Business

I have always tried to follow the personal business philosophy voiced in Shakespeare: 

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be; 

For loan oft loses both itself and friend, 

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. 

This above all: to thine ownself be true,"

 .....Hamlet, Scene III.

Far cry from the philosophy of the Federal Reserve and the media hype currently eroding U.S. business ethics. 

The indoctrination of the American people by government in collusion with corporate finance for the past thirty-odd years has undermined common sense and fairness in American business. The added negative effect of Christian evangelicalism, which has adopted a sales pitch of prosperity gospel, has confused the whole issue of ethical business and the sensible use of money and resources. The financial collapse of 2008 in the U.S. and the subsequent sinkholes around the world are simply pieces of evidence in what will eventually be seen as a criminal erosion of public trust and general human well being in the name of capitalist greed. 

The financial predators are everywhere. They plunder the public purse to build huge medical complexes which deliver advanced technical care and poor human care. They exploit drug addicts for profit by building chains of methadone clinics and ineffectual rehabs. They package ethics and morality in seminars for profit. They build mega-churches for bilking the "faithful". They enslave the poor in China and Bangladesh to sell lousy products to the fat and lazy in the developed world. 

Yes, this has become business as usual. 

The merging of religion with business is particularly evil in my secular-humanistic view. The Vatican stands as the penultimate example, but ornate mosques, financed by petrochemical money from Saudi Arabia, are perhaps even more insidious. As a Saudi royal once said to me in the back of a limo, "We use the mosque to keep the common people, the mob, in line."

I fear this merging of business and religion might infect the rising movements of the Nones, secular people who are non-believers in gods and dogma. In the U.S., many of those who are organizing non-believers are wealthy. They have benefited and still benefit from corporate capitalism. They are at the top of the financial pyramid scheme of corporate capitalism, which makes money from money for a select few. 

Humanism can never be valid as a business model under corporate capitalism. This would be an absurd selling of a label which has everything to do with undermining corporate capitalism in favor of economic and social justice. Those who practice humanism in a daily and committed way would not work for or own stock in corporations which support the military-industrial complex, for instance. They would not accept contributions flowing from these income streams. This would eliminate the possibility of Humanism ever becoming a profitably non-profit business for those who presume to market it as such.