If the society truly wanted to promote that ethic, they might be given the tools somewhere along the way.
Basically you are saying that if we (society) want people to be self sufficient, we have to teach them to be, correct? If they haven't learned to be, then it is our failure (as a society) not their own?
Doesn't this in some way, say that someone else, besides yourself, is responsible for your prosperity? That society is in some way responsible to "give you the tools"? Thank you for making my point, it shows how deeply ingrained the idea that people shouldn't have to be responsible for their own welfare is in this country.
People are not prepared to actually take their lives into their own hands.
How condescending. How did your forefathers get here? Mine took their lives in their own hands and crossed the ocean for a better life. Some of our forefathers (and mothers) walked across the continent next to a covered wagon. Are you saying that people are in some way less capable NOW, than they were 150-200 years ago? Less educated? Have fewer tools at their disposal? I learned about financial planning at a three week night class offered by a local college, it cost me $50. I took it because I realized that I didn't know a freakin thing about how money worked. Most, if not all, of that simple course is available free, online to anyone who treks off to a public library and uses the computers there. All they lack is the desire to admit they know nothing.
The only thing the government can do for people to prosper is to provide an environment that allows free markets, protection for private property and the rule of law. To understand where governments fail is to look at those countries which have strayed the farthest from providing those three things, or like our own continually pass laws which erode those concepts. The cheapest labor on the planet comes from those countries that have never developed the principle of private property nor had the rule of law to protect it. |
