no idea who wrote it, but them’s good words. and no i don’t think it’s been recaptured. i think materialism has so overtaken the populace that the most applicable words now are found in Matt. 19:24 / Mark 10:25 / Luke 18:25—“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” What Jesus was calling “rich” there would surely apply to most of us today. How many of us are barely scraping by on the necessities (food/clothing/shelter)? Not many. While I am a political conservative, the free enterprise system is a two-edged sword in that it contributes to materialism which is a real risk for the soul. So maybe it’s a good thing that we’re headed for a huge depression. Maybe it will help us refocus our priorities to what they should be.

Thoughts?

You are right. Capitalism is a great system but it has some pitfalls. I still do not wish to live under another economic model.

I’ll tell who wrote the words above in a day or two. I’m curious who everyone would attribute them to.

@Garrett. I agree with you. But we could do more to encourage small businesses and a strong family. This means putting laws and education in favor of the family instead of to their disfavor.

Materialism feeds off those who are dependent on the system. People with strong vision would never fall for consumerism. In order to accomplish this, as Henry Ford recognized, people would have to be bred into the 40 hour work week (at first men were REFUSING to work that long) and, more importantly, the family ties needed to be broken. Currently we put children in desks for 12 years to assure their subordination to the corporation. Then we award those who have children out of wedlock and encourage people to be irresponsible with their finances. Henry Ford would be proud!

Chris, one reason I can see why the state should give benefits to married couple is that it encourages marriage, which benefits the country. It makes me sick to see money awarded to those who have children outside marriage or to gay couples.

The state should not have enough money that they can afford to give it to married couples. Or unmarried.

True. After reading the essay you linked to in your most recent post, I began to think more seriously about the possibility of going the common-law route if/when i decide to marry. A friend of mine talked to me about this once; marriage is, at its roots, a covenant/contract/commitment between a man, a woman, and God—so there is no need for a legal document to validate marriage in God’s eyes. Of course, before I would take that path, I would research the implications of not having the legal document, but it seems to me that it should be doable.

The “Common Law” marriage is intriguing. I don’t know whether it is gaining more attention in conservative circles or whether I am simply starting to notice it more.

Research seems to indicate that the state’s permission for marriage began around the time of the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic church tried to stem the change with the requirement that couples get the church’s permission. The Protestants began to demand that their church give them licenses. Because the church and state were so closely tied together, we have ended up with the current situation. There might be a little more to this.

Michael Pearl has solicited the aid of attorneys to draft up documents that can be filed with individual states as a public record of the marriage, without the state’s permission. I do not know the current status of that project, but there are others who have been researching ways to gain recognition for non-state marriages.

Wish we had talked about this Saturday.

The comments that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (hmm, was hit again by the significance of the name his parents gave him) made are reflective of one of many ways the church and Christians are tempted when they are not under persecution. It’s reflective even of sections of the new testament (Revelations comes to mind, pretty sure one of the apostolic letters also references something similar). So I don’t think we have an exception here to the standard that “nothing has overtaken us except as is common to man”. 

Are we under “judgment…as never before.” Um, no, that’s where I think things like this go too far. We are still (as a society) under an intense period of blessing…we talk about a recession, and our government has such a large credit card that people (with 2 year+ benefits) are being shielded even from not being willing to take a lower paying job (I don’t agree “no” jobs are out there for people willing to work).

So I guess I’m responding to the second question: we will always need to strive to recapture a sacrificial spirit, but I don’t think the early church had it right all the time and/or I don’t think we’ll “arrive” either.

While I agree that the method of income tax collection has been used as a method of welfare (and I admit a full-fledged recipient of it), I think you might have overstated your position. If the government wants to fund itself by charging single people $1000 and married people $100…that’s not specifically giving it to married people, that’s just deciding how to fund government (and do some social engineering in the process). Or were you just against the tax code being used for redistribution?

I appreciate your posts because they are feisty and cause me to have to pause and think through what I believe.

