CycloWizard
Lifer
- Sep 10, 2001
- 12,348
- 1
- 81
You need to get past your fantasy that I am forever indebted an unlimited amount of money to pay for my limited use of infrastructure. You wield this supposed debt to society as a weapon to remove any claim regarding personal responsibility or merit.Forcing them? As opposed to what, heading off into the forest and using stone tools to make their own Center for Innovation by hand? You need to get past this fantasy that you or anyone else is self-made. Everything you are and have was built upon those who came before you, using America's extraordinary physical, financial, and educational infrastructure (substituting other countries as appropriate for other people).
We don't see meaningful innovation coming from aboriginal tribes using hand-made stone tools. It comes from people people who leverage the benefits of a developed society to push forward. It comes from people who can take for granted things like electricity, clean water, plentiful safe food, roads, housing, education, banks, merchants, public safety, etc., so they can focus on creating the next big thing instead of scrounging for grubs for dinner.
In your system, everything I am is owed to someone else, and that is a debt which can never be paid to people who are long dead; I can claim no credit for anything I achieve, but society as a whole can claim credit for all of it; no matter the amount of work, time, energy, and effort I put into my innovation, I have no responsibility for it and owe it all to previous generations. Thus, we see that we owe everything in our society to Adam and Eve, without whom none of us could accomplish anything. Because of Adam and Eve, I have an unlimited debt to every other person in society. Because of Adam and Eve, I have no claim to the merits or fruits of my labor. But other people who are also not Adam and Eve have a claim to the fruits of my labor. This is the underlying foundation of your system as you described it. Your system sucks.
My system is one in which I pay a nominal fee for using a product or service. This fee may be proportional to the amount of the product or service I use. Thus, I have a claim to the fruits of my labor and can claim the merits of that labor after paying my finite debt to society for enabling that labor. This allows me to better myself and society in one go rather than working simply to dig my own grave.
You describe me as a slave to society. Society is my only source of sustenance without which I can accomplish nothing. You fail to see that society exists. Its existence implies that an achievement, such as society, is possible without society. Society is a means to this end. Does society exist to serve individuals or the other way around? Trick question. Individuals are part of society. Thus, the greater good will always be achieved by serving your own needs. If I spend all of my time and effort fulfilling the needs of others or society, I will die and so will all of my dependents.Even more, turning that idea from a pipe dream into a profitable product demands extensive infrastructure support. One needs facilities, utilities, an adequately-educated workforce, suppliers, service providers, public safety and health, transportation, distributors, investors, a legal system with property & IP rights, ... and customers, all of whom are products of and dependent upon the same incredible physical, financial, and educational infrastructure provided by society. Take it away and no matter how brilliant and ambitious you may be, you're just a smart chimpanzee in a loin cloth.
My ideology is simply this: if I work to earn something, then the earning is mine. If I have expenses along the way (e.g. the use of infrastructure), then that is an expense that is deducted from my earnings. I am responsible if I screw up, and I get the merit if I succeed. Your ideology is that no one is responsible for anything and no one has any merit: you have given society credit for everything. The corollary is that society is responsible for everyone and everything. Since society is simply a means to an end and can never produce anything by itself, your system (which is increasingly approximated by our current government) fails. When no one is responsible for anyone, when everyone is simply a cog in the wheel of society, and when everyone is infinitely beholden to society, everyone becomes a slave to society: the individual exists to serve society rather than society serving the individual.As an educated person, you surely must understand that "partisan" is not limited to political parties. It can also, for example, refer to ideologies and generally taking sides. In this case, I was referring to your partisan devotion to the myth of the self-made man.