A while back I mentioned that I’d almost hit a skateboarder with my car when he, wearing earbuds in both ears, turned off a sidewalk right into oncoming traffic… and had the nerve to look outraged when I had to swerve frantically to avoid him. At least twice a week, on her way to work, my wife has to stop her car because someone, with earbuds and a smartphone, steps into the street in front of her car, oblivious to anything else. Because, after all, it’s their right to communicate where and when they want, regardless of the consequences.

And then there all are the cellphone and smartphone addicts, who feel that they have the right to communicate instantly, and often loudly, anywhere and at any time, even when driving in high-speed urban freeway traffic or after the airplane doors have been closed, or the texters who employ their smartphones in darkened theatres and opera houses, making it difficult for those beside and behind them to concentrate on what most people are there to see and hear – despite pointedly being told that texting and electronic devices are not permitted during the performance. Along with them are the talkers – who obviously feel they have the right to punctuate and comment on the performance while it is in progress.

Others who overextend their rights are the “information should be free” types, who insist it’s their right to pirate electronic versions of music or books, or to enjoy pirated versions, thereby depriving the creators of income from their creations.

Elsewhere in the fabric of “my right” activists are those who employ the highways to demonstrate their belief in solipsistic superiority – either by driving well below the speed limit, especially in the left-hand lane, or careening through traffic well above speed limits, or racing to the merge point and honking madly to part traffic, or engaging in some other vehicular activity that suggests that the rights of others are markedly inferior.

Among other “my rights” activists are the parents who insist that their child is always right, and that the teacher, professor, police officer, employer, or other authority figure is always wrong… or just “misunderstands” the needs of their most wonderful offspring.

Add to that the second amendment fanatics, who insist that it is their right, and everyone else’s, to obtain and carry more personal weapons in the U.S. than all in the armies in the world – without any real requirement for competency and with no real restrictions on who can purchase and use those weapons.

On top of all those people are those who believe that the laws of the land don’t apply to them, that they’re “special,” as illustrated by the fact that, according to FBI statistics for 2013, there were 49,851 assaults on police officers, meaning, that on average, one in every eleven police officers was assaulted in a single year. While I’d be among the first to admit that there are bad apples among police officers, no matter how well applicants for those positions are screened, there are bad apples in every profession, but bad apples or not, what do fifty thousand assaults a year on law enforcement personnel say about the great American public?

Isn’t it about time to stop asserting “my rights” and start looking out for the rights of others?

I understand the concerns over excessive use of force by police. I understand the fact that statistics and a wealth of data show that minorities are harassed more by police than are non-minorities. What I’m having a very hard time getting my head around is the degree of outrage created by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

As I’ve noted before, and as there is indisputable evidence to demonstrate, Michael Brown committed theft and assault and most likely physically assaulted a police officer and tried to grab his gun. If I’d done all that in any jurisdiction I can think of, even as a white male American, I’d most likely be dead as well, and you can bet that there wouldn’t be hundreds of protests across the country.

Eric Garner wasn’t shot. He was wrestled down after causing a scene when police tried to stop him from continuing an illegal practice. The practice of selling untaxed loose cigarettes wasn’t what led to his death. His physical resistance and refusal to stop selling the cigarettes led to an attempt to restrain him, which proved fatal because of two factors – Garner’s underlying health conditions, of which the police had no knowledge, and the use of a supposed chokehold, which had been banned for police use some twenty years earlier, although the officer involved has denied that the hold was a chokehold. But Garner was no innocent, either. He had a criminal record with more than 30 arrests dating back over thirty years on charges such as assault, resisting arrest, and grand larceny. But the “failure” to indict a policeman ignited another round of protests.

Why is there all this outrage, as if the two individuals who died were innocents and paragons of society? They weren’t. Yes, they were human beings, but they made bad decisions, repeatedly, and they are being made out to be innocent victims of a brutal system, and all too many of the protests are attempting to pin the entire “blame” on the police. Granted, the system is at times brutal, and it needs reform in many geographical areas, but riots, demonstrations, and making saints out of people like Garner is likely to make reform even more difficult.

