Archive for April 15th, 2010

The Human Betterment Industry

One of the basics of our society is the Human Betterment Industry. You can see it in obvious action with the NAACP. It was founded in 1905 with legal equality as its goal. It got lots and lots of money and didn’t have a black president for sixty years.

But by 1965 it had lots and lots of money and all its purposes were accomplished. So what do you do if you are a forty-year-old Jewish lawyer who has never done anything but work for the NAACP? Does everybody just close up shop and go home?

Not likely.

You have to be pretty desperate to take up fighting the Confederate flag as a full-time job for thousands of employees, but that is not as ridiculous as imagining that, when the goal is accomplished, a group will cease to exist.

There is a similar problem with Pro-Life. If they got abortion banned nationwide, you would still have thousands of people whose only claim to fame is being in that particular movement. Most of its leaders had their first and only political experience with Pro-Life groups.

We have a president whose entire life’s work resume is being an “activist.” This is not just the first generation that would accept that, this is the first generation that would UNDERSTAND it.

Many think of it was a Conspiracy. I think of it as a growth as natural as a weed bed.

It is hard to find a new career when you are middle aged. That is a simple truth everybody knows but once again they don’t THINK about it.

There is a lot of confused discussion about where all these crazy causes come from. The explanation is the same as for anything else: There are more people than jobs. There are hundreds of thousands of people right now looking for a cause to get into. Their only resume is in causes.

Not all of them can be elected president.

Here is an ironic thing about the Human Betterment Industry. Almost everybody in it claims to denounce American capitalism, but they are themselves entrepreneurs of a type almost unique to this country. While others are out trying to found a company that uses the expertise they got in business management, these hordes are out founding causes for the exact same purpose.

I get the impression that specific cause groups originate here. In Europe or other places, you will have Marxist organizations that have been around forever. But a lot of Americans FIND things like the Spotted Owl.

In earlier days the Communist fronts were founded by the organized Communists. They were not generated by people marching and then raising money. That is more easily understood from history. But while there is certainly ideological conformity and everybody justifies his particular Cause by telling people who count that they are Promoting Change, the element of going out and MAKING jobs in an Industry is the opposite of the genuine Conspiracy the small groups of yesterday were engaged in.

The reason we have organizations demanding Votes for Dogs is because hundreds of thousands of people are looking for prospects in causes the way a metal worker is looking for something that can use a steel framework.

It is, in a weird way, American entrepreneurship in action, which is the LAST thing anybody in the Human Betterment Industry would like to hear.

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