For Christ and Culture

*Posted by Joe Wooddell

This post is the second-to-last in the series, “Christianity and Capitalism,” in which I have been summarizing Jay Richards’s Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem. Chapter 7, “Doesn’t Capitalism Lead to an Ugly Consumerist Culture?” addresses the “Artsy Myth” which confuses aesthetic judgments with economic arguments.

Richards begins by looking at Hong Kong, a British colony from 1842-1997, which boasted a stable rule of law without an overly meddlesome government. However, some would say the skyscrapers, malls, street markets, and neon signs are “ugly.” In fact, critics often argue against capitalism by attributing to it such wasteful things as “urban sprawl,” with its boring McDonald’s restaurants, grasping merchants, and ugly billboards.

The message of Western capitalism seems simply to be, “consume, consume, consume!” In America even our poor are obese, we have high consumer debt, and we throw away perfectly good phones and computers each year just to get new ones. Some have responded by going back to intimate cultural traditions of the past, a simple lifestyle, buying goods locally, eating organically, and trying to capture the dignity of a slow family or community meal. And critics on all sides have accused capitalism of corroding the very cultural values rightly prized by conservatives: faith, family, and community, replacing them with an obsession for stuff. Continue reading →