After a detour or two to deal with the personal hostility expressed by people who don’t like my ideas but resort to name-calling instead of logic, I hope to get back to contributing to the marketplace of ideas. Here goes:

During my face-to-face meeting with Dr. Brian Sweeney, Jr., my most persistent critic, he began by questioning state money spent on Alaska villages, which he thought ought to be self-sustaining, and then complained about the dysfunctional people he sees who tend to see society’s sacrifices on their behalf as entitlements, not privileges.

I acknowledged the doctor has a point. I told him as a landlord, former husband and an uncle of four orphans, I have personal experience with the attitudes he articulated. So it is with real dialogue. I did not respond by saying, “Yeah, but,” as the stereotyped leftist he considers me would do. Not every poor person in Anchorage is like that, but some do fit the stereotype. You don’t need to tell me. I’ve had a major dose of that this summer.

(The doctor did not argue when I said if the villagers ever pay their own way, they will be the first Alaskans to do so. They’re not the only Alaskans getting annual oilfare checks next month. Such checks encourage Alaskans to replace personal initiative and responsibility with laziness and an entitlement mentality. Of course, that statement applies to the other guys, not to you and me.)

What the doctor did not admit was that the poor have no monopoly on irresponsibility. I had a flood in June at one of my rentals. I called the company specializing in responding to such problems and was told I would need to pay $1000 up front before the company would even look at the flooding. So I withdrew that amount from the bank and met the company at the property. When I turned over the $1000 in cash, none of the workers had a receipt. I had to walk down to their office and pick up one myself after having to trust strangers with $1000 in cash or risk even more flooding.

After a couple of weeks went by, I called the company to get a progress report. The receptionist connected me with Larry’s voice mail. Larry did not return my call. So I had to call when he was in the office. When I finally reached him, he lectured me about talking to the wrong person and then proceeded to inform me of the four divisions of his corporation before he would connect me with someone who knew what was going on. Apparently, Larry decided it was my responsibility, not the receptionist’s, to understand the bureaucratic details of his company.

Last week, I got a message from an insurance company that I owe $2700 because “ my driver” got into an accident. I told the company representative the person was not the driver of my car but the person who bought my car in April, almost three months before the accident. Then she wanted me to send the bill of sale to her. I told her it was her responsibility to call the state DMV to find whether I did sell the car when I said I did. Instead, she wanted me to tell the DMV to send her the information. I told her she would have to request it herself; I cannot do that for her. Apparently, the entitlement mentality pervades our culture more than some of us might be willing to admit.

Last year our economy tanked because of irresponsible behavior. Financial specialists who knew better suckered people into loans they obviously could not afford and then sold those loans before getting stuck with the mess they created. After the whole thing cascaded, I heard lots of blame directed at the suckers who got scammed but little blame directed at the scammers. Then our last two presidents spend untold zillions on handouts to the scammers to reward them for the mess they created. Any attempts to bail out the suckers and the victims who lost thousands as innocent bystanders—those, of course, were “socialism.”

Why is it people have such trouble understanding that the more individuals act irresponsibly by drunken driving, beating up spouses and kids, holding up liquor stores, selling drugs to kids, etc., the more government grows to keep such behavior in check. If we behaved ourselves better, we would not need the government to do it for us.

That principle applies to corporations as well. We would not be having this intense debate over health care if the insurance and drug companies would settle for reasonable profits instead of spending big bucks on bribing politicians to give them favorable treatment and send the rest of the bill for such favorable treatment. The problem is the companies don’t provide the services their clients pay for and deserve; the companies spend their resources trying to cheat their clients and paying the government to let them do that. That is not responsible behavior. When the government protects the crooks instead of their victims, the government is acting irresponsibly.

Next time, I’ll discuss irresponsible nations on welfare and their entitlement mentality.