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KMO....Uneducated Homeboy here........After 8 years of teaching skiing
at Killigton, VT, (That is another story: choosing a poor but zesty
lifestyle over more money and less living) I went into the skishop to
buy a headband. The first thing that came to my mind was, "these suck,
I can do better than this."
The next day I purchased a sewing machine for $15 in a second hand shop
and then raided the company Black Diamond's dumpster. I made my first
6000 headbands on that machine and got enough trash to make my first
1600 pieces free. That was 7 years ago.
So while I dont have the benefit of unemployment compensations because I'm self employed I couldn't be much happier. I dont have health insurance either but I dont really care.
What country are you from? I had 3 surgeries in the early and mid 90s. While disabled my rent and food were taken care of by our city and state human services and the Medical Center at Dartmouth wrote my bill off. It is there for anyone with honest needs. A utopan (hard darwinian) capitalism would shun such "socialist" practices.
Did you ever read, "God Bless you Mr. Rosewater"? What a hoot.
There is a whole new block of entrepenuers and "new rich" in this country. This economic expansion has made a lot of homeboys rich, not to mention people like me who would rather play than be rich. In my business I could be making more but I take steps carefully. My business has doubled in the last 2 years and I even had to farm out work, but my time is more precious than my bank account.
Today it is my responsibility to bask in the sun and read while thinking over yours and Prof Tim's critique of capitalism. Later....jim
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Rhonda Chapman wrote:
> The really rich almost always reach those heights because it
> is their primary driving objective. Success for the sake of success. We
> have few people in this group, because few people are so strongly motivated.
The really rich are generally BORN really rich. The Sam Walton's of the world are the exceptions that prove the rule. The best way to get really rich is to have really rich parents, get a private education, be introduced to all the right people, grow up with the right role models and expectations for your future and have the wheels of success greased for you from the word, "go." This Horatio Alger bootstrap nonsense is just the spurious fairy tale that so many of us buy into to either justify our incredible privilege or to comfort ourselves with the ludicrous hope that we too may one day join the jet set and buy our way into paradise.
Sure, homeboy on the street COULD do a lot better for himself if he had thousands of dollars to spend on high-powered large group awareness training like you and I have done, Roni. Randy and Judy's 21st Century Leadership covenant would serve him well, but, having been thoroughly indoctrinated with the values of Liberal Consumerism, there isn't much chance of him knowing that such abstractions could serve him better than new clothes with the right labels, a cell phone, and whatever other tangible consumer trophies define a person of means and status these days.
Sure, they CAN reject their programming and consciously select or stumble into something better, and some will, but under our glorious "free market" the vast majority will spend their way into consumer debt slavery and spend their days working bullshit jobs. There's nothing noble about that. Am I proposing a legislative fix? No. Do I advocate a command economy? No.
I think we live in a time of unprecedented opportunity, but I don't think anyone is absolved of any responsibility for the fact that so many people live paycheck to paycheck with no health insurance or financial safety net just because a handful of people "make it big." That's certainly no vindication for capitalism.
-KMO
http://www.c-realm.com/totd/archive_s.cgi?mode=day&date=24Feb1999
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