Most people in America, at some minimum level, at least, believe that they live in the “home of the free.” Yet, it is difficult to define anybody as being free when they are dependent upon their government, their employer, or some other entity for their subsistence at some meaningful level. To a very large extent, governments desire that a significant amount of the population, and especially those of the underclass, be dependent upon that government, in which that government, seems to stipulate that a fair trade is for those that receive meaningful benefits from that government is for them to be in turn, obedient, compliant, and obeisance to that government. So too, many an employer, believes that for their blue-collar workers, or for those that do routine office work, that in return for their paychecks, that those employees should be loyal to that company and therefore that they should accept their pay and their work conditions, as that employer so dictates to them. Basically, in all of the above cases, those that control the means of employment, or the benefits of governmental largess, demand obedience to their terms, of which therefore, those receiving such, cannot be seen as independent agents, but rather they are dependent, so of.
On the other hand, those that are truly independent, are basically going to consist of people, that whether through inheritance, savings, hard work, or some combination, thereof, have enough capital assets and reliable income, that they aren’t dependent upon either the government, or of being a cog in the machine for some employer, in order to make their own way in the world. In addition, only those that can dictate the terms of their employment, or are important components of said employment, or are successfully self-employed, are truly able to state that they are “independent.” All others, are dependent, to some degree or another, and those that are dependent upon others, are to a significant extent, not free.
It isn’t so much that dependency, is always a bad thing, for there is something to be said about, for example, family situations, in which each party is dependent upon another for certain tasks to be accomplished. Rather, dependency becomes a real negative, when the person that is dependent, has no meaningful say in what is so occurring, and further to the point, doesn’t have a lot of good or viable options to create a place in which they thereby subsequently become independent. Additionally, those that are dependent, find themselves from time-to-time in the unenviable position in which in order to receive the benefits that they are receiving, that they have to continually compromise who they really are in order to continue to get what they currently are receiving, even though, what they are receiving, is never enough to extricate themselves out of their dependency.
Most governments and most employers, typically don’t want a multitude of independent agents within their respective domains, because independency is something that does not easily lend itself to being controlled and that which can’t be controlled lends itself to scenarios in which all sorts of things can occur, both good and bad. It is, though, those bad scenarios that worry governments and employers, because when enough people get together to declare their independence, and do not relent from that justified belief, true change and revolutions happen.