From a very personal point of view, these kinds of protests also anger me because they not only glorify people who don’t deserve it, but they also ignore the true innocents. I don’t see hundreds of protests for the schoolgirls and schoolboys killed every year in drive-by shootings across the country, most of whom, unfortunately, are minorities. I don’t see hundreds of protests for the truly innocent children gunned down at Sandy Hook; instead I see well-heeled and well-dressed middle-class Americans protesting that their rights to bear arms will be infringed if any sort of measure requiring weapons competency is enacted. I don’t see protests about the failure to indict financiers on criminal charges for fraudulent use of robo-signatures that have illegally thrown tens of thousands of Americans out of their houses. I don’t see hundreds of protests again natural resource companies, such as those in West Virginia, who have poisoned millions of truly innocent people.

And in the case of Ferguson, Missouri, there’s one other truly remarkable and unanswered question. Every story I’ve seen indicates that the town is sixty-five to seventy percent black, but the police force is ninety percent white, and while the mayor is black, only one of the town’s six council members is black, yet, according to news reports, less than ten percent of the black population voted in the last election. If this has been an ongoing problem, which is what all sources report, why haven’t all those minority voters turned out and voted for officials to change the system? If that low turnout is because of illegal political restrictions on voting, why hasn’t that been brought up? Either way, why aren’t the local blacks using the system by seeking the vote or voting? It would be a lot more constructive than burning down local businesses in rage, which, by the way, is in fact a crime. But then, rioting and demonstrating is a lot easier and more flamboyant than the drudgery of registering and educating voters, and then getting them to the polls. That takes work, lots of work… but that sort of work is also what brings lasting improvement and change. It also doesn’t bring headlines, which is what the media and agitators all seek.

One of many things I’ve learned in over forty years as a published science fiction and fantasy writer is that while readers span a great range of interests, backgrounds, and enthusiasm for the printed word, and some of those readers enjoy varying types of work, a great many readers have a fairly narrow comfort zone. Years ago, when I wrote The Towers of the Sunset, my editor, the venerable David Hartwell, asked, “Could you write this book in the third person past tense?”

“Why?” I asked. “It’s a better book in the third person present tense. It wouldn’t work as well in the past tense.”

“Because most readers are more comfortable reading books written in the third person past tense, and you’ll lose readers if this book is published as you wrote it.”

I persisted; David accepted the novel as written in the third person present tense, except he did want an expansion of the last part, and he was definitely right about that. He was also right about a number of readers not liking the use of present tense, especially when the book was first published, but those who liked the use of the present tense really liked it, and, as a result, I’ve gotten the impression, over the more than twenty years since Towers was published, that it has tended to be a reader’s most favorite or least favorite book in the entire Saga of Recluce, despite the fact that, since then, I’ve written other Recluce novels in present tense as well.

Then a number of years later, I wrote another book – Archform:Beauty – in which I told the story from the viewpoints of five different characters – in first person past tense. It got great reviews… and sold only moderately well. At times, a differing approach upsets both readers and reviewers, as was the case with Empress of Eternity, where the interweaving three narrative lines set in vastly different future time periods is based on an actual theory of time [not mine] suggested by Einstein’s work.

Readers also have expectations of a writer, and this was made very clear by the five books of the Spellsong Cycle and by Arms-Commander, the sixteenth book of the Recluce Saga, all of which were told from the female perspective, and all of which sold at lower levels than comparable books of mine told from the male point of view. I actually got comments and emails from male readers saying that they just couldn’t identify with a female point of view, that they weren’t comfortable with it.

Over the years, I’ve done a number of books that have incorporated, shall we say, departures from standard third person, past tense, straight line narrative, and there’s a definite bottom-line cost to continuing to write such books.

In general, the greater the degree of separation from “standard narrative,” the lower the comparative sales numbers were. For those of you who bemoan the “sameness” of so many books, you might bear in mind that professional writers do need to make a living, and when innovation reduces the publisher’s income, and correspondingly, the writer’s income, both tend to become more conservative. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but not, generally, among writers whose works support them. In fact, I’m probably one of a very few self-supporting full-time writers who produces a relatively divergent range of books, under the same name. I know a few other writers who try to avoid the sales drop-off and market to distinct classes of readers by using different pen names for different kinds of books, but I guess I’m just a bit old-fashioned, because, to me, that’s catering a bit too much to readers’ comfort zones.

