I have another rant I'd like to post here. This uniontown.com message forum is a bit therapeutic for me in the sense that I can vent like this, besides it might get some conversation going. This is one very strong point that I think everyone is missing.
Anyway, I am very concerned about our future as a country, because I feel we are going down a dangerous path. The mentality of "not letting things fail" is being applied all around, and it's going to have tremendous impact on our future.
One example is this (but is much deeper than this if you read on):
URLs rewritten, remove parenthesis (http:)//www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index ... xml&coll=6
"Fall report cards won't let any GRPS students fail
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
By Dave Murray
The Grand Rapids Press
GRAND RAPIDS -- No Grand Rapids high school students will find failing grades on their report cards when they arrive this week. Instead, students who performed poorly will see an "H" for "held" and an opportunity to make up the work and earn a passing grade by the end of the next trimester."IT'S NOT A BAD THING TO LET THE WEAK FAIL. As a matter of fact, it's just the opposite. It's very IMPORTANT to force the weak to fail. This is classic Darwinism, the survival of the whole ABSOLUTELY depends on the loss of the weak. My argument is not limited to this above example. This mentality is spreading through our society like a cancer in every area.
I've mentioned this before, but the people who have overextended themselves with their debt and mortgages need to fail and fail hard for this same reason. Propping them up at the cost of those who lived within their means causes harm to our society in 2 ways. First, those who were successful (and lived within their means) are being punished instead of rewarded for their success. This is very bad, because we need to have the successful rewarded as much as possible to promote their successful behavior in the future. Secondly, the weak and unsuccessful need to feel severe pain to correct their behavior. Allowing Joe Schmoe to keep his home that he couldn't afford doesn't stop his bad behavior, or send a good message to others. You must have the hard swings either way. Great success versus great loss. That's the only recipe that will truly promote successful behavior, which will benefit us all as a whole.
This is also true with the banking and automotive industries. I believe this is a very strong parallel to the American household. These auto makers were doing the equivelent of living "paycheck to paycheck". They did not have anything set aside for a rainy day. They have overextended themselves on credit. Now it's raining, and they are asking us to give them free money.
This is wrong. They need to fail, and fail hard. This will prevent them (or future auto manufacturers if they fail) the lesson that it might rain and it's a life or death matter if you aren't adequately prepared. They have to KNOW that it's going to certainly be bloody and ugly if they do the wrong thing.
I know this sounds geeky but it reminds me of a Star Trek episode. There were 2 planets at war, but they were waging the war in a civil way. They would have simulated hits on each other and then they would march a number of people to humane death chambers to euthanise them neatly and cleanly. Somehow Captain Kirk disabled their clean neat war system where they then fell back to the bloody messy wages of war, and very soon afterwards the two planets started peace talks.
It's got to be bloody and messy or the system doesn't work. The Lion has to weed out the weak gazelles for the gazelle herd to be faster and stronger.
If someone can convince me otherwise, I'd love to hear it.
page loads.