"Self-Made Men" and Social Darwinism

There have been many statements lately about how the wealthy came to be that way. Most of the statements include phrases like "hard work" and "personal sacrifice" and "maximizing their potential." Now these are all good things, and many people who exhibit these virtues do succeed. But is that all there is to it? I think not.

If everyone started on an equal playing field, that might be true. The real world is hardly a level field. Look at the Forbes 400 (Forbes Magazine's list of the 400 wealthiest people in the U.S.). Out of the top 100, 32 gained their wealth through inheritance. Their total worth, incidentally, is $80 billion. In fact, you have to go beyond the top 100 to find someone worth less than $1 billion. The "poorest" person on the list is worth $300 million. An interesting point worth noting is that Steven Forbes does not include himself on his own list, even though his net worth is around $400 million.

I can't speak about (or even identify) most of the people on the list, but I know that Bill Gates, now the wealthiest person in the U.S., did not come from a poor family to begin with. He had the advantages of a good home and good education (Harvard, even though he dropped out). These opportunities are simply not available to everyone. The field is definitely not level.

Many of our nation's largest and most famous fortunes (Getty, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, etc.) were built on the backs and graves of ordinary people. If you doubt this, then you must have slept through your American History classes back in school. Not for nothing were they called "Robber Barons." Of course, if you liked them, you called them the "Captains of Industry."

So let's not get too carried away in an orgy of self-congratulation among those who have achieved wealth.

But before anyone accuses me of tarring too many people with the same brush, let's consider another very important question. Having achieved success, monetarily at least, does an individual owe anything back to the society in which he or she has prospered? Or is this success due solely to personal characteristics? Is our value absolute, or does it depend on the nature of the society in which we exist? Let's try an experiment.

Let's take a successful commodities broker and drop him in the middle of the Australian outback with a bunch of aborigines. Take away his glasses and his blood-pressure medication, so he's on the same playing field as his new associates. How much value will he have in their society? Can he successfully stalk game? Can he even see it without his glasses? His value will be near zero. In fact, it may be less than zero, because he will have to depend on their good will and generosity to stay alive.

The Social Darwinists in our society would have them simply abandon him, saying that all he has to do to succeed is work harder. If he can't do that, it's his own problem. They owe him nothing. Fortunately for our broker, most subsistence societies are more generous than that. Interesting, isn't it, that the poorest societies are the most generous with what little they have, while the wealthier societies value greed more than generosity?

My point is that our value is determined, at least in part, by the society in which we find ourselves. Therefore, let's not speak of "self-reliance" unless we are living alone on the frontier with no involvement with other people. If we are living in a society, we are dependent on it for our success.

Can there exist a society in which absolutely everyone contributes? I doubt it. Every process has some waste associated with it, like sawing a piece of wood. We saw the wood to produce a product of value, but there is a loss in the length of the wood, because the saw blade has thickness. There is even a term for this loss: it is called the "kerf" and it must be allowed for in planning a project. The wood removed by the blade is turned to sawdust, which has no value for the average workman. But any workman who doesn't clean up after himself isn't much of a craftsman.

The bottom line is that we all have a shared responsibility toward the society in which we exist. If we have prospered in this society, it is partly because the society has allowed us the opportunity to do so. If we refuse to care for the society, we may find ourselves with no more opportunities at all. It is very much a case of cutting off the branch upon which we stand.

Email me at "me@gordon-glasgow.org"