Interestingly enough, the friend, who asked me the question that I was referring to, was Russian. He was actually calling me out in the middle of a university level course discussion, at the time. I’m sure that our professor was enjoying every last minute of it too, right up and until the point that I provided my own answer/question, which then lead to an extended pause, followed by a quick insinuation that I was the likely sociopath, from the perspective of our professor.

By the end of that course I had certainly learned a thing or two, and my Russian friend was praising capitalism, freedom and Adam Smith, and he and many others were beginning to question everthing, including their U.S. professor’s motives, sanity and overall agenda…ahhh, the miricles of tenure.

Someone once asked me; “so, do you believe that man is inherently good, or is he more likely “bad” at his core, and wanting in hos ability to care and socialization among his lessor pers. My answer to his question came in the form of a question, as follows: If we agree that all people have special talents,which are both inherited and developed, and perhaps that even the more pure sociopaths among us can be put to more useful purposes, then in the final analysis the answer to the question must be defined in terms of “what is truly good and what is truly bad…and who should decide this?”.

Now, consider the cascading effects of few deciding for many, versus many deciding for themselves, in relation to both themselves and those that they might interact with…consider the basics of contract law, for example, offer versus acceptance, or decline, versus mutual consent to exchange, or decline to exchange, valuable consideration between and amongst parties, freely.

Yes, we need laws to ensure the actual exchanges take place according to an agreement, and yes, without such a defined system of mediation and adherence, people will and do suffer unfair losses (e.g., GM bond holders in a “prepackaged” bailout versus a normal and pre-existing bankruptcy prioritizing procedure). Now consider the opposite, without the ability to accept or decline an offer, and where valuable consideration is simlpy taken, or otherwise mandated (ObamaCare comes to mind, here).

Freedom over our basic daily lives, and the choices that we make in them, provides the most efficient answer to my friend’s original question. Which is exactlly why our nation’s founders took the word, and it’s conceptual application so seriously as to form an entire nation and its laws, as well as the rights of its citizens, around such a word and concept. No planner, social engineer or man behind any curtain, can even come close to duplicating this idea’s positive effects or ability to grow as both an individual or a society, on the whole. The U.S. is, or at least it was, the perfect example of this societal evolutionary dynamic…and it worked so well that we’ve forgotten it’s value to the point of exchanging it for nearly next to nothing.