I'm a free rider. I've been riding for free all my life. Not that I really had a choice, it was the only possibility given to me...
I grew up in a house above the average in my country. I had access to a TV, a washing machine, a refrigerator... I had access to a VCR before many of my friends, and later on to a video camera, and eventually a computer, and then a PlayStation. Well, should I mention I also had a nice bed, couch, carpeted floors, and a clean house - cleaned by a maid, who happened not to be a free rider like me, she didn't have free access to half the things I had.
From the moment I was born, I've been riding freely on everything my parents have built and possessed. I didn't do anything specifically to deserve it besides being born in the right household at the right time.
More important than all the shiny things, I had access to a nice education. I went to good schools, and since I didn't need to worry about what to eat tomorrow or how to support the house in case my parents got sick for a week or two, I had enough time to relax and focus on my studies. My education is more important than all the material things my parents gave me access to because it gave me the ability to get myself more material things by myself. Education gave me an alternative to free riding on my parents.
Intuitively, free riding is not fair. Receiving things without doing anything to deserve them is not something to be proud of. But I'm not ashamed of it either, I didn't do it on purpose. But the fact is that there are so many, but so many people out there who weren't given the chance to free ride from birth like I did. They had to struggle from the day they were born and were never given the opportunities I had. While I was comfortably learning how to stand on my own, they were too busy crawling to stay alive.
What is not so intuitive, or even understandable to me, is how do some free riders from birth like me have the face to call these other people, who haven't got much to ride on, potential "free riders". Whenever they ask for opportunities, for shiny things, since they don't have much to give back, free riders from birth look down on them and say they don't deserve it. One needs to deserve what they get, to give back, apparently. Well I'm not really sure how that works, these people who haven't been given the same head start are expected to catch up with us brats in some miraculous way with ten times the effort and ten times less opportunities. For me, that's plain unfair, an abuse.
People call this system fair. For me, it isn't fair from the start. From birth. Capitalism is a kind of monarchy, with its property rights and inheritances. Some are born with privileges, others aren't, and the whole thing is conveniently placed in the hands of the original free riders, who don't acknowledge the randomness of their own position and require worthiness from all others. This system is unfair in its core, primitive, with its bloodlines and lineages. Those seeking justice have to look away from it, for a system of equality, opportunities and cooperation - since birth.
2 comments:
The system protects itself, every inheritance is a system onto itself, you wouldn't want to leave something you spent your entire life building to a stranger right? Your parents are protecting their genes an extension of themselves, an investment. It isn't free-loading if the other persons satisfaction is met, like Phoebe says, no act can be completely selfless.
Equal opportunity is non-existent in our dog eat dog world. And the best anyone can do is give people they love a fighting chance, whatever that means to them in their own minds.
Anand, I get what you're saying... You can imagine how difficult it was (and still is in many places) to move beyond monarchy. You wouldn't want to leave your realm to a stranger, right? Seems pretty fair, your genes have been fighting for it for generations...
Every possession is a theft, but we forget about it after generations of inheritance. I'm a white Brazilian. My parents deserved what was left for them, my grandparents too, and so on until we reach some point in the past where some nasty things did happen. My inheritance comes from wars, genocides, slavery... Is that fair?
What might appear to be a selfless act is in fact the most effectively selfish of all - contributing to society improves the life of each single individual. Strangers are people too. Dog-eat-dog is only one kind of world, we gotta start getting more creative ;)
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