McGraw, your above re-cap of the capitalist-"objectivist" mythos is illuminating. I am being serious.
Your point seems to be:
- Regardless of your "given" lot, you are free to make decisions
- Therefore, it is in your own hands whether you become wealthy or remain poor
- Freedom consists of each person "choosing" the level he wishes to attain, and attaining it
- And so "liberals" -- the great bogeyman -- are just fouling the gears when they demand what they consider fairness for the great bulk of a society.
Let's say we have two people. One of them is the son of a very wealthy lawyer, although -- since he is just a baby -- he is not a very wealthy lawyer himself. He's in a beautiful house, surrounded by love, books, and equipment (computers, etc.,) that help his early childhood tremendously. He goes to the best schools, and then "starts" the race to the top -- let's say, working for some middling salary in his dad's law-firm.
The other one is born to an unwed mother who has to work two jobs, and is "watched" (along w/a few siblings) by a neighborhood mom who doesn't work, who also has a few kids of her own. Nutrition is a matter of the best bang for the buck, catch as catch can -- a lot of sugary stuff, a lot of peanut butter sammiches. You go to school when someone catches you and makes you, and you do it because you're supposed to and because child protective services might take you from your mom if you're ALWAYS truant. After high school nobody you know has gone to college, and it's certainly not an expectation to even graduate high school. As he gets older, a gang takes the place of the lady next door, conferring an extra feeling of family and "protection" -- btw, that's what gang members say they feel from being in gangs.
Kid A puts forth effort-amount X, and achieves "his due" in life, a thriving law practice, because he "studied and worked hard." In truth it was all Bs and Cs, but that was good enough. His dad's a "legacy" at the law school he goes to, he makes it through, and on his fifth try he passes the bar.
Let's say Kid B is
exceptional. He works like hell, avoids all gangs & other trouble, and not only finishes high school -- which would by itself be a much bigger achievement in his world -- but actually goes to, finds a way to pay for, and graduates college with flying colors.
Kid B still has an undergraduate degree. Kid A is still set up with a job in a firm where he's
going to be a partner.
Kid A is a run of the mill kid with all the advantages. Kid B is the exceptional kid.
What's even more apparent is the example of what an "average" kid from Kid B's background can expect -- the kid with the inborn "smarts" and the effort level Kid A showed. That kid's condemned to severely limited outcomes.
We all see the
real world every day, and this is much more how it functions than your high-flying language. But let's analyze these two cases using your logic:
1. Kid A made the right decisions.
Well, he made enough right decisions to keep plodding along at whatever level of effort was necessary to get the desired outcomes. Check, I suppose. He made the "decision" to stay in school, where
nobody drops out, and made the "decision" to make it through undergrad, where a "gentleman's C" is the rule, and allows him to drink with his frat AND make "good enough grades." Then he makes the "decision" to apply to the legacy law school that accepts his crappy grades.
1a. Kid B made the right decisions.
This is also true: He stood out from among his peers, and did what nobody around him did. He was in the top 1% in potential and effort, and
this fact allowed him to overcome his circumstances. Once in college, he did nothing but work the job that helped allow him to pay off part of what he owes for loans, and apply himself to studies, conscious that his future is in his hands alone.
2. It is in each person's hands whether he becomes/remains poor, or whether he becomes/remains rich.
2a. Kid A remains rich. Kid B becomes middle-class. Kid A did in fact steer clear of remarkable incompetent self-destructive behavior (for which he might get a reality show, but would not take over the law firm.) So, once again, yeah sure, check. He didn't eff it up. He did enough to get by.
2b. Kid B applied exceptional focus and effort, from an age before most of our brains are even well enough formed to understand consequences fully (scientific fact,) all the way through college. His climb was much, much steeper, and he did more to get there, even though "there" is lower down on the hill than Kid A gets to.
3. Freedom consists of choosing to be what you need to be in order to get what you want, and you're not free if you acknowledge any differences born of initial conditions.
3a. Kid A is certainly free enough. He freely balances his need to go to drunken frat parties and spring break with his need to inherit daddy's law firm. He responsibly chooses to the correct mix of the two, and is able to make a nice life for himself, by making the right choices -- with his great freedom, as they say, comes great responsibility.
3b. Kid B proves your point, right? Any one of those kids on his block could have done precisely what he did. There is no reason he should be such an exceptional case.
Yet these facts remain:
1. Kid B had to work harder than Kid A for lesser outcomes.
2. Kid B is exceptional; Kid A is more like average.
3. You are demanding that every kid with Kid B's circumstances be exceptional, and accept the blame if they are average.
4. You are according every kid in Kid A's circumstances the title of "exceptional" even if they are average.
5. Beyond what you
call these kids, they live in the real world. It's not what you say that matters, it's the outcomes the system delivers to them. The "Kid B"s of the world, with some
exceptions, continue to live with their worse outcomes. The "Kid A"s get the better outcomes, unless they
really eff it up.
Finally -- and this is the point on which your analysis hangs -- people will not continue to believe that "anybody who works hard and makes the right decisions makes it," based on observation of case after case that seems more like the Kid A/Kid B dichotomy above.
In case you don't understand what's wrong with the above, it's the fact that it is unfair.
You can say "life ain't fair," but you have to say it to a peer, or someone you can fire. You can't say it to someone who gets the short end of the stick when you get the good end, especially if you don't supervise him. He gets pi$$ed.
It's easy to look at it from the point of view of a middle-class ideologue who likes the Capitalist/"objectivist" mythos, and insist that the real world fit this ideological framework. It's just not reality.
People see unfairness and people see the channels that perpetuate unfairness. America is getting clear on this fact, and further movement toward wealth concentration is increasingly opposed by the vast majority of Americans who are not the beneficiaries of accumulated and perpetuated wealth.
It's not okay that the exceptional kid, the smart kid, the paragon of self-discipline, gets to sit at the table and get the smaller greasier cut of meat after the lazy entitled punk gets the good part.
But the really galling part is that the lazy entitled punk looks at kids who put out the same or maybe even more effort, and calls
them lazy and entitled, based on outcomes he pretty much had set up for him out of the gate.
So what's an average person to think, when he observes the outcomes of average people around him?
"If I work harder and find some way to be smarter, and really emulate my friend Kid B, perhaps I too can have some small cut of greasy meat?"
Or is he more likely to think "Fu(k this noise"?
The equivalent observations of fairness/unfairness are starting to be made by the middle now, not just by the poor. Your myth unravels as the sh1t hits the fan in economic down-times, and the myth-peddlers continue to insist that the poor and middle "just be more exceptional" so they won't be (problematically) poor or working-class anymore. After all, if you want more of something, you tax it less; so we make vast wealth tax free, and everybody will be rich, right?
Trouble is the myth only works when the
likelihood is that if you work hard and apply yourself you'll do well. That's not what everybody sees in the Capitalist/"objectivist" mythos. You still see it among the "haves," and America is still a rich country. So if there are 25% underemployed, unemployed, stopped looking, and have not yet had an on-the-books job.... that's still 75% employed. The project is to convince enough of them that being the day-shift assistant manager at Arby's is a huge leap up from the fry cook, that the unemployed guy is the reason you make $8 an hour, and that the system as a whole is fair.
It's just not true.
PFnV
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