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Self-made men, debunked
- yummyfajitas 14y agoThis article (and presumably the underlying book) seems to be defining "self-made" in an odd way - anyone who purchased services is not self-made. I.e., if a person bought and paid for an education, roads or IP protection, they are not self made. Similarly, I suppose (the article doesn't follow it's own logic), if a person buys AWS services they aren't self-made. I wouldn't describe the article so much as a "debunking" as a "redefinition". If you adopt an extremely restrictive definition of a term, then no real world objects may meet the definition of the term. So what?
- ZeroGravitas 14y agoPersonally I'd agree with your definition, that anyone who participates in an economy cannot, by definition, be self-made, but the article seems to be taking a slightly different tack. It is arguing that everyone benefits from government intervention. Some of these are arguable (e.g. would totally private education system be worse or better than what we have? If you believe it would be better then can someone therefore be described as being helped by the current education system, rather than harmed?) but I think the basic point that some government is better than no government is fairly incontrovertible.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]