Kids and capitalism

Joe and I were sitting around the other night, relaxing and having a discussion about capitalism (If you think this is weird, you should talk to Joe about his alternative to Fantasy baseball - it's call Fantasy supreme court justices). I think we have become a bit more liberal with time - this would never have happened if we just stayed in Texas for the rest of our lives. But seriously, we were thinking about how unjust the capitalist market is. Yet we know that we couldn't stand to live in any other world. How can one person make so much money shooting a ball into a hoop, while others with "less valued" skills sit in poverty. Who designated values for such skills? Why is the value placed on skills so inequitable? Isn't it also interesting that we work so hard to teach our children the basic principles of being fair, sharing, treating others as equals, and not keeping score, yet I hardly see these principles in practice in the adult world? For instance children's sports leagues often say that they want their kids to play for fun and so they don't keep score. Is it because kids have the rest of their lives to keep score, or is it because they are trying to fool their children into thinking that this is how adults behave? You know the parents are keeping score anyway and letting their kids know who won in the end.

Once our children get that first bittersweet taste of capitalism, there's no turning back. All of a sudden things won't seem worthwhile without a prize or incentive, and equality is just a blurb in the back of an employee manual or 3 letters on the bottom corner of some letterhead. These are tough concepts for a child to understand. How do we as parents begin to translate for our children the world and how it operates, alongside our lessons of goodness and fairness? I sometimes wonder, did Trump sit down with his kids too, like the rest of us and say, "Ivanka, it's not about whether you win or lose." Doesn't that seem totally hypocritical? And why wouldn't we be satisfied with socialism? So what if we become the poorest country on the planet? At least we will all have access to healthcare and have food on our tables, and won't have poverty. I guess Marx didn't account for sin when he envisioned utopia, because in the end, isn't life all about winning? So it seems. That's when I'm thankful that my life is more than just THIS life. All my toiling is just temporary and my true satisfaction lies in the hope and life ahead in Jesus Christ.