I liked your first and last paragraphs…but I don’t understand why you would write the middle one.
In breaking it apart I’m trying to figure out what you’re wanting me to agree with:

- “Materialism feeds off those who are dependent on the system.”: Huh? What system…sin is sin, how does materialism feed…huh?
- “People with strong vision would never fall for consumerism.”: Strong vision = Christians, or we can think ourselves out of consumerism?
- “In order to accomplish this, as Henry Ford recognized, people would have to be bred into the 40 hour work week”: Disagree, the people that settled the prairie worked much more than a 40 hour week. The change was institutional labor.
- “(at first men were REFUSING to work that long)”: I believe you that you have something to document this, but I think it’s a non-argument because if there had been another employer that could have been more successful with less hours worked then that would have dominated—Henry Ford, as a property owner, had some power over the workers, but they were not a slave.
- “and, more importantly, the family ties needed to be broken.”: That’s pretty extreme. I react to this feeling like it’s your opinion of something that was documented…why would Henry Ford have cared about family ties?
- “Currently we put children in desks for 12 years to assure their subordination to the corporation.”: Totally dislike this one. That’s not the point of a state-run education.
- “Then we award those who have children out of wedlock and encourage people to be irresponsible with their finances.” Total agreement with you on this one
- “Henry Ford would be proud!” Huh? I doubt it. He appears to be someone that thought people should work hard.

I do not have a problem with taxes. There are legitimate expenses of government, and I am sure that you and I could agree on quite a few of them. The problem is that people cannot see a realistic balance sheet. They have no idea how much of their own money is going to the government, so they continue to demand more from it.

Depending on the topic, I hover between optimist and pessimist. It is more fun to think that if people saw just how much money the government was siphoning away, they would stop demanding more. That is one reason for the counters on the right side of this blog.

On a side note: if there was that much disparity in favor of marriage, I would be married by now.

You are right that “as never before” is an overstatement. America occupies a strange place. It does have combinations of power that have not really been seen—at least that we have any evidence of. That does not mean that all of the old ceases to apply, even though many politicians now argue that.

Right again. There is always work to be done. The issue is with what people are willing to do. “Strive” is a good word.

Sarah has done a lot more reading on this than I ever plan to, so I cannot answer all of those questions, but a couple of them:

* Materialism exists regardless of the economic model employed. In Capitalist societies, we have perhaps more ability to create a market for our ideas. Have you ever seen The Fast Food Song? The movie Super Size Me has a recording of school kids singing it with the teacher’s approval. Our current school system does feed a consumerist mentality, where we are less likely to make things for ourselves. This is only one (perhaps lousy) example and there are more.

* Concerning subordination to corporations, let me go down a side path for a moment. My mom put Proverbs 13:20 and Proverbs 22:15 together several years ago:

He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

Our school system operates on the assumption that one person can specialize in a specific maturity level. On the newer post you said that you are starting to feel like a specialist now that your kids are past a certain age. But by putting these kids together, we are encouraging them to feed off of each other with few role models present. Some kids thrive in this but many do not.

The courts have ruled numerous times that the parents’ rights end at the property line of the public school. At the same time, the teachers are upset that the parents are not more involved. There is confusion because most people do not realize what the schools are geared for. Thankfully not all teachers are on board with these ideas… but it might be easier to see the problems if they were.

I just saw the counters for the first time while replying to the last item. They’re good stuff. I’m going to try not to be too repetitive…but I still think you’re actually calculating the cost of marriage.

Not so sure fallen man can handle not demanding more…they want Government to be the benevolent God that allows them to avoid pain. I do agree that one of democracy’s (we’re not a democracy…not trying to miss-state here, but trying to reflect the quote) biggest challenge is when people realize they can vote themselves benefit from the public treasury. Sure, they are against others getting the benefits, but, just as I am struggling, it’s hard to say that the ones you personally get should be given up.

- “Materialism exists regardless of the economic model employed”: yup.
- “Our current school system does feed a consumerist mentality”: didn’t make the leap with you here…a teacher sings a song with kids because they enjoy it…where does the conspiracy come in except that schools provide a target for companies marketing?
- “Our school system operates on the assumption that one person can specialize in a specific maturity level”: I think that’s part of the instinct people had for efficiency, but the bigger reason is that it appears to be more efficient to teach the same lesson to people at the same level—less about the specialized teacher and more about hitting that many sets of ears with something they expect to be equally relevant. Don’t read here that I’m thinking they have it right…just trying to set a clear basis for useful alternatives (we are going to get to useful alternatives, aren’t we? )
-“The courts have ruled numerous times that the parents’ rights end at the property line of the public school.”: This is where I think you’re veering a little far (but I’m probably going to be seen as careening out of control). We need to look at what drives institutions to restrict things, it’s generally not helpful people with the best interests of everyone at heart, but people that appear to be neglectful, troublemakers, selfish etc. I have come to decide compulsory attendance is a symptom of the problem, not actually the cause. Welfare is the cause, because we feel that if we’re going to have to support them then we should make it more likely for them to have a more meaningful job (you can’t force this…we have decades now that we’ve proven this). So dismantle welfare, make education an earned privilege, and be okay with people starving and dying while voluntary charity will help those who want to be helped. Anyway, back to the point you stated: the courts were trying to preserve some order in the schools from “malevolent” parents and they end up restricting good ones as well—the law is a blunt weapon and not good at only restricting the problem behavior. I think we need to look past the failed experiment in forcing public education (and be careful not to try and create a conspiracy) and be willing to define a useful model of education.

