Public service is what business failures do for penance -- and to lay the ground-work for future success. Perhaps the biggest American myth is the legend of "free enterprise." American commerce and industry have always relied on government support to give them an advantage, starting with the charters and land grants handed out by European royals.

Since it's "we the people" who govern, we're the ones getting suckered. That the military can't (normally) be used against us is small comfort. Having "reserved" control over our currency for a private corporation (the Federal Reserve), we have provided more than enough coercive power to the ruling class. Now that almost everyone has to earn money to live the life they get by right, the National Guard is rarely needed to deal with labor strikes and can be safely dispatched overseas to impose the "rule of law" -- an impersonal force with which it is hard to argue -- around the globe.

Moving the work of women out of the home has had the effect of making the household more dependent than ever on getting pay checks. And moving work sites to a greater distance from residential zones has had the effect of making it virtually impossible for people to get to work on foot. People not only have to be employed to eat; they have to be employed to move around.

Not only is there "no free lunch;" there's no free walkabout, either.

Don't get me wrong. That it's being used as a tether is not money's fault--any more than a razor strop is to be faulted for abusing a youngster's bottom. Man is a tool-using creature who prefers to use tools to subjugate other humans. The impulse to subjugate is the flaw and inventive man manages to employ every imaginable resource in its service -- even immaterial ones like the laws defining (protective) land use zones.

"What's the difference between a predator and a protector? The former will eat you sooner, rather than later."