A nation of slaves
One of the biggest views I see in my parents and grandparents: work provides purpose and dignity, and without work, you have no purpose, and therefore, you are a failure. This is really hard to respond to, especially with people who have spent 50 years working with this mindset, because they feel "invalidated" or "worthless" if their life's worth isn't measured by their work output.<p>I don't think that's necessarily a "bad" world view to have, especially if it pushes you to provide some social good that you wouldn't if you thought it was OK to be lazy. But I think it's harmful to impose that view on others. If you have no choice but to work or be discarded, then, when the value you can provide via work is less than that required to maintain your life, you have no choice but to attempt to indenture yourself. And failing that, you're truly, completely fucked. The purpose of entitlements ought to be (though currently aren't) to provide reassurance against a requirement to sell yourself to survive. And I truly believe, if we don't correct this failing of entitlements, then we will see mass indentured servitude (though it won't be called that), in developed countries, in my lifetime, of citizens of said country. Currently, we already see mass indentured servitude, but we say it's not that big a deal because<p>[1] The indentured are immigrants<p>[2] The indentured are in un-developed countries<p>[3] The indentured are "ghetto", "whore", or "gangster", which is seen as pretty equivalent to [2]