Seems to me a lot of that comes from a feeling of "it's not fair." It's not fair that someone else should live in luxury and I don't, It's not fair that they get to travel when they want and I'm struggling to feed my family. It's not fair that my great-great-great-grandparents were slaves and yours were the master. It's not fair that I am required to actually seek my place in society and fit in and try to be productive - it's too much work. It's not fair that the company wants to lay me off and I have to find another job.
But that's ok - that's one of the reasons the founders of the US said we were free to pursue happiness, not to have it. It was something unique around the world that a country put itself together from scratch with those sentiments, that each person was a sovereign entity, answerable only to himself and the laws of the society in which he lived - laws which were not meant to be restrictive but to provide a framework that everyone could use to ensure fairness amongst all.
But, of course, people are people and that very concept of personal freedom is too easily thrown away by people who think "it isn't fair." And people being people they will try to find ways around the laws. Instead of making people personally responsible, the trend for the last century or so in the US has been to make the government responsible for their well-being beyond enforcing laws. Why? Because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. People tend to take things to far for "everyone's good." Things that start out well-meaning can steamroll into a huge, heavy burden that flattens all in its path.
Indeed, there have been many capitalist rapists that have given capitalism a bad name. But look back at history and see how that happened. Look at any monopoly, for example, and you will find that it can't exist without government (or authoritative) support. Also, people talk about the horrors of child labor in the preceding century or so and point as that to one of the "horrors" of capitalism.
The fact is, the US a century or so ago was a lot like many of the South American countries today as far as standard of living goes, for the poor. My grandmother describes life very much like what I've seen amongst the poor in Paraguay - the difference being the work ethic and other cultural points of pride that led to improving life rather than accepting it. My wife's family start working from the time they are old enough to walk and carry things. They work in the fields, the work in the house, when they get old enough they start looking for other jobs to do outside the family to try to bring in money.
The truth is, they would LOVE to have a steady factory around the corner where the older kids could go work to earn real money instead of slaving in the fields and, for example, watching the rains or the bugs take their crop, or a lack of water because they have no pump to get water out of their well, etc.
Life was a lot like that a century or more in the States. People today tend to look back and think of life then in terms of their life now and can't imagine how anyone could let their kids work in a factory, for god's sake! How terrible! But very, very few people in the States in more "modern" times ever had to scratch a living in the soil at a subsistence level. Times were very different and the industrial revolution and capitalism provided one step up for the poor, a step that many Paraguayans would welcome now, in this day and age, but they don't have.
We have moved beyond that in the States. When I was younger, it was much easier to get started in a business, to find a job, etc. As an entrepreneur in the last decade plus, I found it increasingly more difficult, expensive and downright painful to do business in the States, to the point where I came down here to take advantage of far cheaper labor costs that even with taxes that had to be paid and other issues, I could make far more money hiring programmers here than I could there. I, and many like me, are being driven out of the US.
We are called unpatriotic, globalists, other unsavory names. We should put up with all the crap that the government has decided to lay on top of us and be glad that we, who are taking the risks and spending our own capital and sweating our asses off to make something, should pay high taxes and jump through idiotic hoops as an inefficient government tries to control things on a smaller and smaller scale.
Instead, if people in general took responsibility for their lives, held the political world responsible for its corruption and greed, and brought government to a point where it served us ALL by remaining out of our lives except to enforce true laws of fairness, we wouldn't need a Nanny State to take care of us.
That's my opinion, and that of a LOT of people. In fact, if the federal government wasn't so strong and oppressive, each state could decide for itself what it wanted to do and there could various experiments in how economies and laws work. Instead, we are stuck with a one-size-fits-all solution that has created a lot of unhappiness on both sides, and something has to give.
I say, everyone has a right to his or her opinion on the best way to do things. I'm not saying my way is better for everyone - it's almost certainly not. Neither is the Conservative or Liberal way. But we are stuck with a system that pushes the current fad onto all, with no hope of trying something really different because the faceless masses that run through the elected offices, and the even more nameless and faceless masses that are the bureaucracy generated by greed, selfishness and I-know-what's-best-for-everyone ensure that that will never happen. Once in power, always in power.
