tangerinedream said:
JMO, but it's my belief that access to these fabled opportunities is not truly equal for everyone.
Yes, but is really different anywhere else? We could look at more socialized governments such as in the United Kingdom where education is much more heavily subsidized - is there that much more career mobility? Social mobility? I don't have any hard numbers, but having lived a decent part of my life in the UK, I strongly lean that it isn't the case. Neither is it in France, or anywhere else, really.
Part of it might simply be how humanity /is/. Money will always open more opportunities, and essentially 'breaking free' doesn't seem all that possible for anyone. I'm from a higher socioeconomic class and I know that I'm advantaged, but at the end of the day, I'm still going to be working a role for someone else. Every investment, too, has its own entanglement; my parents have over a million and a number of properties, and with that, comes the need for an expensive legal team.
I won't say that my life isn't more comfortable by vast margins or that I don't have an obligation to pay back to society for what it has given me, but I do think it poses a viable question - do government regulations truly expand opportunities for members of society, and if so, to what extent?
I think, for example, bussing and desegregation has been a great boon to social equality. Without national laws that broke social racism, the progress of society would have been much slower. Yet at the same time, are affirmative action laws still necessary? Are they fair, if they allow someone who is less qualified to enter a position by the value of his skin?
Or consider the even more true specter of the immortality of government agencies. Once an agency is created, they rarely ever get closed. There are New Deal government agencies, still extant, who still collect a paycheck for purposes that have long ceased to be valid. That could certainly be true of regulation, too.
I wish that policies could be considered on objective, scientific basis rather than the often emotional sways toward 'liberalism' or 'conservatism.' I'm not sure it'll ever happen.