. The superintendent does not seek to have each of the schools in the diocese compete with each other to put them out of business. The schools cooperate in bettering the education of all its students in the entire Catholic schools system.

InnocentIII:

Co-operation leads to cartels and price-fixing.

Cooperation in this American economy would lead to price fixing, higher prices, etc. If there were laws mandating each industry to serve the common good… and knowing that price fixing is a violation of the common good, whoever prices fixes can be prosecuted for doing so.

InnocentIII:

But in an imperfect world this is just a recipe for tyranny. Who

decides what is the common good?

We are already heading towards tyranny. Either you have industries self-regulating towards the common good or you have government bureaucracies making every decision while at the same time creating a social welfare state. I would rather have “occupational groups” than unions. Unions are often self-interested organizations that work against both the industry itself and common good of the nation. I advocate both employers and employees would be apart of “occupational groups” (guilds) that work together toward the common good and the interests of the industry.

InnocentIII:

Will people be coerced into working for the common good?

We do outlaw certain professions and ways of making a living. Some areas outlaw pimps and prostitutes. The nation criminalizes the sale of alcohol to adults ages 18-20. Bar owners can be fined or worse for selling more alcohol to obviously very drunken individuals. We outlaw the sale of tobacco and pornography to children. Although, the Supreme Court has ruled pornography is a freedom of speech issue. Therefore, smut peddlers are free to make money off selling smut. (All these areas involve legislating against economic activity that serves against the common good of society.)

InnocentIII:

I would suggest you study the history of Florence, Venice and Genoa in the Middle Ages - all good Catholic towns, all running capitalist economies long before the Reformation was even thought of.

Yes, I know about them. I am not opposed to that sort of capitalism. I am opposed to libertarian capitalism. Libertarians want a limited government without laws restricting any freedom, even freedom at the expense of harming society and civilization. They want abortion, pornography (and all the rest) to be legal, for they believe the government does not have the right to restrict the rights of Americans citizens and seek the moral and common good. Libertarians are the same way with the economy, there are no value judgements. Greed, lust, and consumerism can influence and sometimes rule the economy, and the government has no right to pass laws to that promote the moral and common good.

Society should be structured in a way that rewards and promotes both hard work and leisure… rewarding hard work and dedication with a living and time for leisure.

The system I am advocating is in polar opposition to the Social Welfare State. Our government is passively (and sometimes actively abetting) in the concentration of wealth. Equally bad, it is active in the promotion of sloth. This has to be turned around. The “stoned slackers” (as some people call them) desire pleasure and sloth over leisure and work.

InnocentIII:

I would also suggest you look at the Church condemnations of the radical Franciscan movements of the 14th century

The system I am advocating is very similar to the economic system advocated by G.K. Chesterton.

InnocentIII:

Prohibition was an attempt to make people moral by removing immorality (in this case the demon drink).

Alcohol is morally licit. Prohibition was a Protestant (heretical) lead movement. What is your opinion of the economic activity that Planned Parenthood, a billion dollar a year industry?

 

[Hildebrand]

InnocentIII:

This is silly. You don’t create a moral economy

by banning the economy.

Who wants to ban the economy? Nice red-herring. (You still do possess freedom of speech even if you can’t yell fire in crowded theater.)

InnocentIII:

I repeat in an imperfect world attempts to dictate virtue

are doomed to failure.

A society should be structured in a way that promotes people to live in accordance with natural law and toward the common good.

Our society now dictates vice and is doomed to fail if we continue down this road.

Not paying a worker a just wage is a crime against society and a crime against the family.

Say for instance I am a rugged individualist. I think about ME! I am a deadbeat dad: I don’t take care of my wife and 5 kids. I left my wife and give her a 100 bucks a week to live off. Why doesn’t my wife get two or three jobs! The government can’t tell me what my responsibility is to my family. If YOU want to change the ways things are, why do YOU start a family of YOUR own! Stop telling ME what to do with my family. What right do all of YOU have to pass laws against deadbeat dads?

Stop dictating virtue! Let the charities take care of my family!

I am an employer, it is not my problem I don’t pay my employees enough to afford a home, food, clothes, and health care. I want to keep as much money as I can and enrich MYSELF. I am not harming families and civilization, and if I am who cares! It is legal… that is all that matters to ME.

---

I assume we are operating under different definitions of freedom…

Freedom is not about being free to do whatever we want (while disregarding the consequences). Freedom is the right to seek the true and the good.

