Big Brother is washing you.
"Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. Instead of all the workers being leveled down to low wage standards and all the rich leveled up to fashionable income standards, everybody under a system of equal incomes would find her and his own natural level. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people; but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income...and the really great in favor of equality."--George Bernard Shaw
Shaw's observation, however true, could be a springboard for similar observations. As he puts it, those who lack gifts of character and intellect will cherish and defend their material gifts. The materially rich who have scant resources of "small minds and mean characters" will want an environment where it's safe for them to grow in net worth. Conversely, the people of strong character and sharp minds who don't have much in the bank won't be as concerned with protecting wealth they don't even have, but they will want an environment where it's safe for them to grow as humans.
It's a binary of fancy (like almost any binary view of the world), but it's one that might have some utility as a model for explaining the political behavior of people. It might explain why the tea-partying conservatives, concerned with the endangerment of property rights by tax-and-spend liberalism, were apparently indifferent to the endangerment of the right to free expression during the previous administration (loyalty oaths at campaign rallies, embedded "journalism," a ban on images of troop caskets, and a Frankenstein monster of Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy to "win" elections and stifle dissent).
Of course, with enough money, you can defend your other rights, and for a lot of people, freedom of speech is only important when they agree with the content of the speech. And the people of great minds but no-so-great account balances aren't indifferent to material things; they just realize that with the assets they have, hoarding might not be as wise as pooling their resources with others.
I'm rambling, because I haven't made a habit of writing much lately. Lately Lexulous and online Scrabble (mostly with speranzosa and clockworkalien) have been absorbing my time. When it's not that, it's my usual reading.
Shaw's observation, however true, could be a springboard for similar observations. As he puts it, those who lack gifts of character and intellect will cherish and defend their material gifts. The materially rich who have scant resources of "small minds and mean characters" will want an environment where it's safe for them to grow in net worth. Conversely, the people of strong character and sharp minds who don't have much in the bank won't be as concerned with protecting wealth they don't even have, but they will want an environment where it's safe for them to grow as humans.
It's a binary of fancy (like almost any binary view of the world), but it's one that might have some utility as a model for explaining the political behavior of people. It might explain why the tea-partying conservatives, concerned with the endangerment of property rights by tax-and-spend liberalism, were apparently indifferent to the endangerment of the right to free expression during the previous administration (loyalty oaths at campaign rallies, embedded "journalism," a ban on images of troop caskets, and a Frankenstein monster of Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy to "win" elections and stifle dissent).
Of course, with enough money, you can defend your other rights, and for a lot of people, freedom of speech is only important when they agree with the content of the speech. And the people of great minds but no-so-great account balances aren't indifferent to material things; they just realize that with the assets they have, hoarding might not be as wise as pooling their resources with others.
I'm rambling, because I haven't made a habit of writing much lately. Lately Lexulous and online Scrabble (mostly with speranzosa and clockworkalien) have been absorbing my time. When it's not that, it's my usual reading.