Capitalism is not the root of all evil

Philosophers have struggled with the cause of evil in the world. After all, if God is good and God is great, why does evil exist? Many young people think they have the answer: capitalism is the cause of evil in the world, according to an article in Reason magazine. Here are some quotes:

"'Do you feel horrible? That's capitalism, baby!' says the wildly popular mental health influencer TherapyJeff in a TikTok with nearly 50,000 likes. 

"In another video, this time with over 14,500 likes, a young woman declares that 'capitalism is the root of all evil' before adding, 'I'm also a business owner...

"Online, 'capitalism' has become a shorthand for just about every disliked cultural trend, no matter how universal or eternal. Unrealistic beauty standards? Capitalism. Monogamy? Capitalism. People not wanting to give you a ride to the airport? Capitalism."

Part of the reason young people hate capitalism is that they must work to earn money:

"'There's no way that you're going to tell me I'm going to work my whole life,' says one 20-something travel influencer in a nearly manic viral video. 'I'm going to sit behind a f**** desk and work nine-to-five each day of my life until retirement. There is no way that is what life is about….I want to have fun, like I actually want to have fun, and I don't understand why this is the norm and we're putting up with this.'"

The author insists that young people aren't lazy. They need to get married so they have a purpose for work. I think they're lazy and hope they never sucker some poor soul into marrying such slobs. 

This attitude explains why so many young people are unhappy. Happiness is a function of expectations. So, if young people expect to have fun, never work and have someone else support them for life, those unrealistic expectations will make them very unhappy. 

As for capitalism causing all evil in the world, that silliness comes from the socialist view of human nature that people are born good and commit evil only because of oppression. The state can perfect humanity by ridding the world of oppression. Private property is the greatest oppressor. The path back to paradise merely requires the government taking all property and supporting the people without them having to work. 

The idea that people are born good and the state can perfect them caused socialist governments to murder over 100 million of their own people in the 20th century as it tried to perfect them. 

Christians know the truth from the Bible. Evil exists because Adam and Eve rebelled against God while in paradise and that rebellion changed human nature. We all have a tendency toward evil that only Christ can change. Work and poverty began the day God kicked Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden:

"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return (Genesis 3:17-19)."

Young people should pay attention to the fact that Adam and Eve worked in the Garden taking care of plants and animals before they rebelled. When God expelled them from it, they fell from infinite riches to a life of hard labor and poverty, scratching a living from the cursed ground. 

Humanity wallowed in poverty and mass starvation in famines for millennia until the advent of capitalism in the Dutch Republic of the 17th century. Check out the hockey stick graph of per capita GDP. The Dutch Republic usually doesn't show in such graphs because its successor, the Netherlands, is not a large country. But it was the first capitalist nation and launched the industrial revolution. 

Evil exists within human nature. No outside force other than Christ can make us more or less evil, not capitalism, socialism or government. Paul lists some of the evils that rebellion against God causes in Romans 1:

"Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

"Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

People will always be confused about evil unless they end their rebellion, accept Christ as God, and read their Bibles. As for work, well God has something for us to do throughout eternity.