From Catholic University:

In Locke’s perspective… simply by pursuing their own selfish goals

people automatically contribute to the realization of the common good…

Liberalism and liberal democracy, the contemporary offspring of modernity, incline Americans to think about morality almost exclusively in terms of rights. This in turn leads to a preoccupation with choice and freedom as ends in themselves, and about the sovereignty of the individual and the goods of the body: safety, health, pleasure, and prosperity. **The liberal temper is anything but neutral **in the moral tone it sets for citizens. It does not encourage the practice of virtue, but rather an unprecedented openness to all human possibilities. Fortin explains: "What this leads to most of the time is neither Nietzschean creativity, nor a noble dedication to some pregiven ideal, nor a deeper religious life, nor a rich and diversified society, but easygoing indifference and mindless conformism. In other words, today’s version of openness encourages not the pursuit of truth, but rather subservience to public opinion, preoccupation with material things, and a reshaping of religion to suit the temper of the times. In other words, Churches are tempted to ascribe normative character to the spirit of the age. For example, the emphasis on autonomy today inclines Christians to redefine their faith in terms of what the culture approves. Many Catholics now accept the right to abortion and believe that gay marriage should be legal.

Nevertheless, even though the self-understanding of many Americans doesn’t easily link rights to truth, their practice, so to speak, is better than their theory. In their daily lives Americans will exercise their freedom in the light of some truths, although not always self-consciously. Because of the split in the American soul I would affirm the following with Professor Mahoney: "It is to be expected that the two notions of liberty, that we have discussed, the ‘self-sovereignty’ of man or the exercise of autonomy without the summum bonum or highest good as the lodestar, and ‘liberty under God,’ will continue to compete for the loyalty of democratic citizens and for the souls of individual men and women. This division is what is ultimately at stake in our ‘culture wars.’ "

 

[Hildebrand]

Last spring an interesting dialog took place in the pages of the University Concourse on the subject of distributism, which is the economic system elaborated in the first half of the twentieth century by such Catholic writers as G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and Fr. Vincent McNabb.

I suggest that the correct method of procedure for us as Catholics is to look to the entire encyclical tradition, that is, the tradition of modern papal social teaching beginning with Rerum Novarum in 1891 and embodied in encyclicals and other documents down to the present day. There we will find an interrelated body of doctrine addressing this very question, as well as other questions about the relationship between the moral law and the economy. In my previous articles I quoted several passages from these encyclicals, but I cannot recommend too highly to the readers of this journal that they return to the sources and read these seminal documents in their entirety, especially Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII, Quadragesimo Anno of Pius XI, and the present Holy Father’s three social encyclicals, Laborem Exercens, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis and Centesimus Annus. Nor is it the case, as some have asserted, that somehow Centesimus represents the overturning of all the previous documents–as if the Church had suddenly disavowed all that she formerly taught. Centesimus is firmly in the same tradition as its predecessors.

Moreover, there is another aspect of the question of the government and the economy that we should keep in mind. This is that, no matter what a government does or does not do with regard to the economy, it is taking a stand. Just as a state that passed no laws condemning abortion could not take refuge in the sophistry that it was neutral on the subject, so a state that takes a hands off attitude toward the economy is taking a position on the economy just as much as the most statist regulatory regime that one can imagine. It is impossible for a government not to affect the economy, either by its laws or its lack of laws. There is no such thing as simply “allowing the economy to be itself,” for the economy, like all the other creations of mankind, must have some framework in which to function. The question is, shall this framework be one that we try to make (as much as we can) a Christian framework, or one that follows the deistic philosophy of the eighteenth century?

Another point that was raised in our discussions concerns what are often called “occupational groups” or “guilds.” These entities are not only an integral part of the distributist program, but have figured very largely in papal teaching. In Quadragesimo Anno Pius XI devoted a good deal of space to describing how these groups would function, and his successor, Pius XII, continued to champion them. Nor does John Paul II neglect them, as when, in Laborem Exercens, he refers to “intermediate bodies with economic, social and cultural purposes; they would be bodies enjoying real autonomy with regard to the public powers, pursuing their specific aims in honest collaboration with each other and in subordination to the demands of the common good…” (no. 14)

con’t

 

[Hildebrand]

con’t

Anyone acquainted with the papal social tradition would immediately see here a reference to occupational groups.

