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Some people have talent and are high energy. Good example. A few years ago I rented part of this very nice old Victorian house...in the back was a garage and a pave area...off to the side was a little slip of land. There was nothing there except a stack of garbage cans and rotted wood. I wanted a nice place to sit out side...It took me a couple of weeks...I built a an large arch...there was an old vine that I trained to crawl on the arch...I found some old paving stones and created a small patio...I put as many flowering plants as I could cram into the small space...Where there was nothing...I created a little paradise. Other people loved to sit there.
I built it. Without my existence that paradise in the core of the city would not have existed...Once I moved the landlord used my garden as selling point to prospective tenants...Just like the founder of a corporation...Certain people have a vision- imagination- desire....drive and energy OTHER DO NOT. Soviet Russia was a great example of denying individuals with talent their reward...and what did they get in the end for this policy? A grey second rate utilitarian landscape...a crap hole that "we built"
I agree. This "I built it" thing is just a tempest in a tea pot. Obama was making a point that we all benefit from society. Civilization itself is only possible because we share resources, information, and stand on the shoulders of all the people in the past, even our own pasts. This does not diminish a person's initiative, which is critical, but it is intended to shame those narcissists who cross a bridge that someone else built and then refuse to build bridges for others, or even to maintain the bridges that already exist.
That is not what Jesus taught, nor Martin Luther King, or any other great moral leader. To be infatuated with one's own achievements, rank, and position is to be a shallow person.
Using your logic, all of these people are also responsible when a business fails.
When one thing fails something else thrives.
Remember how the economy really works: resources are controlled by a select few who arbitrarily make them abundant or scarce and then the rest of the people fall into their "role". Those people then trade arbitrary items/concepts (in the form of money, "work") to attain what they need.
Small business owners are just important to the economy as those on welfare or bankers or drug dealers ...which is to say as equally useless in reality.
So, did you grow the trees that are becoming your chicken coop? Or did someone else grow the trees?
Did you mill the lumber? Or was that done at a lumber mill?
How did the trees get to the mill and who cut the trees? Oh, I know! The loggers and the log truck drivers.
If you didn't grow and mill the wood yourself, where are you getting the materials to build the coop? Home Depot?
How did the materials get to Home Depot? Over roads and highways that somebody else built?
My point is, when you can claim to have grown and harvested and milled the trees for your chicken coop all by yourself, then you get to say you did it "all by yourself."
Until then? Not so much.
This is the thing that seems to be so hard for many economic illiterate liberals. Every "help" you received in building your success, you paid for. All the roads and infrastructure you used you plaid taxes and fees on to help maintain it, probably more then alot of other people. Otherwise, alot more random people would just fall into success. If "society" is so helpful in that person's success and not yours, well, why did "society" give him better help then you?. Despite coming from the same neighborhood?
All the resources I used to build my success I had to pay for. And in the process probably made others successful too.
To say I didn't build, say ,a successful plant shop because if it wasn't for the water pipes and infrastructure already there, then I wouldn't be able to build my shop. I paid my water bill on time every month. I paid for services rendered. If I didn't, I wouldn't get any water, so how can it be said that the infrastructure made it happen when I had to pay to make it happen. It didn't happen on it's own for free.
I do agree this was probably said to drum up more class warfare for higher taxes and more regulations.
And it's not just creating wealth but knowing how to maintain it also place a big part in creating lifelong prosperity. I mean look at how many celebrities and lottery winners who rack in millions instantly and end up penniless.
This type of economic illiteracy is probably why Obama was re-elected and explains our current economic state.
I invented a thing once that was designed to prevent physical pain that develops over a long period of time from using the "standard thing".
It was difficult to test its effectiveness without taking up 20 years in the test, so I found a person who had already developed the pain over a 20 year period, and asked if he would try my new thing.
He quickly discovered the proper setting, which when he used the thing, eliminated his pain almost entirely. He was able to quit all endorphin-releasing drugs. He gave me money and showered me with praise.
He told me his son who was studying art at UCLA told him it was a work of art.
He asked me to patent it so as to help millions of others suffering "the pain".
Well, I got my utility patent, where strangely, the patent office was only able to produce one prior art.
Years went by and the man remained very happy with the thing I had invented. No pain, no drugs.
Then, one day he asked me if I had personally done all of the welding on the thing.
When I told him, no, I had hired a professional welder to do it, he . . . well . . . he became sorry that he had praised me all those years.
It was another case of, "You didn't build that."
The guy was a Democrat.
He felt bad about his misdirected praise.
Liberalism is, indeed, a mental disease.
Last edited by Nonarchist; 05-20-2013 at 01:06 AM..
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