I have taken an interest in understanding meritocracy as a power structure concept. Only the super rich can afford to send their children to prestigious educational institutions and therefore garner a huge competitive advantage over lower income strata individuals for jobs that pay the highest salaries. This becomes an instrument for the wealthy to pass on their wealth to their offspring. In addition individuals with wealth and high levels of education can afford to engage the political system in a way that benefits them in terms of tax laws, as one example, they can employ tax attorneys, lobby law makers to make laws that benefit individuals of high wealth. Essentially the wealthy get to control the rules of the game that benefit them. I think that people with left wing political views support this philosophy more than the right because they can justify this view by saying that inequality of our society is not based on race, gender, sexual preference or the other traditional ways of differentiating people. It is very righteous in their view to say that people with superior abilities deserve their wealth and get to be in command. The problem with this concept is that it compromises our system of democracy. It creates an a system where the rich are in charge of our political system. It also prevents individuals who may have been born with inherent talents and abilities from excelling because they cannot access the same institutions that give them the credentials to high paying jobs. At the same time I think the right wing political side of this equation has mishandled this situation. I think the "right" has made attempts to inflame the lower classes to respond to this situation in a way that encourages dysfunctional behavior as exemplified by the riot at the capital, I say this because I think that the driving force for the demonstrations are disinfrationized people who feel their situation is at a "dead end" . I think a significant portion of our population is in a desperate situation and if we do not respond in a rational, empathetic, strategic and non polarized way of thinking and response, we may loose everything we have aspired to be.
---------- message --------- From: John To: Kevin
Date: Sat, Sep 4, 2021 at 3:48 PM
Kevin,
I understand your viewpoint and have at times expressed concern over a concentration of power affecting freedom. I expressed my concern over not wanting to become a "Banana Republic."
No society has ever been free from disparity. If anything, free societies have the least poverty, sometimes at the cost of some people getting extremely wealthy. More often than not, free societies have the least disparity. There is more opportunity to move up. Having a free society is the driver behind economic growth.
Steve Jobs, and even more so Apple, got incredibly wealthy because people chose to make them wealthy. People wanted their products and felt enriched by their products. We can argue the rationality of buying Apple products, but it is better to have the free choice to buy Apple products than not to have free choice.
The way that you prevent the "rich" from exploiting the political system is to have less power in government. In the last 20 years or so, the way to become wealthier is to be in league with the government.
There are problems with any kind of society. However, the political left seeks government power more than the political right. Recently they have taken this to more extreme levels. This expansion of government power is not normally tenable and the left knows this. At least half or maybe a slight majority of Americans don't want that. So to advance their agenda, it appears to me that the political left exploits half-truths, exaggerating them as much as they can to make people feel like victims. This is a terrible thing because it convinces people that someone else is responsible for their fate. This makes people feel helpless and worthless, which is the goal. It makes people feel that their only recourse is political.
Before COVID, we had the lowest Black unemployment, the highest wages, and the lowest minority poverty in our history. The average person saw their quality of life go up. There also has been a significant increase in our economic well-being in my lifetime.
The United States has been the most accepting and diverse country on planet Earth. We elected a Black president. Try going to South Korea, Japan, or China and see how accepting they are. However, after making tremendous strides in race relations to the point where there was very little racial discrimination, some people have exploited this issue and tried to stir the pot. This started with Obama. They have taken relatively rare events, like police shootings, and turned these into riots that killed dozens of people and did 2 billion dollars in damage. In 2019, only 14 unarmed Black people were shot by police, and in most cases, they were a threat to the police officers.
However, polls show that the average person on the left thinks that the police are killing a thousand unarmed black men per year. They use terms like "genocide" and make obviously bogus claims that the police are actively searching the streets for black men to kill.
The organization "Black Lives Matter" was founded by people who proudly declare themselves Marxist. After governments and private industry gave them hundreds of millions of dollars, the founders used the money to buy multimillion-dollar homes in rich neighborhoods.
So even though I believe that all lives matter, I can't support the organization "Black Lives Matter."
The Tea Party, which was a movement founded over economic issues, was often accused of being racist. The left absolutely does this to everyone they don't like. However, the Tea Party's favorite candidate, and mine, was Herman Cain. It was the Republican Party that wanted Condolezza Rice and Collin Powell to run for President. It was the Democrat party that was the party of slavery and Jim Crow.
BTW, I don't think that "race" is a real thing. The concept is totally arbitrary, and it is something that we just made up to divide us. There aren't precise definitions of race. There are minor physical differences, but you can find that in any two groups of people of different national origin. It is like saying someone is a redhead.
Every single time the political left has brought up an issue that they claimed was absolutely critical, eventually, that issue would be revealed to be exaggerated or completely false. This is how I feel about Climate Alarmism. Someone admitted that the issue was not so much about the climate as it was about completely changing the economic system and getting rid of capitalism. I can almost guarantee that Climate Alarmism is exaggerated because the political left is behind it. My point is that the left is exploiting every issue they can to get people to vote against their own self-interests.
Things said about the political right in terms of their attitude toward the poor and minorities have been completely exaggerated. The capital rioters don't represent the vast majority of conservatives who are non-violent and very accepting of others. They are a fringe lunatic group. They don't represent the people watching Trump's speech, whom he told to protest peacefully. Many of the rioters assembled before Trump's speech and plans were being made weeks in advance through social media. Just before January 6th, Donald Trump offered to send National Guard to protect the Capital Building for extra security, because there was a perceived threat, but Nancy Pelosi refused this.
If anything, Donald Trump was the poor man's president. He stood up for issues that affect poor people, like bringing jobs home. He was a populist president and changed the Republican party possibly forever because that party can no longer be just a group of intellectual conservatives sticking to their principles at all cost. Policies have to be judged in terms of if they are good for the American people.
I agree with Ben Shapiro who says that if people are suffering, then the government has a role in alleviating that suffering, but otherwise, government should leave people alone.
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