this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Oh look, another "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps" take. How have you people not figured this out yet?
That's your takeaway? Try reading again and see if you come up with something better.
I've read comments like these hundreds of times and the takeaway is always that the commenter has fooled themselves into thinking they are some paragon of self-reliance. This is mixed with a big dose of survivorship bias: they believe they were self reliant and that their success was their own, so why can't other people just also be self reliant?
If you have a high paying job because you have a fancy degree from a college or university, you were reliant on the institutions built by your country. If you own a business, you're relying on roads and other infrastructure that has been socialized. If you were breast-fed as a child or had someone to buy you formula, you are not self-reliant. Obama used the phrase "You didn't build that" and it made a lot of people very mad because they, and likely this commenter, have zero respect for the institutions and resources (state institutions, family, community, etc) that have made their success possible. Claims about "self-reliance" are just another way that capitalists, and especially conservatives, shield themselves from any responsibility for the real issues plaguing the US and the broader world today.
The problem with that train of thought is that it omits any responsibility and if anything bad happens then you can always blame someone else. It's always someone else's fault you aren't succeeding. Of course there will always be challenges, that's just life.
And there are plenty of people "that did build that" on their own in spite of the adversity. To think otherwise is simply foolish. You want to paint me as an example yet you have absolutely no clue. The company I have built for myself was done with no college, no loans, no employees. And I would call myself successful. If you want to abstract it out so far to "you breathe air, someone else planted that tree" then that just shows how disingenuous you are with your argument. The fact that you even need to go that far should tell you something. If you can't see how generating your own resources instead of relying on someone else for them is even feasible, you haven't brought a rational argument to the table.
So because you were able to do it, everyone else should be able to as well, huh? Already starting to sound familiar.
Nope, I'm just some guy on the internet. But how do you believe it's not possible when there are plenty of examples stating otherwise? Plenty of single moms making it on their own in spite of adversity. The classic example of immigrants with nothing but the clothes on their back making it in spite of all the hardships they face. Minorities owning businesses and prospering. As much as you don't want to believe it, people prosper all the time in the face of adversity without relying on others to do it for them.