According to Buddhism, Right Livelihood means avoiding making a living in ways that cause harm or are exploitative. Examples might be exploiting people or killing animals, or trading in intoxicants or weapons?
The thing is, The Noble Eightfold path was written 2,500 years ago and there is no way that Siddhartha Gautama could have conceived of the modern world. He knew nothing of Capitalism. It did not even come into recognizable existence until approx. the 16th Century in Europe.
The Buddha could never in a million years imagined global warming, climate change, the destruction of the environment – and all done to make a buck. Fuck the consequences! Buddha never read Adams, or Marx, or Keynes, none of whose ideas applied to his time. But they do now, today. He knew nothing of Fractional Reserve Banking, Surplus Value, the boom and bust cycle of modern capitalist economics, etc, etc. etc.
So my question is this; would Buddha, if he were born today, and he knew something about politics and economics, teach that Right Livelihood is a non-Capitalist livelihood? Would he consider the bigger picture and view Capitalism and all its workings as harmful and exploitative, not just on an individual level, but to everybody everywhere, and the planet as well?
P.S. This OP treats Buddhism as a moral theory and not as a religion.