Pius XI contrasts the occupational groups with free associations such as the ABA, and pointedly notes that he hopes that a flourishing of free associations will “prepare the way and…do their part toward the realization of those more ideal vocational fellowships or `groups’ which We have mentioned” (QA, no. 87)…

But it would be as easy to bring up examples of the abuses of private corporate power, beginning with Rerum Novarum, which speaks of “a small number of very rich men [who] have been able to lay upon the masses of the poor a yoke little better than slavery itself” (RN, no. 2). Moreover, as I set out at more length in my first article (January 28), distributism is not a statist system. Just because it rejects the unrestrained competition of capitalism (something also rejected again and again by the Popes), does not mean that it makes use of the government to regulate the economy. Distributism calls for the wide ownership of private property, with the laws (for example, the tax code) designed to discourage the concentration of property in the hands of a few. It is hard to find anything in the Catholic tradition which is against such arrangements.

A third and very important point that is at issue in our controversy concerns the role of the law as coercive agent. Both Dr. Schmiesing and Mr. Harold warn that using the laws to promote economic justice must tend to become a violation of human freedom. And in the first place, I repeat that any attempt to establish a Christian economic order must be preceeded and accompanied by a renewed preaching of the Gospel. Men’s hearts must turn to God if the society is to turn to God. But this does not mean that the law can never have a punitive effect. One last quotation from Pius XI in which he refers to the laissez-faire philosophy of the nineteenth century will illustrate what I mean.

A stern insistence on the moral law, enforced with vigor by civil authority, could have dispelled or perhaps averted these enormous evils. This, however, was too often lamentably wanting. For at the time when the new social order was beginning, the doctrines of rationalism had already taken firm hold of large numbers, and an economic teaching alien to the true moral law had soon arisen, whence it followed that free rein was given to human avarice.(2)

In most matters we recognize that the law is both teacher and restrainer of evil doers. Thus we want to prevent abortion even if we cannot convert the abortionist. Our Catholic ancestors applied the same philosophy to the economic order, and however much they strove to convert those who injured the common good by their greed, they also sought to restrain them precisely to protect the most economically vulnerable members of the society.

Probably the biggest reason that Americans today have difficulty thinking about making fundamental changes in the economy is that we are convinced that our economy is doing so well. Every day we are bombarded with positive economic statistics, from rising Dow Jones averages to increased GDP or worker productivity. But one way to put this in perspective is to ask, How many families can afford to live on the income of the father alone? If we accept that a normal family life allows a mother to devote herself full-time to the care and education of her children, what can we say about an economy that makes a normal family life so difficult for so many? Despite the statistics, I do not think such an economy can be regarded as healthy.
My plea and hope is that Catholics will allow themselves to ask some fundamental questions about the economy which go beyond the usual assumptions which we receive from the culture around us. Then we can look at what our Catholic tradition has said and perhaps find some surprising truths, but truths which are nonetheless part of the salvific message of Jesus Christ, as held and taught by his teaching Church until the end of time.

theuniversityconcourse.com/VI,1,10-3-2000/Storck.htm

 

[VonMrs]

I would like to address your post from a libertarian perspective:

Say for instance I am a rugged individualist. I think about ME! I am a deadbeat dad: I don’t take care of my wife and 5 kids. I left my wife and give her a 100 bucks a week to live off. Why doesn’t my wife get two or three jobs! The government can’t tell me what my responsibility is to my family. If YOU want to change the ways things are, why do YOU start a family of YOUR own! Stop telling ME what to do with my family. What right do all of YOU have to pass laws against deadbeat dads?

Marriage is a kind of voluntary contract. Unfortunately, thanks to Martin Luther, marriage became a state matter instead of a religious matter. In a free society, private contracts would be enforced. There wouldn’t be such a thing as “no fault divorce”. If a marriage were to dissolve, property, children, etc. would be taken care of according to what the contract dictated. I don’t think Catholic marriages would be wiggled out of so easily!

I am an employer, it is not my problem I don’t pay my employees enough to afford a home, food, clothes, and health care. I want to keep as much money as I can and enrich MYSELF. I am not harming families and civilization, and if I am who cares! It is legal… that is all that matters to ME.

In a competitive economy, this scenario wouldn’t work for the employer. A competitor, seeing an opportunity, would offer fair wages, good benefits, etc. in order to attract the best talent, hardest workers, etc. so that he could offer the best product. The miserly employer would go out of business.

I don’t think you understand “rugged individualism”!

 

[seabird3579]

VonMrs:

IIn a competitive economy, this scenario wouldn’t work for the employer. A competitor, seeing an opportunity, would offer fair wages, good benefits, etc. in order to attract the best talent, hardest workers, etc. so that he could offer the best product. The miserly employer would go out of business.

