From: http://www.lewrockwell.com/fischer/fischer11.html
Heartless
by Andrew S. Fischer
About twenty years ago, I had occasion to work with a computer
programmer named Carl. One day, for some reason, we discussed a
lawsuit which had been brought against a national toy company. The
toy involved was a plastic "sprinkler head," which was attached to
the business end of a garden hose and, when the water was turned on,
transformed the hose into a kind of whirling dervish, which spun
around in the air, spraying water all over the place to the delight
of summer children everywhere. Unfortunately, it seemed that some
kid somewhere decided to place the device in his mouth, turn on the
water and, predictably, the child drowned.
Carl had no sympathy. "Culling," he called it. Nature's way of
weeding out inferior designs. While I was shocked at Carl's lack of
compassion, deep down I had a gnawing feeling that perhaps he might
be right. A single kid, among hundreds of thousands, and among
perhaps millions of uses of this toy, was tragically killed because
he thought it would be fun to jam it down his throat and open the
spigot. The thought that this must have been an inordinately
reckless, or inordinately dimwitted child, nagged at me for days. It
did sound pretty stupid to do what he did, after all. On the other
hand, kids do stupid things. Should the penalty for that be death?
In any case, we agreed that the lawsuit brought by his parents was
absurd. Hundreds of thousands of kids used that toy without a
problem; one kid did something stupid with it and died, so that
meant the toy should be taken off the market and its manufacturers
should pay millions in damages? Obviously not; the fact that one
individual out of so many suffered a negative result due to his own
misuse of a product hardly rendered that product dangerous, despite
the assertions of government and its legal system.
Over the years, we've all witnessed scores of cases such as the one
noted above. Million-dollar settlements, products removed from the
marketplace, idiotic warning labels on everything from Silly Putty
to cattle prods. All of this to prevent people from doing stupid
things and making foolish choices. Yet people continue acting
stupidly, not just in regard to consumer items, but in all aspects
of their lives. They smoke (sucking a solid into their lungs),
damaging their health. They overeat, and don't exercise, ditto. They
spend too much money and have more children than they can afford.
This is all called freedom, and people can do whatever they want to
do to themselves, as far as I'm concerned (but they shouldn't go
begging to the state when they find they've screwed up, of course).
Culling, he called it. Social Darwinism at its most brutal. It's not
that I don't have sympathy for people in dire straits, or even those
in simple need. When I encounter a homeless person on the street,
for example, I recognize that under different circumstances that
could be me. I typically feel a ripple of sorrow, and sometimes hand
over a dollar (although I fully suspect it will be used for alcohol,
or worse). At the mall a few years ago while waiting for the
elevator, I found myself standing across from a boy in his late
teens in a wheelchair. He wasn't a bad-looking kid, but from his
speech and mannerisms I realized he'd never have a normal life.
Somehow this brought tears to my eyes and I had to walk away. This
kind of thing doesn't happen to me often, but it's necessary that I
mention that little story because of what I must write next.
You see, I've reached the point where I have to agree with Carl.
This is an unpopular position, to be sure. When discussing it with
friends, it always ends up with my being labeled a hard-hearted
hater of poor people. With me supposedly caring not a whit about all
the children who never had the advantages I had. I'll admit I was
fortunate enough to have had good parents, a husband and wife who
loved each other, worked hard together, and tried their best to
provide my brother and me with a decent lower-middle class
existence. They made sure I did my homework and do as well as I
could in school. Yes, they scraped together enough dollars and paid
my tuition at an unexceptional, mid-city "commuter college" (in an
era when, fortunately, it cost just $300 per semester), and they
were supportive in many ways when I foundered in my career and my
life.
While these don't seem to me to be extraordinary advantages, this is
obviously better than having parents who are alcoholics, who are
constantly fighting, who don't care about their kids, who berate
them or beat them, who let them run around unsupervised so they can
get in trouble, do poorly in school and fail to develop basic common
sense or an ethical system, or the ability to solve the slightest of
problems, or gain any skills for earning a living. Certainly most
kids from such an environment will have more trouble than I did in
attaining a modest, middle-class existence.
Not that it is impossible, however. As the book The Great Reckoning
notes (quoting Economist magazine), poverty can be overcome fairly
effectively if teenagers do just a few things: finish high school,
don't have babies, and find a job and keep it. Two people working
full time, each earning just $7.50 per hour, should have over
$24,000 a year after income taxes. They could spend a third of that
on rent and have enough left over to live decently, couldn't they?
There could be some savings, too, if they shunned the X-box, cell
phone, widescreen TV and the new car, right? They might not be
living high on the hog, but they could live in a dignified way, and
would be stable enough to improve their work skills, and get ahead,
however slowly, wouldn't they? It seems to me that people need to
live within their limitations; it's simple: just don't spend what
you don't have. Yet, "can I afford it?" is a question no one asks
themselves anymore. "Do I really need this?" is another.
Like it or not, those groups who do not or cannot live within their
means, act responsibly, perform useful work, provide for their
offspring, save money for their future, etc. are supposed to wither
away; their bloodlines are supposed to peter out. This is Nature's
way. Survival of the fittest. Culling. Yes, it sounds heartless, but
it is inherent in life. The effective and competent members of a
species survive and multiply and, furthermore, they instinctively
limit the size of their families to match the availability of
resources; those who cannot do so vanish, and the species as a whole
becomes stronger. At least this is how it happens in all of the
animal kingdom except in a single case. Somehow, civilization
(specifically its subset "government") has altered this state of
affairs where human beings are concerned, and has turned Mother
Nature on her head.
By providing for and otherwise mollycoddling the incompetent, the
state has ensured the survival of bloodlines that were not supposed
to continue. It has given rise to "welfare queens" and unstable
families, abused and forgotten children, illiteracy, crime, and all
the rest. Groups whose "survival shortcomings" Nature did not intend
to embrace are instead nurtured by the state, and these groups may
even have birth rates higher than average. At the same time, the
state taxes its competent citizens so painfully, that they are ill-
disposed to help the less fortunate especially since much of this
taxation is already supposed to be doing just that.
While adults can, and should, be held accountable for their actions,
innocent children can hardly be blamed, since their plight is due to
the shortcomings of their ancestors, their families in short,
their bloodline. As a civilized people, we don't want to see them
suffer; we have empathy. I believe that most people in our society,
if not taxed as heavily as they are now, would give a lot more money
to various charities to help the poor, the less fortunate, all the
down-on-their-luck folks. (I know I would annually donate twenty
times what I do now.) Some might even "adopt a family," not only
giving money, but also providing guidance and education. The
difference is that it would be voluntary and specific, not mandatory
and expansive as it is now, and that makes all the difference in the
world.
So, when I argue that government social programs and handouts should
be scrapped, that it's not my problem if some people don't have
health insurance, that it's "tough luck" if the elderly reach
retirement without having provided for themselves, that all of us
are responsible for our own actions, for our own choices, and our
own lives... I'm branded as heartless. The question is: do I deserve
this label?
February 11, 2006
Andrew S. Fischer [send him mail] is a controller for an investment
advisory firm in Pennsylvania.
Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com
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