If you understand how we started out nothing was secure in that there was no health care and there was no unemployment insurance and basically this was the idea:
You had the freedom to succeed or you had the freedom to die trying to succeed here in the U.S. and people here tried not to interfere with your succeeding (for the most part if you were white).
This was the beginning of our Democracy in a Republic and evolved from this Libertarian philosophy of the fact that you had unlimited Freedom (if you were white) to make a living and to start businesses and to succeed. However, you also had the freedom to die without any medical insurance which mostly didn't exist in the 1600s and 1700s here in the U.S.
We have come a long way since then and in some ways we now resemble more european forms of Democracy with the exception that we don't have cradle to the grave medical insurance (unless you are over 65 years old and have Medicare at that point) which is a lot like the automatic health care for most citizens of Most European countries and places like South Korea as well.
But, in order to have a functioning democracy one MUST have free speech which has withered away to some degree since the 1960s and 1970s since the U.S. has moved in a more liberal direction towards unemployment insurance and Medicare and Social Security etc.
So, now the libertarian ideal of the freedom to be a success or to die trying is somewhat different in this sense.
In the past, one mistake and you were dead. NOW you might have many chances to succeed and to fail.
And unlike Europe for example, you can be educated at any time in your life through public education and some people never stop educating themselves at institutions of higher learning throughout their adult lives.
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