I couldn’t agree more. But I’ve suggested that following the gospel by providing fair wages, good benefits, etc…actually increases profits in the final analysis. Doing good always bears good fruit, eventually. That is why I believe it is Greed that drives the high profits, low wages theory. Nothing but Greed.

 

[vern_humphrey]

seabird3579:

I couldn’t agree more. But I’ve suggested that following the gospel by providing fair wages, good benefits, etc…actually increases profits in the final analysis. Doing good always bears good fruit, eventually. That is why I believe it is Greed that drives the high profits, low wages theory. Nothing but Greed.

Just out of curiosity, how many businesses do you own?

I know a lot of people who don’t own any. They are greedy, keeping all the money they make for themselves, and not risking it by opening a business and employing other people.

 

[seabird3579]

vern humphrey:

Just out of curiosity, how many businesses do you own?

I know a lot of people who don’t own any. They are greedy, keeping all the money they make for themselves, and not risking it by opening a business and employing other people.

Well, it’s not quite fair to say that someone is greedy just because they don’t open their own business. Greediness has to do with how you spend your salary or expend your net profits. A generous person will be generous and a greedy person will be miserly in either situation.

Remember the widow with two mites to offer at the temple? Jesus said she gave more than the others because she gave all she had to live on. I’m not that generous…but at least I know what the Lord considers generous.

 

[vern_humphrey]

seabird3579:

Well, it’s not quite fair to say that someone is greedy just because they don’t open their own business. Greediness has to do with how you spend your salary or expend your net profits.

When is it fair to say someone is greedy? The holier-than-thou types are quick to call businessmen greedy. The mere fact that they own or run businesses seems enough in their point of view.

seabird3579:

A generous person will be generous and a greedy person will be miserly in either situation.

With this difference – a private person can spend their own money as generously as they like. A business manager has an obligation to his stockholders. So we must look differently at the person who spends all he earns, and risks nothing to employ others.

seabird3579:

Remember the widow with two mites to offer at the temple? Jesus said she gave more than the others because she gave all she had to live on. I’m not that generous…but at least I know what the Lord considers generous.

And perhaps the greatest generosity is to start a business, so others can have jobs.

 

[InnocentIII]

seabird3579:

I couldn’t agree more. But I’ve suggested that following the gospel by providing fair wages, good benefits, etc…actually increases profits in the final analysis. Doing good always bears good fruit, eventually. That is why I believe it is Greed that drives the high profits, low wages theory. Nothing but Greed.

Just a question … who decides what is a fair wage?
Those whjo believe in the common good and just wages always act as though “capitalists” just happened to get control of the economy. I fact capitalists are those who have money to invest and create the employment in the first place. I would refer you to Our Lord’s parable about the man who hired workers in the morning, midday and evening and paid them all the same, because he paid what was contracted whether that was fair or not. Socialism in Russia and China tried to run an economy without capitalists and failed. The Church regrettably does not have a particular clear understanding of economics. As a faithful child of the Church I obey her teachings and give weight to her opinions but She has not yet been granted infallibility in matters economic. Without 19th century capitalism we would have stayed in the same state as Asia, just as Asia has experienced an economic boom that has raised its living standards 10 fold in the last half century by copying Western capitalism. Capitalism did not steal from the Third World … it exploited what the Third World had never even thought of exploiting and taught them that things they believed had no value could have value. Every single institution from Egyptian Pharaohs to Soviet Commissars, from Confucian Mandarins to Catholic Prelates who have tried to control the economy in the name of some self defined common good has only succeeded in creating want, misery and stagnation. When you can show me a system that is just as efficient at producing general wealth as capitalism without the side effects I will embrace it with open arms. Till then its the best we have.

 

[vern_humphrey]

InnocentIII:

Just a question … who decides what is a fair wage?

Why people who don’t own a business or have any employees, of course!http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon12.gif

If you want to hear squealing, suggest to some of the holier-than-thou types that they should start a business and pay their employees a fair wage.http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon10.gif

InnocentIII:

Those whjo believe in the common good and just wages always act as though “capitalists” just happened to get control of the economy. I fact capitalists are those who have money to invest and create the employment in the first place.

Yep. And those who spent all they made, and gave no thought to the future – who hadn’t the discipline to save, nor the courage to invest those savings – they are the ones who complain about the “capitalists.”

