Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome
Bookworm on Feb 04 2011 at 9:23 am | Filed under: Government
In 1832, Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill granting a new charter to the Second National Bank. In a statement justifying that veto, he wrote a stirring statement defending equality of opportunity, and acknowledging how ridiculous it is to pretend that government can force equality of outcome:
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.
Related posts:
- Animal Farm hits Britain in the guise of sexual orientation equality
- A positive outcome for the law of unintended consequences
- Obama’s unabashed socialism and its probable outcome
Email This Post To A Friend
24 Responses to “Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Oh dear, dear, dear, dear…I am afraid that we can’t take Andrew Jackson seriously, as he was not educated at the appropriate Ivy League institution. Sorry! No, non, niet, nekogda!
My fingers shall now go over my eyes and into my ears.
How timely! (he has a couple of others of interest as well)
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=179149
Echoing Danny’s sniff of disdain . . .
conservatives certainly don’t have any new ideas, do they?
I am looking for a candidate who thinks like this. If you see or hear of one let me know.
You know it also occurs to me that we err in evaluating outcomes only in terms of wealth and material possessions. Even if you want equality of outcome, it is impossible to tell if you’ve achieved it if the only thing you look at is balance sheets. There are many people who derive their satisfaction from other things, and may quite intentionally forgo opportunities which are financially lucrative in favor of opportunities offering more intangible payoffs.
I offer myself as an example. I made a very nice living and had financial security guaranteed in my previous career path, which involved representing insurance companies in bad faith and ERISA disputes. Regular paychecks, nice benes, secure future.
Just didn’t believe in what I was doing for a living, because it struck me as defending the indefensible and promoting injustice. So I — quite intentionally — decided to let go of financial security to hang out my own shingle and represent the other side in such cases. What I have learned is that I am a decent lawyer but a terrible, terrible businessman, and that’s primarily because I can’t get myself to care very much about finances. It’s childish of me, ’cause I know intellectually they’re important, but I am constantly distracted by other priorities.
The result has been that I am at the other end of the spectrum from being financially secure. Income fluctuates in this racket, and I lack the discipline and knowledge to deal adequately with that. So my life is feast and famine.
I would not go back and do things differently, though, because if I was going to lose sleep I wanted it to be over finances instead of doubts about the morality of my career path. I still lose sleep all the time, but it’s over the thing I have chosen to lose sleep over. I think I am as well off as others with more wealth than me, because I have chosen the path most conducive to my own happiness. But if you measure my situation by my bottom line you’d have to say I was in dire straights much of the time.
I remember reading “What’s the Matter with Kansas” and its theory that poor and middle-class people were bamboozled by theatrics over abortion and similar issues, and thereby induced to vote against their own (financial) interests. I came away thinking maybe all those people just decided some things were more important to them than their financial interests and voted accordingly. Seems pretty rational to me — they weren’t voting against their own interests at all, they just prioritized their interests based on things other than their pocketbooks.
I did the same thing, Richard. A friend called it “breaking the golden handcuffs.” I had a very high paying, high status job and was as miserable as a person could be. I rejiggered my life (which included getting a dog), saw my salary drop by 60%, walked away from the status career path, and was very happy for about 15 years, until I simply burned out. Blogging now floats my boat, but I’m still struggling to figure out how to make it lucrative.
Johnston, outsource your finances to somebody that knows and you can trust with. Whatever you pay them, will be much less than the time you spent spent on finances and didn’t get it to work well.
Seems pretty rational to me — they weren’t voting against their own interests at all, they just prioritized their interests based on things other than their pocketbooks.
That’s a cardinal sin and heresy to Leftist ideologies on social equality.
Btw, most people get financial backup from their spouse. Either the husband or wife is good at finances. If both are terrible, then usually they have to find somebody else, assuming they even make it out.
