[UA] What Do You Believe?

[Nick Wedig]

>  How they explained successful businessmen of other faiths and those who
>clearly sinned to obtain money, like the mafia, I don't know.
>  
>At the time there was no mafia.  There were ruling landowners in Italy, but
>not in the US.  

I knew that.  Really, I was just using them as a modern example of a businessman who's quite rich yet you can't deny he has done a whole lot of sinning.

>This was also pre-industrial revolution in the US, where
>there was no nobility.  Thus, the only ways to have money in the US was to
>be a merchant or a laborer and work a lot.  Calvinists thought working a lot
>was inherently good.  The idea of backhanded merchants cheating investors,
>etc. doesn't really become possible in the modern sense for over 100 years.

Cheating investors, perhaps not.  But as long as there have been trade and merchants and the possibility of becoming rich there have been people who became rich by charging more for shoddy good, deliberately marketing faulty products, etc, who are undoubtedly sinning in some form of the whole "Thou shalt not steal" and/or "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods" etc.

Mr. Teapot
cheating his investors

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