 

[seabird3579]

I would not consider myself “qualified” to own a business unless I was willing to pay a fair wage. Spiritually speaking, of course. :bible1:

 

[vern_humphrey]

seabird3579:

I would not consider myself “qualified” to own a business unless I was willing to pay a fair wage. Spiritually speaking, of course. :bible1:

What have you done to get yourself qualified?

 

[seabird3579]

vern humphrey:

What have you done to get yourself qualified?

Vern, let me put it in plain English:

Christians who are unwilling, or have a personal philosophy, that says it’s* okay * not to pay a living way, should not operate a business.

I did not say I was interested in owning my own business. You missed the point. I merely said those **not interested ** in paying a living wage are *morally unqualified * to own a business. That is **if ** they are following the Bible.

 

[vern_humphrey]

seabird3579:

Vern, let me put it in plain English:

Christians who are unwilling, or have a personal philosophy, that says it’s* okay *not to pay a living way, should not operate a business.

Let me put it in plain English. If other people have an obligation to pay what you call a “living wage,” you have the same obligation.

Why aren’t you living up to it?

seabird3579:

I did not say I was interested in owning my own business.

Suppose some employer said, “I did not say I was interested in paying a living wage.” Would that excuse them from their obligation in your eyes?

You missed the point. I merely said those **not interested **in paying a living wage are *morally unqualified *to own a business. That is **if **they are following the Bible.

You missed the point. If **others **are obligated to pay what you call a “living wage,” you have the same obligation. Saying “I’m not interested” doesn’t relieve you of that obligation.

Other people work hard, scrimp and sacrifice, then risk all their savings to start businesses and employ other people. You don’t do that, and yet you feel qualified to criticize.

 

[Crumpy]

I’m reacting to the initial post, not to the entire thread.

Undoubtedly, even in college, you have been confronted with students of differing economic means. You can add their differing outlooks to your quandry.

Don’t worry, you will probably soon have the opportunity about worrying about your own life, instead of everybody else’s.

In my 20’s I emerged from all that Catholic education convinced I should not be mesmerized by the attraction of getting a large income. So, I wasted those good years of my life in very low paying jobs, only to discover somewhat later that I really needed more income to stay afloat of my adult responsibilities.

Yes, it’s really the interior life that is important, in order to understand how to manage one’s wealth and to deal with those social justice issues. You just simply cannot send a $100 check to all the deserving charities in the world. You have to be selective.

And, no matter what you do, you’re going to find out that the Red Cross and other charities don’t really spend your money on what you think they should. I made a sacrificial contribution to the American Bible Society, only to find out that they have a half-billion dollar trust fund to cushion their operations. My money probably just went into one of their hedge funds.

I gave money to a guy with a crutch panhandling on the streets of downtown Chicago, and I caught up to him sitting on a stool at a bar in the train station where I was headed.

Sorry, but I didn’t donate anything to 9/11 victims or to Hurrican Katrina or to the tsunami victims. I just had no confidence at all about my donations getting to the victims. And, we all know, that the government was wasting billions down there.

You donate money to the Church, and a billion dollars has been paid out to sexual abuse victims, and not many of them got wealthy over this thing.

The Lady President of Liberia just addressed Congress last week, and told of billions of dollars that government leaders had embezzled in that country. She told about how U.S. personnel had been forced to flee 11 times due to safety concerns.

If you spend any times in these forums, can you not be depressed about all the Mickey Mouse issues that come up, instead of a concern about evangelization in the world?

Sorry. It’s not a perfect world.

 

[Fitz]

I find that one gets results and many posts when they attack people. How absurd to attack Catholics in general for being the ultimate consumers. We are a cross section of society just like any other group. To be criticised as a whole and not addressed as indivuduals is insulting and well, immature. I am too busy paying college bills so my own kids can get an education to spend too much time arguing with college kids that I never met. I like spunk, I like caring about the poor, but criticising people you never met- well you have a few things to learn still.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Fitz:

I find that one gets results and many posts when they attack people. How absurd to attack Catholics in general for being the ultimate consumers. We are a cross section of society just like any other group. To be criticised as a whole and not addressed as indivuduals is insulting and well, immature. I am too busy paying college bills so my own kids can get an education to spend too much time arguing with college kids that I never met. I like spunk, I like caring about the poor, but criticising people you never met- well you have a few things to learn still.

It’s criticizing people we never met, who are doing things that we don’t do because we are lacking the self-discipline, courage and ability that gets me.

That’s why I keep asking, if someone else has a duty to his employees, don’t the rest of us have the same duty?