You could put a great deal of individualism into this bucket, I'm thinking. "Everyone should do their own thing", makes a lot of sense, when you have a lot of

You could put a great deal of individualism into this bucket, I'm thinking. "Everyone should do their own thing", makes a lot of sense, when you have a lot of resources, individually. "We all need to hang together", is more important when everyone is one misstep away from disaster, because they have few resources. "Don't do anything weird", makes more sense when, if you get yourself into trouble, you don't have the resources to get yourself out, and everyone else will have to pitch in to rescue you, and they don't have much in the way of resources to spare, either. The original meaning of "conservative", is very close to "cautious", and it is the normal result of the feeling that you are in a precarious position. Not being conservative, being adventurous even, is more palatable when you have the resources to recover from things going badly for a while. Oddly, I find myself thinking that this NYPost article is an interesting, even insightful one, and that is not what I normally think about the NY Post.