It is truly a remarkable thing for Americans to make a holiday out of gratefulness, and it is very fitting for us, as we are among the most fortunate of people on the face of the Earth.
We have so much to be grateful for in this country. We are incredibly wealthy compared to most countries; we have more freedoms afforded to us by our constitutional traditions; we have more opportunities for success and for failure.
She excitedly asked if she could press the buttons on the machine. Then she sat in front of it, watching it work as if it were entertainment.
It is a recognition of these blessings that made me a conservative and continues to sustain my belief in conservative values despite the constant challenges to that understanding of the world.
At the top of that list is the free market, which is the source of so many of the blessings we have to be grateful for. And this is not to say that the free market should be unfettered or that there are no abuses of this system. Of course there are abuses, and the causes for those abuses run a spectrum from lack of personal responsibility all of the way to systemic failures.
If anything, the free market brings us so many blessings that we take them for granted and forget quickly how our lives have improved in such a short time.
I have a great example showing this tendency. A while back I had a dental check-up, and the youngish assistant notified me that we were going to take X-rays of my teeth. I got ready to go to the X-ray room. Of course, she just pulled over the X-ray machine, put it up to my face, and snapped a few images.
“That machine is so amazing,” I said to her.
She didn’t understand what I meant.
I explained that just a few years back, X-ray machines were much bigger and more expensive and it was not as convenient to take them. She had no clue.
I felt like that meme of an aged lady telling some young person about the olden days and young person responds by saying, “That’s great! Let’s get you to bed, Grandma.”
Now part of the reason that story happened is simply because I am getting older, but it’s also because things get better and better every moment of every day through the invisible hand of the free market, and we benefit from it and take it all for granted.
It simply blows my mind that people are born on Earth in this age after thousands of years of incredible technological and scientific advancements, and instead of looking around in overwhelming wonder and gratefulness, they look for the problems and call for it all to be wiped away.
I’ll bother you with one more example that I always refer to when challenged on this subject, if you’ll indulge me. There is a Ted Talk that can be viewed on YouTube about the laundry washing machine and how it absolutely revolutionized women’s lives and changed human society.
Swedish academic Hans Rosling details the day when he was a child and his parents finally were able to save enough money to buy a washing machine. His grandmother, who had spent a lifetime heating water over a wood fire and washing the laundry of seven children by hand, excitedly asked if she could press the buttons on the machine. Then she sat in front of it, watching it work as if it were entertainment.
“To my grandmother, the washing machine was a miracle,” he explained.
He goes on to explain how that one technological advancement that we all take for granted allowed women to have more leisure time, and that allowed for some of them to read, and even more advancements gave them the freedom to work and find their own careers.
Go watch it. It’s worth your time, and it only has 736,000 views, shamefully, after being available for 10 years.
It really is worthwhile to stop and consider just how much freedom we have been given, for good and bad, because of all the advancements invented and developed in the free market — and to remember those blessings when we decide whether to be on the side of policies that increase freedom or on the side of those designed to stomp it out.
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Free market, Capitalism vs socialism, Washing machine ted talk, Free market economics, Thanksgiving
