My opinion of Obama’s remarks about success and “the village”

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me, because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.  That’s how we funded the GI Bill.  That’s how we created the middle class.  That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.  That’s how we invented the Internet.  That’s how we sent a man to the moon.  We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President — because I still believe in that idea.  You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.”

via Did Obama Say “If You’ve Got a Business, You Didn’t Build That?” – ABC News.

My immediate reactions, in no particular order:

  • There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with Obama because they know they got their wealth by paying him off or someone like him to given them a monopoly source of income at public expense.
  • There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with Obama because they know his policies will allow them to keep prospering at the expense of the public in the name of helping them. Virtually everyone involved in college and university education, for example, is a source of garbage about “helping keep college affordable” while advocating policies to try to extend the life of an unsustainable bubble.
  • Why is “the Golden Gate Bridge” looked on as a shiny example of justice and collective power, and not a misallocation of resources? Pharaoh could claim that the pyramids could only be built by us working together. NASA still sings that song. Try this: they are the 1%.
  • “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.” Absolutely, someone trying to be successful. Not their enemy and antithesis, a politician. Obama thinks his point leads to socialism. But it actually proves the opposite.
  • In a free market where people trade with each other without threatening violence to gain their stuff, the only way anyone can succeed is by trading what he has with others who are willing to trade with him or her. You can’t succeed unless you are “giving back to the community” from the beginning; and you will never stay successful unless you continue to do so.
  • Obama wants a society where it is easier to receive bribes and give kickbacks. There is a whole society of wealthy people who know how this game is played and who back him. They also back Romney. We are screwed. But let us at least know it for what it is rather than endure this disgusting and hypocritical moralizing.
  • Obama is going to create a society that is destroyed by its political class and its dupes. It is inherently destabilizing.
  • The idea that going to the moon was some kind of triumph is an amazing one. No Pharaoh  was ever able to convince the slaves that they wanted to build the pyramids. It is truly breathtaking that the State hucksters are able to appeal to this and everyone believes it.
  • Obama is very confident that private roads and fire protection services won’t work. But I have had free market road service twice now for about the quarter of the price I paid for one incident when the government cronies raided my wrecked car and “helped” me without my consent. They, of course, had a much nicer tow truck and had plaques on the wall of their “business” from the local police force thanking them for their contributions for the Corruptocratic Cover du jour. I’m not going to take Obama’s word that these things couldn’t be arranged better by the private sector.
  • Private protection, for example, would never randomly enrage people by sending expensive drones to murder at random overseas. It takes a state to invent that sort humanitarian and economic insanity. (And, by the way, government contractors are not the private sector).
  • There are a lot of smart people out there. I hope we see more of them. They watch Russia Today on the internet and vote for Ron Paul. And they are smarter than me; they would never waste time responding to this garbage from Obama.
  • The fact that “people” help you doesn’t mean you owe Obama–or his government, his military, or his cronies–one cent. Even if you actually robbed people to get your success, how can you pay them back by giving more wealth to people who want to rob them more?
  • People think that Obama sounds vaguely like Jesus. He does. Jesus spoke of how people owed God, who created, sustains, and controls all things, and should help the poor. Obama replaces God with the State, taking credit for all things, and says that we must give more to It, and trust It to help all those people.

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