Beneficiaries of Injustice

Every homeowner and every business owner (anybody with shares in a company via private or public markets), or descendant thereof, living in the developed world, has blood on his hands.

The US (and the rest of the developed world to a lesser extent) controls the global economic system. Because the value of all other currencies, whether based on fixed or floating exchange rates, are implicitly at least at a secondary or tertiary level, a function of the value of the dollar. When we "print" more or less dollars, we increase or decrease the value of the dollar and as a result, all the other currencies in the world are affected.

The value of the currency ties to inflation, unemployment, net exports, defense expenditures, etc. In other words, manipulating currencies creates poverty and wars. So, the ones who control the world's currency control the world. It's that simple.

I have a 3.625% 30-year fixed mortgage rate while friends in various places in the developing world are lucky to get a 20-year mortgage at less than 20% per annum. I have virtually unlimited opportunities to earn returns on a range of diversified investments that generate 5 to 10% real annual returns while my peers in the developing world are limited to highly speculative investments in subsistence agriculture, real estate and small family-owned start-ups. Fuel costs and other basic goods in the developing world can easily be two to five to many more times higher than in the US. This measure of disparities is endless.

Virtually everybody in the US, even the poor and oppressed in the US, are the beneficiaries of a system where the richest and most powerful people and nations simply accrue more and more power and wealth. Whether I earn my living mining rare earth minerals in Congo or trading foreign exchange or from a US defense contractor or healthcare institution or a local government agency or a mom-and-pop shop down the street, I'm a participant and beneficiary of a system built to bring greater and greater benefit to those who have more power and wealth.

Does it really matter how close I am or how many levels removed I am from the injustice? It seems pretty cut-and-dried that it's bad to be the one directly perpetrating the injustice. But if that person shops at my store and buys his food from me, then am I just as guilty? Or maybe if I supply the lumber that he uses to build his ships, that's worse because I'm enabling his bad behavior, even if I do it unknowingly.

We should understand the injustice all around us and endeavor to make it right where we can. At the same time, we shouldn't be so arrogant or ignorant as to think we aren't all beneficiaries, at some relatively meaningful level, in the injustice. I like what my pastor has said about Paul and Jesus and others in the Roman Empire, about how they were subversive in their approach to injustice - they didn't incite violent rebellion; instead, they won over their enemies with love. I'm not there yet, but hopefully moving in that direction.