Debunking the 'self made man' myth

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Doesn't appear that way thus far since no one has called criticism, censorship yet, though I do not see any actual relevant criticism of the article or the topic at hand.

Nobody's trying to censor anyone on this thread. So far, there's just criticism for opposing political views.

Problems with this statement:

1) It is irrelevant to the point raised (that government is necessary for society to flourish)
2) As Thomas raised, it is a false dichotomy. There are rights other than "peaceful and voluntary trade".
3) It is a straw man of any opposing view

Most importantly, however

4) It does not define "initiate force".

As an example: let's say you own a chicken and are offering eggs to people who provide services. I own a cow and I give you plenty of milk in exchange for a week's worth of eggs. You hope to take what milk you need and sell on the rest, but when you taste it you discover it is sour, and you actually get very sick as a result of drinking it. It turns out that the milk is actually from my dog. Most people wouldn't say that I had "initiated force" against you, but I have sold you product that is no good, is actively harmful to you and wasn't what you thought it was. You have been unable to feed your chicken because you've been sick from the dog milk poisoning, and you can neither use my product nor sell it on without lying about it. Your chicken stops laying due to lack of food and you lose your source of income.

Have I acted in a perfectly moral manner? Is this better than having a third party stop me from lying, deceiving, or sell sub-standard product?

Ha-ha, not even Lions make it on their own in the Jungle, and they are not even as socially cooperative as dogs, and little weak humans do it in complex cultures, ha-ha X2.

The answer is so simple to this; it's ludicrous to suggest that any modern humans in complex western cultures are self-made.

Put a human naked out in a jungle with another group of primates and see just how long they make it on their own, and there's the answer.

Human beings are extremely domesticated and functionally disabled by culture. They can no longer stand toe to toe in a competitive environment where culture does not provide a crutch for survival with even each other, for survival. In other words a REAL FIGHT for survival, in the wild.

When a hurricane comes through people can go crazy with guns, pointing them at each other scavenging last minute gas at the gas station, as they might not be able to make it somewhere far enough to get something to eat, pre-packaged.

In fact, a hurricane or any natural disaster is great evidence of just how self-made any human is, as we almost completely rely on culture for our existence.

And what is culture: The total cooperative effort of everyone in a society and all the by-products they create.

If it were not for taxes there would be no roads to even travel to get a frigging donut at the store, for all the folks addicted to sugar and fat in our society.

Let's face it human beings today, in our fancy western cultures are functionally disabled by culture, more than they ever have been in human history.

The closest to self-made men there are, are in primitive societies, as at least they can survive, when the teat of the grocery store is not available.

But self made, hell no, that's an oxymoron for any social animal. Humans ARE SOCIAL ANIMALS. THAT'S JUST ZOOLOGY 101. AND OF COURSE THE SIMPLE ANSWER.

Obama was just using common sense, when he said you didn't build this alone. No human builds anything alone or ever has, or any other social animal as far as survival and subsistence goes.

It's amazing to me that anyone even questions this, but it also goes to show just how easily humans can be brainwashed to believe almost anything for their greatest need: social acceptance and fitting in; an instinctual need for any social animal for survival, and rarely is any healthy social animal exempt from this mother nature instinctual reality.

And additionally, it is the simple reason that higher functioning autistic folks, OVERALL, are 23 times more likely to commit suicide. They have trouble fitting in, and the evolutionary alarm bells keep going off, and reminding them that survival is on the line, even if it isn't as we can rely on culture through the by-products of others for survival, without actual flesh and blood cooperation more than ever, but instinct still reins.

There is no escaping mother nature, except for those individuals that have developed extremely high cognitive abilities in regulating emotions, and bodily functions down to brain waves and body temperatures as evidenced in Tibetan Monks in the Mountains by Scientists.

But hahax3, there just isn't time to achieve this, or ever have the focus to do it for humans in complex western cultures, overall. THERE IS Too much cultural noise, to even control one's own mind, but at that, still not subsistence, as Tibetan Monks still rely on each other for that.

