[net.politics.theory] Libertarian Post-Scarcity Welfare

wjr@x.UUCP (Bill Richard) (09/25/85)

<the state>  Come on, line eater, make my day!!!!!

Please note: This is by STella Calvert, a guest on ...decvax!frog!wjr.

From (gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642)
>                                                    a libertarian
>who is proposing radical reforms which would mean adjusting and discarding
>a great deal and walking over a great many people. [I am not talking about
>Libertaria now but the means of getting there from here.]

I don't know how you intend to get to Libertaria, but if you do it by
"walking over a great many people" (like, one!) I won't help.  The path
to Libertaria leads through demonstrating that less government leads
to more individually controlled wealth.  The only interests that will
be walked over are those that have no potential value -- tax thieves and
the like.  This would be a pleasant change from the current situation
in which, to provide bare survival to a mother and child, I have to
fund the bureaucretins that decide whether or not she "qualifies".  

We are a people who have sent men to walk on the moon, for godsake!
Why should we need hirelings to decide if someone "qualifies" for 
survival.  But switching over to a post-scarcity welfare plan would 
be perceived as  terribly threatening by the bureaucretins who have 
secure jobs deciding _not_ to distribute resources extorted from our 
pockets at gunpoint because we can't afford to help the hindmost _and_ pay the
bureaucretins.

>Take the dismantling of the welfare state, for example. Your starting point is
>a society in which around one third of all households receive a part of their
>income from government sources. As a matter of political reality, such 
>payments represent a form of property right no less real than the income
>from bonds inherited from a rich uncle. This political reality will not
>disappear through rational argument about legitimacy, force and fraud -
>or by convincing the deluded owners of these phantom property rights 
>that they are bound to be better off when the experiment is finished.
>You can only make it disappear through the very same process of social
>engineering that you find so abhorrent in socialists. Such social engineering
>would have to be underpinned by systemic arguments treating society as
>a whole, just as the dreaded socialist doctrines do.

Systematic arguments treating society as a whole = socialism?
Somewhere you lost me.  (I have never studied the "science" of
sociology, and recognize socialism as just another government, so if 
my ignorance shows, enlighten me.) Any attempt to find
a minimal set of shared assumptions that will permit all to follow
their individual dreams must consider society as a whole.  However,
there is no need for coercion to ensure that all share those
assumptions.  Any sufficiently sound set of axioms will win enough
adherents to lurch along.  Consider that the wretched set given lip service by
the United Statists is still doing business.

The only way I can get from here (United Statists of America) to there
(Libertaria) is to demonstrate to individuals that government is not 
necessary to protect their interests.  If Libertarians and such set up
a charity fund that provided resources superior to our meager
welfare to anyone who chose to ask for them (and agreed not to claim
statist welfare in addition), that block would rapidly
be converted.  Of course, we'd still have worried bureaucretins, laid
off when the caseload dropped, opposing us.  But that is a minority
with a much worse claim ("But I've always robbed you!").  

I can hear the flames already.  Why should we support the welfare-bums
that have been sucking our taxes all along?  Several reasons occur to me
immediately:

	-- in a situation of devil-take-the-hindmost, we can all be
	hindmost at some time or another; 

	-- in addition, I can't think of a better way of humanely making 
	the transition from a world in which people have been 
	systematically infantilized by the welfare bureaucracy and I want the
	bureaucretins off my @$$;

	-- I cannot feel safe in a world where there are people so 
	worried about survival that they feel they must steal from 
	me in order to feed their children or to spend their lives 
	doing something "non-productive";

	-- whether I value their efforts (writing poetry or carving 
	duck decoys) or not, since I cannot predict which of
	these endeavors will be valuable in the long run, I am willing to
	provide some of my resources VOLUNTARILY to "purchase culture
	futures".    

Why did I say "anyone who chose to ask"?  Because I'd rather pay for 
five infantile victims of the welfare system while they figured out what
they wanted to do to earn their new car than fund the bureaucrats
forever.  I don't want to pay for someone to qualify these people -- I 
want my bucks to go to them!  For the most part, I would expect people 
to cut out the agency and deal directly with people they knew, but there 
must be a way of reaching out to those who aren't acquainted with their 
friendly neighborhood libertarian.  The "fraud" and "unworthy cases" 
this system might lead to would be cheaper than maintaining a major 
bureaucracy.

What is an unworthy cause, anyway?  Coleridge nodding on opium and
writing Kubla Khan?  We cannot tell what the future will value.  But I
assume that enough people, doing enough damfool things, will provide
goods that we cannot yet imagine.  Leisure is the greatest good,
because freedom from survival anxiety leads to further invention.

I rather expect to get flamed by some libertarians as well as the
usual statists, but that's OK.  If we argue long enough, we'll change
our ideas.  If we argue smart enough, we might improve them.

>So if systemic thinking and a propensity for social surgery are inadmissible
>then socialists and libertarians are equally guilty of thought-crime.

What is wrong with social genetic engineering -- the spreading of
ideas that have some survival value until they reach an effective
concentration in peoples' world views.  When that happens the
libertarian evolution will have arrived.  The only possible
non-coercive revolution is a software evolution.  So pick on my ideas, and 
I'll return the favor.

				STella Calvert
				(guest on ...!decvax!frog!wjr)

		Every man and every woman is a star.