I am in the process of reading conservative entertainer Michael Medved's book 5 Big Lies about American Business. I am not far into it admittedly, but it got me thnking.

In the intro section of the book Medved says this: "Ever since FDR's New Deal in the 1930's, and perhaps since the Progressive Era of thirty years before, the public has expressed queasiness and uncertainty regarding the profit motive."

Now, maybe it's me, but I think that human's uncomfortableness with wealth and "the profit motive" has been around a hell of a lot longer than 110 years. For instance, here is chapter 53 from the Tao te Ching, written 500 years before Christ:

The great Way is easy,
yet people prefer the side paths.
Be aware when things are out of balance.
Stay centered within the Tao.

When rich speculators prosper
While farmers lose their land;
when government officials spend money
on weapons instead of cures;
when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible
while the poor have nowhere to turn-
all this is robbery and chaos.
It is not in keeping with the Tao.

And here is Christ himself speaking, Matthew 19:24: And again I say unto you, 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.

The Catholic Church had rules against usary (i.e. interest) and forbade those who engaged in it from taking the sacraments (thereby consigning the business of moneylending to the Jews and establishing the pattern of pogroms when ever times got bad.)

Essentially everyone from Plato and Aristotle to Cato and Seneca, condemed the practice of charging people money for the use of money.

Even John Calvin, the spiritual father of Capitalism considered profit making to be only for the glory of God, as a show of mercy to those who lack.

So I am hereby proposing a 6th Big Lie for Mr. Medved: Progressives and liberals are the only people who are uncomfortable with the excesses of our gratuitously consumptive society. It seems pretty clear from a historical perspective that, if there is any being who is uncomfortable with the profit motive, it it is God (Jesus, the Tao, the Universe, etc. etc. etc.)

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