Self-Interest Is Hard Work

"Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims." — Ayn Rand

The photograph above tells you everything you need to know about Jimmy McMillan. He’s entitled and he knows it. Worse, he wants you to know it. He wants you to feel it.

To tell you the truth, just one look at this man and I want to punch his lights out.

Entitled? I don’t owe him anything. Nor do you.

So why does this man think that Society owes him a rent-stabilized apartment in the City?

Because he’s a veteran? No, that’s not it.

Because he’s a Black person; you know, colored? No, that’s not it.

He thinks he entitled because the ‘Rent is Too Damn High’.

It’s too high, more, it’s too ’damn high’. That’s McMillan’s argument.

But if McMillan owned rental properties in the City I’d just bet that he’d be the first to evict people ’like him’ and yet, because he doesn’t he believes that he’s entitled to pay a lower rent. He believes the company that does own his apartment building shouldn’t be able to capitalize on their investment because he’s entitled.

I believe that the City of New York needs leave private property rights alone. It’s none of the government’s business what landlords charge. If the City really wanted to provide housing to the poor (and I don’t advocate this because the City doesn’t have any money... only taxpayers do) then that would be one thing, but from my perspective forcing private individuals (including companies) to accept less rent because Jimmy McMillan and his ilk are entitled, isn’t right.

It’s goes against everything that is American and yet these regulations get passed.

Why?

One reason is that there are are fewer landlords than tenants and it’s easier to get someone to vote for entitlement than to vote to get a job and work for a living.

Acting upon what the so-called majority want, we’ve created a ’society’ of lazy, unimaginative, entitlement seekers. Ayn Rand said: "Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)."

Self-interest is hard work. It requires me to focus on what I want. I forces me to develop a plan. I have to figure out who I might have to work with in order to achieve my goal and then I have to follow-through with my plan, modifying the steps as time goes on, as my circumstances change, to ensure that I remain on target, working (now, there’s a concept!) toward my original objective.

Entitlement simply requires me to sit back, bitch now and again and receive something that frankly isn’t mine to begin with and is very likely something that someone else produced, but that I lay claim to because I’m too damned lazy to get off my backside, or simply too unenlightened, to create it myself... in other words, to be just like Jimmy McMillan.

Read more at http://www.wirenews.co.uk/op-ed/usa/23206/self-interest-is-hard-work#pJ3XvzF0DpKVg9GB.99