The US will be second or third world before too long. Others in the world will rise and fall as well, no one really heeding the call of logic when it comes to self-governing.
But that's ok - that's one of the reasons the founders of the US said we were free to pursue happiness, not to have it. It was something unique around the world that a country put itself together from scratch with those sentiments, that each person was a sovereign entity, answerable only to himself and the laws of the society in which he lived - laws which were not meant to be restrictive but to provide a framework that everyone could use to ensure fairness amongst all.
But, of course, people are people and that very concept of personal freedom is too easily thrown away by people who think "it isn't fair." And people being people they will try to find ways around the laws. Instead of making people personally responsible, the trend for the last century or so in the US has been to make the government responsible for their well-being beyond enforcing laws. Why? Because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. People tend to take things to far for "everyone's good." Things that start out well-meaning can steamroll into a huge, heavy burden that flattens all in its path.
Indeed, there have been many capitalist rapists that have given capitalism a bad name. But look back at history and see how that happened. Look at any monopoly, for example, and you will find that it can't exist without government (or authoritative) support. Also, people talk about the horrors of child labor in the preceding century or so and point as that to one of the "horrors" of capitalism.
The fact is, the US a century or so ago was a lot like many of the South American countries today as far as standard of living goes, for the poor. My grandmother describes life very much like what I've seen amongst the poor in Paraguay - the difference being the work ethic and other cultural points of pride that led to improving life rather than accepting it. My wife's family start working from the time they are old enough to walk and carry things. They work in the fields, the work in the house, when they get old enough they start looking for other jobs to do outside the family to try to bring in money.
The truth is, they would LOVE to have a steady factory around the corner where the older kids could go work to earn real money instead of slaving in the fields and, for example, watching the rains or the bugs take their crop, or a lack of water because they have no pump to get water out of their well, etc.
Life was a lot like that a century or more in the States. People today tend to look back and think of life then in terms of their life now and can't imagine how anyone could let their kids work in a factory, for god's sake! How terrible! But very, very few people in the States in more "modern" times ever had to scratch a living in the soil at a subsistence level. Times were very different and the industrial revolution and capitalism provided one step up for the poor, a step that many Paraguayans would welcome now, in this day and age, but they don't have.
We have moved beyond that in the States. When I was younger, it was much easier to get started in a business, to find a job, etc. As an entrepreneur in the last decade plus, I found it increasingly more difficult, expensive and downright painful to do business in the States, to the point where I came down here to take advantage of far cheaper labor costs that even with taxes that had to be paid and other issues, I could make far more money hiring programmers here than I could there. I, and many like me, are being driven out of the US.
We are called unpatriotic, globalists, other unsavory names. We should put up with all the crap that the government has decided to lay on top of us and be glad that we, who are taking the risks and spending our own capital and sweating our asses off to make something, should pay high taxes and jump through idiotic hoops as an inefficient government tries to control things on a smaller and smaller scale.
Instead, if people in general took responsibility for their lives, held the political world responsible for its corruption and greed, and brought government to a point where it served us ALL by remaining out of our lives except to enforce true laws of fairness, we wouldn't need a Nanny State to take care of us.
That's my opinion, and that of a LOT of people. In fact, if the federal government wasn't so strong and oppressive, each state could decide for itself what it wanted to do and there could various experiments in how economies and laws work. Instead, we are stuck with a one-size-fits-all solution that has created a lot of unhappiness on both sides, and something has to give.
I say, everyone has a right to his or her opinion on the best way to do things. I'm not saying my way is better for everyone - it's almost certainly not. Neither is the Conservative or Liberal way. But we are stuck with a system that pushes the current fad onto all, with no hope of trying something really different because the faceless masses that run through the elected offices, and the even more nameless and faceless masses that are the bureaucracy generated by greed, selfishness and I-know-what's-best-for-everyone ensure that that will never happen. Once in power, always in power.
The US will be second or third world before too long. Others in the world will rise and fall as well, no one really heeding the call of logic when it comes to self-governing.
But then my circle of acquaintances is a small sample compared to the entire country. But I look for keys to understanding all of this.
