Members Only Post #92 – Why Do People With No Skin In The Game Get To Have An Opinion?

Let me ask you a question say you’re sitting with your family and discussing what should be done about a certain discipline issue. Let’s say it something small, let’s say limiting the kids screen time or something to that effect. Let’s say you talk it over with your wife and you let the kids get have their say though your rule ultimately goes. Let’s say you come up with a plan that you think will work good and then set it up. Now let’s say right before this happens five crackheads from down the road bust into your house and say “No, that plan doesn’t work. All the kids need stoke crack.” and starting immediately the next day they all start smoking crack.

Now at first this probably seems completely and utterly ridiculous, past hyperbole and past farce. Too ridiculous to even make a point. Yet this is exactly how many countries, especially Western ones, are run. Those without any skin in the game are given just as much say in how things are done and run as those with skin in the game. You may understand this general principle but I want to cover some specific instances to bring this point home. Regardless of what side you come down on.

Also I want you to think about if this is something that can work and if not, how long does a system like this have? And what happens when it collapses in on itself? We all know democracy is one of the worst ways to run a country, it’s mob rule, rule of the lowest common denominator, and we all know how easy it is to manipulate the lowest common denominator. But it goes beyond that. Let’s take a look at some of this and see why we have so much division today.

Too Big To Suceed

Take a country like the United States of America. The United States is a huge country both landmass wise and population wise. Yet it is all ruled together as one yet because of the true diversity of America culturally, politically, racially, religiously, and many other ways this becomes very hard to do. There’s just too much difference in the peoples and ways of living. I’ll give you an example of this using liberals in Vermont with conservatives in South Texas and talking about demographic change, also note I’m not making value judgements about either’s stance just pointing something out.

How is it that a guy living in Vermont in a lily white neighborhood (and county and state for that matter) can preach to a guy living in South Texas about something like the border and demographic change taking place there? Does anyone else see the disconnect? How could the guy in Vermont ever in 100 years think he knows what the hell is going on in South Texas? Because of what the news and media tells him? Now maybe the guy in Vermont is right but you see the discrepancy here, right? And this happens all of the time.

People have strong opinions on things that they know nothing about. A good many people, especially in Western nations, are sheltered and do not have the first idea how the real world works and therefore shouldn’t have a say in how the real world is run. That’s just one example but there are plenty more. How could folk living in mansions in Washington D.C. have the faintest idea how a farmer in Nebraska should live his life and run his affairs? Or a guy living in some rundown apartment in Miami? Or anywhere else for that matter?

Isolation & Naivety

The bigger the disconnect between those that rule and makes the rules and those that are ruled over the more trouble you’ll end up having. Exposure to reality has a way of quickly understanding some things don’t work and some do. For example say you have one guy who’s boxed for a year and another guy who’s done regular Western karate for a year and both say that their way of fighting is best and they both run a school and preach it that their way is the better than the other guys.

Now let’s say neither guy ever fights or any of their students get in a fight. I could say tai-chi is an effective form of self-defense and if it’s never tested against reality I could have a whole lot of people believing me and preaching that. However once the first real fight goes down it’s blindingly obvious which is the superior form of fighting. However if no one is ever exposed to reality anything is up for grabs. It works the same with politics and a great many other things. When too many people live too far from reality that’s when bad things happen.

This isolation and naivety has a price. Granted I don’t think that those that run the country are naive I think they’re extremely intelligent and know exactly what they’re doing, rather I’m referring to the people who vote for them and believe in the things they say. They are often good hearted people, just hopelessly naive.

Beyond Politics

Like I was saying above this applies to far beyond politics. It applies to cultures, teachings, and just about everything under the sun. Some people live further away from reality than others and some peoples reality is different than your or mine (because of either isolation or being sheltered). I don’t mean to make this about any one issue just point out the larger theme here and the untenable nature of it. This applies to everything from the individual or family level to how a nation or even the world is run.