What is The American Dream?

I was raised to be Conservative. Christian. Republican.

I didn’t choose those labels. I inherited them — no different than inheriting my last name. For most of my life I identified with them without question. If I had been born in a different state, I would’ve been raised to be a Democrat. Different country, Muslim.

That’s what we do. We let other people and our circumstances decide who we are. What we believe. What we do. Until we learn to think for ourselves. If we do.

I didn’t learn to think for myself until I was 36. Read: Why I Hated My Life - And What Changed Everything. In short, years of taking the easy path and staying uncomfortably comfortable led to unemployment and divorce. Then I did the hard thing. Which then led to my first startup, financial freedom, and the love of my life.

That work on myself at 36 taught me to be careful about the labels I let define me. I am now more open to understanding — and valuing — both sides of most arguments.

I am an independent thinker with political beliefs that align with both Democrats and Republicans. Which means everyone disagrees with me. 🤣

My views are both left — AND — right. But usually somewhere in the middle. Where compromise lives, where collaboration happens, where we can actually move forward.

The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.

We are all interconnected. We need freedom to pursue our potential AND guardrails to protect everyone we affect as we strive. Food safety laws. Environmental standards. Consumer protections. These guardrails don't restrict our striving. They make sure our striving is ethical.

We can have billionaires. And a thriving middle class.

We need the natural tension between liberals and conservatives that our Founders built into our political system.

Politics has gone mainstream. It seems to be our new reality show. Infotainment, if you will. But it can get ugly when friends and family disagree — especially about the current president. Best case, we just don’t talk about it.

Sounds minor, but it isn’t. Not talking is the problem.

• Conservative vs Liberal

• Republican vs Democrat

That’s identity politics. No middle ground. No moving forward. And the problem lives on both sides. George Washington warned us about political parties:

The alternate domination of one faction over another ... is itself a frightful despotism.

Tribalism doesn’t care about truth. It cares about loyalty. Independent thinking is not allowed. Disagree and you’re not just mistaken. You’re just wrong. A problem. Primaried. Cancelled.

The cost doesn’t seem dramatic. But it’s killing the American Dream.

We don’t live in a binary world. So why do almost all votes land on one of only two parties? Most Americans want an independent alternative at the polls. Why are we forced to choose a side that no longer represents us?

We need more choice. Keep reading.

Social Democracy is how the Scandinavian countries have combined capitalism with strong social infrastructure to build the highest quality of life on the planet. It's a few shades of gray away from our American model, but not as far as you might think:

Social Democracy = Regulated Capitalism + Strong Safety Net

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are getting this wrong.
It’s not semantics. It’s backwards.

Democratic socialism aims to replace capitalism entirely. They reject authoritarianism but strive for socialism: state ownership of the means of production. Government owns the big, important companies. They control the economy directly. That’s what failed in the Soviet Union. And what’s failing in Venezuela.

Socialism has never worked. Never will.

So why is our Republican-controlled Commerce Department taking ownership stakes in major corporations? Picking winners and losers. No longer an impartial market regulator. That’s a step toward socialism.

That’s China. Not America.

Ironic, isn’t it? Both extremes are getting it wrong.

The right has successfully branded “socialism” as a slur for anything left of pure, unabashed capitalism. Progressive taxes? Socialism. Public education? Socialism. Regulatory oversight? Socialism. Safety nets? Socialism.

The left let them do it.

That's not a policy debate. That's a word game. And we're all losing.

FDR wasn’t a socialist. Eisenhower wasn’t a socialist. Kennedy and Johnson weren’t socialists. They were pragmatists who built the most successful economy in human history — with progressive taxes, strong public institutions, regulatory guardrails, and robust safety nets.

Now we’re calling that socialism.

Think about that.

America was founded on a clear set of guiding principles defined in three documents:

• Declaration of Independence

• Preamble to the Constitution

• Bill of Rights

This wasn’t a political platform. It was a contract. And like any contract, it only works if everyone honors it.

