Originally Posted by spence
Perhaps it's just the opposite?
Perhaps you mean opposite ends of the same "spectrum?" I know you like to think in terms of spectrums, and contexts, and so forth. So maybe that's what you mean here, otherwise, in the following you seem to be supporting Hayward's dependent class/ruling class relationship.
Certainly there is a small percentage that are really dependent and are more favorable to this dependent state.
Your following comments imply that you think there is more than a small percentage that are really dependent.
But what about the millions of defense contractors who are dependent on the ruling class to fund their jobs?
Yes, when the ruling class expands its size and power and financial resources, it can hire and incorporate greater and greater numbers into the dependent class. And when it can accumulate debt well beyond even its expanded financial resources and beyond that of the private sector, it can pay for enough dependents to subsume the majority of the population into dependence. Are there really millions of contractors? That is scary.
What about the transportation workers who are dependent on the Fed to keep things liquid so they have a reason to move business people around?
Yes, this is the increasingly prevalent type of unconstitutional power that the ruling class has taken from the private sector and local governments and made itself supposedly "indispensable" in areas that could do without it, thereby increasing the number of dependents and the size of its budget and debt.
What about the millions of attorneys who thrive under the chaos of regulatory change?
"Millions of attorneys"? There are about 1.4 million or so, and they don't all thrive under that particular chaos. But is this a defense of the ruling class and its regulatory State? This is the wonderful gift of dependence? Legalistic vampires eating out our substance to make the ruling class work and bond us to it? Yes, their "thriving" is the diversion of money from our pockets into theirs in order to comply with the mandates of the ruling class. As such, they not only thrive under the chaos, they are part of the ruling class. Read Hayward's article carefully and you will see that they and others, media, etc. are included.
Everyone else could be very independent in their own right, but aren't they just as dependent in the end?
Yes, but doesn't it depend on what they are all depending on? Dependence, in various forms, is common to us all. But must it be on a ruling class that makes us a dependent class?
Not to mention the ruling class is pretty dependent on the dependent...
Of course it is. I've said so myself a few times. Especially see my comment on the "controllers" in the thread started by Jim in Ct titled: "Why do liberal universities honor murderers?" The relationship is symbiotic. But that does not change the nature of the relationship between controller and controlled, or ruling class and dependent class. It is one of top down authority opposed to the bottom up system of the Founders.
. . . and everyone else.
No, Everyone Else, not wishing to be dependent on a ruling class is opposed to it. Whatever
"dependence" they have on that class beyond what is constitutionally prescribed is forced. If you mean coercion to be a form of dependence, that is an un-American condition, at least pre-progressive American, and not what Hayward meant by dependence. Symbiosis in this context is cooperative. Coercion is dictatorial. Although some of those co-opted into the dependent class that Hayward defines may have initially been against it, they willingly partake when regulations, penalties, and subsidies make it more palliative than not. The rest of the dependent class had no objections from the start.
Everyone Else doesn't want any part of it.
Perhaps we're all just dependent. It would certainly eliminate two of the variables and establish a more simple context.
-spence
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