Forgive the length, if you don't find it interesting, simply move on to something else 
Today, while I was luxuriating in a hot bath in a large bathtub (though quite old, the layer of paint the owners used to make it look acceptable visually before we rented are peeling quite nicely, unfortunately) on a rainy, chilly beginning-of-winter afternoon, I was reading the tenth installment in a very entertaining science fiction novel series. It's space opera, by which I'm usually not all that well entertained. However, this series is well-written, with a large cast of well-developed, varied characters and has a hard-science edge to it; the known science it uses is accurate and the science it projects into the future is mostly consistent with what we think we know today.
The story is about an interstellar war between a monarchy which inhabits a double-star system with a total of three habitable planets, which has gathered, by friendly means, a significant group of allied systems to defend itself against an aggressive "People's Republic", a very large group of star systems whose aggression (they have taken the star systems in their empire mostly by force) is fueled by the need to expand their territory in order to support the "Dolists" who were promised plenty of food, shelter, and "quality of life" from the "profits" of their economic system, without the need to labor if they so desired.
One of the things I really like about the novels is the ability of the author to refrain from painting one side as demons and the other side as angels. Of course, there is a preferred "side" in the books, the monarchy and it's allies, along with a primary hero who is self-less, dutiful (to her beliefs and her oaths) and honest to a fault, yet even she is not a card-board character with no motivation beyond "because it's right", and she even slips up, or comes close to really slipping up, a number of times in various ways. However, both sides have their demons and inhuman characters, and both sides have their good people who are appalled at the scale of death and destruction that is being wrought upon billions of human beings scattered across hundreds of light-years, yet still fight because it is their duty, however it has been defined by them, or however it has been thrust upon them.
The novels define some pretty deep political underpinnings to the story, which work on both sides to motivate characters, in addition to their own personal experiences which are also told to the reader with a deep richness of content.
I was reading a scene about a "People's Republic" admiral and her flag's executive officer, along with a "Citizen Commissioner" who is a part of the story ostensibly to watch the naval officers and ensure their loyalty to the regime. They had all three begun to realize how far astray their empire had gone, how much they'd been lied to, and that the deaths they were causing, on both sides, in the line of their duty, were getting harder and harder to justify as they realized how much they'd been lied to by their leaders.
The word "sheeple" entered my head in relation to the population of the "People's Republic", as well as many of their military's officers and enlisted personnel, and how they were following along behind the machinations of their rulers like angry sheep (I also ruminated in how much of the "good guys" tended to act like angry sheeple as well, BTW). Rulers who are shown to have a very human side, who are truly concerned about the future of the Republic, but who are equally without mercy and feel justified in the means to their end - reformation of their Republic and removal of the requirements of the "Dolists". It's just that they can't quite get it done - the reality of life and the population of tens of billions of humans has proved to have an inertia that has almost taken things out of their control. And the atrocities that they commit in their "cause", and the attempt to maintain control, are truly horrendous.
I know, maybe I didn't have to describe so much of the novels' basic theme (so far) to come to the point, but I would like to reflect on real-life now.
Why do so many people want to control the lives of so many others? Because they have been told for countless millennia, through an immense number of generations, that the rulers know best, which has always been backed up by force. We've been told that without government we would all devolve into chaos, death and murder in the streets, that only governments can make things better. think Stockholm syndrome on a vast scale of humans and time - of course we all sympathize with this viewpoint that government is a necessity, whether it's actually correct or not.
When things don't get better, the people in control point to things they supposedly had no control over and blame everyone else for their lack of ability to make life perfect, or even better than the last group who tried. But it seems that the only time things get better are after the cusp of revolutions (not that all revolutions bring about good change), where large numbers of people decide "enough with the old way." Unfortunately, in many, if not most, cases, things manage to go back toward the way they were as power concentrates and natural-born politicians whip the sheeple into a frenzy.
Take welfare, as an example. I don't think there are many people who would argue against the idea that some people, who claim welfare benefits at any level, are "gaming" the system to either get any benefits, or more benefits, that they are not actually qualified to receive. I think a fewer number of people see that giving people something for free will cause those people to move toward dependency and away from independence. Fewer people seem to see that there are actually people who count on that dependence for their own power.
People who argue in favor of welfare defend the fraud that unavoidably happens as a necessity to be tolerated in order "cover" all of the people that are "in trouble". We simply have to build up the number of auditors and enforcers in order to reduce the number of scammers that take money they "shouldn't". After all, is it not our "christian" (I'd really rather use "human") duty to care for our fellow sentients? A very worthy ideal, by the way.
