Capitalism as religion- great article by Julian Gough

Julian Gough wrote a highly entertaining take on tragedy and comedy that will be the subject of a later post, on a slow day (when there's a lot of begatting going on).

I had a look at the archive of his pieces on the Prospect website, and stumbled across
"The Sacred Mystery of Capital" from July 2008.

Though there's bits to disagree with, it's full of provoking and intriguing ideas, and is so well written you can just quote chunks. Among the best are these gems-

"But religions evolve, and recent events show that capitalism has begun to evolve less in the manner of the Galapagos finches (whose beaks adjusted over millennia to suit the berries of their individual island), and more in the manner of the Incredible Hulk. Incredible Hulk capitalism can expand the muscle of its credit so swiftly that its clothing of real world assets cannot stretch fast enough to contain it. Expansion, explosion, collapse—Incredible Hulk capitalism sprawls, stunned and shrunken again, in the rags of its assets.

"Or, returning to our religious analogy, if capitalism was a religion, it would now be a delightfully demented pseudo-scientific cult. Incredible Hulk capitalism is to the capitalism of Adam Smith what Scientology is to the Christianity of Christ. Both modern high finance and Scientology use the language and tools of science to ends that are religious, not scientific. Both meet a need, a yearning which the old forms of religion and capitalism no longer meet. The need for a mysterious power greater than us, in which we can believe. It must be powerful—but it must also be mysterious. And mystery has been vanishing from the world ever faster, ever since Galileo."

Genius stuff...