What About Work Ethic?

If feadership and social change are hard work, we might be in trouble. Here is a very intriguing article from the City Journal. It's one of the best I've read recently (although it's way too long). Do you agree with the author? Have we lost the work ethic this nation was built upon? Or, does work ethic just show up differently? At first read, I agree with the author.

Here's a good quote: "In the wake of the market crash, our national discussion about how to fix capitalism seems limited to those who believe that more government will fix the problem and those who think that free markets will fix themselves. Few have asked whether we can recapture the civic virtues that nourished our commerce for 300 years."

The loss of those virtues have an impact on leadership, as I believe we are less willing to stick with difficult endeavors.

Another quote: "What would Tocqueville or Weber think of America today? In place of thrift, they would find a nation of debtors, staggering beneath loans obtained under false pretenses. In place of a steady, patient accumulation of wealth, they would find bankers and financiers with such a short-term perspective that they never pause to consider the consequences or risks of selling securities they don’t understand. In place of a country where all a man asks of government is “not to be disturbed in his toil,” as Tocqueville put it, they would find a nation of rent-seekers demanding government subsidies to purchase homes, start new ventures, or bail out old ones. They would find what Tocqueville described as the “fatal circle” of materialism—the cycle of acquisition and gratification that drives people back to ever more frenetic acquisition and that ultimately undermines prosperous democracies."