Have we lost the plot completely? Life isn't just about money.

I never wanted to be some monocle wearing 1% elitist. But I have to admit - I do like money. Not because I want to roll around in it. Simply because I see it as a raw ingredient to individual independence and that mastering it is the key to salvation.

However since moving the USA in 1989, I've seen such changes in social culture that I really question whether we have lost the plot. It seems that since the dawn of the Internet, society has thrown human beings away in a quest to become richer.

My Libertarian challenge

I'm a staunch Libertarian. Sometimes I have to clarify what that means to me, but clearly I see it as a unification between two opposing forces:

• The social liberal side of me wants to see society improve, help people, volunteer, donate, and generally improve people's lives
• The fiscal conservative side of me wants to do this using techniques that don't create debt, and are sustainable - particularly using technology to keep costs down and to embrace a free market.

All while ensuring that the state is minimized. There is no reason we should not be self-sufficient and avoid reliance on any government entity.

So now that is out in the open, it clearly seems to be a battle. Like a left/right brain thing. They may as well be polar opposite objectives, but subconsciously I believe that they can live together in balance.

The thing is that the media has programmed US citizens to think that things can't be harmonious and have polarized a population. If you believe in civil liberty, social obligations, voluntary actions, etc. then you must be a card carrying Liberal. And if you believe in not raising taxes, money, business, etc. then you must be some right winged conservative.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Why political polarity doesn't work

Just as the universe lives in waves and cycles, so must social belief. Everything must eventually balance itself out. We see this in nature with sound, where audio is just wave forms that resonate between positive and negative poles. We see this in electricity with alternating current. We see this with phases of the sun & moon. We see this with the market cycles in the stock market, real estate market, etc. For every extreme shift in one direction, the universe has a way to bring it back to a norm, but an extreme shift in the other.

The thing is that the battle between extremes is painful and creates anxiety. We would probably all prefer to see things being copacetic - where these extreme boom & bust cycles slow down and we can just focus on being better human beings.

For example, let's say that there is a political party in power that spends a lot of money from the people's coffers. They put the state in a debt position because of uncontrollable spending. In order to pay for this, they raise taxes and the people rebel. At the next election cycle they are voted out of office and a more conservative alternative takes up the leadership challenge and attempts to restore normality to the citizenry. You'd think that would be the normal way to right a wrong or wrong a right. Whatever your viewpoint. But one would expect to see some form of balancing here.

But this requires that the citizenry must accept that they can't get free stuff anymore. That they have to pay back the debt somehow and no one wants that responsibility. I mean you vote in the party that promises to right the wrong, but you don't want to support your vote by actually paying more taxes, or having less benefits?

This is why polarity isn't in balance anymore and it causes a ton of unintended consequences.

Unintended Consequences

Here's the problem. The citizenry have not taken personal responsibility for social normal behavior. They are told by the brainwashing media that by voting in party X into power, they will have all their needs fulfilled and hope for the future. Rather than taking personal responsibility, they get programmed into assuming that the party they put their faith in will make everything right. Nope, it doesn't work that way. But no media is telling them that. The more generations that emerge that are subjected to the same media message, the less likely it is that anyone takes personal responsibility. And then it just gets to be some big fight over red vs. blue, right vs. left, team A vs. team B.

But here is where I believe we've lost the plot....

We have to stop putting money before people. If you are stricken with some life threatening illness, you really couldn't care less about money. You care about health and fixing the problem so you can have your life back. You get one life.

But if you infuse a society with all this talk about money all the time, you create behaviors that are anti-human. For example, if you prohibit health care to a sick person because they have no money, you are an abhorrent human being. If for some reason you have been programmed to have some excuse or some justification against this position, you are a victim of media spin. Or you are a psycho Serial Killer that gets pleasure from enjoying other people's pain. This is not normal human behavior. We need to support each other, or we will live in a society more closely representing an episode of The Walking Dead than a modern western society.

