The Golden Rule (So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12 NIV)) has few impediments in the United States built as it is upon respect, equality, and freedom. Any generous, charitable act I choose to do today, I might do--save one. The rules of capitalism prevent me from assuring the money I spend on lunch today will be proportioned so as to pay the employees who prepared it a livable wage. That can only done through the rather cumbersome and uncertain device of indirect political action and the vote. This is regrettable for the employees who prepared my lunch today will be paid in a week or so (and have bills constantly accruing now)--not years from now. Thus, the laws of capitalism and the fiction of private property keep me from practicing the Golden Rule over today's lunch hour.
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