# Are There Huge Dangers With Overemphasizing Self-Reliance? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 14, 2023, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-huge-dangers-with-overemphasizing-self-reliance/981188 "2023-03-14T21:36:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 2
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2023, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-huge-dangers-with-overemphasizing-self-reliance/981188/2 "2023-03-14T21:45:58Z")
Paywalled for me, but the concept seems ridiculous. If anything we have a much bigger problem in that peopl keep looking to someone else to protect them from life. The opposite of self-reliance is dependency. Do we really want to have nations full of people dependent on others? I know that’s the socialist goal, but it doesn’t work out too well in practice. Self reliance is anti-fragile, and that’s a good thing. Of course it can be overdone - we are social creatures and our economic well-being relies on cooperation. But we should be as self-reliant as we can possibly be while still taking part in economic and social public life. People who depend on government eventually discover that government isn’t very dependable. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-huge-dangers-with-overemphasizing-self-reliance/981188)._