Growing up in Tennessee, I am a Jackson man through and through. I don’t agree with every thing he did. But he was, as we used to say, a real man. Of course, Jackson didn’t even have an elementary school education, so as Danny said, we couldn’t permit him to hold any responsible position nowadays.
By the way, are we going to have a Reagan thread? Or did I miss it?
There’s a whole “brand” of people here in the South called Jacksonians, coined by Walter Mead.
It was a great way to describe Americans, without using Democrat or Republican. In case people hadn’t noticed, those terms started losing their meaning a long time ago (due to public brainwashing) and really lost their meaning in the Iraq War. Democrats call themselves patriots or at least not un-patriotic, and yet their actions belied their claims. And so did the actions of all the Democrats making their contribution by voting for not only a corrupt party, but an evil one hell bent on manipulating the lives of Iraqis and Americans to make a political buck.
If voters do not know the evil they do or vote for, then whose vault is that.
TommyC, now that it turns out Reagan was really Obama 1.0, I’m not sure we should have a tribute thread about him.
Too late, Charles. I started the thread and we can now all direct our energies to showing how utterly idiotic it is for the media to pretend that Obama is the political reincarnation of Ronaldus Magnus. (I love it when Rush calls him that.)
Book, I think it’s time to let you call me what my closest friends do: Monsieur Chuck. (Or M.C. Hammer if you prefer a bit more formality.)
Can we call you “Monsieur Chucky” if we feel particularly affectionate?
LOL!
“Chucky Marteaux”?
“Wow, for me? A 1961 Chucky Marteaux, the greatest Bordeaux of the 20th century? You shouldn’t have!”
1812 Rivers of War by Eric Flint provided a lot of background historical detail on Andrew Jackson, his family condition, and what was going on at the time before he became President.
Jackson is not only a genuine war hero, he’s actually one of the better military generals they had at the time. Which means he was not just an ordinary citizen nor a future politician. He was in charge of much of the US’s vital, critical, strategic defense initiatives.
And believe you me, being “good” at being a general, actually counts for a lot of lives in battles. More than was ever saved by the Left, at least.
I got a close up look at Jackson’s duels and some of the reasons why they were crafted. I got a close up look at what they said about Jackson and the reality behind the Trail of Tears (the historical reality, not the day time tv soap opera drama you get from revised history from Leftist indoctrination camps).
Thank you to Rush Limbaugh for making me aware of this blog. Until now I had never participated in a blog. I have a Facebook page but rarely post and when I do it usually has something to do with the weather. I have a twitter account but don’t tweet. I use twitter to follow political patter, the news, as well as professional information.
Bookworm you write as well as anyone I have read. Your writing is reasoned, poignant, and backed with research. (Probably that lawyer thing) There should be a way for you to make your living with it. I will noodle this for a while. I am a marketing person. I can sell anything I believe in. I like you did the corporate thing but I found it difficult, no, impossible to sell that which I do not believe in. I have had many arguments with sales managers. Now I work for me and pick and choose who I will work for. This is a great blog and there should be a way to make money with it without ruining it.
Richard Johnston (#5), I can so relate. When I was younger, I was very much in the corporate career and entrepreneurial mode, convinced that if I just had more money and be assured of taking care of my family, I would be happier. I finally decided that it was not only not making me happier, it wasn’t making my family happier.
So, now, I take great satisfaction in helping other people make money by making and selling things of value as a freelancer. My income is lower and my financial security more shaky, but I have been able to choose my own hours, attend my kids’ sports and music events, and choose my clients. I love what I do and every day is a learning experience.
I don’t fault others’ for seeking the almighty -$, because I was there myself. I understand it. At the critical forks in the road of life, I made my choices and I am willing to live with the consequences.
I have also found that the really smart and good people don’t chase the $…they take great pride in excelling what they do and the $ follows them. Who knows? It may happen to me some day. I don’t envy other peoples’ wealth, because I have learned that there is absolutely no correlation between people’s wealth and happiness. Some of the happiest people I have known were dirt poor but had great families. Some of the saddest, most pathetic people I have known had money coming out of their ears but failed lives and failed children. I have know very wealthy corporate execs, physicians and attorneys that I suspected were only steps removed from putting bullets into their heads because their lives were so miserable and they hated, absolutely hated what they were doing in life. To each their own. We all make choices.
