But in real life, the loser in the competition of “making a living” ends up totally ruined and will probably never get the chance to rise up again. The world is way too competitive. Even the guy you consider as “lazy” in the UK, could actually be the hardest worker and most motivated guy in Yemen. It’s all relative. Labeling someone as “hard worker” or “not working hard enough” is all in relation to how others behave. So, the question is: why should someone who geniunely tried his best, worked as hard as he could, but simply couldn’t get promoted (maybe because the boss didn’t like him; maybe because there was no openning available for promotion; maybe because someone else way more qualified showed up to take the higher position) get a less share of life’s fruits than the one who got promoted?

And come to think of it, when you reeaally think of it, you notice that the ones who work the hardest seem to be making the least money. Take a quick look around you. Who works harder? The server at a restaurant or the manager of that restaurant, the teacher in school or the principal, the engineer or the construction worker, the phone operator of the floor supervisor, the soldier in the battlefield or the general in the air-conditioned center of command, the taxi driver or the taxi company owner?

If you want to be completely honest with yourself, you will notice that this culture of “work hard and you will receive more” was simply propaganda fostered by the owners. The owners want to make more profits, and the way to achieve more profits is to motivate their workers to become more productive. So, what better way to motivate workers than to tell them: “work harder, and you shall receive more or get promoted”?

Maslow suggested that “society’s leaders, strong ones, high achievers, and winners receive their pay in relation to higher needs and metaneed gratifications rather than in the obvious, lower-need gratifications like money and material wealth”.

Average people might actually be paid more in “dollars, appliances, automobiles, and so on and, therefore, not have to feel envious, resentful, or jealous of society’s leaders”.

Interesting thought…!

Matt

PS Ooh, time for ‘X Factor’…

@MT. Explain, are you no longer watching X Factor because you agree, and can only tolerate the super gifted Leonas or cringeworthy fools? Or are you saying that because a despicable programme like X Factor is exploiting these remaining mediocre performers you no longer want to contribute to their viewing figures? Knowing which will help me understand your actual view.

@Joe. The problem is that when you begin your piece with statements like that, anybody on the left will immediately roll their eyes and stop listening to you until its their turn to speak. If you’re lucky. It would be a bit like scrapping with them over IHT and beginning with, “Well its money that’s already been taxed blah blah blah…”. Just don’t bother… they don’t want to hear it and they’ll likely nod their heads and smile, virtuously believing themselves in that moment to be no different to Colonel Gaddafi’s psychiatrist.

Whether or not you’re right is largely irrelevant. Unfortunately so are the merits of the case. What matters is not so much what pieces you have on the board but how they’re played, and who moves them around.

The reason ‘Broken Britain’ was ridiculous wasn’t that it said the wrong things but the fact that David Cameron was the one who said it and not Shawn Bailey.

Moronic mistake.

The problem with patrician liberals arguing in favour of positive discrimination (or what our friends in the US call ‘affirmative action’) is that each and every one of them should really give up their jobs on Monday morning for a less qualified woman or a minority candidate to fill their post. If asked, how many of them do you think would agree to do so?

There are plenty of intelligent compassionate people like that who essentially want people to make sacrifices for the greater good, just as long as it isn’t them. I don’t doubt for a minute that most of us who are on the left (and know why) are no doubt compassionate people.

The problem is, the liberal left tend to feel they have a monopoly on compassion.

Here and in the US. And it infuriates the conservatives over there, who in a 180 to Great Britain outnumber liberals 2:1 and in another 180 tend to be more represented by the working class. Hence Palin’s enormous popularity despite her questionable intellect, and 90% of British people having no clue who the hell Michael Gove even is.

The left enjoy demonising people who believes in a strong sense of individual responsibility as a way of advancing social change, and it irritates me personally to be both one of them and one of their enemies. Its convenient to place those people on the right and believe that they just hate poor people, because that’s what mankind’s tribal instincts, evolutionarily hardwired into all our social programming, tell us to do.

Similarly if you’re on the right, then what turns you on the right isn’t so much your love of self reliance and hard work, but your hatred of the state. The namby pamby social worker / guardian reader types. Groups draw their strengths from their antagonism towards other groups, not their own merits (Where did I hear that again??)

Forget the merits of the case. Just play. And beat the other guys.

You can’t do anything if you don’t get elected.

Before I went out to Malawi a couple of years ago I had a discussion with a professor at the University of Malawi about the needs of young people and it was interesting that despite the obvious vast differences in the challenges they face how much similarity there was between the concerns she had and those we hear in this country for young people – interestingly she laid a lot of the blame for that on the changes brought about by democracy within Malawi (apathy, lack of respect, lack of ambition etc. etc.)