In the end, I not only want to entertain and hopefully enthrall my readers, but also at least edge them out of their comfort zone to some degree, if not more, to get them to consider anything from a slight to a far different perspective, and like all writers, I doubtless have mixed success. But it’s still worth trying.

Last week several Utah state legislators proposed giving “incentive funding” to those state universities who most increase the percentage and numbers of students completing their undergraduate studies and graduating in less than six years. While the goal is certainly noteworthy, because all too many Utah students do take more than six years, the remedy effectively places the blame in the wrong place and would be almost laughable, if it weren’t so tragic, because the colleges aren’t the ones to blame, not in Utah, anyway.

The population of Utah is roughly 70% LDS [Mormon], and roughly 75%-80% of all college students in Utah state universities are also LDS. Of that number close to 80% of the male LDS college students undertake a two-year mission during their “college years.” Depending on what month in which their “mission call” arrives, the male student can spend 2-3 years out of college serving his church. Roughly 30% of female students also undertake missions, which removes them from college for two years.

Add to this the fact that the head of the LDS church has made an extremely strong push for male students to get married within a year of completing their mission… and a great number do, as many as half, if the percentages observed at the local university are replicated at other Utah universities. Those married students then often have to work, not surprisingly, to support their families and their studies. This delays their completion of studies, and, in some cases, particularly for women, keeps them from even getting a degree.

The real question is just how universities and university professors are supposed to get students through the degree programs faster when religious commitments leave those students in a situation where it is either difficult or impossible to finish a four year program in six years, considering that the students are absent from 2-3 years. The university most likely to improve their “6-year graduation rate” is going to be the University of Utah, simply because it has the lowest percentage of LDS undergraduates, and in general, the most highly qualified in-state students, while the regional universities with the highest percentage of LDS students, and the greatest percentage of first-generation college students, will have the hardest time… and yet those students and colleges are the ones who are already getting far less funding from the legislature.

But then, this latest legislative “initiative” at least recognizes the problem, if pointedly ignoring the causes.

… has almost nothing to do with Michael Brown. Nor does it have all that much to do with “police brutality.” Those who focus on either are missing the underlying point and will only make the situation worse by polarizing the fear and hatred without doing a damned thing to address the underlying cause… and that cause is not just the unfair treatment of blacks and minorities. The unfair treatment of blacks and minorities and women is just one aspect of something much larger. And no, I’m not a socialist, or a communist.

I’m a firm believer in personal responsibility at all levels, and the overall problem facing the United States and, from what I can see, all too many industrialized nations is that we have institutionalized and effectively legalized a system that all too often absolves those with resources from personal responsibility, and in some cases decriminalizes certain forms of unethical or irresponsible behavior on their part while retaining penalties on those who are poor, or otherwise economically challenged.

The great legal innovation that made possible the rise of large corporations was the development of limited liability or incorporation, whereby organizations gain the legal status of individuals, thereby shielding the officers or owners of corporations from both damages and direct responsibility for acts committed by the corporation. In practice, that means no individual can be prosecuted for murder, manslaughter or any other equivalent charge as a result of the faulty GM starter switch, the unsafe placement of the Ford Pinto gas tank, the sudden acceleration of certain Toyota vehicles. No individual in the banking establishment has ever been nor could they ever be prosecuted for developing and implementing the widespread financial tools that crashed the economy. Over the past century, company after company has engaged in acts and behaviors that have killed or ruined the health and environment of millions of Americans, and after more than twenty years in the environmental regulatory field, I’m not aware of a single prosecution of any corporate decision-maker on environmental grounds. Oh, there have been prosecutions of and successful damage lawsuits against corporations, but those violations and damage were paid out of “corporate funds,” i.e., revenues generated by corporate operations, usually the same polluting and/or unsafe operations that were found to be illegal. Slightly ironic, isn’t it, and more than a little hypocritical.

