I will concede one component of this discussion that I agree with those on the left, including the President, that 'we are all in this together." But I don't think any of you making the argument that this makes the President correct have a clue of how or why we are all in this together.
We are all in this together because we each profit from our own activity that is made possible by others profiting from their own labor. And despite all the millions of components that go into the process of each one of us doing our jobs, it works pretty well IF government stays out of it and doesn't try to manipulate or micromanage it. Government can't enlist enough people with enough expertise to run an economy. At least to anybody's benefit other than a very few chosen to be blessed by the same government.
Walter Williams explained it beautifully in this essay excerpted here:
In other words, yes we are all in it together but not in a way that obligates us to each other. He who is obligated to another, other than voluntarily, is not a free person. And certainly a government who obligates us for the benefit of others, most especially itself, takes away freedoms from the people.
Williams went on:
Walter Williams
As a side note Foxfyre, I think when you add government there are winners and losers choosen. Rarely does government help everyone equally.
You are correct. There are some who will NEVER use those roads and therefore don't benefit from them in the same way others do, yet we ALL benefit from them because we ALL have to consume something simply in order to live. And most of that which we consume is transported, delivered, and made available to us via the same roads. The guy using them proactively to transport consumable products is of course going to receive more benefit than is the guy who benefits only in the most passive way.
But the point Williams was making is that the way a free people is interconnected is not necessarily in mutual cooperation though the people may find that to be beneficial too. Most of us benefit from each other only incidentally. The guy in Venezuela doesn't know I exist when he operates the oil well that pumps a barrel of crude that eventually, through the participation of millions of people in multiple countries, makes its way into the tank of my car in the form of unleaded gasoline. He doesn't care about me in the least. He might or might not throw me a rope if I was drowining.
But he nevertheless played a role in me having gasoline to fuel my car.
THAT is how we all work together to accomplish what we accomplish. Yes, I couldn't prosper by doing my own thing unless millions of others of you are also doing your own thing to put bread on your respective tables. And not one of us is fully aware of how we are benefitting anybody else, but we do simply by looking to our own interests.
And still, despite all that, nobody built my business and made it profitable but me.
