RE: What Exactly Is an "Earned Privilege"?
March 21, 2017 at 10:26 am
(This post was last modified: March 21, 2017 at 10:27 am by Mister Agenda.)
I haven't noted a particular tendency on the left or right to categorize intelligence and looks as earned privileges, but earned or unearned, they would be intransigent to handle directly. It wouldn't be productive to ask engineering firms to hire more people with IQs below 100 or set up an 'attractiveness assessment board' to make sure that companies on average hire average-looking people (we've got too many pretty people in the data entry department, we've got to hire someone really ugly to bring us back to average).
Making sure people on the bottom economic rung have adequate healthcare, education, and access to other resources they need to have a secure life is a reasonable provision to compensate for whatever the situation may be that is keeping them at that level, and increases the chance that those who are able to get out of it will have what they need to do so.
But it behooves the more fortunate to remember how big a role being fortunate plays in being more fortunate. If you've got drive, determination, and talent; good for you; but you don't get credit for the circumstances that made you that way, and paying it forward to help other people have better circumstances is classy.
Making sure people on the bottom economic rung have adequate healthcare, education, and access to other resources they need to have a secure life is a reasonable provision to compensate for whatever the situation may be that is keeping them at that level, and increases the chance that those who are able to get out of it will have what they need to do so.
But it behooves the more fortunate to remember how big a role being fortunate plays in being more fortunate. If you've got drive, determination, and talent; good for you; but you don't get credit for the circumstances that made you that way, and paying it forward to help other people have better circumstances is classy.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.