Let us consider our organizing American characteristics: independence, ordered liberty, self-interest, free market economics, and currency as a medium of exchange. Each of these characteristics encourage differentiating individuals from each other.
As an independent person, I am free to choose my own values. My liberty is only limited by laws designed to prevent me from imposing on the liberty of other people.
At the heart of free market economics is the utilitarian principle of individual actors making market choices based on their individual preferences (self-interest). Based on these choices, market prices are set for all goods and services in the global economy, thereby distinguishing consumers by their capacity to pay.
Accordingly, the quality of every good and service we buy is tied to how much money we have. Since most consumers cannot afford the very best quality goods and services, fortunes are made selling substandard quality to the broadest part of the market (i.e. Walmart).
Under these circumstances, well-being has become a function of fierce competition to accumulate money. And as a result, the universal desire to provide for ourselves and our families is reduced to creating a zero-sum environment of inhuman, non-sustainable inequality.
