What I did do what take a look around in the 90's and notice Democrats were trying to help poor people while Republicans were trying to cut social security and school lunches for poor kids. That's when I became a Democrat.
John Steinbeck also wrote "East of Eden" which I would say was even more impactful of my life, but I didn't read it until my mid-twenties. That book really explores good and evil. It is slightly critical of religion (specifically Christianity), which is why it isn't read in school. But the principles and themes of the book dig really deep into human morals and how we choose our personal values. I really love it.
Lastly, Travels with Charley is a fun view of Americana. It was written much later in Steinbeck's life and is a much easier and lighter read. But its very fun and I recommend it to everyone. It is a personal story of Steinbeck traveling across America in his old age with his dog named Charley. Its fun.
Maybe read an actual history book about the Depression, instead of a novel.
"The Government" is effectively equivalent to hundreds of separately run companies as well, some of them are bureaucratic/ineffective nightmares.
You can't refuse to deal with the government.
It would exist for about three seconds before people realized that there's a hell of a lot of stuff that works much more smoothly/is only possible at all if a bunch of people pool resources together and delegate responsibility to one person or a group of people to manage it. And then bam! you've got a government.
When people say they're libertarians I usually give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that what they mean is "I think the government should be smaller than it is today" and not "I think the government should not exist".
If you really want to exist without being beholden to the government there's plenty of places you could build an isolated cabin in the woods, collect rainwater, grow your own food etc. Or move to some kind of commune.
That's not actually refuting my original point, which was that it's a lot easier to stop dealing with McDonald's than it is to stop dealing with the government.
You're trying to shift the goalposts.
> If you really want to exist without being beholden to the government there's plenty of places you could build an isolated cabin in the woods, collect rainwater, grow your own food etc.
And if I want to exist without being beholden to McDonald's I can just, you know, stop going to McDonald's.
Sorry, that is not true. You get the government that 50% + 1 vote wants, and you get absolutely no choice about whether you deal with it, which sucks if you're a member of the 50% - 1 vote group.
If I refuse to deal with Amazon, or Apple, or McDonalds, nothing happens (except I don't get to eat Big Macs).
If I refuse to deal with my government, they will send people with guns to put me in jail.
The situations aren't even remotely comparable.
If you're lucky you get that. Usually you get what a majority of voters in a majority of districts want, which may very well be a superminority of total voters.
> "If I refuse to deal with my government, they will send people with guns to put me in jail."
If you fully drop out and become a wandering homeless person inside of a very, very large forest you can probably avoid dealing with the government. If they send people with guns after you you obviously aren't trying hard enough.
Until some ranger in a plane sees the smoke from your campfire and lands to give you a whopping fine.
But that's not actually the point. Once again, if I want to stop dealing with McDonald's I can just do it, with next to zero effect on the rest of my life.
Are you really suggesting that abandoning your entire life to live in the wilderness is somehow just as easy?
But for the large companies it's not easy to stop dealing with them either. Unless you're in IT or programming it's basically impossible to boycott both Microsoft and Apple if you happen to have problems with both of them. Even if you're running Linux or BSD in your personal life you have to deal with one or the other at work.
Good luck boycotting your local grocery store, especially if restrictive covenants or local monopolies mean the alternatives are non-existent or owned by the same parent corporation.
When it comes to the government, as long as you avoid annoying your neighbors, obey traffic laws, and pay taxes, you can spend huge stretches of your life not interacting with it. Heck, if you're a W-2 employee and your workplace takes out enough money from your paycheck you can skip even filing taxes. No one will come after you.
In the US governments pretty much leave you alone as long as you obey a minimal set of rules and don't cause problems with your neighbors.
> "If I refuse to deal with my government, they will send people with guns to put me in jail."
Yes, in some cases sure. But no, typically they won't. Because typically they have no reason to deal with you.
Just like in some cases citizens will get significantly hassled by private companies. Today those private companies typically use the government (through lawsuits and the like) to hassle citizens, but it's the private company that's the initiator. And if you refuse to deal with them they'll mess with your life in ways more Kafkaesque than simply sending people with guns to put you in jail.
I fail to see how everyone, regardless of their 'side', wouldn't be better off by shrinking the size of the Fed gov by half and reallocating at least that much in total taxes paid to the State instead.
He got rid of it all. He put his wife in charge of selecting the replacement furniture. His wife's taste was impeccable, and the soldiers' wives would appreciate her efforts to bestow good taste on the minions.
The wives didn't just dislike the furniture, they hated it with all their might. (The men, naturally, couldn't care less about the furniture.)
My dad would laugh and laugh every time he recounted the story.
Central planning sucks whether it's left or right.
Be careful about confusing a novel with history.
I'm shocked at how high quality the correspondence was, makes friendships of today feel kinda cheap
So they watched the movie (not reading the book) and changed political parties. Why? No real reason was given. Then they plop a Chat GPT response in there and that's it. So what is it? They are just living their life as Chat GPT directs them? ChatGPT is a month or so old, so did this all happen a month ago?
I asked ChatGPT a question
Q: Why was The Grapes of Wrath banned in some parts of America?
A: The Grapes of Wrath, a novel by John Steinbeck, was banned in some parts of America due to its depiction of the struggles of migrant workers during the Great Depression and its criticism of capitalist society. Some people found the book to be controversial and offensive, and some even accused Steinbeck of being a communist. Additionally, the book was banned in some areas because it was believed to be obscene or inappropriate for certain readers.