Marriage does have a cost. I currently live on less than $500/mo. Without living “off the grid,” there is no way that two can live that cheaply. Any marriage will raise this amount; it is a simple fact.

In regards to government, it is hard to not demand more. That does not mean it is impossible. I still have the stimulus check from the Bush administration. It has not been cashed because I do not want “free money,” I want them to stop taking so much of mine. This tidbit gets two reactions. One is that the person tells me to cash it and give them the money. The second is less common and you get to see inspiration light across someone’s face.

And, no, we are a democratic republic. Democracy always devolves into mob rule. The latter is only safe until your neighbor figures out he can vote money out of your pocket and into his own (or you figure out the same).

I was afraid that I hadn’t been clear enough but did not want to write too long a reply. You seem to be familiar enough with how Dewey thought and with his influence on the public schools. One of his goals was to eliminate the individual because you can’t make individuals into socialists. It has to be a group effort, or such was his view. The school system has been set on a course to prepare kids for an assembly-line style of life. They specialize in one or two vocations and hire other people for everything else. Singing the Fast Food song is a symptom rather than a cause (although I understand all the silly things we do to entertain kids). This is consumerism.

Lol. Because people are individuals there is no single, relevant teaching. You’ve mentioned it before but I did not reply at the time. I do agree that human life is not designed to be efficient. We are redundant and should be. An employee who is irreplaceable can not ever be promoted. I, for one, want to see Heaven one day.

Do we really want to discuss useful alternatives here? That could get long. ^_^

Those court rulings do have to do with order in some cases. I used to work for a school system and we had signs up in the main offices that told parents they could not visit the classrooms without a prior appointment. I understand that it was to help deal with belligerent parents (and we had a handful in the time I worked there), but this also lends itself toward abuse. Just FYI, in at least one occurrence, this was a court ruling about a forced vaginal exam of a class of pre-teen girls. They had not been allowed to call their parents, even though at least one girl wanted to.

As far as compulsory attendance, I agree. We are unwilling to make the hard decisions so we make soft ones that hurt almost everyone.

We don’t have to discuss educational approaches on this exact thread, but I would be interested in channeling energy into trying to define an educational (and resulting social/economic impacts) approach in some forum.

I’m finding myself both content with many existing systems due to the flexibility I can wring out of them, as well as deciding many are not able to be reformed into what I think is ideal. Compulsory attendance, for example, doesn’t bug me…I plan to have my children comply with that law for at least the duration of its application. I don’t think removing just the law fixes anything much, but I’d love to define a system that didn’t expect to include that.

When you filled out your taxes this year, did you turn down the “making work pay” credit?

[quote=netwiz]“Materialism feeds off those who are dependent on the system.”: Huh? What system…sin is sin, how does materialism feed…huh?

This article http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962 will help you understand. The basic idea is that there is only so much that we as people need. Obviously, we need food and shelter. Other things, although not necessities, are very important, such as electricity, gas, computers, books, automobiles, ect. However, most Americans have literally thousands of material gadgets and doodads.

From a practical standpoint, if we are not dependent on these goods to make us happy or feel completely, then our employment system as we know it could not sustain itself. With the industrial age came people working for money. This not all bad, but it is true that this created needs for jobs, and needs for more material goods.

In fact, in American society it appears as if the poorer you are, the more doodads a person has. (In college I could generally tell a girl’s social-economical background by looking into her bedroom. If they had a lot of small doodads, I often soon heard about how their dad took off when they were kids, and mom worked at Wal-mart. The poor understand money the least and are the most dependent on cash.) In Dialect of Enlightenment, Adorno writes about how current art is no longer art for the sake of art but is a big business. This is seen on multiple levels from who distributes the art, to who buys the art, and more importantly, to the plot and ideas behind the art. 

