More on American Way

We do a lot to try to give everyone a fair start at the starting line. But once the race is underway, how much should we do to regulate its progress? We do realize that we can't guarantee that everyone finishes together, i.e., not everyone can end up with the same income and the same amount of money. Individual differences in ability, motivation, etc., account for differences in result. To the degree that there are unfair barriers for some and unfair advantages to others, we try to eliminate those. But we can't eliminate the individual differences that result in differences in economic outcome. Some people believe that we should guarantee that everyone ends up with the same result, but that has been tried, and it failed miserably. (There have been voluntary associations of people that have worked successfully that way, but not a national government.) Nor is selfishness the ultimate answer, despite Ayn Rand's assertions, because most people do want to help others.

Our system, as envisioned by economist Adam Smith a couple of centuries ago, has built in rewards and penalties. Having a well-functioning economy requires productive activity from its participants. The rewards for production and the penalties for lack of production are important factors in our system. Trying to regulate that and modify it probably slows down economic activity.

On the other hand, our fear of having excessive differences between rich and poor is probably a legitimate concern. If we could think of ways of helping those who need help without penalizing the production of the most productive, and without damaging the incentives of those being helped, that would be ideal.

(Of course, making a lot of money is sometimes not the same thing as being productive. We have laws to prevent people from making money dishonestly. Also we should not assume that everyone who makes a lot of money is somehow doing it dishonestly. Most of them are good people. It's the bad apples that give them a bad name.)

It would be nice if we could keep in mind that we are all in this together, and all help as best we can.

Regarding July 4th post

A lot of ground was covered in the Fourth of July post, and some elaboration may be in order:

The question of whether any particular group (ethnic, racial, religious, etc.) may or may not have higher or lower average attributes of any kind (such as intelligence or talents of any kind) is irrelevant to the fact that individuals vary widely within the group. If there are differences in averages between groups, they are minor compared to the differences amongst individuals within the group. In other words, in the racial group of green people (if there were such a group), there would be some very stupid people, some very brilliant people and everything in between. The same is true of any major group. Our task as a modern society is to find the ones who can contribute the most and allow them to do so, despite whatever objections anyone may have to the group they belong to. Our system, our "American way" if you will, seeks to allow people to rise if they are able to do so, and attempts to eliminate barriers of prejudice, poverty, etc.

Even if it were true that there would be more brilliant people per capita in one group than another, that would not alter the fact that there are brilliant people in every group, and we need their talents.

The important thing is that we want to evaluate individuals as individuals, not as members of whatever group they belong to.