Justine of course specialises in promoting a squeaky clean essentially Disneyland and/or Norman Rockwell fantasy view of the role of Christianity in history and its applied politics.
Everything always either had a price or was simply stolen from the victims via the process of Christian imperialism/colonialism.
Once again, applied Christian politics 101:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel13.html
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/cruelty.html
Check out:
Columbus and Other Cannibals by Jack Forbes
American Holocaust by David Stannard.

Without doubt, the human economy of both males and females has suffered a dramatic decline in value since it became the subject of market forces.

Take the most beautiful maiden and subject her to ten years of the depraved demands of the average man and his mates and the worth of the women is halved or even quartered. A stud suffers the same fate.

Such a woman, typically, is not protected as something of value should be but as something to be used until the lustre is gone then replaced.

Humans, especially the male of any species are curious creatures. Their evolutionary path thus far is predictable and low class and is based upon war and killing.

Whether nobility and classicism will eventually attract them is unknown and unlikely!

If everything has a price, then there must be a price imposed for the privilege to live, breathe the air, watch a sunset and so on!
And of course, it's a nonsense, that allows dog eat dog competition to thrive, extremely unhealthy individualism, where anything goes; ponzi schemes, Enron, slavery etc; and, an ever downward economic spiral towards the lowest common denominator, when what we need is cooperative capitalism.
Even where you accept individualism and or self made men, who were born in the log cabins they built with their own two hands; and or, extreme capitalism, many must and do cooperate, sometimes under duress, to allow any individual to prosper.
Neither Gina Rinehart, or Clive Palmer, i.e, prospered entirely on their own, but had various advantageous!
Gina essentially inherited her wealth, and Clive was simply at the right place at the right time, with the right backing.
And both are assisted by others much more competent than either individual or myriad fellow travelers.
We need a world that cooperates, or dives down to where Russia and Ukraine are now, with almost everything settled at the point of a gun, or threatened violence, or mutual annihilation.
We need to retain all essential service as a not for profit publicly owned essential service, ditto energy and capital.
The natural price and there is one, doesn't ever include individual profit or skimming, or dividends for drones!
This public paradigm, will remove artificial restraints and or constraints on genuine entrepreneurs, who will be more free to follow and achieve, their dreams, the ultimate purpose of life!?
Rhrosty.

"In fact, market thinking seems a perfect fit for a Darwinian universe. If humans are nothing more than the sum total of unguided evolutionary forces, and all of this life is a scrabble for competing resources that the strongest or most adaptable are destined to win, it seems overly sentimental to speak of human dignity. Women, as the 'weaker sex', just have to make peace with their lot in life-and find a man who can protect and provide for them."

Humans are 'nothing more' than the results of evolution in the same sense that the Pyramids are 'nothing more' than piles of rocks. Evolution has produced human brains that are capable of planning ahead, of causing altruistic behaviour, and of valuing people on the basis of their capabilities rather than their gender. I'm not sure what's supposed to be meant by 'dignity', but if we have it at all, we have it as a result of evolution; so presumably dignity -- whatever it is -- is a useful factor in ensuring human longevity and reproduction. Maybe it's something to do with seeing humanity as valuable in itself, not merely as a Divine tinker-toy.

In fact your naive view of evolution matches your naive view of the market, where in fact, as Tim Worstall has recently pointed out, the participants spend a lot more time and effort trying to find others to co-operate with than they do in competing with them.