“People with strong vision would never fall for consumerism.”: Strong vision = Christians, or we can think ourselves out of consumerism?

No, we’re still consumers. But the question is, is the family primarily a unit of consumption, or primarily a unit of production? People used to produce more than they consume; it appears that this has been flipped.

Lenin said a communist nation is composed of families where someone else does the laundry, someone else cooks the meals, someone else schools the children, and mom and dad outside the home.  The one area he was sorely lacking in, he said, was birth control for women.

How far are we from this today? Last year I decided to sit at a Subway restaurant for two hours and just listen to people talk. The workers were making sandwiches while someone else raised their babies. A hundred men and women came in Subway, lines lasting thirty minutes during the 12:00 lunch hour again while everyone else was raising their children. Some were oil field workers, some teachers, some business men. But as I listened, I could truly see what Lenin was saying….in his ideal society, everyone specialized in a certain field.  We need someone to keep our children, so we can have teachers. We need someone to make our food, so we can have Subway employees. The list goes on.

Currently homeschool families break this “ideal” because children are trained to help keep the home, and mom stays home and teaches the children. Futhermore, homeschool families forgo certain luxuries because they would rather have family than goods. They choose one income because family is more important. This is not the American ideal.

  - “In order to accomplish this, as Henry Ford recognized, people would have to be bred into the 40 hour work week”: Disagree, the people that settled the prairie worked much more than a 40 hour week. The change was institutional labor.

I suggest you read a biography on Henry Ford. In short, he was not a family kind of guy. He PAID money to shut down the train system into the city, so people had to buy his new machinery. He wanted everyone in the workforce, and he wanted kids in school, which is why he built schools and gave boys vocational training. Is that all bad? No. He gave us the minimum wage idea, but is it not suspicious when the business owner is the one training you? 

With Henry Ford’s minimum wage came his eight hour work day, and this was EXTREMELY controversial (I doubt anyone seriously complained about the higher pay). The very advantage of machinery is that it allows us to work less because we can produce more in less time. This was good news! However, the Capitalists like Ford realized he could get richer if people produced more.  So again, that goes back to what I said…we need people to consume more and work more. The article discusses many tactics used to force businesses and employees into having a 40 hour work week after World War II (companies had gone to less hours during the depression).

- “(at first men were REFUSING to work that long)”: I believe you that you have something to document this, but I think it’s a non-argument because if there had been another employer that could have been more successful with less hours worked then that would have dominated—Henry Ford, as a property owner, had some power over the workers, but they were not a slave.

ABSOLUTELY, I AGREE! People are going to choose to work in factories because they like security rather than freedom. I do not have a problem with this per se. However—I think this is the key—public education has contributed to people choosing these poor conditions despite the opportunities that capitalism affords. This happened for several reasons:

1)Many people no longer think. I teach developmental college classes; these students have been so far crushed intellectually that they cannot even formulate opinions. I had literally 90% of my students tell me they were wholly unaware that other ideas existed. Talk about living in a bubble!

So some people need to work in factories because they lack the brains.

2) What Chris brought up. I took a computer education (a class designed to give teachers lessons on how to use technology to push the school agendas. I’m NOT exaggerating. It was a TERRIBLE class) class my sophomore year of college. In the book we learned about the difference between directed learning and constructive learning. In short, the constructive learning, pushed by John Dewey, was targeted so people could think only in groups. I can find you MANY MANY quotes from John Dewey.  His most famous quote is the one Chris referenced, “Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the collective harmony of society.” It is not a conspiracy that the schools definitely DON’T want people creating their own business or doing their own thinking.

3)Schools were targeted for illicit sex and the break down of the family. Again, this is not a conspiracy. In the 1995 NEA convention passed a resolution. Quote:

“The National Education Association recognizes the importance of raising the awareness and increasing the sensitivity of staff, students, parents, and the community to sexual orientation. The Association therefore supports…the celebration of a Lesbian and Gay History Month as a means of acknowledging the contributions of lesbians, gays, and bi-sexual throughout history.”

I don’t really need to go on. Schools use sex education to break down minds and break down families. The more broken down the family, the more dependent we are on the government. Families with strong vision are not as dependent, and this is a serious threat to our society.