A hermit is probably as close as one will find to a self made man, but still unless they are totally naked in the forest; they are still relying on others for their survival.

Again, let's face FACTS, there is no such thing as a self-made social animal; AGAIN, ZOOLOGY 101.

That's because lions don't live in the jungle, they live in the Savannah.

Lions do often survive independently after rejection from a pride.

You are setting up a straw man. I do not argue for anarchy, but for a government whose purpose is to defend individual rights rather than violate them. It is the distinction between a properly delimited police force and a protection racket.



It is a valid description. With regard to any area of peaceful human action ? trade, marriage, migration ? there are those who primarily want to let people alone, and those who primarily want to boss people around. In either camp there are disputes over goals, methods, and fine points, but at the root it's one or the other.



My opinion of most people is not so low as yours. Fraud is an indirect form of force; you physically possess my eggs, which you obtained under false pretenses, and I cannot readily recover them. It is exactly as if you entered my home and stole the eggs while I was away.

Not only is fraud a crime ? and it would be if it were a defective radio you sold me, claiming it worked when you knew it didn't ? in the case of the milk, you actively tried to do me physical harm, by representing poison as a wholesome beverage. This would be a form of assault even if no money or trade were involved ("Here, try my delicious, wholesome milk," he offered, stifling an evil cackle). Only a maniac would do such a thing. Fortunately, maniacs are a tiny minority in any society, and of course laws, police, and law courts properly exist to protect honest men from maniacs and criminals of every variety.



Certainly not, but the law's concern should not be the morality of your actions but the fact that you have grossly violated my rights in at least two ways.

If an intelligent young man spends every spare moment smoking marijuana and playing video games, I may believe he is acting immorally, but he is harming nobody else so it's not for me to coerce him into different actions.



There's that straw man again. Fact: nobody can stop you from lying, deceiving, or selling a substandard product. The law can only punish you after the fact. Even in our current highly-regulated society, government agents cannot monitor every transaction; even in food production, USDA and FDA inspectors do not closely watch every facility. Your own self-interest is the strongest motive for dealing honestly with others.

It seems to me that statists have a very odd view of other people. They seem to assume that every businessman, every convenience store owner, restaurateur, hotdog vendor, is a psychotic maniac itching to commit mass murder, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary ? and yet that anybody in a government suit is morally pure and immune to corruption, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It's a strange religion.

Thanks for the pedantic clarification, as the jungle generally is metaphor for the wild. Yes, I know they literally do not live in the jungle.

And even though Lions can SOMETIMES make it without similar species specific animals they still rely on the interdependent relationship of Nature to make it anywhere in life, from what they eat to what they breathe.

Really that too, is simple pedantic math, as is this OP, in Zoology 101.

NO one, AND I do mean no one, is self made in nature. The greatest illusion of all is that of division from Mother Nature. And amazingly STILL, some folks do hold that illusion as true. BUT HA-HA, other animals are not 'smart' enough to do that.

Last edited by aghogday on 28 Oct 2014, 11:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, I could read it but I seriously doubt you'd like my opinion of it.

Like you always do? I could go find some of your posts that in my opinion don't contain substance or value.


It's not just about working hard but working smart. Luck, connections, and parents can't make up for working smart if someone is to achieve true success.


They utilise loopholes in the law like anyone else. Sometimes there is no right and wrong in law, only who has the better lawyer.

No, I am not setting up a straw man. You implicitly set up this straw man when you criticised Thomas' "no man is an island" remarks on the grounds that "everybody has a right to trade".

Thomas: "Government is necessary for society to flourish"
Luanqibazao: "Everybody has a right to trade"

I pointed out that your point was irrelevant to Thomas' point. Indeed, your point only makes sense as a response to Thomas if you were arguing for anarcho-capitalism -you'll notice he wasn't arguing for totalitarian communism on this occasion.

