the assumption is that the market encourages "self reliance" by forcing people two work. well, it doesn’t, and this is because of two reasons.
the first reason is that the market does NOT reward people according to work. work is only one factor out of many. some of these factors are good and should be rewarded, like ingenuity. some are either a-moral or immoral, like luck or privilege. privilege can also be explained as owning the necessary capital to invest. there are a lot of hardworking people out there without anything to invest in.
this whole "capitalism rewards according to work" thing needs to be explained in context. when capitalism was just starting, it was fighting against an immoral system where people were rewarding with wealth and power according to nobility. they did not have to work to be rich- they were born rich. Adam Smith, therefore, in trying to convince people that capitalism was better then feudalism, devised a theory on why things are expensive (or not expensive). to him, something is only expensive if it takes a lot of effort and labor to make. therefore, capitalism rewards according to labor.
this became the dominant theory of value for over a century. it was called the "Labor Theory of Value." (LTV)
however, this theory was debunked when Alfred Marshal came along and created a new theory of value, called "Marginal Utility." This is a very complicated value theory, but in essence it said that the price of a commodity is all relative to a number of different factors. Marshall said that just because something takes a lot of work to make doesn't mean its worth much; if nobody wants it, then its not very valuable. therefore, labor is not the sole factor in determining how people are rewarded.
Marginalism has now become the dominant theory of value and has been for almost a century and a half. the LTV is now considered quaint. nobody believes it nowadays, and anybody who does is not taken seriously.
the second thing that flies right in the face of the idea that capitalism promotes "self reliance" is a market externality. again, we go back to Adam Smith. Smith tried to convince people that a government that governed the least was best. his reasoning was that the market would price socially unacceptable things as expensive and unprofitable, and good things as inexpensive or profitable, therefore encouraging people to do good things. the idea was that if people didn’t like something, there would just be no demand for it. therefore, if something is profitable, then it must be good. therefore, there is not a lot of need for government to make a bunch of laws because people will naturally do things on their own.
let me explain this in a different way. an advocate for the free market says that because markets require voluntary agreements that are mutually beneficial to both parties involved, then they are a much better way of solving problems between people then government. however, markets only see two kinds of people; buyers and sellers. but what of these two groups of people come up with an agreement that hurts a third party of people who were not involved in the market agreement? they get no say in this particular market, even though they might be hurt by it. this is called a market externality.
market externalities also mean that markets don’t price things very well. an externality is basically a cost that someone else pays who is neither a buyer or seller in a given market. therefore, someone else is paying for your actions. it's like going to a restaurant and saying "i'll pay half for this cup of coffee, and the guy across the room who I don’t even know will pay the other half."
how, then, can anyone even suggest that capitalism promotes "self reliance" if you're 1) not rewarded according to your hard work and 2) not responsible for your own actions? the whole "self reliance" argument is only promoted by people who know nothing about economics and ideologues (mostly both).