What does make someone a “useful” member of society? That is not an easy question for a variety of reasons that go well beyond not just agreeing about the answer. In fact, in a nation as hyper-individualistic as the United States, a lot of people don’t feel like that’s an appropriate question to ask in the first place. Their answer would be some version of, “It’s not anyone’s job to be useful to the country. People don’t owe anybody anything except themselves.” In other words, it’s sort of the opposite of John F. Kennedy’s famous quote:

Perhaps most importantly, it’s worth noting that this is sort of a “first principles” question about what makes a successful nation. Most Americans have stopped thinking about questions like that, much less the answers. Of course, that is a horrible mistake and it’s a big part of the reason that the country is in such a huge mess today. America has become like a Krispy Kreme which doesn’t know what products the public comes there to get or (ahem) a school where they think their primary job is to talk to kids about gender and push gay pride, not teach the kids to read, write and do arithmetic.

However, getting back to first principles, it is obvious that a lot of things we are rewarding and encouraging in our society today ARE NOT producing useful, productive human beings that other people are going to benefit from sharing a society with.