alt Hacker NewsThis is the product of "rugged individualism" so prized of Reagan/Thatcher politics. Thatcher meant exactly this when she said "there's no such thing as society".
I've got mine, you can all go f*ck yourselves.
We need to get back to a place where other people matter, where the implicit social contract is honoured by everyone, and there are consequences for breaking it.
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david_shi • today at 4:11 AM
which itself seems to have been just a ruse:
DrewADesign • today at 2:47 AM
I was watching some midcentury American Prelinger (sp?) archive video where some dapper and devastatingly square professor extolled the virtues of capitalism. Nearly point-for-point, his rationale for capitalism being fair and egalitarian was dismantled starting in the 80s.
No, that wasn't the meaning. In context, the lead-up to the quote was:
> people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing!
In subsequent years she often invoked society in phrases like "civil society", "free society", and "responsible society". The quote means that government won't help you very much, and indeed that you should be self-reliant. But it would be a distortion to extrapolate that into "be bad and inconsiderate and uncooperative". Individualism doesn't require the individuals to be unpleasant to one another. It just means they aren't an organized collective or hive.