Don’t like the American contract? Don’t change the contract. Change countries. Move if you have to. Most immigrants choose America precisely because of our contract.

Our contract has always had two sides:

“Promote the general welfare.” Create conditions where society as a whole can thrive. Nobody’s allowed to fall through the cracks, completely: quality public education, basic healthcare, infrastructure, safety nets for the people who need them. Not because it’s charity. Because without a stable, educated, and physically secure society, "the blessings of liberty" cannot be enjoyed by anyone.

“Secure the blessings of liberty.” Protect individual rights, personal autonomy, and economic freedom. Get out of the way and let people build: free markets, property rights, the rule of law, equal protection. The freedom to strive, risk, fail, and try again.

Both sides of the contract are in the same documents. Written by people who disagreed. And argued. And collaborated to create something far greater than any single perspective could have created on its own.

It was never meant to be EITHER / OR.
That’s what both sides get wrong.

The Founders didn’t write “promote the general welfare OR secure the blessings of liberty.” They wrote both. In the same sentence. Because they understood that a functioning society requires both. Opportunity going up and safety going down.

That’s not a liberal idea. That’s not a conservative idea. It’s the American idea.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison

The Founders also had a deep and explicit distrust of unchecked power — in government and in the marketplace.

Checks and balances. Separation of powers. Three branches of government designed to prevent any single entity — any single person, any single party, any single branch — from becoming overly authoritarian.

The same principle applies to economic power. Concentrated wealth without guardrails corrupts democracy. The Founders understood that too.

They saw it coming. They built guardrails to protect us against it.

We dismantled them.

John D. Rockefeller. Andrew Carnegie. J.P. Morgan.

History remembers them as ruthless. It also remembers them as philanthropists. Both are true. And the tension between those two facts tells you everything you need to know about unregulated capitalism.

They built extraordinary wealth. They crushed competitors, bought politicians, busted unions, and accumulated power that no single citizen in a democracy was ever meant to have. Then — to their credit — many of them gave it away. Carnegie built 2,500 public libraries. Rockefeller funded universities and public health initiatives that saved millions of lives. More recently, Bill Gates has probably prevented more deaths through his foundation than most governments.

But here’s the thing: their philanthropy was essentially doing privately what progressive taxation does publicly — using some of their good fortune to support the society that made it possible.

The difference is we had to wait for them to feel like it. What if they never did? What about the others who never do?

Ultra-high-net-worth families donate an average of 1% to 1.5% of their wealth per year — less than the rate their investment portfolios usually grow.

Hoping billionaires will do the right thing one day is not a system. It’s luck. The American Dream was never supposed to depend on the generosity of billionaires. It depends on a fair set of rules that give everyone a real shot at whatever level they aspire to.

Harvard economist Raj Chetty found that 92% of Americans born in 1940 achieved the American Dream by doing better than their parents. By 1990 that number had become a coin toss. We now have a 50/50 chance.

Elon Musk came to the US on a student visa for the same reason most immigrants do — the American Contract — and then plugged into our capitalist ecosystem. His genius is risk tolerance and talent for scaling technologies invented by others. He deserves credit where credit is due. But Musk’s fortune is American Made — not “self-made”.

Elon Musk is standing on the shoulders of giants.

Centuries of American academic infrastructure, scientific breakthroughs, legal frameworks, and venture capital are the “giants” he and other billionaires stand on. Property rights, bankruptcy protections, and deep financial markets provide the capital and safety net necessary to take on massive risks.

The Internet itself — the backbone of his early fortune — was built entirely on a data network created and funded by the US government. American taxpayers paid for the infrastructure that an entire generation of tech billionaires leveraged to build their wealth.

Elon Musk rails against public spending — unless he’s the beneficiary. He built Tesla with $2.5 billion of US government money. Taxpayer money. SpaceX was built on decades of NASA research, rocket technology, and industrial supply chain development. Who paid for that? You and me. Now, NASA pays SpaceX billions every year as their largest customer.

