tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8053627019760211350.post3108398332926086071..comments2022-10-28T00:55:23.215-07:00Comments on Prax Americana: Defending the One Percent... PoorlyC.J. Caswellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10105689230744789436noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8053627019760211350.post-17523571081507759322018-01-29T21:50:31.014-08:002018-01-29T21:50:31.014-08:00Wow, been a while since I looked these over. On th...Wow, been a while since I looked these over. On the off chance you still give a shit, here goes:<br /><br />The ideal of a people freed from material deprivation and left free to value whatever they like in other areas of life sounds great, of course it does. Thinking of that as an entitlement of some kind fundamentally devalues the others who have to spend large portions of their lives working to maintain the system to provides it, but we can put that aside for now, because I don't feel like getting into some argument about how productivity for nothing should be an act of love or pride for some people, or how greater portions of wealth would justify their time and attention being spent in service. Let's just stick to personal choice and social behavior. <br /><br />We have a precedent, and that's in the domain of violence. In the Bad Old Days, protection from violence was largely a broad social and personal responsibility. This is why some Americans still think everyone should have a gun. Military and police have largely made them irrelevant for most people, which should make them respected institutions in society, right?<br /><br />Obviously not. <br /><br />Violence is now seen as a pure pathology and those institutions are seen, by the people who gain the most from them, as root causes of the problem. There is no respect. There are protests and demonization. Rhetorically, they are players in a cycle of violent reprisal, actively creating exactly what they ostensibly exist to stop. The kids can think this way precisely because violence is so alien to them. Nonviolence is now considered normal, deviations of it a mark of mental problems created by a corrupt social environment, and their protectors are now oppressors creating demand for themselves by spreading a psychological abnormality that flies in the face of people's "natural" abhorrence to violence.<br /><br />This is historically idiotic and denies the controlling power of violence and its role in all social order, but they think of it as the definition of sanity.<br /><br />Can this be extended to economic welfare? I think it can. In fact, I know it can. You read in the post up there how people are blowing off any obligation to church and family, right? There is an economic component to that. The church and the family are support systems, and their stability over time has come from their necessity. Parents not only cared for their children, but expected their children to care for them in old age, and to deny that duty was considered shameful. Religion was essentially the brand name of altruism for the needy prior to the creation of the welfare state. <br /><br />Now they aren't needed, and those institutions are dying. So much the better, you might say: people should not subscribe to a religion for the fringe benefits and should not love their family because they might need them some day. Love should not be based on exchange, it should be free. Right?<br /><br />No. Soldiers and cops DO still protect. Violence would still make sense to sane people if it were not met with threat of further violence. And the ties that bind a people are, in part, economic. Turn material comfort into an entitlement, and this continues and probably gets worse over time. It looks like alienation, self-absorption, and a complete disregard for those who are old, unattractive, or lacking in charisma. It leads to further shallowness. And I don't think it is an accident that this disproportionally hurts men.<br /><br />The economic demand to share the burden of work builds social cohesion. On pure psychology, entitlements create isolation, while sharing hardship creates meaning. It gives choices relevance that they have consequences. Take that answer if the obvious exploitations of the productive by the nonproductive don't work for you because you don't see them as "fair". It's a big, diverse game. You can choose the work and the goods that you consider fair, but if you consider them to have any value at all, you shouldn't demand a system that lets you take them for granted.C.J. Caswellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10105689230744789436noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8053627019760211350.post-26687986842919322272014-06-14T03:04:51.269-07:002014-06-14T03:04:51.269-07:00What's wrong with the liberal individualism yo...What's wrong with the liberal individualism you describe? I'd say it's okay for a government to only "care about people" in terms of comfort and material possessions. Everything else in life is a matter of personal choice and influence from other people.ABCDEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04040557730359081599noreply@blogger.com