Black Friday and Capitalism

In capitalism, each dollar is like a vote.  The dollars that we spend are powerful: they can help shape the future by investing in the things that align with our vision of the good life. You can give to the church, to aid funds, or to other beneficial organizations and here we recognize this principle of our money's power.  But when it comes to purchases for ourselves, the only thing that motivates us is how many dollars can we have kept to ourselves once the transaction is done.   

Most of us operate under this assumption that holding on to our votes is the best possible use of them.  We have been deceived to think that we must give our votes to the places that help us conserve our own voting power as much as possible.  

In this time of year between the beginning of the month's pull to "get out the vote" and the end of the month's pull to get the best deals and save money, it maybe be a good time to look at our understanding of money and what it does. 

Can you imagine that kind of system on election day?  What if everyone got 100 votes?  Wouldn't everyone use as many as they could to support their candidate? Yes, you'd need to use them wisely to be able to vote for Congressmen and women, mayors, and random amendments.  But how valuable would it be to walk away from that day with 95 votes left in your pocket?

Of course dollars (and life) last much longer than votes on election day and prudence is necessary.  But casting 500 votes for a huge national chain store (in return for a nice computer) seems odd when you could cast 700 votes for your friend's local computer store in return for the same computer. 

I am not advocating for frivolous spending: my friends know that I can be a frugal man myself.  But I am advocating that we readjust the priorities we have put on money.  Using it wisely is more powerful and responsible than not using it at all.  

That's why I would support Small Business Saturday over Black Friday.  The latter tells us to keep our votes to ourselves and to cast the few to the big guys whose ideals likely don't align with ours.  I'd rather put piles of support into locals than give small votes to those who represent big business.