Well given the necessary and superbly timed death and rebirth of trillions of stars, time and again, just to create the carbon of carbon based lifeforms.
And or, the equally superbly timed sequence of ice age events, that created the building blocks of the miracle of life, I just don't subscribe to the Darwinian theory of evolution, but rather, would have it rewritten as the amazing/superb adaptability of the successful species. I don't know what or who created the universe, but it may have something to do with the recently discerned dark matter.
Is the universe intelligent or can it think or reason?
Well you and I are and can, (allegedly) and we are just part of it!
The theory of evolution is almost as improbable
and believable, as a whirlwind whipping through a junkyard and assembling a fully functioning and flyable 747, which is still vastly less complex than a human being!
Moreover, if we took all the atoms of the entire population of planet earth, and squeezed them into a single space, they'd be no larger than a sugar cube.
If one looks at the night sky and counts the stars than can be viewed through binoculars, we'd see more of them, than all the grains of sand, than exists on all the beaches, around the world!
And this is just due to happenstance and serendipity?
When it comes to putting a price on things, the least valuable, seems to be life itself, followed by personal responsibility/integrity; and or, our fellow human beings, who were patently not created just some some ultra greedy fool(s), whose only real or discernable ambition, is to be the richest man, (the wolf) in the graveyard, can mercilessly exploit or use them; and having used then up,(the slave) discard them like just so much obsolete machinery!
Rhrosty.

What never ceases to amaze me is how we seem to be ignoring all the alarm signals pointing to our irreversible, insidious descent into neo-slavery – a process that has been happening since the 80s but has relentlessly picked up strength in the last 10 years.

Put up the retirement age to 67, and now 70? Oh, all right.

Unpaid internships? Yeah, OK.

Casualisation of the workforce? Sure, whatever.

Get rid of the minimum wage? Well … yeah, I suppose so.

Australians work the world’s longest working week? No problem.

Gut the Public Service? Well, we can't really afford it, can we?

Right-wingers love all this - but then they would, wouldn't they? But over on the Left, the average liberal can get ever so steamed up about asylum seekers, foreign ‘dictators’ du jour, reducing our carbon emissions etc. But addressing the continual assaults on our right to job security, decent conditions and pay, and the right to enjoy our leisure time, is just too … well … plebeian.

Slavery is not over and done with. The stage is set for a major comeback.

Slavery is not over and done with. The stage is set for a major comeback.
Killarney,
Too right, it's already happening, blue collar workers supporting the bureaucrats & academics.
You know the ones that the unions stand up for not !

<<If humans are nothing more than the sum total of unguided evolutionary forces>>

Humans, like any other animal, ARE nothing more than the sum total of unguided evolutionary forces.

We, however, You and I, are not humans. We only temporarily, for perhaps some 100 years or so, associate ourselves with a human body - what a pity to waste this rare opportunity on slavery!

Without taking into account a spiritual perspective, there indeed is nothing wrong about slavery.

<<And yet we do hold to such a belief in the inherent dignity of people. Perhaps it's a cultural hangover from a time when the biblical claim that every human is made in the 'image of God' was better known>>

What a poor example: the bible is full of stories about tyrants, genocide, rape, murder, slavery and in general, people who couldn't care less about God or His image.

People and other animals deserve no dignity, but WE do, because we (rather than our human bodies) are not only made in the 'image of God' - We ARE God and should be revered as such!

Yuyutsu,
You're just lucky that in all probability there is no God. At least not the kind of God the religious are trying to talk themselves into. If there is a God then I'd imagine the church-goers will be the first to cop his wrath. Why, because even in your own words God is just. So how do you think a just God would deal with the hyprocrites ?

Dear Individual,

<<You're just lucky that in all probability there is no God>>

Ha Ha - and who is saying that? Great are thy plays, O Lord!

<<At least not the kind of God the religious are trying to talk themselves into.>>

I am religious, mind you!

<<If there is a God then I'd imagine the church-goers will be the first to cop his wrath.>>

Yes, I'd better cop His purifying wrath than His indifference.

<<because even in your own words God is just>>

My own words?? If God were just, then it would mean that He is limited, that He cannot be unjust - is that the kind of crippled god you think I'm trying to talk myself into?

<<So how do you think a just God would deal with the hyprocrites?>>

Hypocrites, having distanced themselves from God, will eventually feel so empty that they will repent on their own.