[SELF-HONESTY] Do You Judge Rich and Successful People?

In Sweden it's almost as if people believe that companies, businessmen and entrepreneurs have a duty to give them a job and a salary; pure entitlement mentality, instead of seeing that each one of us has a responsibility to go out there and CREATE value. They also have a quite skewed view of entrepreneurship and what it actually takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are 'parasites' and employers are 'oppressors' who seek to harm their employees, and wealth is defined by how much governments have in their treasuries. It's often assumed that these wealthy people didn't work hard to get where they are. Whenever people are picturing a successful businessman/woman or entrepreneur they picture a fat man with a monocle in his eye, sitting on his behind while laughing maliciously at poor people and his employees.

A lot of people are ignoramus of what it takes to start up and run a successful business. According to statistics entrepreneurs in Sweden are the hardest working people with the most overtime hours. I know a couple of successful businessmen, and they are indeed the hardest working persons I know, with late nights and 60 hours per week. Add to that the financial risk they are taking. I also wonder what would happen if Atlas indeed shrugged; if these industrious, creative and inventive entrepreneurs would decide to put the middle finger up and say "ok, you're on your own". That's what we often see happen in heavily statist societies with extreme regulations and taxes - massive brain drain = the industrious people leave and soon society crumble.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I used to reason like this as well.  But in the past few years I started to shed my Marxist skin, all thanks to stumbling across libertarian and anarchist thinkers that made me question everything I held true, as well as my motives for holding on to these views. I started investigating the Austrian perspective of economics, and its critique of the current Keynesian model. Here I came across authors such as Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Walter Block etc., and I began seeing my own conditioning to believe that the state is there 'for my own good' and that it's the only possible source for things like courts, infrastructure, certifying businesses, inspecting food manufacturing etc. But having a state over you is like having a permanent parent that is constantly overseeing every action you do; what exactly does that do to individual growth and responsibility?

In my prior Marxist mind-set I held a more or less hidden animosity towards all successful people (many times successful due to state subsidies and privileges though); the rich and successful was evil, greedy and exploitative. I also used to be unreasonably demanding towards businesses, justifying it with the old adage “the customer is always right”, and within doing so completely ignoring the hardships of this business and the consequential outflows of my demands, and ignoring that I was negatively affecting not only the business owners, but also the employees by my unreasonable demands. I now see and realize the spitefulness within this behavior and that it’s not in line with “do unto another as you’d wish another do unto you”.

I was entirely ignorant when it came to placing myself in the shoes of the entrepreneur and the businessman; ignoring all the grueling hours, all the financial risk, and all the stress that follows. I totally bought into the dichotomy between employers and employees, businessmen and workers; that businessmen and entrepreneurs enrich themselves at the expense of the workers, instead of seeing that there is an equal interest for all parties, and that this marxist ‘class-war’ rhetoric is doing more harm than good. I really believed that I was entitled to the fruits of another man or woman's labor, and I didn't see that this was only reflecting my own greed and selfishness. I rather pursued the jealousy and envy, displaying it as a hatred for ‘greed’ and ‘selfishness’, because I accepted and allowed myself to believe it’s easier than to pursue success and that I’m actually incapable of doing so! Thereby I was trapping myself in the point of jealousy, instead of looking at and investigating why I hadn't allowed myself to succeed myself.

So eventually I began seeing that I wasn't actually looking for 'justice' or 'fairness'; my starting point was instead jealousy, masked as virtue.