Fugazi HavredeGrace

“The rich are not paying their fair share.” I have some thoughts on fairness. Wanna hear ‘em? Here in Denver, we have a street called Colfax. They say it’s the longest continuous commercial avenue in the nation. It’s where you’ll find Casa Bonita. If you drive a few blocks on any section of Colfax, we you will encounter several able-bodied hobos. If you drive the length of Colfax, you will encounter HUNDREDS of them, and that’s just Colfax. Denver is teeming with hobos. (Note on terminology: You may find the word “hobo” distasteful, but we all understand the difference between a homeless person and a hobo, even if some of us pretend not to. I have a cousin who pretends he doesn’t understand the difference between people and sheep, but that’s a story for another day. When a person pretends there is no difference between hobos and homeless, then I question their empathy for the homeless.) Where was I? Oh, yeah… Denver’s army of hobos. They are mostly young, mostly white, physically healthy, young men who have chosen to do fuck-all with their one and only turn on this planet. On this question of fairness, then, what’s THEIR fair share? What would Denver look like if these able-bodied people contributed to the common good in any way whatsoever? What if, instead of littering, and shitting, and vandalizing, they contributed their “fair share”? Societies are challenging to think about, at least for me. Families are easier, so let’s do this. Imagine I have two teenaged children: Werky and Loafy. Werky is motivated, conscientious, and inquisitive. She does fine in school and plans to go to college. Loafy ditches class, smokes pot, and spends time in expensive rehab centers. She’s every bit as capable as Werky, but she lacks inquisitiveness and work ethic. How should I treat these two kids? Here’s what many families would do: the parents would funnel most of their time, money, and attention to Loafy because Loafy says life is difficult, and she just can’t make a go of it. Her mother and I might try to keep her on track, but Loafy will wear us down because we are working harder than she is. Eventually, we will relent to her demands that we make life easy on her. There’s an economic principle that applies to every human interaction: you get more of what you subsidize. That means every time we cater to Loafy’s lack of initiative, Loafy becomes likelier to Loaf. Meanwhile, Werky sucks it up and makes do with less… Less time with her exhausted parents, less money toward her needs and her education, and less attention. To make matters worse, Loafy resents Werky’s success. Someday, Werky will also become resentful, but Loafy will be the first to discover the power of that particular emotion. By the time Werky is ready to embark on adulthood, she has enjoyed much less guidance from her parents than Loafy, and Loafy has burned through money that might otherwise have helped Werky pay for college. The cost to Werky is largely invisible, for two reasons. First, we don’t tend to track resources we never see. We don’t monitor the absence of a thing. It’s just how our minds work. However, we still respond to the incentives and disincentives, even when we don’t realize we’re doing it. Second, families tend to favor those in need. Most social animals do. For example, groundhogs will put themselves at risk for other groundhogs by standing guard and making themselves conspicuous to predators. The closer the familial relation, the more risk any given groundhog will assume for another. Complex social animals tend toward self-sacrifice, and it usually serves the common good. But we’re not groundhogs. Loafy has agency, and her loafing harms the common good. Continued…

Every one of us started out as a mental communist. A very small child believes that wishing makes it so. The world revolves around him. Food appears, toys appear, someone else pays for everything. When reality says no, he cries: "It's not fair!" And when something breaks, it's someone else's fault. Normally, children figure out around four that it isn't so. The mental communist doesn't. The rest of us learn it from reality. The stove is hot. The toy breaks. The friend leaves. Wishes don't move the world; work does. Freud called it the passage from the pleasure principle to the reality principle. It is called growing up. The mental communist never made that passage. He is fifty years old, and still four. Why? Because he was protected from reality for too long. A comfortable home, endless studies, a job in an institution where being wrong costs nothing, and a state that plays the parent. Peter Pan was the boy who wouldn't grow up. Today Neverland has a campus, a newsroom and a ministry. And so the fantasies became delusions. A child's fantasy is soft. It gives way when reality pushes. A delusion is hard. It survives every piece of evidence – that is what makes it a delusion. You recognize the grown child easily. The tantrum when reality says no – today we call it outrage. Rights without duties. Someone else always pays – only the parent has become the state. Every failure is someone else's fault: he started it. And the imaginary friend – "humanity," "the people," "history" – who always agrees with him. Here is the danger. A child's fantasy is guarded by his parents. A grown man's delusion is guarded by power – and paid for by everyone else. What grows people up is what it always was: consequences, work, responsibility for someone other than yourself. And nothing ends a fantasy faster than your own baby crying at three in the morning. A civilization is built by adults. It cannot be run from Neverland.