vaguelyaware.com

I just got finished reading this article, its rather interesting, and most thought provoking are the comments. Although most web comments are reserved for inane tripe, and there was plenty of that, there was some some value to be found.

I agreed with the assertion that Americans have a relatively high expectation of living standards. As one commenter pointed out, even people considered poor have a roof over their head, a 2000 calorie diet (however terrible it may be), cell phone, internet access, designer clothing, etc. Hardly a rough life in comparison to other countries.

The Democratic party has recently raised issues with health care and higher education. The fact is that some people cannot afford these things, and some people don’t WANT to afford them. I know we have all seen people with flashy cars with big fancy wheels and expensive stereos with the latest cell phones that have no health insurance. They have their own priorities. These insurance systems seem to perpetuate the high costs of health care, as the doctors know they patient won’t care how much it costs as long as their copay is under $50. That way they can set the precedence for a $150k operation that takes a few hours. To tax the whole country for gov’t provided health care would put the same frustrating burden on tax-payers the rest of the taxes have. Some people are healthy, careful people that will never use these services, or simply choose not to use the likely poorly run gov’t facilities. Why should they end up paying for services they don’t use?

The commenters also hit upon a very important point, part of the problem here is motivation. They criticize a “Darwinist economics” policy, yet fail to express why that is a bad policy. Evolution is the actual process of improving society, motivation to get yourself something to eat is what keeps you alive. If the dems just hand out the food they skimmed from motivated people, all you end up with is a group of people that question why they work hard when it gets handed out for “free” anyway, thereby driving down the collective motivation of society. Let’s look at it from the evolution perspective, everyone has heard of the issue of animals raised in zoos, given food, care, and protection all their lives only to be turned loose in the wild and live about 15 minutes. Yes, I know I’m exaggerating, but the point is that a darwinist economic policy promotes innovation, production, investing, risk taking and hard work. If you don’t you end up hungry. Yes, we are human, and being so a human may be called upon to help another human. That should be left up to private enterprise and citizens, not only does it offer PR, it also takes the burden off the gov’t. It also goes back to a core psychological value, reciprocity. The principal is that if someone does something nice for you, that you return the favor, its expected, and its no wonder that people get tired of handing out money to people that don’t appreciate it, there is no reciprocity. Then again, with a gov’t handout, there really isn’t much of an opportunity to do something in return. But if another person or company does something for you, its much easier to return the favor, in a way you are capable of. And lastly I’m going to throw in the very inhuman portion of the Darwinist economics: the people that lack so much motivation that they don’t want to work to earn their place in society, there are LOTS of opportunities for lazy jobs in this country - are those the kinds of people we want to be helping and nurturing anyway?