- “and, more importantly, the family ties needed to be broken.”: That’s pretty extreme. I react to this feeling like it’s your opinion of something that was documented…why would Henry Ford have cared about family ties?

See above. I would say Ford probably did not want parents divorced, but the mother was targeted to work outside the home by the workforce ever bit as much as the feminists who wanted it. This is simply the result of economical ideals, such as Big business or communism. Plato, during the time of the Greeks, wrote in his Republic that children should be taken from their parents in infancy. Lenin essentially wanted this as well. Its part of the consumerism wanted in the industrial world.

This response is just to right before the third quote of my response. I’ve read the article you linked, and I’m just having to break this apart in order to get out a reply.

Okay, first I have an issue with trying to tie together materialism as a marketing thing to it being a form of mind control for people’s daily lives. I have run into years ago the insight that the typical resident of the USA seems to be willing to trade time for stuff. Overseas we find that differently. However neither of those is a good or bad goal in itself. The Greek crisis illustrates that those that are more interested in a more comfortable lifestyle and schedule can also be irresponsible. So I really took issue with the linked article when it started this section:

“Sometimes an even more blatant antidemocratic stance…”

Suddenly a helpful article about the experimentation with giving shorter hours for less money became an inappropriate forum for a conspiracy theory about socialists wanting to control by keeping people working and tired and tearing apart the family. I just do not buy it. Evil will use whatever it has (think Greece’s desire for ease), there’s nothing inherently more sin prone from capitalism and consumerism than state control and a simple life style. Each has its dangers, neither is an inherently moral decision (hmm, I can’t believe I’m saying that about state control…but it sounds right—sorry, the USA doesn’t have a lock on “Biblical” government; add religious freedom to communism and it might be as good as rampant capitalism).

I have also observed that the “poor” have cash management problems. But they have cash management problems in poor worlds as well. I distinctly remember something I heard a few times while living in Africa that there was a big problem trying to introduce “western” thoughts like large scale farming because any “big event” of harvesting, or something like inventory that provided a large amount of concentrated “wealth” would fall apart because family would mooch off it and not leave enough to continue. Dumb people are dumb whether they have income to buy TVs or just struggle to have good sanitation. Note: no argument that people in 3rd world countries are universally dumb, I’m just saying that consumerism doesn’t breed poor societal operation.

Finally, I have the same argument with the leap you make from “producers to consumers” to “disintegration of the family”. Yes, we now can produce what we need to live with a small fraction of our potential output. So then what do we choose to do with the other 90% of our time? That’s just a choice…it’s not a wrong or right choice.

Farming out different aspects of daily life are just choices that people make. That doesn’t mean that someone out there has pulled the strings to create the situation…many times I find that so many things have been said you can look in hindsight and find someone who was trying to plan how they could use that situation…but that doesn’t prove that they did use it, just that they happened to be right about what people would pursue.

My basic assumption: people have a God-sized “hole” in their lives that they would prefer to fill with anything except God…and that’s the basis. Any society will have people that offer options to try to fill that hole…and all will be unsatisfying. It’s not the offerings themselves that are inherently evil. It’s just that people are desperate to avoid the requirement to “follow after me.”

Your ending with its reference to millenniums of people targeting the family unit means goes along with my argument in my other thread—that anything can be twisted to a bad end, not that something is bad in and of itself.

Henry Ford wanted money—standard human desire. He decided a good way to get it would be to sell cars radically cheaper. He didn’t want people to easily recreate his model so he squeezed it as hard as he could. Sounds pretty similar to the creator of WalMart. I applaud it. It’s not anti-family. Its consumerism. Henry offered an option that people were not required to take. He wanted to offer that option outside what the family would control…okay, but he still couldn’t breed the children himself (so he was dependant on what the family would decide). I don’t buy it…if you suggest a biography I’ll see if I can tackle it—but I was hoping for a more concise argument. For now I’m actually seeing Ford as at least as much of a positive revolutionary as I had in the past.

This quote is presented as a fiat bad thing: “People are going to choose to work in factories because they like security rather than freedom”. Security is not a bad thing. Mortality has been higher in every century than this one. And I have no problem electing to choose security over flexibility. The other problem with the statement is that it makes it sound like it’s either all of one or another. In reality people balance the freedom and security that they are comfortable with, and options are the best—there is no one size fits all. Chris prefers freedom of his current employment approach; I chose to have 5 kids and the reduction in freedom of a job with a large company. I’m just as free as Chris, but I elected to not be as flexible in what I work on (have someone telling me what to do). I just feel your statement is a good sounding sound bite but is relatively poor logic.

