Tuesday 14 September 2010

Social Responsibility - The Unicorn Everyone Sees!

Government and its allies have been out there for years trying to convince us that we cannot take care of ourselves. Human responsibilities are too vast and unfathomable for a single person to take care of - they claim. As a result 99% of humanity now thinks they are personally responsible for everyone's livelihood. We are responsible for the poor people within out society, for the sick and starving in Africa, for teaching other people's children, for healing other people's sick relatives, even for preserving the environment of our planet for future generations! No wonder we cannot fulfill all those obligations! But there is a solution - just give some money to the government who will appoint the right officials and all will be fine! Fund foreign aid, environmental subsidies, public schools and hospitals, and the armies of bureaucrats involved in them. Even businessmen can no longer practice their trade. They must be 'socially responsible' and not seek 'excess profits' and 'exploit' their employees and customers...
But what is responsibility - really? It is not a difficult term to grasp. We all learn it during our childhood. A person is responsible for his actions. For instance, if you drop a gum-wrapper on the ground, you have to pick it up. Now, the doctrine of social responsibility says that if someone else - no matter how unrelated to you he/she is - drops a gum-wrapper (purposely or accidentally) on the ground, then you are the one who has to pick it up! You lose time and energy, but who cares? The collective gains another slave! A person is never responsible for the actions of another unless he/she agrees that the other is his responsibility. I never did anything to aggravate the recent Banking Crisis in the UK and US. So why should I be the one responsible for 'bailing-out' those who were the culprits? I was forced to bail them out due to the doctrine of 'social responsibility' i.e. everyone is punished for anyone's crimes and mistakes. Nowadays even criminals aren't treated as criminals - they blame society and get away with it (resocialization instead of punishment). Because, as the socialists say, how can someone be punished for the crimes of society (i.e. the criminal had no free will, society compelled him to commit evil). It is the same with the bankers.
But someone might ask: What about those poor people in underdeveloped countries in Africa or South America? Aren't we responsible for helping them?
My answer is, equivocally, NO! We are not responsible for the state they are in (I never took anything from people in Africa), so why should we be compelled to compensate them for an offence we never committed? Of course it would be very noble and nice to help them (as it would be kind to pick up a gum-wrapper that the wind blew out of someone's hand), but by no means are we responsible to help.
I think the gum-wrapper analogy is quite a useful one in understanding the concept of responsibility. Everyone should pick up after themselves, but picking up after others can only be considered kindness (not fulfilling one's responsibility). In fact picking up after others in some circumstances can be evil. Picking up after people who throw trash around on purpose makes them more irresponsible and helps them avoid consequences of their actions, it is therefore the exact definition of irresponsibility and injustice. And helping unfortunate people can also be very dangerous - aid dependency is a big problem in sub-Saharan Africa these days.

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