All the roads, education, etc. means zilch without an individual to put those things to productive uses. Those individuals certainly “build that”.
The Onion buys Infowars
- Thread starter Marvin the Martian
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I read all of the speech, including the last sentence in the passage at issue. I have no doubt that Obama believes what he said. As I mentioned, that is in his DNA.
This is the reason I wrote what I wrote like this:
Well, it's that everybody does most of what they do out of self-interest.
Of course human interest also contains an element for doing things solely out of kindness for others. But I think it's pretty obviously in the minority of the things we spend our time, energy, money, and other resources doing. Or, at least, it's a secondary priority.And I don't think this is oversimplifying anything, either. I think we're just a bit uncomfortable admitting that Adam Smith was entirely right. But we shouldn't be. Admitting he was right doesn't turn us into a bunch of Howard Roarks. It's indisputably true that the primary reason people exert efforts, make sacrifices, and take risks in the name of producing value for others is not "benevolence" for those people...but to serve their own needs and wants.
This idea most certainly does not conflict with the idea that people are also, at their core, charitable. In fact, being prosperous enhances our ability to be better givers. So, really, they go hand in hand.
My Man Mitch, again:
Every day, we work to lower the costs and barriers to free men and women creating wealth for each other. We build roads, and bridges, and new sources of homegrown energy at record rates, in order to have the strongest possible backbone to which people of enterprise can attach their investments and build their dreams. When business leaders ask me what they can do for Indiana, I always reply: “Make money. Go make money. That’s the first act of ‘corporate citizenship.’ If you do that, you’ll have to hire someone else, and you’ll have enough profit to help one of those non-profits we’re so proud of.”
The more people in a society who subscribe to this general philosophy, the more prosperous that society will be.
You misrepresent what he said, is the problem. You've got to be trolling at this point. I thought we cleared this up many years ago.
I took Obama's speech as a paean to collectivism - which is why I consider it anathema to the ideas that will actually make our nation, or any nation, prosperous.
If you want to get a good idea of what a nation should do to be prosperous, go check out Javier Milei's recent interview with Lex Fridman. It's two hours long, but it's fantastic.
Personally, I think Obama would have far more sympathy for the Peronist/Kirchnerist policy framework that created the mess that Milei is in the process of fixing....and not much sympathy for the policy framework that Milei is implementing to reverse its disastrous effects. But, who knows, maybe I have a completely bad read on Obama.
Why would you think that? And as long as we are on Obama, he became very wealthy and he produced nothing to make lives better or advance science and knowledge. This point is ancillary, but it shows that he really doesn’t know how things work or what it takes to make things better.
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What was the basic thrust of what Obama said....and what is the basic mischaracterization of what he said?
Are you saying he was simply touting the benefits of publicly financed infrastructure...rather than the notion of "sharing the wealth" kind of collectivism?
Never thought Obama's speech was anything close to a paean to collectivism. Always heard him saying a "no man is an island" kind of thing underlining the idea that we are all connected and should acknowledge the many helping hands we received along the way. That doesn't diminish the amazing things the entrepreneurs accomplish unless for some reason that you believe that entrepreneurs are islands. That seems completely counter to entrepreneurship to me as one of the greatest skills an entrepreneur needs to have is the ability to draw other people to their idea to help build it to its fullest potential.
Well, I disagree that was the point of his speech, but whatever. There's nothing wrong with interpreting themes differently. What triggers me is blatantly misinterpreting syntax, which is what CO is doing by denying the referent of Obama's "that" in the infamous phrase.
Collectivism is the opposite idea of individualism. It emphasizes the group over the individuals within it. Individualism emphasizes the individuals over the group.
And it’s important to realize what individualism does not mean. It does not mean that people are an island and do whatever it is they do without critical inputs from others. In fact, many entrepreneurs are quite literally reselling the labors of others (I’m one of them).
So what’s the upshot of this?
The upshot is that those “helping hands” weren’t acting primarily out of devotion to the group. They were acting primarily out of devotion to themselves.
That doesn’t mean they weren’t fully bought into the group. Many people are very devoted to their employers and their mission - sometimes with gusto. But try cutting their paychecks in half. It would almost instantly reveal that their primary motivation is their own well-being. And that’s because they’re normal human beings.
Of course they aren’t islands. But they’ll never accomplish their goals without making it possible for other people to meet their needs to by working for, selling to, buying from, investing in…etc their enterprise.
People will do that in spades. And those people doing that are absolutely necessary for the mission of the enterprise. But just don’t think they’re doing it “for the group” - each and every one of them is interacting with the organization because they believe that doing so will benefit them. If they don’t believe it will benefit them or that they could benefit more elsewhere, they will devote and apply their efforts and resources elsewhere.
It would be, yes. But I never said that entrepreneurs do what they do on their own without anything from anybody else. They did so with critical inputs from others — pretty much all of whom did whatever they did in service of their self-interest, not in service of the entrepreneur.
“The point is … that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”
He's a dishonest, disingenuous, partisan hack. Why do you even bother?
No, it doesn't show that at all. That is a non sequitur.
He said it himself: “The point is … that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”
What happened was, he gave a pretty solid speech, but the delivery/phrasing was such that it was easy to edit out a clip that made it sound like he was saying something he wasn't. And half of the people here, their first experience with that speech was to hear the misleading edit on one of their many right-wing newsfeeds. So that's what they think reality is, and it will never change.