Want to be happy? Make a great and loving family and raise successful kids. Create something (a product or service) of value to others. Help society, one person at a time. Do these things and we make a great positive contribution to our society. I suspect that God will reserve a smile for us at the end of our quest.
I know that I am not saying anything new but affirming that which we already know. I suspect that virtually all that frequent Book’s Bookworm Room can relate to all this. That’s why there are so few angry voices in our discourse.
Bizcor (#19): Thank you so much for your kind words. I’m a numbskull when it comes to marketing, so any ideas are always welcome. Of course, I realize that one of the profound limitations I face is my unwillingness to go public under my real name. Since that’s a deal breaker for me, I have to recognize that it my cut down my opportunity for advancement.
Of course, if I was a self-identified victim, I would say that my principled stand to keep my identity secret entitles me to more money, not less, because it’s unfair to live in a world that discriminates against the anonymous.
Bizcor: “Bookworm you write as well as anyone I have read.”
That may be the problem. Your entries, Book, invite some great commentary. The short essay form is in high gear here, produced by a group of very distinct personalities. It makes for engaging reading. (Not to mention that my successful subterfuge of appearing here under the guise of the quibbler known as Zach has created even more opportunities to show outsiders how this room’s denizens so capably handle static.)
Because responses and comments are as long and sophisticated as they are, it limits readership. A lot of people graze when it comes to their favorite conservative blogs, and you’ll notice that commentors on most sites limit themselves to fewer words than we do here. When I read Hot Air comments, they’re usually very pithy. Pajamas Media comments are somewhat longer, but it’s unusual to see something the length of what Danny, or jj, or Ymarsakar or I might write when they’re really taken by a topic.
It works the other way, too. We occasionally get comments here from people who obviously stop by the room often but otherwise remain silent. Invariably, they are relevant, well written comments, which tells me that their authors would be great additions here but just don’t have the time to devote to this room that others of us have decided we can.
Maybe one step to devloping a marketing plan is to have those of us with some expertise announce that expertise in an open thread on marketing ideas. You can arrange to contact them privately to discuss ideas. One thing I wonder is if you have any formal way of notifying big sites or outlets like Instapundit or Rushbo that you’ve got a provocative topic they might want to redirect to. An active daily outreach that highlights what you think other sites might find interesting—as opposed to passive RSS feeds at their end—might liven up traffic flow here.
(Not to mention that my successful subterfuge of appearing here under the guise of the quibbler known as Zach has created even more opportunities to show outsiders how this room’s denizens so capably handle static.)
I ran a textual analysis comparison using your sampled writing and Zach’s. They don’t match Martel ; )
Also, I find it strange that you would use and adopt a term “quibbler” that Tommy C used to refer to a character you created for yourself. If you had in fact created it for yourself, you would have your own terms that you were biased towards and would use instead. Such that it would create a consistent track record from beginning to end, as you commented on Zach. Of course, you could have used quibbler to “throw off the trail’ so to speak, but I find that to be a less likely potential given that you are admitting that you had in fact created Zach. If you had in fact done so, there would be no further need to keep up the veneer by throwing off the trail. If you had in fact not created Zach, but said you did, then the inconsistency in your wording would then be consistent with the analysis of your textual style from a historical point of view. (This is the kind of stuff that goes through my head naturally, be assured of that)
Like I told Book before, if people want to keep things hidden, they really got to watch what they say. I know that your body language and tone doesn’t come through to me, but be aware that people can still get some kind of read on your words if they have a long enough time and a great enough example space hehe.
I tend to agree on the short essay format bias. Neo-neocon is known for that as well and you can notice that her commenters are usually the more involved sorts.