I’m not opposed to capitalism. In fact, I’m in favor of “pure capitalism” as opposed to the “unfettered” capitalism that so many business types claim as the pure thing… and isn’t. Unfettered capitalism was what the robber-barons of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century practiced, capitalism without rules or restrictions. In practice, this meant minimizing costs by paying workers as little as possible, providing few if any benefits, paying the lowest taxes for government services possible, not worrying any more than absolutely necessary about product quality, and despoiling the environment, and thus dumping the environmental costs on everyone else. In short, unfettered capitalism thrives on pushing off as much of the costs of production as possible on everyone else. Under “pure capitalism” [which I admit freely isn’t yet possible], businesses would be required to cover ALL the costs of production in the price of their products, including total environmental clean-up [zero pollution], safe products and working environment, and livable wages for workers. While a handful of businesses today meet this standard, most don’t, and possibly can’t under current economic and legal structures, especially with the insatiable American demand for goods and services at the lowest possible prices. As result, we have a considerable number of large corporations that employ huge numbers of part-time workers and send jobs overseas, where labor costs are lower and environmental requirements far less stringent. None of this translates into better wages and jobs for economically disadvantaged Americans, a significant percentage of whom are minorities.

In a sense, the same structural mindset is also true of government, in that no member of Congress or group of members of Congress can be prosecuted for giving tax breaks to specific firms [appropriately couched in general language that boils down in practice to applying to one or two or only a few corporations or individuals], even though such “tax breaks” that apply to a minute few of all taxpayers essentially amount to theft from all other taxpayers, which is ethically definitely a form of corruption.

As a result of this kind of governmental and legal structure, we have developed a business and societal structure that rewards unethical behavior by those with great resources, removes those individuals from personal legal sanctions and responsibility for actions that damage if not kill anywhere from scores to millions of people, and minimizes the impact of criminal penalties on those in the upper middle class and upper class. The legal penalties for so-called white collar crime are so much less stringent than the penalties for what might be called street crime, and even drug laws are effectively aimed at the economically disadvantaged.

Education falls into the same twin-level structure. Those with resources can obtain a better education for their children by either living in an affluent community with good public schools or sending their children to private schools. The poor – and the bulk of most minorities are poor – have no such choice. Add to this the fact that almost all the education “reforms” so far implemented [as I’ve discussed in great depth over the years] are largely ineffectual in improving education for anyone who is not affluent, except in the case of a comparative handful of charter schools, and “more” education isn’t helping the majority of the poor and middle class all that much. The skyrocketing levels of public college tuition [fueled largely by the reluctance of state legislators to maintain past levels of state contributions because of an unwillingess to raise taxes] impact, again disproportionately, those students who come from middle class or lower economic backgrounds, especially minority students.

Then add in the growing income inequality in the United States, which reduces even more the ability of those without resources to climb out of poverty and otherwise succeed.

Michael Brown was no angel. He wasn’t even close. But that isn’t the point behind all the demonstrations. In effect, Michael Brown was shot because he wanted more and stole a box of cigars to get it. That theft set off a chain of events which led to a confrontation during which he was killed.

On the other hand, Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who definitely wanted more, weren’t killed for destroying Enron and devastating the lives of the 4,000 employees. And recently Skilling effectively “bought” a reduction in the jail time he’ll have to serve. GM and Ford upper management weren’t prosecuted for approving cost-cutting designs that killed people. Although coal companies have polluted and rendered undrinkable almost a quarter of the surface water streams in West Virginia, causing thousands of health problems, and likely hundreds of deaths, if not more, I haven’t found evidence of a single criminal prosecution that has been undertaken against an individual. Not a single individual could be prosecuted under current law for the banking and financial manipulations that almost crashed the entire U.S. economy in 2008 and led to the Great Recession. These are just a few examples of what is a wide-spread pattern of corporate behavior.

But we can criminalize minor drug possession, and throw people in jail for life for three crimes, not involving murder, that might affect as few as three people.

The outrage over Michael Brown’s death, whether all those protesters realize it consciously or not, is an outrage over a system that has become more and more closed and more and more tilted toward those with resources.