Or why culture matters and communism doesn’t work reason #145849
After musing on the state of certain cultures around the world recently, I noticed one big problem that keeps them poor, dysfunctional or both. Without naming any specifically, it is well known that in certain cultures, when a family member is rich or gets rich, they will find themselves with a very large and needy family that depends on them. As incentive is a significant motivator for human beings, this naturally means people who have such a big man to go to for hand outs, aren’t motivated to work hard themselves. It also lessens the incentive for one to become a big man as they’ll come to be depended on the same way by a suddenly large and needy family themselves.
In being reminded of this, I got thinking about my own family. Most of my family both direct and extended are wealthier than me. Some are significantly wealthier than me. The very idea that I would go to them expecting a handout is hard to fathom though. If desperation compelled me to beg, I would still be reluctant to do it and it would be with the intention to pay it back. Without thinking about why, the idea that because someone has more than me, that they should share it with me goes against my being. This is even so when with those sharing blood and mutual affection. It is interesting that literally everyone I know who is sympathetic to state socialism, is if anything less generous with money not automatically fleeced off their wages. A major reason I don’t take socialists seriously is because almost every one I have met thinks exactly like me when it’s their property up for grabs.
Now, there are certainly people who rely on others for handouts in my culture. And this is without me going off on a tangent about the welfare state. But this really only helps what I’m trying to get across since people like this are generally regarded with disdain and described as leeches, moochers and a variety of other pejoratives. I wonder if such names are quite so common in cultures where this dependence is common? I don’t know but I’d be interested to find out. Based on observation, such names would seem redundant when such dependence is normal. It’s not a coincidence that cultures where this exists are some of the poorest and most dysfunctional in the world.
If I can feel like this about my loved ones and they about me when it comes to sharing the wealth. Specifically, the mutual but generally unspoken belief that I have no right to what they have unless they decided they want to share; how can anyone expect a system extending this to strangers to work? It also goes to show why socialist policies are even more destructive in countries with this dependence culture than in the West. In the latter case the government becomes the big man and since the government has no wealth, it’s really a poor man that everyone thinks is rich.