Archive for the ‘thinking’ Category
Understanding Liberty
This will be the first in a series of posts designed to explain liberty in a common sense, less theoretical way. I sincerely hope it helps a few people understand a little better.
Look out onto a crowd of people….what do you see? Do you see skin colors? Genders? Gender preference? Hair colors? I would hope not. Real liberty, a real liberty minded individual, sees diversity not in classifying a crowd by it’s gender, ethnicity, or other superficial categories, but rather sees diversity in talents, dreams, desires, goals, hopes, dreams and creativity. Liberty says that each one of these folks deserves the freedom to cultivate their dreams, talents and creative aspirations. When we pigeon hole people based on some superficial attempt at categorization (often under the guise of compassion or altruism) we start to strip these people of their ultimate freedom to choose whatever life they want.
A good end timely example is healthcare. With liberty we have the freedom to choose a lifestyle, and that choice might not always be a good one. We may choose a healthy lifestyle or an unhealthy one. If we choose an unhealthy lifestyle, we take risk and this is the risk inherent in liberty. When we remove the risk, with government saying we must cover everyone with healthcare regardless of their choices, it starts to eliminate or reduce the inherent risk of our choices. This also reduces liberty and freedom. The risk says that if we engage in poor health habits and choices, we run the risk of not being covered by insurance, or early death. This is a risk we knowingly accept. If we choose a healthy lifestyle, we’re rewarded with lower medical costs and lower insurance premium rates. But rather, the government want’s to subsidize risk. It want’s to minimize the impact of choices we make in life, regardless of whether they are good ones or not. And this divesting of risk will be carried by those that make good choices.
It is not too much of a stretch to apply this to other things. We see it already with the villification of “rich people”. To make money, to be successful in acheving your dreams and goals and doing a damn good job of it, is looked at as “unfair”. These people will be increasingly punished with higher taxes just for starters. Just yesterday President Obama was, during one of his speeches, saying how evil profit is.
Joe might take his life savings and invest it into creating the business of his dreams. He may end up with one of three results. He may be very successful, making much more money and/or creating greater happiness for himself, his family, and his future employees. He may end up with around the same lifestyle as before. He may also fail, loosing a good portion of his life savings. If we, as a society, eliminate risk by bailing out failure (as with housing, banks, and healthcare) we necessarily reduce the chance of success. The consequences can be several: people may take more risk with less understanding, knowing that the safety net will not let them fail (housing bubble). The cost of bailing out improperly understood risk costs a lot to the people that are using common sense, which is not fair. It becomes a case of not subsidizing good risk, rather increasing reckless risk.
Putting this burden on the people who have done well, becomes a punishment for those who followed rational, well thought out plans, and rewards doing things wrong. This puts a burden on common sense. This in turn takes money away from those who can invest into more risk into a well thought out plan, subsidizing the failures. This is how the success that comes from risk is reduced.
Risk is a necessary part of liberty and freedom. We are free to take the risk needed to get further in life, to achieve greater happiness. There is also the possibility of failure. Common sense and good planning reduces this risk but never eliminates it. Reducing risk with common sense is one thing, but subsidizing it through the government under the guise of compassion is destructive to the American dream.
When we take away the possibility of failure we take away the possibility of success.
Where do you get your news?
We all have our favorite news sources, which tend to be the ones we agree with. It’s also easy and popular do dismiss news sources with differing views from our own, as evidenced by name calling such as Faux news in place of Fox news, or the proliferation of hate groups, such as “Bill O’Reilly is an idiot” or what have you. These things are a problem; allow my to explain why.
As was pointed out, we have a tendency to watch news sources that are biased towards our own points of view. This makes things easy doesn’t it? We can cheer as our pre-conceived notions are being validated quickly and easily, and we don’t have to do much thinking. We let the pundits do it for us. There have been studies done that show that the more we listen and pay attention to one viewpoint, the more we feel validated and correct in our opinions. However is this the honest thing to do?
I would like to challenge you with this: Good, strong, valid arguments are not formed by having our own views reinforced by others with the same view. Good science shows us that the best way to be right about something is to try really hard to disprove the thing, rather than prove it. Good use of logic says the same. Having this in mind, is there not value in listening to and understanding all sides of an argument, thinking carefully about it and then forming an opinion?
It troubles me that so many of us end up on a side, usually from our life experiences and influence from parents, church, teachers or other significant people from early on in life. We fight desperately to cling to these views and to believe they are valid, no matter what the means. I submit that the best way to strengthen a view or belief is to challenge it. Listen to all sides with an open mind and carefully consider the evidence and argument presented to you. You have nothing to fear, because if you were right in your previous assessment, your point of view will only be strengthened by carefully examining it armed with consideration of all arguments and biases. This is how you become an independent thinker, rather than beholden to one political party’s view.
Take all sides into consideration. Think carefully about these things, and enjoy your ability to defend your well considered position to all comers. Enjoy your status with your peers as an independent, careful thinker. These independent thinkers are not the ones who hate the faces on the other side. They don’t call names. They spend more time defending carefully thought out truth than trying to criticize those who don’t agree. That is a waste of time and energy.
All of this takes effort and I think it is much easier for people to listen to someone else and let them form our thoughts and opinions for us. That is lazy. Do your own thinking, listen to what all have to say. You’ll be a better informed citizen. Watch the ego too, it can get in the way.
