Someone we all know has decided to analyse a post about liberalism. In doing so they’ve moved the meaning of “liberal” from the use in the original post being analysed – the American meaning of liberal – to the British one – classical liberalism.
Hilarity ensues.
What’s interesting in the post (which is almost Dave Spartist at points) is it reminded me of a great post by the always reliable Jim in these pages yesterday – it’s worth juxtaposing it with Murphy:
‘They can sort their shit out’
Thats easy to write on a blog comment. Its a bit harder to actually enact and then enforce. Because the bald facts are that c.10-15% of the population are functionally useless. Due to a mixture of mental health, physical health, alcohol and drug related issues (usually the latter two making the former two worse) they are unable to live in modern society if they do not get given everything handed to them on a plate. Housing provided and managed for them. Money in their bank account every month to pay for their ‘needs’, a lot of which will be drink and drugs anyway. No requirements to actually do anything with their time other than wile the hours away until the next drink or drug binge.
If you remove the system that supports such people today and replace it with a ‘here’s a basic minimum of money for the month, thats your lot, sort everything else out yourself, don’t come crying to us when you’re run out after 5 days, you’re on your own now sunshine’ tough love type system then you are going to get people literally dying the gutters. These people cannot function in the way you or I could in such circumstances. Many of the reasons they are where they are is because of their inability to make good decisions. So even when faced with obvious catastrophe (there will be no money for food/rent/heat next week if I spend it on drugs now) they will still do something stupid with it today, because thats what they’ve always done.
The question is what then happens. I would predict that politically in a Western society that people starving to death and dying on the streets because they’ve been evicted for non payment of rent etc would not be considered acceptable. And you would rapidly replace the tough love system with something that is pretty much the same as we have now. Because a large proportion of the rest of society won’t accept the harsh outcomes of such a welfare system.
Whatever way you decide to reform the welfare system you have to have some process by which the changes are seen by the rest of society (pretty much all of it, not just the 30-40% who vote for one party or another) as being far, and stand a reasonable chance of remaining in place across changes in governments. Then you might start pushing the recalcitrant 10-15% in the right direction, learning to stand on their own two feet. But going cold turkey on them just isn’t going to work. A change of government in 5 years will just undo all the changes and you’re back to square one.
Murphy is obviously concerned about such people as Jim describes. His latest wheeze ‘ The politics of care’ requires that people have, as of right:
‘Classical liberalism tends to define freedom as non-interference (negative liberty).
Politics of care requires freedom to be defined as capability (effective liberty), meaning:
While this would work for three of his desires, as Jim says, Humanities dregs (and I agree they are around 20% of the population, more in some areas) aren’t fit to fully participate in society, whether or not they have the freedom to do so. His failure to understand this drives the entirety of his misanalysis.
But who decides who is fit and who isn’t? If you decide, you’re authoritarian and autocratic.
So let them decide for themselves. How? By being net fiscal contributors, and thereby buying their franchise. Easy. Wanna vote? Pay income tax. Added advantage: the unfit won’t be able to.
Note this will disenfranchise most pensioners. This is a pity as that’s where most of the wisdom lies but state pensioners have an incentive to vote themselves money and this must be counterbalanced somehow.
If we’re talking about ‘net taxpayers’ voting – pensioners might then be incentivized to ensure their children (and incentivized to have children) that are properly educated and indoctrinated in civic virtues so when they give up their franchise (they could, of course, always choose to continue working) the next generation will be primed to take care of them and not take advantage of them.
Secondly, you say pensioners are where most of the wisdom lies but over here its the pensioners who are the ones suffering from suicidal empathy and out in the streets demanding the fraudsters, rapists, thieves, murderers, etc all be not only left alone but actually be taken care of by those still working for a living.
Its the pensioners that have the time to attend marches and protests for stupid shit. Indeed, they have nothing else going on in their lives so this sort of thing is an adventure for them.
Same here, but if you look the majority here are public sector pensioners on the gold-plated stuff Nessi refers to. These fuckers were always a lost cause because they’ve spent their lives self-selected as bubble-dwellers and never grown up.
WTF is economic domination I suspect it allows Spud to control.the whole economy to fit his whims.
As the state pension is very near the income tax threshold a lot of pensioners with perhaps a small private pension and modest savings are paying income tax.
Yes, but the point is that the franchise should be limited to net fiscal contributors. There will be few pensioners still contributing more in tax than they take in state pension and/or other benefits. I’m not.
‘Net Fiscal’ could be a tricky notion to define: all taxes (inc VAT, CT etc.) or just income? Confine it to income tax, that will be sufficient to concentrate minds. Provided that is that you do away with PAYE etc. actually paying real, could-be-spent-on-something-by-me, money to HMRC tends to concentrate the mind even if it is only a few hundred pounds. [A few! think what else I could do with that!)
Agree, income tax would do, and be easiest, cheapest to administer, therefore best.
As for PAYE, I think not so much of a problem in the private sector so long as people understand “take-home pay”. In the public sector “income tax” is merely the government paying you less than they said they would. It’s like giving part of your salary straight back to your employer.
Since we’re talking airy hypotheticals we’re just going to brush away the difficulty in calculating and say ‘total taxes paid in any form’.
So if you’re a pensioner and you’re burning down your savings at a massive rate buying yachts or what not – and thus paying a lot of sales/VAT then you can still vote.
If you’re sitting in front of the telly in the cold dark and eating one can of beans a day then you don’t – even if you’ve got a million in the bank.
Unless they’re still paying more tax than they get from the state – otherwise they lose their franchise.
If you pay as much or more in taxes as you receive in services you get to vote.
Freedom from fear is not a bonus for pedestrians: except for the (very rare) exceptional few who use zebra crossings solely because they are public-spirited, fear is a survival trait.
Humanities dregs
Was that a typo, or a Freudian slip? 😀
Is there any point in maintaining the ‘British’ meaning of liberal when the political party that bears its name isn’t British-liberal in any sense whatsoever?
That is merely political misleading advertising, just as a would-be emperor proclaims that he leads the “Republican” party and those demanding rule by journalists call themmselves “Democrats”
Personally (I think, with dietary reason) I avoid carbohydrates, especially potatoes.
The Sage of Ely pontificates without insight or discernment, and from economic ignorance, to the point of risible 6th form classroom chat. It’s worrying how many morons listen to his nonsense – the sheep of the world who do not know they’re duped.
I’ve been listening to original HitchHiker, and I’m reminded of: Revoked: k.i.l.l.e.d: revoked.
Liberalism: a.u.t.h.o.r.i.t.a.r.i.a.n.i.s.m: liberalism.