Sharing is Caring

May 16, 2024

Share the Road, Share the Wealth, Share the World

That's the sign the organizers distributed to us to wear during last night's ride of silence. It got me thinking we should share the road, the wealth, and the world. What we apparently haven't learned is that sharing isn't just caring for the other--it is self care. As I've said to my students over the years, you can recover from almost anything: embarrassment, failure, injury, illness, jail, homelessness, but it's difficult to recover from killing yourself or another. Vehicular homicide destroys at least two lives. Likewise, not sharing the wealth kills the poor and wealthy alike through prevalence of public health problems, e.g. viruses, crime, collective stress and mental health issues, addiction and diseases of despair across socio-economic classes, and so on. I recently reread Robert Fulghum's, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It's worth reading in its entirety, but he provides a short list in the beginning:

Top of the list: "Share everything." To be sure, I don't agree with everything Fulghum puts out. For example, when it comes to flushing and water conservation, I'm a "when it's yellow, let it mellow" adherent. But we agree on the importance of sharing. Share the road, share the wealth, share the world. The life you save will be your own.

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Bill ShaneyfeltFollowing your tour, I agree with much of your sentiment.

I believe after 78 1/2 years of wandering the planet myself and observing there is one problem with the idea of sharing. It should be on an individual basis. Every public assistance area I have ever been around is wonderful for a few years, but the residents overwhelm the system and the system deteriorates as the beneficiaries begin to work the system and it corrupts, falling into disrepair and becoming a magnet for malcontents.

If the government gets involved, it will eventually be a mess, full of rigid rules indiscriminately applied, often hurting the very ones it is intended to help.

By the way, I retired from working for the government and saw all the kingdom building and well-intended rule making that causes it to fail.
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7 months ago

Gordon BrownTo Bill ShaneyfeltFirst, sorry for the delayed response--I've been on the road:). A voice of wisdom/experience. Of course, when it comes to welfare-type benefits, we know now that the problem isn't so much people scamming the system (though a few do--it adds up to pennies relatively speaking). The problem is the billions in benefits that don't get distributed due to complex bureaucracy--as you alluded to. In fact, as you probably know, this has resulted in case management positions largely consisting of helping people in need navigate and access the benefits they are entitled to. As I like to say, we do live in a welfare state, but the benefits mostly go to people who don't need them, i.e. we bail out bank executives, etc. Thank you for following.
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6 months ago