Many of the ideas of these programs came from smaller groups of people in the form of promises to larger groups of people. Two main groups: Those who want to assuage their consciences that they are doing their duty to their fellow man, and those who are truly in trouble, for whatever reason. However, there are a number of people who want to belong to the latter group who consist of people who blame others for their failures (whether it be by action or inaction) and and others who look to take advantage of the kindness of others.
The problem that I see is that pure, un-throttled charity tends to create a dependence. Particularly if the people who are given charity are told "it's not their fault", that "the system is stacked against you." Or "you deserve every bit as much as the rich people do." It gives them a sense that they deserve to receive handouts, that others should have to work for them because they have been so mistreated for all these years. It gives them at least a little bit of incentive to welcome the "donations" and feel less and less embarrassment for what they receive for simply existing as "victims".
Most people won't just give up their money to someone else, unless they are forced to. People like to think they have the choice in how they can spend their hard-earned money. If they are spending it on something they consider necessary, even though it might hurt them, the majority are willing to do so. Politicians play on this by creating a problem, or misrepresenting a problem, or creating a problematic solution to the problem, which gives them the leverage to get others to agree with them. Once enough people agree with them, they all of the sudden have a large amount of power to do things that a possibly large, but not large enough, number of people think is crazy.
Everyone on the "correct" side "knows" that it's best to just take money from everyone else and give it to those who really are in trouble, right? Now we start dealing with peer pressure and guilt. Oh man, how can you possibly not see that the kid in the street with no money, rags for clothes, begging for his meals, needs "our" help? We have to get the parents the money they need to get that kid some clothes and some food! Emergency! Everyone pull out their wallets and their purses, their ATM cards and their credit cards, whatever it takes! If you don't, you're an asshole!
I wonder why it is that people who live around there can't handle this themselves? If they feel like the correct action to take is to give money to the parents, let them do it. I can guarantee you that there will be people who will do this. I'm one of them, I always have, and I know others who are like this.
Of course, then we get into "well, the parents are abusing the kids. That has to stop." Things get a little more iffy after this. No one in their right mind wants to see kids abused. One problem is, what do you consider abuse? Another problem is, how should the situation be dealt with?
Some people might see raising children in an Amish community as a form of abuse. Others might see raising kids in a Southern Baptist, fire-and-brimstone setting as abuse, particularly if the father or mother is scaring the bejeesus out of their children with tales of the devil waiting to eat you if you get out of line. Others might see letting their children do whatever they want, in an attempt to let them make their own decisions, as abuse. Not raising their kids as "christian" or "muslim" or even "taoist". And so on. There are a few things most everyone agrees on as child abuse, but the line can shift quite a bit until they are smaller groups who believe this.
You can't save everyone. You just can't. And sometimes trying to save everyone, with all the good intention in the world, does even more damage to others who were not even previously affected. The US has played the American people, as an example, on exactly this theme with our "foreign adventures." And the funny thing is, each side sees what their leaders did, for the most part, as the correct thing. While the Republicans may have been more responsible for the start of a lot of killing, particularly of innocent civilians more recently, look at Bill Clinton who bombed Iraq the day before his impeachment hearing was supposed to start. Or Kennedy and later Johnson who were instrumental in escalating a French-Asian localized issue into something huge, with uncounted civilian deaths, all because they didn't want Communism to spread to the US, under the guise of freeing all of those people from the horrors of communism. Unfortunately, all of the dead and maimed didn't come so well out of that, not to mention those who had a decade and a half of horror running through their lives, and in the end it was all for nothing.
Are we the cops of the world? Obviously no one outside our country had much to say about these things. Who elected the US as WWC (World-Wide Cops)? No one can even claim "social contract" for something like this, we have to resort to "because it's right" to stop the killing and oppression of innocents! No matter what those innocents thought. How may did we save by killing those we killed?
And where do we stop with this? We certainly rule our own people with an iron fist. Hell, we can't even "save" our own people, much less those cultures we don't even understand and have no business butting into to begin with.
There is little personal responsibility left in this world. People will walk by a beggar without even talking to him or her, to provide some sort of personal contact the person may need, but it is something that many people could provide. No one will take a beggar into a restaurant to eat a meal, talk to him or her, find out what that person may need, and maybe even offer that person a job (even if it's cutting their yard!). Too many people see a poor person and think internally "ah, I feel bad, but I can't even think about interacting with that dreg of society. But poor dude or dudette."
