A Society of Scavengers

There was a time when we'd refer to a rich or wealthy person as "successful." I realized just the other day that this word has slowly lost colloquial favor across recent decades. I find myself not only mourning that loss, but being alarmed by it.

A few years back, I cobbled some commentary on the emplacement of the "Fearless Girl" statue in front of Wall Street's iconic Charging Bull, noting that the message therein is all wrong, that it portrays the concept of success as a zero-sum, winners-and-losers Manichaeism, when the basis of capitalism is voluntary, mutually-beneficial exchange. I've also covered the punishing of success and the overall disdain for it.

That the word itself is fading from use tells its own tale.

There's a notion, popular in certain circles, that wealth and riches are taken rather than earned, therefore "redistributing" them ( an odd concept - they were never “distributed” in the first place) for someone's notion of 'the greater good' is morally acceptable. That wealth beyond a certain level is immoral, so government is justified in confiscating large chunks of it.

Half a century ago, some of a socialistic mindset conceived a strategy to cause societal collapse and open the door to a new, socialistic structure by agitating economic class warfare. That strategy didn't work out because, some theorize, the not-rich would like to be rich one day, tempering the envy and covetousness that was stoked by the agitators. Underlying all that was a baseline of work ethic and an appreciation for the "American dream," the premise that this nation offered opportunity for upward economic movement to those willing to work for it.

The opening lines of The Godfather are spoken by an immigrant undertaker:

I believe in America. America has made my fortune.

This was the draw for countless millions of immigrants to these shores. For the great migration westward, by fortune hunters and families alike. And for everyone of a self-deterministic spirit, whether he be a wage worker, an idea-blessed entrepreneur, or anyone, really, with a dream and the motivation to pursue it.

The more modern message, promulgated by the Best-and-Brightest of ivy-walled academia and the balance of the intelligentsia, is that those who reap the fruits of such tenacity did so through exploitation, that they left a trail of losers and 'stole' from those they employed. Really, if you boil down progressive messaging, that's what it comes down to. That many of these titans of intellect never strayed into the real world to work a wage job, or to start a business and make a payroll, is an irony we mustn’t overlook.

So, words like "successful," when not used ironically or pejoratively, don't have a place in their lexicon. Their displacement advances the mindset they need in the masses to skirt the immorality of stealing a person's life's work. The reality that 88% of millionaires are self-made is inconvenient, and thus rarely mentioned. Moreover, even those who inherited wealth have a greater claim on that wealth than some randos who think the government should take people's life savings upon their death. I once had some guy tell me that a millionaire's kids did nothing to deserve their inheritance. "Neither did you," was the obvious retort. People are much too cavalier in their entitlement to Other People's Money.

We are justified in criticizing those who've grown rich by cheating, or by leveraging the public treasury (Hey, Senator Bedfellow, here's a thousand bucks! Please tip the scales my way for that million dollar contract I'm bidding on!).

But, the modern disdain for success is toxic, and if it metastasizes too fully, will result in a society of scavengers, where people survive and thrive not by building, but by plundering those who do. Already, a third of American men don’t work. They don’t contribute to the nation’s wealth, and many don’t even take on productive support roles for wage-earners. Instead, they live off the fruits of others’ labor, inculcated by the government to deem this acceptable behavior, and abetted in their torpor by countless forms of government handout.

When the handouts run out, as they inevitably must, will we see a return to a work ethic, or will we experience welfare riots? If our Best-and-Brightest keep insisting that wealth is taken, not earned, the ultimate outcome will be disaster.

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Peter.