Back By Popular Demand

I know, I'm as surprised as you.  I really hadn't meant to fall off of the face of the planet, but I had more or less forgotten about blogging until some friends requested that I begin again.  Apparently, some people were reading, and that fills me with a tiny warmness that makes me feel important.  And my world revolves around me, so the effect is compounded.

But I'm sure you're wondering, "Caleb, after all this time, what are you going to write about?"  Good question.  Sadly, I don't have an easy answer.  But on thing has been on my mind lately in relation to my grander writings, so I'll work on that.

Human beings are in a state of constant competition.  This occurs because people are not naturally masters of their environment.  The most basic thing that a person can find his or herself facing is survival against the elements.  This world was not designed with humans in mind (don't start creationists) and people are not naturally the dominant life forms on the planet.  We are not the largest, the strongest, the fastest, nor do we have large teeth or claws.  We are mostly hairless, meaning that we stand a lower chance of surviving in the cold. We have natural predators, from the larger animals to the smallest microbes, and we are mostly defenseless in the wild.  However, we have something that no other identified species has, and that's a brain capable of reasoning.

Reason is the faculty through which every person improves their lives.  In fact, it is the faculty through which human kind survives.  From the harnessing and understanding of fire, to the creation of the wheel, to the harvesting of grain, to the establishment of physical boundaries separating people from the wild, all the way to the creation of the computer for connecting with other people, the building of skyscrapers to allow people to interact and alter their world, to the creation of antibiotics, everything that has helped man achieve success has been through the use of reason.  People often simply attribute where we are to the developments of people before us.  But this is part laziness and part misunderstanding of our communal history.

Reason, as stated above, is a faculty.  It is an ability, and not one that is always in use.  Most people can walk and run, but not everyone does those things all the time.  Neither do people use reason all the time.  However, the developed homo sapien mind is capable of applying reason to the world around them.  This allows the creation of value judgments, which in turn effects EVERYTHING in your life.  No, seriously, everything.  If you're reading this now, it is because you made a judgment based upon your values and accordingly adjusted your behavior.  Right now you could be surfing facebook, painting your toenails, or singing Lady Gaga in your shower.  But you're spending your time reading this because you see some value in this blog that is of a higher order than those other things.  Shucks, you're gonna make me blush, spending time with me and all!  But everything in your life that you do is directly affected by value judgments.  When you look at buying something, you analyze the value of the buying power of that dollar against the perceived value of the object you're considering buying.  Does a bag of Skittles costing$20 seem worth it?  Probably not, because those twenty dollars could go to other things.  However, would a new car costing $20 be worth it?  Probably so, because the perceived value of the car is higher than the perceived value of $20.  This is why old people talk about how things used to cost less.  While the number of dollars that they paid per item was greatly reduced, the value of a dollar was higher in the past, meaning that a house of a certain condition and size will always be worth about the same amount of value, even if the dollars are less valuable over time.

Values, of course, change over time.  An old  fashioned computer isn't worth as much now because better technology exists.  However, a new computer that is capable of doing what you want or need will always be of a higher value to a person because the value remains consistent.  Even if a computer now and a computer twenty years ago are completely different in terms of capabilities, both made life easier for people living in those time periods, resulting in their continued production and improvement.

I KNOW WE'VE GONE A WAYS OFF TRACK, BUT I PROMISE, I'M BRINGING IT ALL BACK TO MY ORIGINAL POINT OF COMPETITION!

Okay, so we now understand, or at least I hope you do, that values dictate our decisions, and we tend to operate towards our higher values.  Family is a value to some, so some people operate towards it, others operate more independently, and ultimately, everyone operates based on values.  The blue car over the red, a day spent working instead of relaxing, a dollar donated instead of a dollar spent (really the same thing in a way, but I'll save that for another time.) Okay, so I'm done making that point, but if anyone has any objections or examples that would seemingly contradict this, post them in the comments area.
Anyway, so if our values dictate our decisions, competition becomes a certainty.  Because of the finite realm of existence, not everyone can't have everything at the same time in the same respect. Remember back to the playground days, when you wanted a ball and someone else wanted the same ball, and the teacher stepped in and gave it to the other kid?  The idea was that you would "share" the ball?  Yeah, fuck that noise.  Even as a kid you thought "Now what the hell?  I got the ball first, I want it, I have a right to it.  Bitch teacher over there needs to mind her own business before she gets cut!"  In this example, the child on the playground is located in the inner city and has an issue with his vocabulary.  I'm sure his parents drink.  The point remains, however, that someone stepped in and made sure that someone got what they wanted and deprived another of it.  That, kiddies, is called "Government."

