Theory is nice. It's like a game where you take the values you learned and believe in and adapt human society to an imaginary matrix which you find comfortable. Once you've worked out all the kinks in your little imaginary creation, you can then began to debate how wonderful it will all work when your little theory gets applied to the real world. Unfortunately, the real world does not adapt itself to your dream world.
For one thing, there are a lot of dumb people. That's just a fact. If you have a matrix where you think everybody is going to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and apply personal entrepreneurship and intelligence to pursue their own ends and create their own destiny, you're wrong. Many people are just not smart enough to do that, even if you try to educate them. They need to make a living too. And obviously, depending on the price of housing, goods and services, it's questionable whether they can make enough in the real economy to sustain themselves. Especially if your first world economy decides to send all the manufacturing offshore and not give these people employment opportunities. Certainly, there is a whole swath of Americans who can't hope to earn enough to save and plan for a time in their life when they can no longer work. Their only plan is to work til they drop.
So, you're going to get rid of all the "entitlement" programs, cut them out of your health care solution, cut education, allow a laissez faire economy where corporations are free to seek their highest profit margins (which might include sending all of their manufacturing facilities offshore), and then you are going to expect the entire population to thrive in this new, libertarian environment of self reliance? Sure, the smart ones will. They'll adapt. Go into retraining. Pick new, more profitable paths presented by the changing world. Just like in nature, those who have the capacity to adapt will find new niches and survive, and those who won't, or more importantly, can't, will not.
So then we must ask ourselves, is there any humanity in our imaginary matrix? Or is it just a reflection of our technological minds? Machine like? Devoid of imperfection? Ignoring human reality? Or no more involved than the jungle law of survival that we (supposedly) left behind us a million years ago?
The truth is, we are all just like Romney. When we create our perfect little imaginary utopian matrix we have already, in our minds, eliminated 47% of the world's people out of our plan. What happens to them? The dumb? The ignorant? The handicapped? The sick? The illiterate? The elderly? The ones your brave new technological world leave behind?
Nature is imperfect. In the old Victorian era, the Rousseauians saw nature as perfect, and if man would just return to his natural state, all would be well. But nature is chaos. Nature is a nice sunset and a babbling brook, but it is also a hurricane, a lion ripping the guts out of an impala, and a baby chick falling from the nest to be devoured alive by ants. Modeling our world after nature might be a neat, and attractive solution, but it is not humane.
Perhaps, when we consider creating our little imaginary utopian matrices, we should not allow ourselves to be so influenced by nature, or even the machined techological grid we have created to support us? Perhaps we should reach higher than that? Apply our consciousness? Apply our heart? And like Hippocrates said, "First, do no harm."
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