Not lazy? Then help me with this argument.?
I am putting together an argument to point out a simple solution to the sad state of current affairs, and need your help. What I am shooting for is to make the point using as few peripheral statements and/or analogies as possible, while still driving it home to most anyone that takes a few minutes to think about it. If you don’t get the point, disagree with the point, or have something to add that I am missing, please do answer. Here it is in raw form…
Here is a hypothetical situation that can be related to real life:
There is a manufacturing plant just sitting there ready to run, but there are no people to run it. Among several other processes, it is set up to mine natural resources, generate power from those resources, grow crops, build shelters, i pods, televisions, and even provide childcare and Big Macs. The funding for building the plant came from banks which are waiting for the return on investment, but nothing happens. On the other side of the country there is a large group of people who are barely getting by on food stamps and other sorts of welfare. Many of these poor people are living in conditions you could hardly imagine. Of course, they are each individually living in these conditions off of 10 people in the working world that have things okay, if not well. The people working are resentful of the people living off of them; while those living off of them are resentful in return because they want what the others have. This seems to be a paradox. Is this our paradoxical paradise?
A great teacher once said something like, ‘if you give a man a fish, he will eat well for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he will eat well for a lifetime’. There is a simple lesson there that seems to apply to the problems faced in the hypothetical situation. It is pretty simple, even if the powers that be want to make it seem like it isn’t. A question must be asked at this point, “If it is really this simple, why haven’t the problems in this world been fixed?”.
Here are some keys to keeping a civilization healthy:
•Banks must loan money to entrepreneurs.
•Entrepreneurs must be encouraged to take a chance.
•Technical/basic skills training should be offered in school to those more suited for it than administrative work. More options must be available to the youth in school (if you enjoy doing it, it is likely your calling).
•Nature works on the principle of “survival of the fittest”; if nature was wrong, we wouldn’t be here. We are a product of nature. It is only when we think we know better when we get it wrong.
•You can’t make something out of nothing.
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Filed under: Entrepreneur Training
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So should banks who loan money to entrepreneurs who are encouraged to take risks get their money back when the entrepreneurial endeavor fails?
A third party, corporate, or governmental organization should administer an assessment test, and determine for the rest of your life what job and what education youre allowed to have?
We are better than animals. Just because nature operates on survival of the fittest doesnt mean that we should. If we did that, society and civilization wouldnt exist. We would have social, moral anarchy. Nothing would be achieved, there would be no progress and only degradation. We wouldnt even have agriculture, government, or scientific or technological advancement. If we all served ourselves we’d might as well be swinging from trees… even apes live in a coop community.
Not to mention you have to assume Darwinian evolution theory over creation theory. You have to assume that there are no moral imperatives we are charged with.
The real problem? The real problem is capitalism!
Capitalist greed. Inflated prices to increase profit margins, even though the product or the real-estate isnt worth its listed price. This is what happened in the real-estate as of late, but its true of every product on the market.
People working two jobs just to get wealthy while necessarily depriving another family of any chance at income.
Two incomes in one household (man and woman)… their goal is to increase their buying power to live better… but when every couple in the USA is doing it, all it does is inflate prices because money is more readily available. As much as that sucks, the consequence is that now every single man or single woman must now hold down two jobs a piece to make sufficient income to meet the costs of living that inflated prices have created. If you havent noticed, young bachelor(ette)s are forced to live with a dozen roommates… because no one of them can meet the basic costs of living that all individuals should theoretically be able to meet.
A 10% unemployment rate is sad, but when 10% of the employed are holding down two jobs a piece, my concerns change, suddenly I know why unemployment is so high and it is not at all surprising.
When you are forced to have two part time jobs because no one employer will give you full time status for fear of having to give you medical coverage or retirement plans…
Education is a detriment to the job market too. It used to be anyone with a GED could get a job. Nowadays the same position will be filled by someone with an Associates, or maybe even a Bachelors. The need for the education for the position has not increased… but the educational level of society has… making competition more fierce, unnecessarily. I could spend the rest of my life paying off my student loans on a Masters degree for a minimum wage paying job that I wouldnt have been able to get at all otherwise.
