The case for hatred, Volume one: Talking off the cuff with a room full of robber-barons

This series is my attempt at writing more often as thoughts come to me. This is in no way an attempt at anything coherent or even academic.

The date is somewhere late in September of 2012. We’re currently working our way through the election season of one Mitt Romney versus President Obama.

Now to start, allow me to state that I don’t particularly like either candidate and that this series of blog posts aren’t designed to shill for one side or the other. Or to put it into laymen’s terms, I don’t give a damn about the race, nor do I think your candidate is worth a damn.  I only mention the race as Romney made a statement regarding 47% or something like that of the American voting population expecting things such as food, healthcare and housing to be provided for them and that they are basically a group of entitlement losers who depend on the government.

Of course, much like anyone who is not a parrot for talk radio, I shook my head and rolled my eyes at the stupidity of the comment. It wasn’t until I recalled a conversation that I had with an older friend of mine in which I mentioned something about ‘might makes right’. He turned and looked at me with disgust in his eyes.

‘The problem is that, in our society, might does make right. It’s just that ‘might’ here in America is based off of wealth, not strength or ability.’

You see, it dawns on me that there is something intrinsically wrong with the idea that we as a people have no ‘right’ to any of these things… No, that doesn’t sound quite right. Perhaps I should state it in a different way.

There is a basic belief among a number of philosophers (or at least in my experience) that the reason that we agree to being held under a set of laws and government is that we get something out of the system such as safety, security and so on.

So, my question is simple. What am I getting out of this system? Why shouldn’t I simply take what I want? I ask this outside of the pesky ideas of morals and ethics. I mean this in simply a transactional type of view.

More specifically, if the system doesn’t provide me with an even playing field (and don’t bother pretending that it provides the population with anything even remotely resembling an even playing field), doesn’t provide basic necessities and doesn’t even provide a fair and unbiased system of justice, why should I play according to the rules? 

I think Mitt, living in a world where ‘struggling’ means ‘having to sell a bit of stock to pay for school’, misunderstands how few people actually think the government has ever, or will ever provide anything even remotely resembling basic necessities. But I also think Mitt misunderstands just how little disincentive there is keeping someone such as myself from breaking him and claiming his gear.