Government can serve all sorts of functions, and some of them are unethical and a lot of them are bureaucratic, and nearly all of them cause someone somewhere to be deprived of something.  Occasionally this deprivation is just, like the deprivation of a person's ability to injure another without impunity.  The government attempts to insure that such events do not occur.  Other things are not just, and they include the aforementioned theft of property.

In a recent argument I had with a utilitarian, I made the argument that theft from a person is wrong, in each and every instance.  They countered that the "greater good" was more important.  Besides the obvious problem of determining whose good is greater, and without identifying who was authorized to make this decision, one simple problem remains: if theft is legal, who has rights to anything?  If you don't have a right to your food or to medicine, or if you acquire these things by hard work and honest purchasing between yourself and the person who is willingly selling them to you, do you still have rights?  The right to freedom includes the right to property, because without property a person does not have a right to those things that keeps them alive.  A right to your ideas is a natural right, one you do not have to justify to a court or to anyone.  And the obvious outcome of ideas are goods.  If one person exchanges the creations of their mind for the creations or another's or if a person exchanges the effort of their labor in exchange for the effort of another, then nobody has been hurt and both parties have benefited, so long as nobody uses force against another.

But too often in society, the idea of "the greater good" is lauded above the heads of all the others.  The individual is sacrificed to the many.  Independence is crushed under the iron foot of utilitarianism.  And that, friends, is where liberty dies.  And it has begun in America.  It began some time ago, when the welfare state was formed.  Prior to this time, people were largely more on their own for survival.  This was considered to be okay, because people helped each other from time to time, but this help was provided on a compulsory basis.  Then the "greater good" was seen to be more important than the work and rights of individuals.  Welfare was created, meaning that those who were "disadvantaged" would be given some of the progress created by others.  But this welfare was not earned.  Instead, those who were "disadvantaged" were given a leg up in society.  Rather than have to earn something as everyone else had, the "playing field was leveled" resulting in a legal imbalance of power.  No longer was every person on their own to prove themselves to the world, they merely had to prove their inability to have equal footing and they were given a leg up.  Consider this exmaple:
At the beginning of a race, everyone is started at the same point.  Naturally, this is where races begin.  But, because someone has a difficult time running, the referee decides that that person can start a few paces ahead of everyone else.  Now, sure, it seems like this is just to balance the terms of the race, but without the other racers having volunteered to let this guy start ahead, he was now being helped against their will.  While it seems like it doesn't matter too much at first, it begins to become apparent that to win the race, the other competitors, the racers who are not disabled, must try harder to win.  Whereas the idea is that that other person will still try their hardest, the race is now unfair.

Here we hit a point where most people claim that the inequality lies.  If that person who is injured has a legitimate injury, why shouldn't he start ahead?  After all, everyone will still have a fair chance to win the race.  But that is not the case, as the other racers have been disadvantaged by the injured racer.  One's injury has become the injury of all the racers.  His disability, not his ability, has become his advantage in this competition.  So would it be fair to start all of the racers on the starting mark, despite the disability of one?  Yes, so long as the disability was not inflicted by any of the other racers.  Why?

Because the not everyone develops equally.  There are people who are smarter than others, people who are more able-bodied than others.  People who are lazier than others, there are people who are at different ages than others.  There is no universal person.  The only thing that the law should be doing is to insure that nobody is disadvantaging another.  This means fraud, this means lies, and this means, obviously, no hurting or killing another, and no stealing.  Doing these things is to destroy another for your own gain, and that is unethical.  However, people often times point out that in business, people step on each other constantly to get ahead.  They point to capitalism as a system that creates competition, that it alienates a person from themselves and that it creates a group of people dedicated only to the seeking of things.