And yet they have little embarrassment supporting taking money from other people who, like them, have the means to live decently. They take the choice away and make their feelings and concerns, which they do nothing about normally, a requirement for everyone.
Why? "Because it's right." "Because it's the way it has to be." "Because if I don't, I'm an uncaring asshole and no one can see me like that."
Because no one really likes to tackle the serious problems and leaves it up to the politicians to promise things they can't deliver in order to enhance their own personal power, or ego, or whatever combination of things it is that makes any politician promise things he or she cannot deliver with a straight face, using the system that was supposedly created to ensure equal opportunity, not equality, to the masses. And people go right on believing them because "it's the Democrats' fault our economy sucks" or "it's the Republicans' fault that we have so many poor people" and so on, ad infinitum.
We should teach more personal independence and responsibility, not seek to encumber others with our charity. We should seek to lift the unfortunate among us by giving them true equality, not by restricting the rights and properties of others. We should push each person to be dependent only upon themselves, while helping those who come to us in true need. We should have the power to decide who we want to help, and who we choose not to help and let our own conscience be the guide, not the conscience of people unknown to us. Nor should we force anyone else to help us by a tyranny of the masses.
You've all heard "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." What about "concentrated power seeks corruption?"
My opinions, not any kind of "facts", yet opinions based on more than 50 years of working hard with little help from anyone else except myself. I don't think badly of other people in relation to their opinions, unless they try to force me into actions that I disapprove of, or try to prevent me from espousing my beliefs in a reasonable manner.
I invite others to comment on any side of the various arguments raised herein, if they are so willing, or to completely ignore my comments as irrelevant. Don't look at my text as a reason to think like a libertarian, but rather examine your own beliefs and see if you really think we're all doing the right thing, and suggest something that would fix the problem.
A mind-puzzle we should all be interested in talking about in a reasonable manner. My opinion is Libertarianism or not, we at least need to dilute the amount of power narcissists and sociopaths have access to in our name, while using the support of the "sheeple" against the People.
BTW - if you all are thinking this has nothing to do with being an ex-pat in Argentina...well...
Today, while I was luxuriating in a hot bath in a large bathtub (though quite old, the layer of paint the owners used to make it look acceptable visually before we rented are peeling quite nicely, unfortunately) on a rainy, chilly beginning-of-winter afternoon, I was reading the tenth installment in a very entertaining science fiction novel series. It's space opera, by which I'm usually not all that well entertained. However, this series is well-written, with a large cast of well-developed, varied characters and has a hard-science edge to it; the known science it uses is accurate and the science it projects into the future is mostly consistent with what we think we know today.
The story is about an interstellar war between a monarchy which inhabits a double-star system with a total of three habitable planets, which has gathered, by friendly means, a significant group of allied systems to defend itself against an aggressive "People's Republic", a very large group of star systems whose aggression (they have taken the star systems in their empire mostly by force) is fueled by the need to expand their territory in order to support the "Dolists" who were promised plenty of food, shelter, and "quality of life" from the "profits" of their economic system, without the need to labor if they so desired.
One of the things I really like about the novels is the ability of the author to refrain from painting one side as demons and the other side as angels. Of course, there is a preferred "side" in the books, the monarchy and it's allies, along with a primary hero who is self-less, dutiful (to her beliefs and her oaths) and honest to a fault, yet even she is not a card-board character with no motivation beyond "because it's right", and she even slips up, or comes close to really slipping up, a number of times in various ways. However, both sides have their demons and inhuman characters, and both sides have their good people who are appalled at the scale of death and destruction that is being wrought upon billions of human beings scattered across hundreds of light-years, yet still fight because it is their duty, however it has been defined by them, or however it has been thrust upon them.
The novels define some pretty deep political underpinnings to the story, which work on both sides to motivate characters, in addition to their own personal experiences which are also told to the reader with a deep richness of content.
I was reading a scene about a "People's Republic" admiral and her flag's executive officer, along with a "Citizen Commissioner" who is a part of the story ostensibly to watch the naval officers and ensure their loyalty to the regime. They had all three begun to realize how far astray their empire had gone, how much they'd been lied to, and that the deaths they were causing, on both sides, in the line of their duty, were getting harder and harder to justify as they realized how much they'd been lied to by their leaders.
