Great is our Sin

Charles Darwin’s words resonate across time, "If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin." They are there challenging the notion that poverty is an immutable fact of human existence. His observation cuts through the rhetoric of inevitability, exposing the truth that suffering is not an accident of nature but a deliberate construct of human institutions. If wealth has the power to alleviate suffering, then the persistence of poverty in the shadow of immense riches is not an unfortunate consequence—it is a choice, an intention, a sin of design.

The myth of inevitability has always been the shield of the powerful. The ruling class, those who hoard the wealth of nations while proclaiming themselves the architects of prosperity, understand that their grip on power depends upon maintaining the illusion that poverty is an unchangeable condition, an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of progress. They insist that there will always be poor people, not because they must, but because allowing people to question the existence of poverty would mean questioning the system that enables a few to accumulate wealth beyond comprehension while millions starve.

The economic excesses of wealth should, in theory, make poverty obsolete. Technological advancements, agricultural surplus, and industrial efficiency should have ushered in an era where no human being needed to go hungry, where shelter and medicine were within reach of all. Yet, despite the abundance of resources, wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a few. This is not the work of some invisible force, no divine decree or natural law dictates this reality—it is a structure deliberately upheld by those who profit from inequality.

The idea that poverty is inevitable ignores the material reality of the world we have built. There is enough food to feed every person on the planet. There are enough empty houses to shelter every homeless individual. There is enough medicine to treat the sick and enough resources to provide education to all. The question has never been about scarcity—it has always been about control. Who gets access to these resources? Who decides their distribution? Who benefits from deprivation?

The ruling elite throughout history have relied on manufactured scarcity as a means of control. From the feudal lords who kept peasants tied to the land through laws of inheritance and taxation to the modern billionaires who drive wages down while extracting record-breaking profits, the game has always been the same: consolidate wealth at the top and convince those at the bottom that their suffering is both necessary and deserved. They call it meritocracy, they call it free enterprise, they call it the natural order of things—but in reality, it is a rigged system, designed to ensure that wealth flows in one direction and that those who question it are drowned in propaganda about personal responsibility, hard work, and the supposed fairness of markets that have never been free.

Gordon Gekko, the fictional Wall Street prophet of neoliberalism, famously declared that “greed is good.” He was not alone in this belief. The economic systems of the last century have been constructed around the very idea that greed—unchecked, unapologetic, and predatory—is the engine of progress. The consolidation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands has been rebranded as economic efficiency, and the suffering of the many has been dismissed as collateral damage in the pursuit of growth. But greed, left unchallenged, does not produce prosperity for all. It produces hoarding, exploitation, and despair. It creates conditions where billionaires accumulate more wealth than entire nations while children starve in the streets. It ensures that the working class remains just desperate enough to accept wages that will never allow them to escape their conditions, while the ultra-wealthy continue to move money in ways that generate nothing of value except more numbers in their accounts.

It is no coincidence that every movement seeking to uplift the poor has been met with violent opposition from the ruling elite. Labor unions were crushed under the weight of police batons. Social programs that dared to redistribute even a fraction of wealth were demonized as radical, dangerous, or communist. Even in religion, where one might expect a defense of the vulnerable, the co-opting of faith by capital has ensured that prosperity gospel preachers fill stadiums while the homeless are blamed for their circumstances. When Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple, he was not merely reacting to corruption; he was striking at the very heart of a system that exploited the poor while claiming to serve God. The merchants were not just selling goods—they were selling salvation at a price, ensuring that even in matters of the soul, the poor remained in debt.

The modern equivalents of those money changers exist in every industry that thrives on manufactured scarcity. The pharmaceutical companies that hoard life-saving medication while the sick suffer. The landlords who leave apartments empty rather than lower rents. The corporations that destroy surplus food to keep prices high rather than feed the hungry. The financial institutions that create debt traps, ensuring that even those who work themselves to exhaustion remain forever on the edge of ruin. These are not accidents. They are not unfortunate byproducts of an otherwise fair system. They are the system itself.

If the misery of the poor were truly a natural condition, then why does it require so much effort to maintain? Why do governments and corporations spend billions lobbying against policies that would alleviate suffering? Why are those who attempt to redistribute wealth met with the full force of legal, political, and even military power? Because poverty is not just an economic condition—it is a mechanism of control. The fear of poverty keeps wages low. The reality of poverty ensures that people will accept exploitation rather than risk starvation. It is the threat that underpins the entire economic order.

To dismantle this system is not just a matter of economic policy; it is a matter of moral reckoning. If we accept that poverty is not inevitable, then we must also accept that the existence of billionaires in a world of suffering is not a mark of success but a damning indictment of our civilization. The wealth of the ruling class is not a sign of progress but proof of theft—of stolen wages, stolen land, stolen futures. And if great is our sin, then the only redemption lies in dismantling the structures that uphold it.