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
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