Only An Educated Mind …

This quote from Aristotle translates as “Only an educated mind can understand (entertain?) a thought that is different than his own without necessarily accepting it.”

I’m reminded of a segment I heard on NPR just yesterday about a college economics professor and his two sons, both of whom are majoring in econ.  The dad’s a libertarian, and, understandably, so are the boys.

Though this is a concept very far from what I believe, I really try to wrap my wits around this philosophy, which had a real run in the U.S.  Its high watermark of acceptance here was probably somewhere in the mid-20th Century; the popularity of the Libertarian Party capped at ~5%.

It’s true that most things cannot be accomplished as efficiently in the public sector as they can be privately.  If I had been allowed to pay nothing into Social Security over the years, I’m sure that I would have been far ahead of the game, now that I’m a senior citizen.

But all this ignores what I believe to be a far larger fact, i.e., that we live in a society.  Yes, we have our own personal rights, but we also have duties to do things like keeping the environment clean, educating all children, and ensuring people aren’t dying of treatable diseases.

There are also hundreds of functions that can’t function at all without government: national defense, policing and criminal justice, fire-fighting, emergency management, utilities, infrastructure, and so on.

Nonetheless, I understand that people, especially rich ones, want to keep every penny of their money, and see no obligation to society at large.  See example below: