You Will Always Be In Chains

Being in chains is a metaphor, of course.  Chains depict restraint of a physical sort.  But the reality of economics is restraints of a different sort.  In that respect, whether a person is restrained from eating T-bones due to the lack of a few dollars, or a politician is restrained from buying those last few votes because he couldn’t produce the government handouts, the slack eventually takes out of everyone’s chain.

But this is why economics is such a hot topic isn’t it?  No one likes restraint, especially when they see their neighbors living lives with much less restraint.  It just doesn’t seem fair.  Perhaps that’s because it isn’t.  Worse, a different sort of chain will keep anyone from fixing it.  Oh, not that it won’t be tried over and over again, and not that failure to make it fair will always make it worse for all, but human nature will always intervene our vane attempts; very sad I know, but also very true.

You see, some are born with a silver a spoon in their mouth while others are born in abject poverty.  Some are born to intelligent parents, while others are born to morons.  Some, it seems are born with self discipline and others lazy.    All of these attributes play a part in determining the lengths of a given person’s chains, and they all have one thing in common.  They are not fair, and again, no one can fix it.

Every person’s chains could be loosened if the efforts to loosen them were judged by results.  But unfortunately the history of mankind is generally marked by the burden of tight chains because man usually judges efforts to loosen them by intentions rather than results.  Failure, therefore, is generally rewarded with increased power for the “fixers” which results in shorter chains that “fixers” are eager to address if only they are given the power to do so.  The result?  Chains.

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