Bottomless Well

Back in 2013, one Dr. Tung Thanh Nguyen penned a blog post for the White House titled: "Our Land of Limitless Opportunities." It's pretty much what it says on the tin, a tale designed to support the notion that "America offers everyone the hope of limitless opportunities."

Recently, I've been wondering about that idea, and just how literally it's taken. It's not a secret that even when people in the United States say they want change of one or another sort, that wanting only lasts as long as it takes for the price tag to appear. My own impression of why "Generation X," of which I am a member, didn't change the world after so many of us swore that we would was that the bill came due, and our collective response was: "Too rich for my blood." We then went on to other things.

I was reading an interview with Vicky Osterweil, the activist/author who made a name for herself with her book In Defense of Looting, and at one point the interviewer asked her this:

Isaac Chotiner: If you’re taking from a store owner who needs to pay her daughter’s hospital bills or whatever it is, that could have an effect on someone’s health. This seems to be a type of connection that people on the left often want to make, no?

Vicky Osterweil: Sure, but there’s no really clean or easy way to struggle without ever hurting anyone.

Later in the interview, Mr. Chotiner went to the well again, noting:

We saw some property destruction in Brooklyn and elsewhere, where I would not be surprised at all if the people who were rioting or looting were of more means than the people whose stores they were looting. But it feels like you’re getting close to saying you’ve got to break some eggs to make an omelette.

At this point, I wanted to ask him what part of "there’s no really clean or easy way to struggle without ever hurting anyone" he hadn't understood.

But in a "land of limitless opportunities," perhaps it makes sense that there shouldn't be any external costs. The people who want change should be able to gather up enough of the limitless opportunities and convert them into the resources they need to bring about change without ever having to bother anyone else for them. And while I'm sure that very few people would, if asked, say that the United States has literally limitless resources, there is a degree to which everyday rhetoric and thought would imply that it does.

The maxim that anyone who works hard enough can get ahead or even make themselves wealthy presupposes that the nation has an inexhaustible and unmediated ability to convert work into material gain. To be sure, there are some people who understand that hard work is the only input needed. But even this presupposes effectively infinite demand for unskilled labor such that it pays well enough to allow for unimpeded upwards mobility. And where are the resources that fund that demand?

Even if there's a suspicion that the reasoning here is at least somewhat motivated, there's no reason to presume that people are being insincere here. The idea that the United States was well-resourced to the degree that it would simply never run out has been there from the beginning. It's perfectly reasonable to presume that at least some people have bought into it. And it provides a workable explanation for a social attitude that disdains paying costs for things that are primarily important to others. How does one take more than their fair share of limitless opportunities? How does someone lack a fair chance to get ahead if there are always more opportunities, there for the taking? If the perception of agency limits sympathy, being seen as capable interferes with being seen as worth of assistance. Yet being seen as incapable comes with its own pitfalls. Altering the narrative of infinite opportunity might help. But it's no less difficult a sell.