Adam Smith wrote, thought and spoke from the perspective of community among the masses. Not from the current state of society. How many appraisers came to fight AMCs before AMCs took more than half their income?
The problem is that we, the head count, look to each other for the same spirit that stood up to the English during the Revolution, and don't see our brethren standing beside us.
We puff our chests over a proud history of standing up for what we believe, the Civil War gave us such heroes on both sides. We are Americans, a force to be reckoned with, our spirit will not die.
But sadly, that might have been our history, but after WWII, we, as a people, have not stood together for anything else, and might not, ever again. Brave, strong, and sometimes stoned, young people stood up in the 60s and 70s against Vietnam and the political animals. But they did not stand together, and we as a people, did not stand with them. When survival was more closely tied to community, there was greater availability for congregation and consensus of actions toward the benefit of our shared interests.
But Industrialization fractured the family units, The Information age has further fractured us into individuals fully capable of not just survival, but success without community. If it affects me, I might care, If it does not affect me right now, I’m too busy with my own problems.
As a people – a society, we have become feral cats not wanting regulations, less than not wanting to be bothered with others and their problems.
We are focused on “us” as individuals and can’t get back to the community level with any success, save, all but the smallest of groups, without some catastrophic event that would affect the largest majority of us with such deep ramifications that we could not ignore as individuals, such as a failure of all crops and international transportation issues causing wide ranging starvation.
Even $4.00 a gallon gas did not unite us as a people, many with HUMVEE vehicles were interviewed on TV stating they could afford the gas so # U $%@ you can’t afford their gas sucking vehicles.
Americans are deeply generous, but only to foreigners that we don’t want here. We have jumped to help every country in the world, except our own. Because as an American, you have a duty to survive and thrive. We hate people that think they have a right to live, and our tax dollars should buy their food and pay their medical bills, when they are fellow Americans.
The people that died on 9/11/01 outraged the country, because they were survivors, thriving, taxpayers with jobs.
That many people, ten thousand times over, are homeless because of subprime mortgages and unemployment. Do we rally as a nation to their aid? Do we build homeless shelters and shut down the greedy that were responsible for profiteering the very shelter that keeps men, women and children alive? Nope, not at all, if they were victimized, then American society has deemed them as not worthy, pushed under the rug until they can yet again become taxpayers with jobs, thriving in our society.
This is what we must over come to be heard. And we will not be heard from a position of underemployment, enslavement or hopelessness, least we move to a foreign country and scream from there.
