Every few years, someone “discovers” the idea that work is just slavery with nicer branding.
It catches on and usually spreads fast because it feels rebellious and deep to people who are looking for an easy out. It flatters by suggesting that if we’re frustrated or tired or stretched thin, it must be because someone is exploiting us.
Of course it’s total nonsense. The proof is in literally all of human history.
Before there were bosses, there was winter.
Before there were corporations, there was hunger.
Long before anyone could “oppress” you with employment, you had to produce in order to not die.
Put simply, life requires effort before reward.
This truth isn’t the product of a political system or some idea constructed by “greedy capitalists” in a bid to get richer off the labor of others, it’s simply true.
Somehow, a lot of people have accepted a blurred line between “I must work to live” and “someone is unjustly forcing me to work to live.” Those are not the same thing.
If I have to plant crops to eat, nature is not enslaving me.
Yet far too many adults don’t get it.
This is one of the reasons it’s so important to talk to our kids about incentives.
In The Tuttle Twins and the Search for Atlas, the twins enter a world where incentives take center-ring.
The people who build, invent, solve, and produce are no longer celebrated. Instead, they’re used and abused and treated as if the products of their labor should be free for all to use—as if greatness is something to be apologized for, not something to be celebrated and rewarded.
Natural consequences follow.
Ethan and Emily learn that when effort is punished, you get less of it, and when people aren’t allowed to benefit from what they create, they don’t usually see much reason to keep creating.
It seems so simple, and yet it’s almost entirely foreign to a lot of young people who, for one reason or another (that’s a topic for another email) have an increasingly positive view of socialism and communism.
Here’s what makes those statistics so frustrating: kids understand incentives instinctively—they understand fairness in the real sense of the word. So something is happening during their growing-up time that drastically alters their perspectives on the morality of taking something that doesn’t belong to you and for which you did not labor to produce.
That has a whole lot to do with activist educators, and trends in media that confuse true compassion and love with bitterness, envy, and entitlement.
“Eating the Rich” isn’t loving the less-fortunate, but too many kids never learn that because too many parents are outsourcing too much of their child’s character-building to people and institutions that do not share their values.
I once heard it said that love is actually spelled T-I-M-E.
As I’ve grown as a husband and father, I’ve come to see the truth in that.
Our families remember far less of the gifts we give, the big trips we plan, or even the words we say than they do of the time we spend together just doing regular, everyday life.
And if that’s true, then one of the most loving things we can do as parents is incorporate teaching true principles of freedom, prosperity, and peace into our everyday routines—to build those strong foundational beliefs into the very structure of our home.
Throughout human history, the most profound and lasting lessons have been taught and learned around the family dinner table. Knowing this, we created a simple, printable resource to help give families the little boost they might need to make their evening gatherings a little more meaningful.
You can click here to download 13 Questions to Level-Up Your Family Dinner Conversations now.
You can even start tonight!
You’ll be amazed at what happens when you give kids the space to think out loud about fairness, responsibility, effort, gratitude, and opportunity. You’ll practically hear the wheels turning, and you’ll be able to watch as they start connecting ideas and coming to realizations all on their own.
It’s incredibly rewarding to watch.
If you want to dig a little deeper, The Tuttle Twins and the Search for Atlas is a great place to start. It introduces these principles and helps kids discover what happens when incentives are twisted, and why a society built on resentment toward producers will always crumble.
If an economic truth is that we can only consume what has first been produced through time and labor, then a household truth closely follows:
We can only reap the rewards of raising strong, principled, hardworking, honest children if we first invest our time and effort into shaping their view of the world and their place in it.
I can’t imagine a better use of our most finite resource.
I can’t think of a better way to show love.
— Connor
