The Force of Failure
Often, I believe that one critical component that separates the right from the left is responsibility. The right believes that holding people personally responsible, barring exceptional circumstances, is critical for a functioning society. The left appears to believe that people more often than not are victims: victims of others, victims of bad luck, victims of their own poor choices. Whatever the reason, the left seems most often to believe that people should be "saved" - rather than live with their own choices.
Perhaps hand in hand with this thinking is the notion of failure. Almost none of us ever want to fail. We want success, wealth, love, accolades, power - and failure figures into none of it. Oddly enough, however, failure is a necessity.
When government becomes a player and tries to prevent the failure of market participants, its decisions are almost invariably corrupted by the political process. Government overseers tend to be less attentive and careful because they are playing with taxpayers' money rather than their own. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the poster children for what is wrong with "state capitalism" or "economic fascism," in which the government leaves nominal ownership in the hands of private individuals but exercises control by regulation and taxation.
It is an illusion that the government and regulation can save us from ourselves. Do not misunderstand; I am not a nihilist and I completely agree that some government regulation is essential. Yet, the government should be an overseer - not a caretaker. When you remove the ability of people to fail, you remove their need to have good judgment, to work hard, to plan for the future - in essence, you remove most of the qualities that create successful adults.
Just like any leftist, I would love some ideal world where no one was poor, no one ever went hungry, no one went without medical care or love or shelter. Yet, unlike the leftists, I realize such a world is impossible to achieve.
The closest we can come to a world we want is to continue to stress that people be responsible for themselves - and to appreciate that if they are not, then failure is not only a very real option; it is a likely one.
Failure is a powerful and necessary force. Do not remove it; the results will be dire.
Posted by Peg Kaplan on Wednesday, March 24, 2010
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