Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction Message Board

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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction

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To: ManyMoose who wrote (66019)	5/8/2008 10:07:48 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) of 90947

Here's some explanatino for those who can't understand what O'Rourke was getting at: Pursuing wealth (and/or more modestly, just making a living), as long as its done within the bounds of law and ethics, means doing something that someone finds worthwhile enough to pay for. So such a person is almost certain to be doing something that's useful to society even though they are doing it for personal self-interest or "greedy" reasons. Foregoing practical concerns to pursue idealistic goals, especially idealistic social goals, usually involves telling other people they should be doing something different than what they would do on their own. We don't have to look very hard to find "idealistic" people wanting to change how other folks go about their business. People want to tell others what kind of vehicles people should drive, what kind of light bulbs they should use, how their power should be generated, where companies should and shouldn't be allowed to search for resources, what kinds of people should be on corporate boards, how many of what kinds of people should be admitted to elite colleges, whether we should be allowed to smoke in public, what we should and shouldn't eat - I could go on and on. Such "idealistic" folks inevitably seem to try to get the government to mandate their idealistic ideas. And these "idealistic" things the idealists get the government to impose on people usually end up being not very useful to society at all, and sometimes downright destructive. The ethanol subsidies and mandates are a nice example - a purportedly good thing (biofuel) ends up driving food prices up around the world and destroying more and more of the equatorial rain forest to grow more crops. People pursuing wealth or just generally making a living, however, generally restrict themselves to voluntary appeals to buy their product or service and base those appeals on a claim their product or service will make the potential customer happier some way or other. No coercion involved.

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