A Personal Sin, Or A Corporate One?

Peter Boettke posts thatthe greatest sin in life is wasted talent:

--- there are underachievers and overachievers in every walk of life, not just in sports. And the sin of wasted talent applies equally as well.

As usual, the unspoken premise is that the underachiever himself is the culprit, and, of course, in some cases this is true. And yet, it becomes increasingly clear to me that many underachievers are underachievers because our sick society won't let them do anything.

Husbands and fathers get to be husbands and fathers by whim of their womenfolk. A single phone call to the police or social services destroys a family and a father's ability to do anything to save it.

Academia is ruled by propagandists who are willing to perpetrate scams in order to achieve their agenda. This was done with the AIDS scare, global warming, the demonization of saturated fat and cholesterol, and I am sure I could come up with far more if I spent any time googling it. Crisis government loves to fund scary sounding research, and, in turn the scientists become corrupted because they like their salary and their toys- how else do you get a large hadron collider?

People like to tell their children stuff like, "You can grow up and be anything, even the President of the United States!" Liars all. There's not a chance. We've got a bald-faced, stubborn refusal to see the coordinated opposition made against competency in this country at all levels. They won't even let you get to the election and let you lose; they'll shut you out in high school.

Don't over interpret 'they' in the above paragraph to mean some great conspiracy. It's merely the instinct of the mediocre- they vote to take what others have, and they protect their established position in a reactionary sense- by excluding anyone who shows the propensity to excel.

This doesn't mean we can't achieve; it just means there are rather severe limits placed on where we achieve. I myself look on video-gaming with some mystification, but it's not lost on me that a significant portion of the male population finds, in such entertainment, some sense of achievement that they've been denied in other realms. For myself, it is not lost on me that my successes tend to occur in areas of my life where other people tend not to interfere.

One of the great sins of the existing regime is that it contravenes division of labor. And since they have exactly zero capability of considering the seen versus the unseen, I doubt it shall ever occur to them that they are not only doing a disservice to the able, but to those incompetents who gain positions not through achievement, but politics. We have to achieve when they aren't looking, and hopefully render them harmless.