Sure. I am glad you accept the need to protect against actions which do not use direct force, such as false advertising and fraud.

You're assuming I knew though. What if I were merely negligent? My dog's milk is usually healthy and nutritious, but right now she has an infection that I just haven't tested for. I sell cow's milk and dog's milk to generally satisfied customers, but I'll sometimes have problems which spoil a batch.


We're even further into hypothetical land here... I do notice, however, that you have moved from "initiating force" to "harming others".

I accept this point.


The danger of being caught by random checks is a great way of keeping people on the straight and narrow.

I would argue that "dealing honestly" is probably not enough. What we need are informed parties on both sides. If you decide to make the milk and eggs into a cake, people don't really have any way of knowing the fat or sugar contents of your cake. They can't make an informed choice whether to go with you or the vendor down the road who makes a genuine effort to differentiate herself by baking low fat, low sugar cakes.


This is straw man is both outrageous and bizarre. Outrageous because, as I am sure you are aware, it is inaccurate; bizarre because you yourself claim to be a statist in this very post - you are straw manning yourself!

The reason we have Food Standards, employment rights, and environmental protection legislation is because without them, some people go too far the other way and the market doesn't correct it. People actually put sawdust in bread, people actually dump their waste in rivers, people actually cut safety standards to cut costs and raise profits. I'm not arguing for a theoretical position here, we've tried it and it doesn't work.

I suspect you and I actually have a lot in common politically, but we'd squabble over worker's rights, environmental protection and consumer rights. Oh, and taxation for healthcare, welfare, education, roads, fire departments, the above things... Maybe I'm wrong and you'd agree with some of those, maybe I'm wrong because you'd actually disagree with me on much more. When it came down to it, I think we can agree that governments shouldn't create laws that don't actively promote justice, should keep regulation and taxation to a minimum, and shouldn't stop people from doing activities that don't harm others.

You can come to a compromise and agree that the good or service is only worth 6 eggs. You hypothetical fails to support your all-or-none argument.

You really don't pay much attention to the DOJ prosecution of corporations, do you? And I suppose that the massive regulatory violations by many financial, chemical, mining and mineral processing, and food and drug companies were all just a few unintentional clerical errors, right? If a company can make a boatload of cash, and (if caught) are likely to be fined less than the amount of cash they pull in from breaking the law, do you really think that the norm would be for the company to act in a way that was less beneficial to the company's bottom line?

I am afraid that I am a bit more cynical in my views on the human species. They are a short sighted and selfish bunch by genetic design. It is our history of civilization built on logic, reason, and progress that allows us to protect one another as a whole (laws, police, and law courts) rather than resorting to survival of the sneakiest.

Then do read it. I dare yuh. I DOUBLE DARE YUH!

I tend to notice that people who want the government to leave them alone often want to be allowed to sell shoddy products to consumers, or pay their workers slave wages, or want to discriminate against other citizens. Many people who talk about the government taking away their rights by continuously looking over their shoulders are up to something detrimental to someone else.

They utilise loopholes in the law like anyone else. Sometimes there is no right and wrong in law, only who has the better lawyer.[/quote]

So would you say being smart is necessary to work smart? Also what is true success?

The italicized text demonstrates an injustice and a problem with the way the world runs. That's probably where the thing you call "liberal envy" comes from. It's not that he has a yacht and I don't so that's not fair. It's not like a child complaining because another child was given a bigger toy. It's that the law only applies to poor people. The rich are technically bound by the law just like everyone else but in actual practice they are above it.

It no longer amazes me that (1) there are still people who try unsuccessfully to disprove the "Self-Made" person when so many of us are around; (2) the most vocal of those people seem to be somewhat less than successful, to say the least; (3) an over-reahing sense of entitlement also seems to be common among success bashers; and (4) haters gotta hate.


Amen, Brother! Preach it!