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About the author: Vitaliy Katsenelson is CEO of IMA, a value investment firm in Denver, and the author of the upcoming Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life.

On Dec. 4, 1991, my family got off the boat from Russiawe landed at JFK, our stop on the way to Denver. I was 18 years old. My father moved my entire family to America for the shot at a better life for his kids; he had little inkling that the Soviet Union would collapse a few weeks later. I had learned about the U.S. mostly from American movies, which, with the exception of Westerns, were heavily biased toward coasts and skyscrapers. Denver was flat, sunny, and unusually warm. People wore T-shirts in the middle of winter.

That was not the only surprise for us.

We were picked up at the airport by a half-dozen strangers from my aunts synagogue. They drove us to our fully furnished apartment. That was shocking to me. I had been brainwashed into believing that Americanscapitalist pigswould sell their brothers to supersize their Happy Meals. These cold-hearted capitalists had taken their time and money to care for people they had never met.

In Soviet Russia, everyone (for the most part) was equally poor. My family, despite my fathers high salary (he had a doctorate, which boosted his pay), lived from paycheck to paycheck. Our understanding of money, especially mine, was very limitedwe never had any.

Money and power often unmask a person. Sometimes you like what is revealed; many times you dont. Im an investment manager. As an occupational hazard, Ive spent time around some very wealthy people, and I havent observed any extra dose of happiness in them.

Money solves money problems. It doesnt make people love you; your actions do. Money, just like education, is supposed to buy you choices. It should provide security. The first few years in the U.S., my parents worried how we were going to pay for groceries and rent. We dont have that worry todayand that is liberating.

After we arrived, I spent a few months knocking on the doors of every business within walking distance of our apartment. I didnt realize it at the time, but the country was in a recession. Getting a job was very difficult. Every member of my family needed to work.

When I eventually found work at a restaurant on the night shift, everything I earned, down to the last penny, I gave to my parents. This money went for food and rent. My stepmother, who was a doctor in Russia, was now cleaning rooms in a hotel.

Those were difficult years, but I would not trade them for anything. They taught me to work harder than anyone else. I dont know if I was driven by hunger for success, fear of failure, or by seeing the contrast of what this country had to offer versus my life in the Soviet Union. Probably all of the above.

Yes, this country has kept its promise. But as I reflect on spending the bulk of my adult life here, I realize I understand this country less today than I did 30 years ago.

Over the past decade, the country has turned tribal. We outsource our thinking to the mother ship of the tribe. Other tribes become our nemesis, and we lose nuance. Tribalism has started to impact our freedom of speech. No, the government isnt going to send you to the gulag for your political thoughts. We do it to ourselves by canceling one another.

The more we self-censor, the less free we become. As nuance is lost, we lose pragmatism and resilience, and we follow the paths of all empires. They get too rich, overextended, think they are better than others, and then fail.

I see the same thing happening on the corporate level. As great companies triumph, they lose a healthy sense of paranoia and perspective. Their culture stiffens, and they start thinking that success is a God-given right. Hubris creates an opening for the competition. IBM , GE, Xerox , Kodak , Polaroid, the onetime hallmarks of this country, are now sorry shadows of themselves.

It pains me to see the younger generation romanticizing socialism, as a person who lived under Soviet socialism and as an investor. When you tell them that every country that tried it failed, they answer that theyll do it better. Socialism fails not because of the quality of people involvednobody thinks that Russia or Venezuela would have succeeded if only they had better bureaucrats. Socialism simply runs counter to our genetic programming.

The alignment of incentives is paramount to the success of any enterprise. The incentives of government bureaucrats are aligned not with the success of the country but with keeping their jobs. Compare SpaceX to the space program run by the U.S. government. Capitalism is far from perfect, but it is the best system weve got.

I am still optimistic about the U.S. But we should not take our success for granted. Just like immigrants fresh off the boat, we should be hungry.

Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barrons and MarketWatch newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors. Submit commentary proposals and other feedback to ideas@barrons.com.

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