Quotes Tagged "capitalism"

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.

Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else. A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth.

China Belt-Road region focused on the One Belt and One Road of The Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road in the ancient Chinese silk traders were road the belt for merchant silk & banking finance. Bangladesh is Belt-Road member states. Ancient we learned business & capitalism from China traders on which today’s super power America’s economy was built.

The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ The capitalist–consumerist ethic is revolutionary in another respect. Most previous ethical systems presented people with a pretty tough deal. They were promised paradise, but only if they cultivated compassion and tolerance, overcame craving and anger, and restrained their selfish interests. This was too tough for most. The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum. In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist–consumerist ideal. The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money and that the masses give free reign to their cravings and passions and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. How though do we know that we'll really get paradise in return? We've seen it on television.

The language of intrinsic human rights represented a significant advance beyond the previous language of world religions in terms of its universal applicability and its thiswordliness.

The model of business success in the millennial era is that of dismantling social structures to suck up cash from whatever corners of life can still be exploited.

Capitalism can no longer be viewed as a soaring success. And yet, the left wing and right wing are fighting, only accelerating their collective downfall.

The mirrors of capitalism will never reflect us as wealthy, successful or even worthy. - Change perception

We charge a lot of money and give advice. We charge a lot of money so you remember the advice.

[The] tremendous and still accelerating development of science and technology has not been accompanied by an equal development in social, economic, and political patterns...We are now...only beginning to explore the potentialities which it offers for developments in our culture outside technology, particularly in the social, political and economic fields. It is safe to predict that...such social inventions as modern-type Capitalism, Fascism, and Communism will be regarded as primitive experiments directed toward the adjustment of modern society to modern methods

Life would not seem short if we valued time as much as we value money.

Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it's just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not inalignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet.

Further, in the modern story, reality is that which is observable, measurable, and repeatable - the kinds of phenomena available, accessible, and verifiable to the five senses. Thus, reality comes to equal the scientific method. It should come as no surprise that in such a world the life of the spirit is ignored or marginalized (as well as a great many other nonmaterial things.) This view of life subsequently birthed in human beings a ravenous materialism as matters of the soul were ignored or reinterpreted within this tightly controlled version of reality. When the life of the spirit is ignored, people will seek to feed the hunger of a neglected soul with the only nourishment available: in our context, the consumptive acquisition of material goods.

Often what we see as progress in the right direction is merely the improvement of a wrong solution.

A moral economy is either a moral enterprise that is guided by a genuine spiritual desire to create one, even at the expense of strictly economic considerations, or it will degenerate into another profit-oriented and exploitative use of resources. Citizens who are not prepared to pay higher prices to support such an economy and volunteer their own efforts on its behalf are not likely to be prepared for self-governance in any form. Hence the need for a new municipal politics to become an intensely educational and participatory experience at every level of civic life.

At this point in history, our society tends to elevate and reward the specialist...This concentrated focus has brought some benefits...It may also be a modern malady. Specialization, when taken too far and allowed to define who and what we are, becomes limiting. It robs us of our wholeness and our self-sufficiency. It misses the big picture and confines us to a narrow zoom. And it leaves us at the mercy of experts.

But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it brings is a means and not an end. The end is what it does to the lives, life-chances and hopes of people. Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners.

Technocapital is flowing at hyperspeed and is primed to grab onto our drives and pull us toward capitalistic integration into the will of the Other; therefore, now more than ever, we as a species need a conscious psychoeducation.

There are days when I would gladly hit “Return” and please refund my debt to Sallie Mae to stop those impossible bills from coming, but it is not for the fact that I believe I’ve been cheated. I, like most millennials, am disillusioned with the net return of academia, but I have not been cheated by education. I have been cheated by a corrupt system, and it is education that has taught me the difference. If I could say education had a product, I would like to say it is abundance. But if education had a product, it would be an empty box. And if successful education had a product, it would be the match ignited which set that box on fire and set the mind upon which every essay on “knowledge” ever written in history was cast into the fire to burn.

I, like most millennials, am disillusioned with the net return of academia, but I have not been cheated by education. I have been cheated by a corrupt system, and it is education that has taught me the difference.