My father in aw bravely thwarted a robbery a while back.
It was taking place on the sidewalk. A large man and a small man were struggling over a backpack. My father in law got out of his car and asked them what was happening.
The large man said "I'm trying to take his stuff but he won't let me!"
My in law began calling the police at which time the large man trundled off into the city.
I think this is emblematic of the thinking in America. Nobody is concerned with what is fair or right anymore. Everybody is concerned with what they can get regardless of how they get it.
People like that large man have been robbing people like us for ever. It's the kind of robbery we all know and it's what people imagine when you say "robbery." But the thinking which underlies that behavior is flung a lot further and a lot wider than just hoodlums and ruffians.
You see this thinking in many welfare recipients, both individual and corporate. I know more than a few people on "disability" who could easily work if they so desired. Instead, because their easiest path is to steal from the taxpayer, they lounge around in their free apartment, watch their free cable, and eat their free food at my (and possibly your) expense.
Likewise, rather than earn a profit by offering a valuable product that people are willing to buy, corporations are becoming increasingly dependent on government contracts. Why build something useful when you can just suckle at the teat of the U.S. government? Why cover your risks when you know the government will just bail you out because you're too big to fail? Why learn how to get people from point A to point B at a reasonable price when you know that the government will keep subsidizing your airline?
Another great example is the "false fee" industry. In business schools, some have taught that adding fees onto an agreed-upon account is a "growth industry" and will represent some ridiculous amount of money (tens of billions per year) by the end of the decade. Phone companies are notoriously bad about this. They get you to agree to one price, then they tack on a bunch of extra fees and "taxes," some of which are legitimate and many of which are just plain old fashioned fraud.
I've also personally experienced a credit union stealing my money by charging me a fee for not using my account. When I confronted them about this, they looked at me like I was crazy and said "We're just trying to fee down all the inactive accounts so we can close them."
In every one of these cases, the thief must justify his actions and his own existence; at least to him- or herself. The welfare consumer must argue that they are "down on their luck" or otherwise unable to take care of themselves and that justifies, in their minds, the use of money taken at gunpoint. The corporate welfare recipient is probably every bit as unenlightened in its thinking... it's probably something like "I've got a lot of jobs and shareholders to which I must answer so I've gotta do what I've gotta do."
People who perpetrate false fees also must justify their actions and probably say something like "I'm just trying to make a buck" to themselves and others who confront them about their nefarious acts. Ten years ago, the credit union manager told me straight to my face, as though I was the one in the wrong, that they were just trying to take my money.
What's the big deal, right?
All of these people are about the same as our thug on the street. They all want more than they have or could gain on their own by fair means. They all want to take something from someone else; something that doesn't belong to them. They all believe that they are in the right for "just trying to get ahead."
I've got no idea what to do about it. It seems like the only corrective course of action is to radically change the makeup of the people who are deciding how the country I live in works. There are lots of ways to do that.
You can increase the population of smart and thinking people, possibly by education and definitely by reproduction. That takes time and a lot of energy. Who wants to wait fifty years for a problem like this to get solved?
You can decrease the population of stupid or unthinking people but it's difficult and requires unethical activities. A pogrom against the stupid and evil has one major roadblock: there are whole lot of stupid and evil people out there and none of them want to be pogrommed.
An increasingly viable impulse, for me, is exodus. Instead of making more good people and instead of rounding up the bad ones, just round up the few rational people left in this country and leave to make a new one.
That's probably very nearly as impractical as restoring freedom and reason to America but it seems unlikely that it would be any harder and it's probably at least a little bit easier.
