Sorry, There Are No Self Made Men Here

I don't want to hear you call yourself a self-made man or woman unless you are a hunter-gatherer. The idea that anyone can achieve anything they want with only will power and a sparkle in their eye is so laughable that those who claim this should have their MBA's revoked.  It seems that in some circles, self reliance has become such an obsession that it has collapsed into a dichotomy.  Either you are a hard worker who never got no breaks from no one or you are a free loader sucking money from the first guy.  Reality is always more subtle, always.  It's just that you can't see that because you are blinded by the light of your own deified magnificence.

I grew up without much money, hovering between the middle class and the lower middle class.  Because I am good at taking tests and writing gibberish that sounds sage, I went to a decent college with a tuition scholarship and a little help from the loan sharks in the US federal government.  I studied math and computer science, which led to a remunerative career in the same.  My final (well, never say "never") foray into academia was an engineering master's degree, which I collected on the back of a full scholarship and living stipend.  Listen closely, you can hear my bootstraps stretching to the point of snapping right off my feet.

Do I sound ungrateful?  That snide voice you hear is a parody.  The volume of social investment required to deliver me to where I am today is so vast, it makes me cringe.  If I lived in Somalia, I could be just as smart and just as hard working and wind up with nothing, or even less than nothing if people felt inclined to cut me down to size.  Bureaucracy is a technology, and when used well it is a mighty one.  At some point in the past, some people were feeling in a cooperative mood and decided to create our universities and industries.  Each of us who benefited from there work were victims of the happy accident of living in a society that values this kind of cooperation.

Sometimes we place such value in self reliance that we forget that we can accomplish more together than we ever could alone.  Positioning hard work as the ultimate virtue is almost correct, but a little off center.  The better question to ask is how well I am participating in a system that benefits all of us.  It may be better to give than to receive, but those two do not have to be dichotomous.  When a social system is functioning, the two are a part of the same whole.  Well designed social welfare programs empower those benefiting from them, often leading to amplified returns as we progress from generation to generation.

I think your belligerent distrust is misdirected.  Immigrants are not taking your jobs and women are not having children to collect welfare dollars from your pocket.  I mean, seriously, do you even listen to yourself?  The statistics, if you cared to look them up, support this, but you hardly need them because you don't need statistics to show that one and one don't make three.  The idea is absurd.  Crimes require motive and opportunity.  If you want to find trouble, go looking for those in a position to cause trouble.  Like I said, a functioning social system shores up its foundations along all sides, benefiting us all.  What we lack in the United States is a fully functioning social system and that is the fault of those in charge.  We don't live in a bad country.  It's actually a pretty nice place to live.  However, we suffer from bad leadership.  Or, more accurately, we suffer from absent leadership.