It seems that equality is a non issue at this point in history. No one cares. Everyone wants the government to sanction their platform of privilege, whether it be religious, ethical or just plain monetary. Personally, I want my privilege of cheap iceburg lettuce to keep coming to me through all seasons at a rock bottom price. But when I burrow into the thousands of exploitations and insults to life, liberty and and the earth that are required to sustain this privilege, I despair of life in this wretched schema where I have to slice from my soul the sinew of ideals that hold it together. I have to do this in order to just eat for a day. My husband thinks we're crazy. What is that popular definition of insanity 'to keep expecting something different in the face of other such evidence' or something like that? Couldn't that also be a definition of hope?
I suppose humanity has always struggled for equality. The declaration of independence invokes the self evident truth that all men are created equal, yet this country supported a tradition of slavery for eighty-nine years and it was a bloody mess to uproot.
It seems to me that where there is a lust for leisure there is also a bent for exploitation. The first requires the second. We as a society worship leisure. I don't want to grow my own iceburg lettuce. Few of us would actively exploit a human being, but most of us tolerate sweatshops, illegal workers, unethical corporations, and on and on because we want our stuff.
I am timid about prying at the sensitive heart of capitalism; the right to amass and horde more than one could ever use. I know the benefits of capitalism: It creates industry, invention, incentive, and competition eventually it turns to the proliferation of stuff and more useless stuff at the cost of individuals and society.
I don't pretend to have an alternative. I just think we need to think about it. It seems to me that the accumulation of fortune gives one greater power than another. Could it be that this system of capitalism undermines the ideal of equality in ways similar to the system of slavery? People were born into slavery. Everyone is born naked, but to different circumstances and these make all the difference. Economic circumstances have the same detrimental effect today. Slavery wasn't everyone's problem. It was a problem for the slaves. The slaves had no power so the institution of slavery was not threatened. Slavery became a problem to the non participating northern states, because of economics. They could not compete. That is when equality became an issue.
Americans can't compete in the marketplace now. We can't compete because we have laws that protected the poor and weak from the rich and powerful. Laws about work hours and pay. Laws about safety and bigotry. We just can't compete with the countries who ignore such issues, but we don't mind.
Our jobs are being shifted elsewhere because we can't compete, but we don't mind because we have 'investment'. Leisure money that sustains the unethical industries, but since these are in someone else's backyard we don't have to see the havoc they wreak on people's lives. 'We are helping them, they wouldn't have jobs at all if it weren't for us', is our excuse for complicit tolerance of their living and working conditions. We just aren't willing to sacrifice some of our leisure or convenience, we want our stuff to keep coming. Or maybe we just don't think about it, who has the time and energy to connect up the dots of self incrimination?