However given that we have created a set of behaviors that allow for corruption, crony capitalism and greed, the medical industry that should be a public service has become a for profit, make money at any cost, operation. This means denying service to anyone that doesn't have deep pockets and over charging for prescriptions, procedures, etc. and skirting their social responsibilities to create a healthy and happy society.

If we can't afford to pay for medical care, then the fiscal conservative in me wants to analyze just how come the medical care is so expensive, and what can be done to be more efficient, more sustainable and learn from other countries on how they keep their medical costs under control. This seems to be a conversation that never happens, meanwhile we create less than a free market in medicine and force those with illnesses to have to do extreme things like travel across the world to other countries to get treatments because they can't afford them here. I'm all for doing that, BTW. If you want to really send a message to a business that you don't agree with their terms & conditions, then find a competing business and move your trade to them.

And that is where we are today

At the time of writing this article, our President has a business background. He sees everything from a profit/loss perspective and his goal is to create a more economically vibrant place. But with this, there is no sense of social decency that applies to the common man. The very same voters that support him cannot get healthcare affordably. Rather than offer ways to achieve that, the focus is on destroying other attempts to do this from the past. Citing that they are too expensive, etc. I personally don't care what form of payment I have to make to ensure that my family gets quality healthcare - either a government provided one (ie. Medicare) or a privately funded one (ie. private health insurance). When the SHTF and you need a doctor or a hospital, the focus should be on getting the care you need, not worrying about how to pay for it. If you avoid preventative or elective medicine because you can't afford to pay for it, then something is definitely wrong in society.

And this brings me to the #1 killer of under 50 year olds in the United States. Drug overdose. Yep, it has surpassed motor vehicle accidents, war casualties, medical, etc. And it was all brought on by a medical industry that decided that providing addictive pain medication and making money writing those scripts, while being promoted from lying pharmaceutical sales people, was an acceptable downside of making money. It isn't. Until we change our behavior towards each other, whether on the streets, at school, on the sporting field, in conflict or in the board room, we will never be able to return to a society in which there is mutual respect and we don't degrade into a Walking Dead episode.

This isn't about Democrat vs. Republican

This has nothing to do with politics. Don't get hypnotized into thinking that you can take one side or the other and let that define your humanity. If it does, you are as addicted to the media as a drug addict is to heroin. You have to realize that if you are lying on your deathbed, looking back at your life and wondering what is missing, that making more money would not be your first choice. It will be your family, your memories, your experiences, etc. These are the things we have to protect and nurture. And health is the #1 job for all of us regardless of age.

We have to be willing to look in the mirror and realize that we've failed in the health department. We have to do better than this. We can't let greedy healthcare providers rip us off anymore. We can't let "big pharma" control political behavior by their extreme lobbying. We can't accept that a drug company can create addictive pain medication, and cause the #1 biggest killer of under 50 year olds in this country. We can't live in a world where not having access to available healthcare is acceptable. It isn't. We all know that.

Those that fall through the cracks today - those with pre-existing conditions, live in poverty, the elderly, etc. need to be supported by the rest of us. I don't care if you are a republican, democrat, libertarian, independent, etc. You know this is our responsibility as a society to each other.

So stop accepting any candidate for office that doesn't demonstrate at least some empathy towards their fellow man and is willing to truly be a public servant in office, rather than the "Man in the High Castle" who couldn't give a crap about the average guy on the street. If you drunk the Koolaid and fell for this, then you are part of the problem and you have to realize you got hypnotized by the media and when a member of your family falls on hard times due to health issues, you better have a plan for this before it either bankrupts you or you elect not to get healthcare and that person suffers an adverse event in their life that either ends it, or permanently disables the quality of it for the future.

Let's get selfish here. We need to put health as the #1 thing, and money can come 2nd. And this is coming from a guy who is all about money. There's a point where I'm not, and this is where I draw the line.