[Sangetsu]

It's funny how much people criticize things which they know so little about. I have visited a few dental offices in Japan and have been shocked by the poor quality of dentistry here. I've been to many places, but the quality of Japanese dentistry is not much betterr than you would expect to find in India or Central America. Sure, basic treatments are covered by the national healthcare program, but the resulting dental work is awful to look at.

I ended up finding an America dentist in Tokyo who does good work. Of course his treatments are not covered by national healthcare, and neither are his treatments cheap.

I wish people would stop blaming governments for not providing services which people should be able to provide for themselves. One of the reasons intelligent people study hard in school is so that they can earn enough money to pay for things like their own insurance or their own dental care. America has free primary education, and the best universities in the world, it is a country where it is almost painfully easy to succeed. Yet there are many who fall through the cracks. Some of these people are victims of bad luck, but most have only to blame themselves for the bad decisions they have made in their lives.

When I lived in America I made sure I had good insurance. When I chose an employer, I made sure that they offered medical and dental coverage. I qualified myself to work for such an employer by getting a good education and having a good work history and good credit.

When I suffered from hardships (and there were more than a few) I didn't blame anyone but myself. I understood that my problems were MY problems, and therefore my responsibility. Solving these problems and overcoming the hardships in my life made me smarter and stronger. In a society where the government protects everybody from such hardships, how would people learn responsibility? We would all turn out to be weak-minded and weak-spirited people who would never learn to take care of ourselves, like the French.