The word "sheeple" entered my head in relation to the population of the "People's Republic", as well as many of their military's officers and enlisted personnel, and how they were following along behind the machinations of their rulers like angry sheep (I also ruminated in how much of the "good guys" tended to act like angry sheeple as well, BTW). Rulers who are shown to have a very human side, who are truly concerned about the future of the Republic, but who are equally without mercy and feel justified in the means to their end - reformation of their Republic and removal of the requirements of the "Dolists". It's just that they can't quite get it done - the reality of life and the population of tens of billions of humans has proved to have an inertia that has almost taken things out of their control. And the atrocities that they commit in their "cause", and the attempt to maintain control, are truly horrendous.
I know, maybe I didn't have to describe so much of the novels' basic theme (so far) to come to the point, but I would like to reflect on real-life now.
Why do so many people want to control the lives of so many others? Because they have been told for countless millennia, through an immense number of generations, that the rulers know best, which has always been backed up by force. We've been told that without government we would all devolve into chaos, death and murder in the streets, that only governments can make things better. think Stockholm syndrome on a vast scale of humans and time - of course we all sympathize with this viewpoint that government is a necessity, whether it's actually correct or not.
When things don't get better, the people in control point to things they supposedly had no control over and blame everyone else for their lack of ability to make life perfect, or even better than the last group who tried. But it seems that the only time things get better are after the cusp of revolutions (not that all revolutions bring about good change), where large numbers of people decide "enough with the old way." Unfortunately, in many, if not most, cases, things manage to go back toward the way they were as power concentrates and natural-born politicians whip the sheeple into a frenzy.
Take welfare, as an example. I don't think there are many people who would argue against the idea that some people, who claim welfare benefits at any level, are "gaming" the system to either get any benefits, or more benefits, that they are not actually qualified to receive. I think a fewer number of people see that giving people something for free will cause those people to move toward dependency and away from independence. Fewer people seem to see that there are actually people who count on that dependence for their own power.
People who argue in favor of welfare defend the fraud that unavoidably happens as a necessity to be tolerated in order "cover" all of the people that are "in trouble". We simply have to build up the number of auditors and enforcers in order to reduce the number of scammers that take money they "shouldn't". After all, is it not our "christian" (I'd really rather use "human") duty to care for our fellow sentients? A very worthy ideal, by the way.
Many of the ideas of these programs came from smaller groups of people in the form of promises to larger groups of people. Two main groups: Those who want to assuage their consciences that they are doing their duty to their fellow man, and those who are truly in trouble, for whatever reason. However, there are a number of people who want to belong to the latter group who consist of people who blame others for their failures (whether it be by action or inaction) and and others who look to take advantage of the kindness of others.
The problem that I see is that pure, un-throttled charity tends to create a dependence. Particularly if the people who are given charity are told "it's not their fault", that "the system is stacked against you." Or "you deserve every bit as much as the rich people do." It gives them a sense that they deserve to receive handouts, that others should have to work for them because they have been so mistreated for all these years. It gives them at least a little bit of incentive to welcome the "donations" and feel less and less embarrassment for what they receive for simply existing as "victims".
Most people won't just give up their money to someone else, unless they are forced to. People like to think they have the choice in how they can spend their hard-earned money. If they are spending it on something they consider necessary, even though it might hurt them, the majority are willing to do so. Politicians play on this by creating a problem, or misrepresenting a problem, or creating a problematic solution to the problem, which gives them the leverage to get others to agree with them. Once enough people agree with them, they all of the sudden have a large amount of power to do things that a possibly large, but not large enough, number of people think is crazy.
Everyone on the "correct" side "knows" that it's best to just take money from everyone else and give it to those who really are in trouble, right? Now we start dealing with peer pressure and guilt. Oh man, how can you possibly not see that the kid in the street with no money, rags for clothes, begging for his meals, needs "our" help? We have to get the parents the money they need to get that kid some clothes and some food! Emergency! Everyone pull out their wallets and their purses, their ATM cards and their credit cards, whatever it takes! If you don't, you're an asshole!
I wonder why it is that people who live around there can't handle this themselves? If they feel like the correct action to take is to give money to the parents, let them do it. I can guarantee you that there will be people who will do this. I'm one of them, I always have, and I know others who are like this.
Of course, then we get into "well, the parents are abusing the kids. That has to stop." Things get a little more iffy after this. No one in their right mind wants to see kids abused. One problem is, what do you consider abuse? Another problem is, how should the situation be dealt with?
