What are dreams anyway? I thought I had those in my sleep.
I recently listened to a speech given by a good friend of mine with the classic "Don't give up your dreams!" theme. I know, very cliché, but I don't hold that against him (compared to my aptitude for public address, cliché is good.) What I do hold against him is what that theme rolled into. After laying out some inspirational quotes from the Rocky movies and even one that I think was from "Hoosiers" but I'm not sure (I don't watch sports movies) he continued to say that everything from our current economic troubles to our lack of a cure for cancer exist because people didn't believe they had the ability to go into fields that could solve those problems and do so. He lamented the fact that retail sales-people and not super-heroes or astronauts hold the largest single percentage of the workforce. We've all been confronted with this view of the world before. It usually causes us to lean back and say, "What's wrong with retail sales-people?" but when we take a step back we realize that the underlying emotion of the speech is something natural to capitalism itself.
No, it isn't the give-everyone-a-trophy egalitarianism of our youth soccer days; it is something far more insidious and elitist than that. For us young-folk it is a call to never give up on ourselves, but it isn't only with the young that this idea is popular. It is a very popular idea with those on top. Why? Because it gives an excuse which is culturally acceptable as to why some people are successful and others aren't.
The defenders of capitalism often believe people's inequality of wealth is a result of economic performance (barring the state; we're talking about why some people are doctors and lawyers while others are retail salespeople). It is no longer popular with the upper-middle and even high class to believe that this is based on some sort of superior upbringing or genealogy. Instead we have substituted the idea of effort. When a successful man looks down and says, "How did I get here?" perhaps the most comforting answer is "I worked harder than everyone else and never gave up." The privileged rarely want to admit the existence of pure, dumb luck (or at least they'll never acknowledge that it may be more important that work ethic or determination). It makes a good substitute for social Darwinism as they successful no longer have to insist the poor deserve to be underprivileged but instead insist that the poor must believe in themselves. They blame society for keeping the individual down through ridicule of goals and disbelief in what the individual thinks he or she can do and advocate a kind of unadulterated ambition that I, personally, find terrifying in a secular world.
I think that's part of the reason my father, who is about as dedicated and "brilliant" as me, is such a huge liberal. He knows that he is very successful due in large part to the luck of the draw. This is also I think why we see a huge liberal bias in actors. Many of them have a true talent and work very hard but they know that a lot of their success is dependent entirely on chance.
As true free-marketers we must never forget that the luck of the draw has just as much, if not more, of an effect on the successes and failures of individuals as dedication. We can't allow ourselves to fall into the trap of thinking that the underprivileged are so for any reason other than chance. If we do, we try to legitimatize our station over them and trample all over the idea of basic human equality. If you are on the short end of the stick, don't subscribe to the competition mentality that you must struggle and struggle and if you don't make it there must be something wrong with you--not the system, but you.
People often complain about complacency or lack of work ethic but if you look to history you see that human beings are working harder and more often than we did before inequality reared its ugly head. In many pre-State societies egalitarianism reigned until a few "big-men" decided they would work harder than everyone else and eventually people began to fall into their control. Later they would look down and wonder what was wrong with those lazy people below them and reaffirm their right to rule and be respected as great men. This is an over-simplification of the process which occurred among many Native American and New Guinea peoples but I think the point stands. Inequality goes hand in hand with both liberty and tyranny; with liberty because it is necessary for self-determination and with tyranny because a tyrant always must secure and legitimatize his place over his fellow man.
I'm not saying I think we should all stay at home and do nothing, nor am I saying that the profit motive is not a good way to get things done in human society. What I am saying is that if there is any hope for social unity under free-markets, we cannot keep telling the unsuccessful that they needed to work harder. We have to understand that because of the way our culture and society are currently structured there are only so many seats at the table and it is often the worst among us, not the best, who make it to those seat (As Hayek, an Austrian neoliberal economist, pointed out).
The idea is about a society with opportunities for all and where all may find a place at one or two good tables that strike their fancy, not about a society that allows the "better-man", the "dedicated", or the Rocky Balboa to get on top. In a truly free society, the top won't mean nearly as much as it means now and hopefully we can stop complaining about how few astronauts and super-heroes there are around.
No comments:
Post a Comment