Unethical business practices or hiring practices. For one practice, employers would rather hire a 16 year old drop out because he is more compliant and ignorant of his rights. Minorities get preferential treatment because law is imposing required segregation.
Ex-military men are not favored either… you dont blame the politicians or the voters for the military decisions of the leadership… but when a war is being fought the military is ordered there and they have no choice in the matter… so if the war is controversial, dont hold it against the ex military man. I have seen employers try to preserve their reputations by refusing to hire an honourable ex-service-member, for no other reason that their military history.
Over-qualified? Hello? Im too skilled and too educated and too versatile to have any job at all?
Employers will promise work, explicitly ask you to stop looking for work because they dont want to lose you nor have you waste your time, then two weeks later they revoke the offer.
The “right” to live, liberty and happiness only applies to liberty and happiness, not life. Medical care must come out of your own pocket. Either you must pay for the medical bill yourself, or pay an insurance company. Medical should be socialized if it is a right.
Same with food. Food stamp users get mocked and criticised by the same people who horde all the working hours and make qualifying so difficult.
Employers will also expect you to pay for your own training in some industries. Not a degree. Not a certificate. Nothing that is practical elsewhere… a training program that is applicable only at the job in question… the profit is theirs… and they dont even guarantee you work after the fact.
Rights to justice? If you want to guarantee you lose the case, sure, accept the court-appointed attorney. He is novice. He is a near drop out from law school, still wet behind the ears. But the District Attorney who is prosecuting, or the Big Industry Corporate-paid army of lawyers the defendant has in a suit… you stand a chance all right.
Even medical insurers will wait and debate if your covered before they pay out… until after you die… then they dont have to pay out at all.
What about judges and politicians who accept money/bribes from corporations for passing laws that serve their interests? Its not illegal, but then again the politicians made sure of that first. So much for the little guys voice being heard. Politicians will also debate on their own pay increases – they pay themselves, after all – instead of debating the real issues at hand.
I think our capitalist economy is losing its stability. It started a long time ago when one capitalist decided to be greedy and unethical, and ruined the system. For every problem that is caused by greed is corrected, or dealt with, by those consumers who suffered. Instead of giving people medical care like they were supposed to, they dial down your hours and force you to get two jobs. Now hard working people with two jobs must also pay for medical insurance. There is just more and more compounding the problem.
The ‘hypothetical situation’ is almost true in many places.
What we see in the society at large is a magnified form of what an ‘average’ individual is.
We are trying to apply good economics, amidst people with poor perception of objectivist values. Added to that there is a wrong perception of ‘majority’s’ need, demand, right, democracy, freedom etc. And, the bulk of the people are logically driven, with scant regard to emotional balance. So any mismatch of expectations and desires, with the reality of the situation throws the emotions out of control. Whether such emotional imbalance waits to snowball and erupt collectively or whether it pours out in isolated manner is again situation dependant. The ‘survival of the fittest’ rule plays a crude part in all this. That is why ‘corruption’ gulps all rational thinking values. The resultant chaos leaves us with questions such as this!
It is the instinct of self-preservation (in a very narrow sense of the term) that happens to maintain whatever social order that we see today. All compromises, self-restraints etc happen due to this instinct of self preservation. The ego does the cosmetic window dressing, and make it look like a polished, sophisticated, elite society at times. That is why when it comes to confrontation on core issues of self interest, we find most high-social-status-people, coming down to street-fight, making a good harvest-day for media.
Yes, nature takes care of all our mis-deeds (even our extra-cleverness, over-smartness of “trading” emission-entitlements, instead of striving for reducing it).
But as an evolved species, it is expected of us to go beyond nature (not by-passing it), such that prosperity, economic well-being, and such other material aspects become purely incidental to our joyousness, and human-way-of-being!
(We do not wait for others to reform first. We do not wait to even reform others. We get transformed first. the rest has to happen then!)