Vengeance Libertarianism

John Kelsey kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
Sat Jan 3 09:34:30 PST 2004


At 12:45 PM 12/31/03 -0800, Tim May wrote:
...
>I don't claim this is a "right" implicit in the fabric of space-time, or 
>handed down by Moloch or YHWH or some other supernatural myth-figure. 
>Rather, societies which have taken money from workers to give to others to 
>sit at home and breed or eat Doritos while watching Oprah have failed.

Well, western democracies seem to be surviving okay while maintaining big 
social welfare states.  This looks like an efficiency issue to me; it's 
basically sucking some fraction of the total production of the society off 
the top to maintain a welfare state, but doesn't seem to be sucking the 
whole system down.  Presumably this works out only to the extent that most 
people can't or won't go on welfare.  And the thing that currently looks 
like it *might* suck currently successful societies down is 
taxpayer-financed pension schemes for everyone who gets old.  In that case, 
the size of the pool of recipients is growing very quickly, for demographic 
reasons that don't seem possible to change.  Also, while really poor people 
often don't don't vote and aren't elloquent or effective at demanding 
increases to their benefits, people close to retirement age (50s) are at 
the peak of their political power, vote in large numbers, and are quite 
good at demanding expanded benefits without sounding like welfare queens 
demanding more money for crack and beer.  (Farmers are also really good at 
this, but they aren't numerous enough to be more than a pinprick to the 
taxpayers.)

The "no work, no eat" principle has a problem here, too.  Most of the 
soon-to-retire *have* worked, and done so under a "bargain" that promised 
them some benefits at retirement in exchange for what they were paying 
in.  Millions of people are convinced they have those benefits 
coming.  These people include productive workers from every area of life, 
and aren't generally people it's easy to dismiss as parasites.  Whether 
you've worked your whole life as a garbage collector or as an electrical 
engineer, you're likely to expect those social security checks to roll in 
on schedule, along with medicare, the new prescription drug benefit, and 
any number of other goodies.

...
>--Tim May

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD  BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259





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