Self-made People

We, here where I live, seem to be surrounded by people who think they got where they were with sheer hard work, and without any help from anybody.

This is a frustrating attitude to be confronted with regularly.  I am known as a liberal, and my friends keep very quiet about political philosophies (when I'm around) because they take the attitude that Arch is an idiot, and he thinks, just because his family got a lot of assistance from ... various sources, that everybody needs a leg up.

People like Arch, they figure, must need a lot of help, because they are so helpless, and are so misguided, and ... yackety yak, blah, blah.  Well, back when I was in grad school, and making just about $360 before taxes, we were put on the WIC program, because my wife seemed a little anemic.  That's it.  I'm eternally grateful for the food assistance, and I'm sure our daughter benefited from the improved nutrition.  And, obviously, we would be less likely to have to get into medical trouble because of the improved nutrition.  Oh, and I mustn't forget: we attended the Well-Baby Clinic in Allegheny County, which gave free inoculations to newborns and infants up to three years old.  That was good.  Now some would take the view that everyone should be responsible for their own damn kids and their inoculations.  But listen.  If a kid gets sick with some preventable disease and spreads it around the school, it becomes everybody's problem.  Ah, but these people will reply, that is what we have lawsuits for.  So there you have the genius of American Society.  An answer to every question, which involves a delicate balance of personal financial resources, and legal recourse.  People who have never been in a lawsuit have a rosy idea of how effective the courts are at addressing problems that have not been taken care of by some sort of social safety-net.  Unfortunately, the American litigation process only works for the most wealthy.  It does not work for the average citizen, unless a lawyer can be persuaded to take the case on pro bono, with an interest in any resulting financial award.

Oddly enough, I was so successful in the areas in which I was successful, because (A) I was naturally musical, and I discovered that mathematics came easily to me, (B) my family encouraged me to be engaged in lots of extra-curricular activities, because they were both that way: music, theater, history, politics, psychology, education, social services, all these things were interesting to me, and I got to know a lot of people of different sorts, rather than being surrounded by people who thought exactly like I did.  I was also (C) encouraged to read widely, and in rational thinking, which is to say that philosophical positions based purely on prejudice were ridiculed.  Finally, (D) though my parents were deeply religious and in fact pillars of the church, they did not consider religion as having first position over science.

They are both dead, and so I am not in a position to query their take on Marriage Equality and things like that, and there is an even likelihood that they might object to it in principle, but then, they don't have to live in a world where that level of diversity has to be confronted daily, and so they would have had the liberty of disapproving of it.  We should support it, because such an enormous fraction of the population now has the opportunity to live happily with spouses of their choice, and so many among our friends would probably let us know that they have an alternate sexual preference if they were sure that we would support that.

This is the problem.  Insularity breeds insularity.  I live in Central Pennsylvania, and a few decades ago, few of my neighbors had ventured further than Altoona.  The few that have escaped the gravitational well of this area hate to come back, probably because they find the people back home impossibly insular.  In contrast, they love getting together with other Pennsylvanians-in-exile, because they do love the region.  They love the people, too, but in small doses.

But back to the main topic, namely that everyone should look after themselves, everyone should be given the liberty to keep the money they earn, and not have to pay taxes.  Some would prefer that all schools be private, so that those who can afford it can send their kids to better schools, which are not cluttered up with the children of poor people.

Some would prefer to live in exclusive neighborhoods in which they would build their own superior roads, have them plowed privately, after a snow fall, have their produce brought to their doorsteps by refrigerated private truck, have their own private militia to protect their homes and neighborhoods (so that they need not pay taxes for policemen), and have their own helicopter pads in their backyards, so that they don't have to take the public highways, rubbing shoulders with the masses, and using smelly public rest areas.

And the wildlife, of course, has to look after itself.  Bald Eagles have to pull their own weight; if they're endangered, it's their own damn fault.  If a species can't survive in the 21st century, it jolly well deserves to die out.

What about those African killer bees?  If the customs and the coast guard had been doing their jobs, we would not have them here.  Well, we just have to manage with however we can pollinate our crops using special tractors, or whatever; maybe we can breed some sort of artificial bee that can do it for us, or can't we spray pollen on the crops?  If we don't have to pay taxes, we could afford all this stuff.

What about gasoline for helicopters?  Well, see, the economy would take care of itself.  The company that can sell the most fuel for the least money would survive, and we would buy cheap gas from them.  The government is encouraging oil companies that should not exist, because they charge just too damn much.  (Swearing is something conservatives do only in private, so consider this rant a private one!)  Prices would go up if gasoline becomes a monopoly?  That's nonsense.  If prices get too high, someone is sure to start up a new gasoline company that sells it cheap, and the monopoly will crumble.

That's the problem with amateur conservatives: they don't know the principles of anything, really, because they have limited success with the little that they have the imagination to try, and they extrapolate that they know all that needs to be known about everything.  We can all go it alone in every sense, if only we were allowed to keep all the money we make without having to pay taxes.

The ordinary citizen often has very little idea of the myriad ways in which government subsidies and government programs protect them and facilitate services that appear on the face of it to be delivered automatically.

Mapping.  Zoning.  Water purification.  Cell towers.  Airport.  Weather reporting.  Developing new drugs.  Training doctors.  Keeping air quality good enough.  (Hah.  I'd like to see private citizens keeping their air clean.)  Keeping streams stocked with fish.  Maintaining the Internet.  Making sure restaurant food is safe, by and large, except for instances where the inspectors were bribed by your rich neighbors.  Making sure that fires don't break out in highly populated areas.  Making sure that zoning laws are enforced, so that there is no recurrent flooding (especially in freshly developed areas).

Ignorance rules in conservative areas, because many conservatives hate to be bothered by bad news, and like to live in ignorance.  When Democrats bring up unpleasant facts, the GOP folk tend to identify those unpleasant scenarios with the Democrats, because they'd never even heard of these things before Democrats started stinking up the place.

I'm going to blog about why I hate business so much very soon.  It's not that business is bad for us.  It's because business are not good at running everything all the time.  It should not be a basic principle that what's good for business is good for everybody.  That's an axiom that we must abandon, no matter how easy adopting that fallacy makes things.

Arch