Originally Posted by Val
Originally Posted by Old Dad
The beneficiaries are largely paying their own way! They're adults, personal responsibility for one's own well being SHOULD be paid for largely on one's own! I do believe we're getting somewhere!

Personal responsibility! is the American rallying cry that leads to a place where people are out for themselves and whoever they decide they should help. This gives us lopsided results and terrible inequalities. Plus, it lets us end up with funding for public schools being cut, and with those funds being replaced by middle to upper class parents. Working class and impoverished parents can't afford that, and the schools become unequal. This is a good example of where this philosophy has failed. Well, for some.

This is basically what I was referring to earlier when I said I see it more as a pathology than as a system of beliefs, because it's basically a philosophy of, "Screw you, I got mine!" Society and sociopathy don't tend to get along well.

Plus, there's another failure of self-awareness, because the people who espouse this don't even recognize how much help they got along the way of allegedly doing it all on their own.

Nobody does anything on their own. Everyone gets help.