Culturist Economics

Culturism and economics intersect at several places. In fact, our culture has been very important to our economic development. And, a strong economy is important to our culture. We as a society are paying for our lack of culturist thought. Immigration and globalization are driven by multiculturalism. We must again become culturist to undo their damage.

Dropping out of school early and having several children is a formula for personal poverty. Statistics show that this is a cultural distinction of many cultures. In many cultures women are expected to do this. And, shy of that, there is no shame in it. In their home countries, such people are poor. In the first world West they lean on our social services. When you combine this fact with not having ever paid taxes, you have the perfect storm for the creation of a second or third world economy.

Welfare is cultural. All laws are culturist. Welfare only works if people are ashamed to take it. Once everyone thinks it is okay to take it, you get more people taking from the system than paying into it. Without a sense of responsibility and shame, welfare is unsustainable. Laws are culturist in that if you get rid of value judgments and encourage people to take free lunches you sap initiative and responsibility. Culture and social services are intimately intertwined.

We are now at the point where people think that handouts are a right. They do not beg with shame; they demand with all their self-worth. Notice that these attitudes towards social services result from ideas; they are cultural. One is based on Marxist thought that the rich are holding the wealth and we deserve ours. The other comes from the republican capitalist view that wealth comes from generating services or products. We need to teach about the ravages of communism and dangers of demagoguery.

Culturist problems do not only lay with the poor. The business class have taken our manufacturing industries and moved them overseas. This reflects globalist thinking. And this, like multiculturalism, stems from an inability to realize that we have a culture, a side, to be loyal to. This, in turn, has a double effect in that the understanding of factories and how things are made is also goes overseas with the factory; the idea of starting a machine shop to make a part your factory needs disappears. Thus businessmen’s lack of attachment to our nation has undermined our economy. On this note, they also do not seem to mind Sharia financing. They think they are post-modern, post-cultural beings. This is a dangerous fallacy.

Teaching American history is important to the economy. The Founding Fathers spoke often about the importance of self-reliance and the unique nature of our culture. Teaching about western civilization is important. When you do so you realize that cultivating our commitment to the individual took a long historical struggle. Businessmen need to be loyal to the West. Economics must be taught. We have forgotten that Keynesian stimulus requires local factories to be stimulated by purchases. We now are only stimulating China. And economics and history intertwine in the lessons about the evils of communism. A functioning economy requires basic cultural precepts. We need to teach our basic cultural precepts again.

A combination of multiculturalism and globalism has undermined our ability to teach about the importance of culture to an economy. Since multiculturalism teaches that all cultures are equally wonderful and businessmen have no side to be loyal to, we can no longer, as we used to, discuss the intersection of values and economics. This is dangerous. Economics undergird our being the land of opportunity. If the West falls our vision will fall with it. We are not the world. We have nowhere else to live. We are the West. Sustaining the West and its vision requires a realistic sense of responsibility towards it. It requires a sense of culturism.