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stryck's post about liberal fascism and thought:Am I the only person who believes that basic survival needs should be met for practical reasons? Surely I can't be the ONLY one! For example:
A healthy person is more able to work and contribute to society. A sick person is a drain on resources. It is almost always much cheaper and more effective to prevent medical problems than to cure them, and to treat problems at an early rather than late stage. Therefore, it is in everyone's best interest for the population to be kept as healthy as possible, which requires easy access to high-quality health care.
An educated person is more able to find and hold a job, and more useful in that job, than an uneducated person. An uneducated person is more likely to be shut out of opportunities, and thus out of society, and thus to engage in destructive behavior. Overall, an educated populace is better able to make good decisions and solve problems. Therefore, it is in everyone's best interest for everyone to be educated.
I'm also in favor of having a healthy, capable military; transportation infrastructure that is widespread and servicable; and a safe reliable food supply. Some things are necessary for a culture to flourish, and those are on the list right now. Some of them vary over time, some don't.
Of course people should have the freedom to fail. But I think that failure should be the result of consistent bad choices -- not accident, and for gods' sake not social engineering, and it had better be rare rather than ubiquitious because if it's not rare then civilization falls. Others have in the past. Ours could. It's up to us to make sure that doesn't happen.
Failure on a small to moderate scale is a necessary life experience. If you don't do your homework, you shouldn't pass the test. If you can't make a budget and stick to it, you're going to have financial trouble. Calling all students "winners" when some of them can't read is destructive. People need to know how to learn from their mistakes. But the social matrix must have enough fault tolerance -- enough ability to compensate for things going wrong -- that it's relatively safe to learn and grow and experiment and, yes, make mistakes. Most mistakes shouldn't be life-destroying. They should be setbacks which can be overcome by more careful planning and some hard work.
Look at what's happening in America today. For example, a majority of personal bankruptcies are now caused by medical bills. Those people didn't waste their money; they simply got sick or injured in a country where health costs are outside the range of many people's potential earnings. Wages are so wretchedly low that it now takes two to five jobs to support a family -- and there's very little job security, or benefits anymore. People are being forced to do more with less, and the result is fragmentation and despair.
I believe that if you're willing and able to work, and you don't have your head completely up your ass, you should be able to live a reasonably decent life. A society that can't provide at least a tolerable existence for most of its members is neither healthy nor sustainable. You can't drive a car without putting oil and gas into it. You can't run a society without making sure its parts are in working order.
... I can't be the ONLY person who looks at social mechanics from a practical perspective, can I?
March 25 2008, 01:08:51 UTC 13 years ago
Further examples would be things like the Americans with Disability Act. If you don't oblige employers to accommodate the disabled, then employers won't (because, after all, it costs money), and so you're stuck with a large unemployed population (even if they probably wouldn't show up on the official unemployment figures, not being counted in the "labor force"), which is unproductive, a drain on the economy, since someone has to support them, either government or their families. On the other hand, if accommodations are made that permit a disabled person to work, then they can contribute to society, which would more than compensate for the cost of the accommodations.
A reasonable social safety net keep society more stable. If you have a large, desperately improverished group of people, they're not going to sit around and suffer in silence, they're going to riot and destroy property, at the very least. If things get bad enough, they may even stage an all-out revolution. It benefits the wealthy to avoid a socialist revolution! Welfare, in a sense, can be seen as insurance against such an event.
Unemployment insurance allows for greater freedom in finding employment. If you know that you can have some money to live on while looking for a new job, you might be more willing to change jobs. In turn, that increases the competition for labor, increasing wages, allowing for more spending, and thus a stronger economy.
Thoughts
March 25 2008, 03:53:56 UTC 13 years ago
March 25 2008, 02:33:35 UTC 13 years ago
The 'liberal facists' book strikes me as total crap, anyway, and that's from *positive* reviews. All of this nonsense about the government *always* screwing everything up and suddenly taking power where it hadn't before, seems to indicate collective amnesia about what has failed in this country, and when.
Give business free reign or deregulate them, and they give us, and always have given us, a train wreck. Let government oversight be done by people who have a stake in the companies they are 'inspecting,' and they wouldn't find excrement in a sewer.
Add real, 'classical definition' facists to the mix and we're up for the kind of life lessons that make history students cringe for a hundred years.
March 25 2008, 13:33:31 UTC 13 years ago
... I can't be the ONLY person who looks at social mechanics from a practical perspective, can I?
Not at all. I like to think I do as well. But, as I'm about as far on the opposite side of the aisle as I can be from you (hardcore libertarian, and ultraconservative in the true sense of that term-- what my libertarian brothers in arms would call a "classical liberal"), I would like to mention that while I agree with every one of your premises, I see what I think are entirely different solutions. Realizing, of course, that neither of us is going to get anything close to what we see as ideal. :)
I think practicality stopped being a baseline for governmental action a while ago. Which is a shame, really.