Generally even kind liberal hearted folks harden up and grow more fiscally conservative as they succeed in life. As young people who need a helping hand to get started, we internalize the ethics of helping others. It feels right if people share as a community. Later our efforts struggling in a competitive world disclose another side of how life works. Life is not only co-operative, the very fabric of reality also has a dog eat dog capitalism built right in.

Socialism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin – they are both just different strategies to power. Different strategies to actualize self perpetuating power structures. As they are emergent properties that naturally evolve out of any situation, they are inherent to the nature of reality. It is impossible to create any self replicating system that does not have both co-operation and competition.

And so we come to see that people born without ambition and drive should be allowed to evolve their way out of the gene pool. We come to see that employees without drive to add value to the company should be fired.

There is such a thing as pathological compassion. We can care so much that we implement policies that wind up hurting people in the long run. And it’s not just the big examples of welfare fostering disgenic societies. Necessity is the mother of invention, and necessity is the wolf pack that keeps the herd strong. We do the herd no favours by killing necessity.

I had one of my lifes biggest lessons taught to me by my 11th grade auto shop teacher.

He was a hands off type of teacher. We all thought him a bit dull, as when he would take attendance when kids were missing we’d call out their names and he’d check them off as present. He didn’t seem to do any type of performance reviews, and largely seemed to let us work on our own. I usually skipped his classes and spent my time reading in the school library.

At the end of the semester I snuck into his classroom after hours, and found his grade book. I was surprised to see that he had given me a low grade. It was written in pencil, so naturally I erased his number and put in a better one.

When the report card came out, there was the exact same low number. I confronted him about it. “Mr Wilson, why did you give me such a low grade?”

“You guys all think I’m stupid. I know what everybody has been doing. You haven’t been doing anything all year”.

He never gave me any feedback all year. He didn’t correct my behaviour. He said nothing to me – not one word or one glance of dissaproval. He gave me all the rope I needed to hang myself.

That was the kindest thing he could have done.

It wasn’t up to HIM to motivate me. It was up to ME to motivate me.

And that is the lesson that he taught me. The best lesson he could possibly have ever taught me. Way better a lesson than learning a years worth of auto mechanics.

I’ve done the same thing with my staff recently. I fired three of them, all at once. And I fired another one last night.

Of course I do try to give more feedback than my shop teacher; I have to, I have a business to run. But I’m not here to babysit people. When I’m away travelling, people are still expected to show up on time and put in a full days work, even if they think big brother is too stupid to be watching over their shoulder.

Three of my staff were not only incompetent, but habitually tardy to the point of disrespecting the office manager about it and ignoring his frequent admonitions to be on time. And then they acted all shocked and surprised when they were axed with no warning. “Oh please Mr! I’m a single Mom!” Ya, well in that case you should be more careful not to lose your job! My live in house handy-man let in one of my girlfriends last night, without my authorization, even though I’ve reprimanded him and the cook many times in the past for doing that. Plus the whole time I was in Bali he took no initiative to paint and repair when needed – he only works when I grab his hand and point it at the problem. Incompetent and no initiative. Goodbye.

People who are both incompetent and lack drive don’t don’t need endless corrections and warnings. They need to be fired.

People get out of life the value that they put into it.

Ambition and drive come from within. Anyone who has eventually succeeded has long ago learned this. That is why we don’t feel much charity for those who are too stupid to realize it.