Not2BSubjugated
Callous Individualist
I'm going to take a stab at this, and I'm hoping you'll respond to the actual argument and not whether or not someone else managed to articulate it properly earlier in the thread.
Realistically, no. Someone born in the projects is going to have a much rougher time achieving the same success as someone who's rich family handed him a major leg up to begin with and then a host of useful connections at the point of insertion into the private sector. Some people are simply lucky enough to be born into families with more opportunity.
However, this doesn't really relate to the greater argument at hand. Romney had those extra opportunities because they were his father's to give. . . rather than asking what right Mittens has to get that extra leg up when so many others don't receive one, you may perhaps ask what right anyone else has to tell Mitten's pops whether he can or can't take that wealth that he acquired or those connections and opportunities and pass them on to his child. Maybe you're not wired like most of us, but personally I'd sooner pass the fruit of my labor onto family and loved ones than allow the government to decide how best to distribute MY shit. Maybe you won't agree with me here, but I, along with a lot of others, don't feel that it's the proper function of government to ensure that everyone is born into the same quality of family, nor to ensure that dead beat do nothing's who happen to shit out a couple man cubs and then do absolutely dick to raise them should be allowed the luxury of passing on "just add water" careers to their kids. Here's a little cheat sheet for you: Life's not fair and no amount of government funding will make it so. Period.
What should be fair, however, is the access that we have to success -via society-. Generally speaking, it usually is (though I do agree that everywhere the government imposes unfair standards is somewhere shit needs to be fixed. What the government provides should provide equal opportunity to everyone). These roads that democrats love to tout when trying to reassign libertarian arguments as anarchist ones are a good example. We all pay taxes that build and maintain roads which, in my view, is one of the proper functions of government. We all have the same access to the roads. Despite being considerably more wealthy than I am, Bill Gates still has to yield right of way to me if we pull up to a 4 way stop at the same time and I'm to his right.
Now, what's so offensive to so many about Obama's commentary isn't just the face value of that singular statement about not having done it on one's own. No shit nobody did it without the protection of the law. The offensive part was the implication via the context: Since society helped you put that stuff together through basic government services, you are now financially beholden to society. Though many seem to be having trouble articulating this point, it is at EXACTLY this point that libertarians like myself and more than a few conservative republican types call out a resounding, "BULLSHIT!" Why? By pitching your taxes in on government services, you recieved access to those services. Period. No more, no less. I don't owe you for those services because, through my taxes, I -also- paid for those same services.
Think of it this way: You've got 10 bucks and I've got 10 bucks, and we decide we want some pizza, but the smallest meat lovers we can get ahold of costs 20 bucks. So we go halves on it, that way both of us can have pizza where neither of us would've had it otherwise. So we get our pizza and I take half and you take half. I, being a stoner glutton, proceed to devour the entire half pizza on the spot. You eat two pieces and then set the rest aside for later, only later some dude (we'll call him Charles) comes along and can smell that pepperoni. He gets all hungry, and he's stoned and impulsive, so he offers to buy you out of your remaining slices of pizza. Being a skilled negotiator, you manage to talk him out of 20 bucks for the rest of your half. How much do you now owe me?
If your answer was anything other than, "Not one red fucking cent", then you did some mental gymnastics to come up with a figure that was based in dogmatic morality and not logic. Logically I already got what was coming to me (according to what we agreed upon at the outset of the purchase): half a pizza. The fact that I was less industrious with my half than you were does not entitle me to what is yours.
This last bit's redundant, but the access to educated workers point is probably my favorite. If I start a successful business, I owe society big time for giving me access to educated and skilled labor by paying into a publicly funded education system. Once again, BULLSHIT! I paid for my access to public schooling. The rest of you monkeys paid for the same. What you recieve for paying into public education is NOT a claim on the fruit of anyone's labor who had access to that schooling. What you recieve is YOUR OWN ACCESS to that same education. I get to use skilled labor, you get to BE skilled labor in stead of an illiterate cave man who can do little more than swing a hammer. Everyone benefits already, why does there need to be extra pay for the people who don't capitalize on that benefit effectively?
Summary: Yes, this whole economic system would be impossible if people hadn't come together to form a society of laws and a government to enforce those laws and protect our individual rights from the intrusions of others. Some level of government is an absolute necessity for getting most businesses off the ground and keeping them sustainable. However, the fact that government supplies these things for our society DOES NOT indebt individuals to the government/society. Why? Because those individuals pay for those services via their taxes. I don't owe you for my access to the education system BECAUSE I PAY FOR MY ACCESS.