Firstly, people will always need things.  The right to own things is natural.  If a man grows his wheat and cooks his bread, is he not entitled to it?  If a woman creates something beautiful, is she not entitled to the sale of her work at a value that seems acceptable to her?  It is often the case that a person produces something or owns something and is pushed to sell it at a cost that seems less than acceptable to them.  This is never the case.  If a person willingly sells something of theirs to another, they always have the option to say no to the transaction.  Again, I'm barring force here, as people will use force against others, but the law must always be designed around the elimination of such heinous activities.

The key word here is "willingly."  Freedom must insure that a person is able to willingly do something.  Welfare unwillingly takes from those who have and gives it those who do not have.  On the surface this seems like a good thing, until one realizes that someone has been stolen from in the process.  If everyone is competing for what they want and using what they have to get it, why would some who do not have be placed above those who've been competing honestly?


Is the winner of the race guilty of injuring the others if he wins it fairly?  If a race is run fairly, why would the winner be blamed for the others losing?  Yes, they lost, but they did not lose because of one man's malice, but they lost to one man's ability?  Ought that winner be started back farther, so as to make him work harder in order to achieve the same as the others?  Should the successful, the talented, the intelligent, the industrialists be sacrificed so that others might be better able to compete?  No, because if that was the case, success would be penalized and failure rewarded.

There are people out there who need help.  There are those out there who cannot function properly, who can't get through the day without the assistance of others.  There is no denying these facts, but to sacrifice the successful to those is to destroy people who've done nothing wrong for others who have done nothing wrong.  Is there a solution to this problem, where two groups, neither of whom have committed a crime, to willfully improve the conditions of all?  Yes, and that solution is effort and charity.

The principle of charity is a high one.  It is the voluntary giving of what one has to another.  The key word in that definition is "voluntary."  To take without right, as taxation does, is wrong, regardless of the reason.  We live in a world, though, where we can build skyscrapers, travel to space, and eradicate diseases.  The solution to the world's problems lie not in taking from one group and giving to another, but in encouraging the development of all and encouraging the successful to help those who need it.

Inequality will be a constant throughout all of human existence.  However, even in those areas of America that are largely poor, that are incapable of sustaining people, many do better than in other countries, and all do better than if we were fending for ourselves.  Through cooperation, people are able to do more for themselves, and even the bottom living conditions begin to rise when prices are driven down through the advancement of a culture.

Consider the following.  What percentage of people in this country die from starvation?  A low number, but a number nonetheless. Now, by percentage, how many people die in undeveloped countries worldwide?  The percentage is greatly raised.Why?  Because the industry is not there to allow for the mass production of goods.  When people are able to produce as much as possible more is produced, in general, and even if the most advanced goods go to the people who have also succeeded, enough extra is produced for others to have some.  It is not that everyone deserves more when more is produced, but it is true that when the wheel of progress begins turning, everyone is moved along.  Even the most rudimentary medical care given in this country is better than the medical care given in much of the world.  Not because prices are reduced to help the poor, but because when the newest medicine comes out, it is better, and the producers in an economy purchase the newer goods, driving down the demand for the lesser products and reducing the cost of the products.  The most advanced cures for diseases are costly, but the lesser cures, despite not being as effective, are more affordable and are still better than nothing.

To blame the successful or the lucky for the hardships of others is insanity.  To say that a person, who has not hurt anyone, is a villain because they have been successful where others have not, is purely ridiculous.  Has the person who has succeeded hurt those who have not?  No.  Has the person who has succeeded allowed the world to move forward, even in some tiny way?  Yes.  So why, if a person has not hurt anyone and has contributed something to society, would you claim that person is evil?

It is often the case that people look at those who have and see them as being in competition with the have-nots.  And in a way, they are in competition, because the finite resources are going to those who have, and the have-nots want what the haves have. But in this example, one group has earned what they have, and the others have not.  Yes, there are those who have things that they have not earned, but that is because people have grown to reward personality over ability.

It is true that genius will to unnoticed, that talent will be wasted, and that people with skill will not rise to the high ranks that some will.  Sadly, in this day and age, connections have become more powerful than ability. And that is why ability must always be rewarded where it is seen.  I implore you, when you consider someone for a promotion, or when you are considering those around you, do not look at who you like more, but look at who has the best abilities for a given situation.  When ability is rewarded, more people benefit from more work in more ways.  Do not reward inability and do not encourage ineptitude.  Find those that work hard and show great potential and a desire to use that potential, and you will find someone who will earn what they have.