I’m not complaining. I’m a capitalist — a Conscious Capitalist. Billionaires earn their wealth when they solve enough problems for enough people. But they aren’t “self-made”. They owe something back to the country that created the opportunity.

The top one percent now owns more of this country than the entire middle class.

And now they're buying the government that made it all possible.

The Citizens United decision in 2010 essentially removed the guardrails on political spending. Money flooded into politics at a scale the Founders never imagined and specifically designed against.

I recently heard a man worth $200 million say he wants to make more money so he can have more impact on politics.

Think about that for a moment.

We didn’t elect him. He didn’t earn political influence through public service. He earned it by accumulating wealth. In our post-Citizens United America, apparently that’s enough.

That’s not equal opportunity. That’s purchased power. It’s how the game gets rigged. Not through conspiracy, but through legal, normalized influence that drowns out every voice that can’t write that check.

This is why nearly 3 in 4 Democrats are now willing to vote for a socialist.

One Striver. One vote. That’s the contract.

Not one dollar. One vote.

The Founders built a republic — not an auction.

Capitalism is NOT the problem. The problem is how our political and economic systems have been rigged to benefit billionaires at the expense of everyone else. Great entrepreneurs should absolutely become wealthy. That’s the whole point. That’s the Dream.

But the Dream only works when the game is fair. And right now, it isn’t.

So what does fair look like?

I bet the farm when I started my first company. Failure was not an option. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew my parents would never let me sleep on the street.

My parents were my safety net.

As my kids were leaving the nest, I specifically told them: “I am your safety net. Not a hammock.”

Not everyone is so lucky. For millions of Americans, welfare is their safety net. And in the 1990s we reformed the laws to make sure it stays a safety net — not a hammock.

Safety nets catch you when you fall. That’s not socialism.
They make it safer for Strivers to bet the farm.

Strivers don’t want equal outcomes as promised by socialism. We want equal opportunity as promised by free market capitalism.

🙏 We need safety nets. But Socialism goes too far.
✈️ We need free markets. But MAGA goes too far.

Capitalism — with guardrails — works for everyone. But those guardrails cost money.

High-income earners find taxes annoying. An inconvenience. But not life changing. Billionaires can afford to give more back to the country that made their wealth possible.

Low-income earners, on the other hand, feel every dollar. Gas prices, grocery bills, rent, and taxes hit their bottom line directly. Every dollar is discretionary. Every dollar is life changing.

Do we want a future where the rising tide lifts all boats? Or one where a handful of people own the ocean?

92% of Americans born in 1940 achieved the American Dream. Today it’s a coin toss.

That makes the Joy of Striving that much more important.

Examine your beliefs. Not your parents’ beliefs. Not your tribe’s beliefs. Yours.

Ask yourself: do I actually believe this? Or was I just born into it?

Independent thinking is the hardest political act in this tribal era. It will cost you something. Maybe at your own dinner table.

But the Dream was never built by people who let someone else do their thinking. It was built by Strivers who did the hard thing — even when it was uncomfortable. When it cost them something. When the people they loved the most didn’t understand.

Compromise isn’t weakness. Collaboration isn’t betrayal. The middle isn’t no man’s land. It’s where the work gets done.

You inherited your beliefs the same way I did. What are you going to do about that?

I don’t have all the answers. But I do know this: the structural barriers to viable independent candidates are real — ballot access laws, campaign finance, winner-take-all elections. They weren’t accidents. They were built to protect the two parties that benefit from them.

Changing this will be hard.

It will take time. But we can fix this. Step by step.

Do the hard thing.

Join the conversation — in the comments — about how we can bring back the American Dream for every Striver.

Keep Striving ✈️
Eric

👉 For the full economic argument, read Blake Ashby’s book: Socialism and the Democratic Party: The Case for a Return to Moderated Capitalism