Some people might see raising children in an Amish community as a form of abuse. Others might see raising kids in a Southern Baptist, fire-and-brimstone setting as abuse, particularly if the father or mother is scaring the bejeesus out of their children with tales of the devil waiting to eat you if you get out of line. Others might see letting their children do whatever they want, in an attempt to let them make their own decisions, as abuse. Not raising their kids as "christian" or "muslim" or even "taoist". And so on. There are a few things most everyone agrees on as child abuse, but the line can shift quite a bit until they are smaller groups who believe this.
You can't save everyone. You just can't. And sometimes trying to save everyone, with all the good intention in the world, does even more damage to others who were not even previously affected. The US has played the American people, as an example, on exactly this theme with our "foreign adventures." And the funny thing is, each side sees what their leaders did, for the most part, as the correct thing. While the Republicans may have been more responsible for the start of a lot of killing, particularly of innocent civilians more recently, look at Bill Clinton who bombed Iraq the day before his impeachment hearing was supposed to start. Or Kennedy and later Johnson who were instrumental in escalating a French-Asian localized issue into something huge, with uncounted civilian deaths, all because they didn't want Communism to spread to the US, under the guise of freeing all of those people from the horrors of communism. Unfortunately, all of the dead and maimed didn't come so well out of that, not to mention those who had a decade and a half of horror running through their lives, and in the end it was all for nothing.
Are we the cops of the world? Obviously no one outside our country had much to say about these things. Who elected the US as WWC (World-Wide Cops)? No one can even claim "social contract" for something like this, we have to resort to "because it's right" to stop the killing and oppression of innocents! No matter what those innocents thought. How may did we save by killing those we killed?
And where do we stop with this? We certainly rule our own people with an iron fist. Hell, we can't even "save" our own people, much less those cultures we don't even understand and have no business butting into to begin with.
There is little personal responsibility left in this world. People will walk by a beggar without even talking to him or her, to provide some sort of personal contact the person may need, but it is something that many people could provide. No one will take a beggar into a restaurant to eat a meal, talk to him or her, find out what that person may need, and maybe even offer that person a job (even if it's cutting their yard!). Too many people see a poor person and think internally "ah, I feel bad, but I can't even think about interacting with that dreg of society. But poor dude or dudette."
And yet they have little embarrassment supporting taking money from other people who, like them, have the means to live decently. They take the choice away and make their feelings and concerns, which they do nothing about normally, a requirement for everyone.
Why? "Because it's right." "Because it's the way it has to be." "Because if I don't, I'm an uncaring asshole and no one can see me like that."
Because no one really likes to tackle the serious problems and leaves it up to the politicians to promise things they can't deliver in order to enhance their own personal power, or ego, or whatever combination of things it is that makes any politician promise things he or she cannot deliver with a straight face, using the system that was supposedly created to ensure equal opportunity, not equality, to the masses. And people go right on believing them because "it's the Democrats' fault our economy sucks" or "it's the Republicans' fault that we have so many poor people" and so on, ad infinitum.
We should teach more personal independence and responsibility, not seek to encumber others with our charity. We should seek to lift the unfortunate among us by giving them true equality, not by restricting the rights and properties of others. We should push each person to be dependent only upon themselves, while helping those who come to us in true need. We should have the power to decide who we want to help, and who we choose not to help and let our own conscience be the guide, not the conscience of people unknown to us. Nor should we force anyone else to help us by a tyranny of the masses.
You've all heard "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." What about "concentrated power seeks corruption?"
My opinions, not any kind of "facts", yet opinions based on more than 50 years of working hard with little help from anyone else except myself. I don't think badly of other people in relation to their opinions, unless they try to force me into actions that I disapprove of, or try to prevent me from espousing my beliefs in a reasonable manner.
I invite others to comment on any side of the various arguments raised herein, if they are so willing, or to completely ignore my comments as irrelevant. Don't look at my text as a reason to think like a libertarian, but rather examine your own beliefs and see if you really think we're all doing the right thing, and suggest something that would fix the problem.
A mind-puzzle we should all be interested in talking about in a reasonable manner. My opinion is Libertarianism or not, we at least need to dilute the amount of power narcissists and sociopaths have access to in our name, while using the support of the "sheeple" against the People.
BTW - if you all are thinking this has nothing to do with being an ex-pat in Argentina...well...
