Opus 2021-166: Beware the Slave Mentality

Why is free enterprise so great?  Free enterprise encourages private individuals to take risks because they can see the potential rewards.  In so doing they generate enough wealth that the corrupt officials can get rich and there is still enough for the rest of us who did the work.  It only works with a free people.

Many people are slaves or have a slave mentality.  I know that in certain situations I turn on what I call my “fieldhand mode”.  That means that I follow directions to the letter.  I try not to think.  I offer no suggestions.  I show no initiative.  You don’t need to be a literal slave to operate that way.  I think it is modus operandi for a significant number of government employees.  They are clerks at the DMV or in some office that is handling your mail.  They can be judges and members of the city counsel.  They are like the bearing on the wheel of a work truck that freezes up and keeps the whole machine from moving forward.

People on the dole are like this.  Maybe not all of them.  I have known people who did everything they could to get off government assistance and a strange thing happens:  They get off government assistance.  We are currently seeing that it is hard for employers to get people to come back to work.  The basic reason is that their unemployment benefits have not run out so why should they work?  This is the insidious power of welfare.  It sucks the initiative out of people.  It makes it almost impossible to stand up and be responsible.  Snowflakes living in the basement have this syndrom.  It is amazing what happens when they are thrown out and either work or go hungry.  As usual, Proverbs has a comment on this phenomenon.  

(Pro 16:26 NAS77) A worker's appetite works for him, For his hunger urges him on.

The basic attitude is human.  It says, “What’s in it for me?”  As a teacher I received the same salary and pay increases whether I worked hard or kicked back.  One reason that private schools do better than public schools is they are held accountable for the results.  The general economy is that way.  If you get a check for not working, why work?  If you get the same check as the guy on the next machine who does half the work you do, why work so hard?  

This is why slave cultures and socialism do not produce enough wealth to raise the masses out of the sloth of poverty.  This is why we need to put people into authority who understand human nature and basic economics.  This is why people with initiative tend to vote Republican after they get their first paycheck and see all that is taken out by the government.  This is why redistribution of wealth and reparations will make no difference in the long run.

Liberty and responsibility work.

homo unius libri