Peace Be Unto You

You are free. Almost.

Actually, as a society, we are not free. The Constitution is a technicality, because we are ruled by corporations, who (yes, they insist that they are persons) act as though they have no responsibilities to you at all: you, but not they, are bound by contracts. We are their slaves.

My recent experience with this was an attempt to refinance a mortgage with Bank of America, regarding which I will say little, since you are not reading this to hear me complain. Since I have a perfect payment history, and since it was not a new property, they quickly pre-approved the loan. Then it quickly became what might have been a nightmare. They transferred my loan to a succession of five different people, and at each transition they misplaced paperwork which I dutifully re-sent. And they kept changing the arrangements on which we had agreed. I said this might have been a nightmare, but I had an option that kept it from being so. I have an existing mortgage, and there is nothing actually wrong with it. I could, and did, simply cancel the refinance process. I only wish I had checked online before I had applied for the refinance loan, and seen the prodigious number of consumer complaints about Bank of America. Bank of America is competent at just two things: taking taxpayer bailout money, and compensating their CEO. In fairness I will add that B of A repaid their $45 billion TARP loan.

My solution will work for you too, at least sometimes. Just say no. It is nearly unpatriotic to say this, but the most important thing we can do is to not buy things, whether mortgages or snack foods. Even though we are their slaves when we do business with them, corporations have not yet figured a way to force us to do business with them. What do you do when airlines treat passengers like cattle? Don’t travel anywhere by plane. Incidentally, consuming less is probably the best thing we can do to reduce our carbon footprints. Mortgages do not necessarily increase one’s carbon footprint, but if enough people deny banks our business, maybe they will close some of their offices and turn off the electricity.

Of course we cannot buy nothing, but we can minimize what we buy, and thus our entanglement with the toxic and evil world of business. Business is not always toxic, but you can limit your purchases to corporations with proven reliability. As an author, it is in my interest to tell you to keep buying books, but I will admit that the public library is the better option in many cases. And you may discover that there are many beautiful and rewarding things around you that are free, not just books but time spent in the natural world.

Buying as little as possible is also the way to be spiritually free, as Jesus said but which Christian conservatives vehemently deny.