Finally, the NEA does not a conspiracy make. People do want to take the easy path. It’s harder when kids you’re trying to train ask questions about stuff and disrupt things through doing that. It would be easier if they were all the same. Also people are compassionate and like to address problems using what they think is a good solution. I do NOT see an education conspiracy…I remain unconvinced.

Maybe I can end well with a question: what motivates you to desire that you teach people to think…where do you think that is coming from?

Do you really want to know why I believe corporations are anti-family and anti-life? I usually avoid the topic because I know people will disagree with me. I’m okay with people working in corporations. Its not a threat to me. I just don’t find it personally very free, mostly because I just get a three week vacation and have to work to make someone else rich. People say being an employee is easier than owning a business. Maybe for some people. I had to study many years to become an employee (and I need a PhD to get higher pay). Everything isn’t handed to us on a plate.

I believe corporations are anti-family because they are built on humanism and social darwinism. Social Darwinism is basically the idea that the strong survive and prosper through self-determinism.

Children begin this process of Social Darwinism from the moment they go to day care or preschool.  Social Darwinism says the strong survive and proposer. In other words, social Darwinism is a survival of the fittest competition, with the winner growing up to get the best degrees and jobs. The trick is those who are independent and self-determinant win.

Self-determinism is just a fancy word for humanism; Social Darwinism cannot exist without humanism. The most self-determinate will survive and prosper.

Let me illustrate. We segment our children off from the rest of society, boost them with grades and URL competitions and immediately start breeding the strong children off through gifted and talented programs. Actually, current child pedagogy (and pedagogy means slave, btw) programs teach children to go to daycare so they will learn to live independently from mom and dad (self-determinism), interact with peers (self-determinism), and rise above peers (self-determinism). You get the idea. Self-determinism is instilled in our children at a very young age.

Institutions function on a ‘factory’ style system of organization.  Take your typical corporation as an example.  The vast majority of employable positions in the organization are lower paid and require less responsibility and intelligence.  A much smaller number of the positions within the organization are higher paid and require more responsibility and leadership.  Social Darwinism as a frame of thought gives justification to these social systems by instilling the concept that only a small number of people are intelligent and gifted for greatness while the vast majority of the population is fit for the lower grade, lower paid occupations.  Institutions enforce the ideology of the system by requiring people to go through years of undergraduate and graduate level work that virtually ensure a person’s commitment to the secularist system.  Schools dumb down students so the masses will accept that their lot in life is all that secularist ideology has to offer them, for as John Dewey, a founder of public education in America, said, “Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society […] where everyone is interdependent.”

There are no objective and philanthropically motivated systems; every institution’s primary goal is self-preservation. The purpose of the organization has been highly specified; segmenting it from any sector of society outside of its scope of focus.  By narrowing the focus, the institution maximizes its efficiency. So we live with the tension of trying to be human in a non-human entity. 

I know people say “its not a non-human entity for me.” This is my response: maybe your job isn’t like that. Maybe you have one of the well paid and enjoyable job. If so, keep your job, and thank God for it. But not everyone does. I had one of those miserable jobs where I was reduced to doing what a computer could, where my boss was always looking over my shoulder, and where the bottom line, not the customers, is what matters. They *could* have given me more interesting work, but it was more efficient to have us all specialize in putting certain information into the computer. Corporations are not possible without someone having those jobs.

I have also been a teacher. The business is what matters most, which is why the students had to buy textbooks even if we didn’t use them, or why the department would not allow us to eat lunch with our students, ect.

Understand, I am not saying Henry Ford isn’t brilliant. IMO, he is a lot smarter than anyone I’ve ever worked for because he realized he could make more money, and have more opportunities by being the business owner. I am NOT knocking that.

This is what I’m saying: corporations are anti-life, and if you don’t want to be caught in the system, then you have to choose to use the system before it uses you. For some people that means climbing the corporate ladder to insure that he or she is not the cashier at Wal-mart. For others that means being a small business owner. For others it may mean being a big business owner. Or perhaps some people want to be the cashier, I dunno.

Henry Ford worked to move us to a factory, class based system. He justified positions that I cannot justify. I’ll look for my biography, though.