Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
The Fifth Division
Last month I had offered my thoughts about the one-dimensional blue-state/red-state spectrum, and my opinion that it was inadequate for describing the issues that are really dividing America right now. Believing, still, that we have disagreements about principles in this country, not about whether George W. Bush is a big doo-doo head, I further offered my encapsulation of what these principles are. I came up with five, four of which I listed, the last one of which I kept under wraps with the promise I’d discuss it later. This fifth division amongst us, I said, is more important than the other four.
The fifth division is Abiding By The Contract: Should individuals in our society be bound by it, or not?
Let’s review what The Contract is.
1. You perform services and make X money;
2. You demand services of others and compensate them with Y;
3. You get to keep Z, which is the difference between X and Y;
4. If you want Z to be bigger, you provide more to others or demand less from others;
5. If Z is less than 0, you must diminish your savings, or else cede your personal decisions to other people because they are no longer entirely yours to make.
This is a gross oversimplification, because today we have all kinds of things in America that help to corrupt this contract. Taxes represent one corrupting factor; social safety nets represent another. In divining one’s political philosophies, it is a far more accurate technique to keep in mind The Contract, than to simply listen to the philosophies word-for-word. For example, a social program exists to keep people of modest means out of trouble. But we have a lot of people of modest means who get into trouble because of tax issues. So it makes little or no sense that the people who want a more robust social safety net, are the same people who like to make taxes more punitive. That is, until you keep in mind The Contract. These people simply don’t like it. They want it to be corrupted.
This is proven by the abundance of very wealthy individuals who favor more confiscatory taxes, and brag about this position in spite of their comfortable position in life — and by the paucity of these individuals who then brag about paying surplus taxes. Very few people say “The IRS didn’t charge me enough, so I cut a bigger check and that’s the end of the issue until next year as far as I’m concerned.” These people never seem to want to do that. They want everybody else along for the ride. If Bob is rich and Bob doesn’t think he’s been charged enough, and he simply leaves a “tip” to the treasury, The Contract remains relatively uncorrupted. The impact of this decision is felt only by the public treasury, and Bob. It can even stay a confidential transaction, in addition to being a private one, if Bob so chooses. Well, I can’t help but notice, there are no Bobs, none that speak up anyway.
So very, very few people who proselytize for higher taxes, really give a rat’s ass about a solvent treasury. That’s not the issue for them. The issue is The Contract under which we all live.
There are a lot of people on the other side of the wealth spectrum who don’t like The Contract. These people are weary of living a life in which Z consistently turns out to be close to, or below, zero. They’re tired of it, and who can blame them? But I’ve learned these poor people who are ready to eradicate The Contract, have their own Code of Honor: They wince, uncomfortably, when the cost for some vital service is high — but when a business opportunity comes their way, and a prospective patron offers to pay them an unexpectedly high wage, they still wince uncomfortably. So the opportunity comes their way to change Z, and they pass it up. They don’t want to pay big money out, and they don’t want to take it in either. They simply don’t want to deal with money. It makes them uncomfortable.
Now, a lot of these people work very hard, and — far from wanting to rip people off by making demands for services and not paying for them — they simply want to be spared uncertainties in life. This is a natural development from working long hours for a prolonged period of time, and having nothing to show for it. Once the spirit of Achievement Through Excellence has been fully driven from you, it’s easy to fall prey to mediocrity: Fine, I’ll punch my time clock and work my ass off. Just spare me, after my fifteen hour shift is over, from this desk with the stack of bills on it. I’m not in the mood. Every two weeks I take in seven hundred dollars and pay out eight hundred. I get it already, one number’s bigger than the other. Call me a failure, call me what you will, I’m tired of the same ol’ math problem, sick of sweating over it. Just let me do my hard work, make that phone stop ringing, and I’ll forget about Doing Something Truly Great. And by that I mean, ever.
I don’t agree with that personal decision, but I certainly understand it, and I have to question if we who abide by The Contract have the right to compel others to do the same.
Maybe the solution is to go ahead with the Two Americas, one blue, one red. America has historically been at its greatest, when it has found ways to let individuals live their lives in the way those individuals choose to live. Let’s go ahead and draw the line, but draw it first & foremost along a question regarding this Contract.
Do you want to live by it, or not? Let’s cut the crap.
And then those who want to opt-out of the Contract, can have whatever government they want. Make it look like France. Hell, make it look like Star Trek and get rid of all the money. Free chocolate sundaes on demand, work whatever hours you want, three hots and a cot, and nobody can have a gun, or a bigger house, better education, faster connection to the innernets.
After all, there’s only one political ideology that is truly economically dangerous to everyone, and it’s Thing I Know #4:
4. Most of us want to be capitalists on payday, and Marxists on the day before.
In a society where people strive for excellence based on the net of what they do, you can’t have people demanding things for free — and in a society where everybody is guaranteed the same amount & quality of stuff, you can’t have people striving for personal excellence. These are things that don’t mix.
I think that’s where America has been going wrong. We keep trying to mix it up, to create some successful “hybrid.” We do this so that we can all live together in harmony. Meanwhile, it is written nowhere that such a hybrid is possible, or even that we as a species were meant to all live together. We are, as we’ve demonstrated repeatedly, a tribal species. Maybe the time has come to form a tribal society.
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