It is in our nature to be predatory.  Humans became the primary intelligent creature on the earth, not because of some God-given power bestowed, but because we evolved to survive and reproduce like all other species on the planet Earth.  As our intelligence increased through natural selection, we gradually gained dominion over all other creatures on the earth, even domesticating some.  The territorial imperative of survival required that we challenge any other human that crossed our territory, resulting in countless wars over food, water, and shelter.  The weak died and the strong survived.  The strong were not always the most intelligent.

 

It is only since recorded history, perhaps the last three thousand years, that the idea of equality has emerged from the territorial, selfish gene, imperative the drives human beings towards inequality and survival of the fittest.  The ancient Greeks expressed it best when forms of government were described including the one we cherish most, called democracy.

 

The elite founders of the United States of America were men primarily of wealth, privilege, and education––rarely available in the rough-and-tumble climate of the New World.  Where pushing the native population back with hordes of disenfranchised and religiously persecuted poor from Europe was becoming normal.  These hordes were coming to try to find some semblance of relief from abject poverty and oppression.  The founders saw the idea of the noble ruling class as being against the tenents of freedom, taxing the poor to fund their lavish lifestyles and petty wars over land they controlled in the name of the religiously endowed king.

 

Thus, they founded a government based on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as equality for all.  Unfortunately, that equality did not include women, indentured servants, or slaves.  Equality for those would take a very long time to come.  In fact, equality of opportunity is still not here in spite of all the Horatio Alger stories of people, like our president, overcoming enormous odds, to become famous and/or wealthy.

 

Money talks and everything else walks.  Wealth means power.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  While our society is no longer bound by family ties as in the old families of Europe, we now honor wealth over intelligence and reason as a sign of personal power.  The fact is that most wealth is still inherited.  The the rest of new wealth is the result of some accidental or lucky physical trait or talent, and the good luck of being at the right place at the right time, particularly in business.  Those that rise to power in business often do so by thievery, trickery, corruption, or other vice rather than hard work and dedication that is so often touted as the American way.  Profit is the name of the game and profit any way you can as a result, leads to much greed in society that is strangely held up as a “good” thing.

 

The United States and the world are becoming wealthy through the exploitation of natural resources, the idea that personal acquisition equates to wealth, and the monetary system that enables wealth to be made from money alone.  However, wealth, particularly in the United States, has been shifting from the population in general to the higher echelons of the population.  These higher echelons have become a sort of noble class, able to operate beyond the laws by corruption and control of the government and legal system.

 

There is enough wealth to go around to provide everyone with assets and personal wealth so that no one could be considered, “poor.”  It is only fair and right that the poor should have their share of the wealth, or at least the opportunity to earn it.

 

Currently, people without equity constitute about 50% of the country's citizens.  What that means is that they may be working, but cannot get beyond payday to payday and save or invest.  These working people do not pay any taxes to support our infrastructure and services that cannot or should not be provided by the private sector.  The idea of deregulation and turning over government functions to the private sector has not reduced poverty but has increased the wealth of those in the higher echelons who are doing government functions for profit.  One of the most disturbing trends is the privatization of education. Public education has been the foundation of American education since the beginning of the country, but public education is rapidly being replaced by a two-tier system where private, deregulated, schooling is favored over public education.  Schools for profit have a very uneven record of success.

 

Jobs, especially high-paying ones, the primary way that most Americans make money, are going away and will continue to go away as more and more of both the manufacturing and service industries are automated through the computerization of every aspect of goods and services.  That leaves a lot of Americans out of work and idle, looking for something to do, something meaningful in their lives except to be on some sort of entitlement making them inferior to everyone else.

 

Any form of redistribution of wealth is considered to be “communist” or “socialist.”  With all the bad connotations those terms imply from history.  I suggest that, to be fair, that we truly begin to look into democracy and equality of opportunity and move away from the idea of “he that spoils gets the spoils,” to a fairer and more equal society.  How we do that, is a dilemma when money has such power and control over so much of our lives.  I do not have any real answers, only to raise the questions.  Can we continue to be called, “the land of the free,” if most of our citizens are poor and unable to be free?  Can our government, “be of the people and by the people,” when monied interests control the media, buy our representatives, and subvert the legal system to their benefit?

 

I suggested we move from a representative democracy (or republic, as some like to call our government) to a pure democracy.  This can be done by providing everyone access to the Internet and government by allowing them to vote on all issues directly without the need for representatives.  I know this is a radical idea, but the subversion of our government toward being unequal for all and more equal for some, like corporations and their owners and directors, needs to be addressed.  There's a lot of talk about “restoring the Constitution” but the Constitution provides for amendments and the right to “alter or abolish it.”

 

The 21st-century is proving to be much different from the 20th and we hope so because the idea of two world wars and a nuclear standoff is not something we want to return to.  On the other hand, this century we are already facing tremendous challenges that can only be overcome by clear thinking and the right choices.  Providing fairness to those that have been traditionally oppressed for reasons no other than fate, and in some way providing wealth to those that have had no hope of ever having any, would make this century the one where we finally broke free from our territorial greed and became truly “the land of the free and the home of the brave (and kind).”

 

Copyright 2012 © Ronald W. Hull

 

11/2/12