Anttech said:
So if we are all indivuals, and with purely selfish ideals, why have school? Why bother learning about mankinds history from the people who observed it? Why bother learning science from other people discoveries? Why did Mankind evolve into "political animals?" Why do we have babies that have to be cared for, for such a long time (I think the longest in the animal kingdom). Why is the "Family" unit so strong in humanity?
EVERYWHERE you look you will see that we are based on social interaction, its the reason why we evolved to the top of the food chain, and now far far beyond! Just because we are all "Different" does not debunk Art's arguement. If we didnt work together there is absolutley no way on Earth we would have been so successful! Mankind. Is the absolute reason that we have progressed so far!
You're exactly right we work best when we work together. However, IMV a welfare state is not about working together, not all it. It
is about the guns of government pointing at everybody and telling them, 'You must care about every living human being on the planet, sans judgement or choice or (your) personal worldview of morality, but instead, per the judgement and choice and worldview of a select/elite few cronies who were supposed to be fairly painting double yellow lines down the middle of the road but who instead got it into their fat heads that they were elected Christ proxies...
I don't expect human beings on average, to be any better than average. So, if we set up a scheme that requires human beings to be better than average, we're in for not just dissapointment, but failure.
On average, human beings will seek to exchange lessor value for greater value, as opposed to the moral alternative, equal value for equal value. So, if we set up a demand system based on the claim "here is my need" as all that is required to demand value from somebody else, and "there is your ability" as all that is required to exact payment, then on average, we will create a clawing mess where "needs" propagate unbounded, like weeds, and ability to meet them is suppressed, hidden, and denied.
A civilization based on such a pudding headed idea will soon enough find itself unable to support even the most basic 'safety net,' much less some grand, pudding headed scheme where every need is met without effort, 'somehow' because we wished it were so.
In fact, the inevitable end result of such a scheme is easy to predict: two guys in a hovel fighting to the death, arguing over who has the greatest sores, and thus, rightfully the owner of the not so maggoty piece of rotted meat. How many times we need to see this in action before we get it?
In a perfect world, peopled by perfect humans, this would not happen. Folks would offer value for value, would not lie, would not cheat, would not steal. Folks would not seek subsidy (offering lessor value for greator value) except as a last resort, in times of temporary dire circumstance, and would work/struggle/behave in such a fashion to remove themselves from those temporary dire circumstances just as fast as they were able to...as opposed to, in an imperfect world, court those circumstances, embrace those circumstances, parade those circumstances as a Magic Shield/Get Out Of Reality Free Card, be told endlessly as part of a cheap political stunt that those circumstances are all the result of some other 3rd party, far away, and unseen; "Vote for us, we'll get that guy for you," the implicit promise, never paid off. Vote selling on the cheap, to the max, practiced by charlatans.
In a perfect world, this nation would not be teetering on considering the entire Middle Class as candidates for "in times of dire straights requiring welfare/subsidy." In an imperfect world, if they have been actively courted to think of themselves in those terms in order to rule them, it would be.
If it a welfare state was about working together then there would be no need for guns and chains. Are you claiming that this welfare state plan does not require _enforcement_?
Or, is that just wishing that the plan does not require _enforcement_?
Getting the mob together and 'passing a law' does not obviate the need for the guns and chains; it just provides cover to allow the mob to sleep at night, thinking that what it just pulled off was a great and virtuous thing.
As long as your argument is based on appealing to our better angels, then preach away, and in fact, you will have great success, because working together, is as you pointed out part of human nature. As soon as you lurch into a political argument that says, "In my opinion, the nation does not have enough better angels and needs just a little coercion to make this fly," you will find the available pool of 'better angels' shrinks considerably, and that is part of human nature, too. No amount of increasing coercion will ever restore the output of the former, given the conditions of the latter.
Better angels are not better angels when there are guns aimed at their heads.
Any 90% can have all the one man, one vote meetings it wants, but if what it wants is to coerce the 10% against it's will to live of and serve the endless/boundless wants, needs, and desries of the 90%, with the moral justification being "because the 10% can and the 90% can't," then there is nothing Holy, sacred, or moral about the proceedings; it is what has gone on in front of barbarian tribal alters for centuries, because it can.
"Let's implement my pet grad school Soc thesis at the point of the tribe's gun because I'm afraid that not enough folks of ability will implement my worldview for me" is the very definition of compulsion, not working together. "There are not enough better angels in the world; I and a mob of like minded friends who are unable to realize the same results will compel the same results at the point of a gun" is not a moral stance, it is the stance of a moral looter.
Of course we live in a mix of these; freedom/compulsion. That is a given, not by an intelligent design, but simply by the brute fact of numbers, the ultimate Law of the Jungle, the biggest beast (The Mob)can and will ultimately always get its little way...even if it is for the 15 minutes that a surgeon might actually toil away, chained to an operating table, before a] pulling the plug or b]oooops, sorry, I tried, but my best wasn't good enough today.
I, and certainly none of the folks I admire, like F. A. Hayek, are advocates of either anarchy nor a 'safety-net' less nation, but rather, "fettered" government. That is no more "anarchy" than a gov't that exacts income taxes is "totalitarian."
The government is an armed beast. It is the one beast loose in the tribe that demands the strictist fettering, because it is not only defacto 'armed' as the biggest beast in the Jungle, but is in in fact "armed." It can and often will steamroller over anyone or more of us, and is held back by nothing less flimsy then a set of wishes written down on paper coupled with our joint dedication to the very American idea of
protecting each of us from the overwhelming and irresistable weight of each other
So, government/statute is a reasonable place to consider maintenance of the much needed state plumbing, such as , fairly painting the double yellow lines down the middle of the road, inhibiting the first use of violence, funding cops, courts, and jails.
But, it is not a reasonable place to launch flights of irrational fancy, especially those based on the flawed modern ideal that reality is actually shaped by desires. "Desire" may be the prologue to focused thought and action, but ultimately, it is focused thought and action that has the ability to shape reality, not mere desire. To an emperor sitting on a throne, backed by an army aiming its spears at a sea of slaves, it might seem like 'desire' shapes reality, but that is the only kind of world where that is possible, and only for the 'desires' of those holding the whip. With or without freedom/the lack of coercion, results are realized by the focused thoughts and actions of actual individuals, living human beings. Only in freedom are whatever results they are able to achieve,
jointly or individually, realizable in a moral fashion.
This is true no matter how blinded we are by the 'morality' of what 'their' outcomes directed by the whip in 'our' hands can achieve.
We should take great care when unfettering the biggest beast in the jungle; any scheme based solely on "I have less/have greater need" "You have more/greater ability to fulfill that need" without regards(judgmentalism is the only public sin)to the underlying values which brought about that condition is not a place to tread lightly, no matter how blinded we are by the utopia we imagine beyond.
More accurately portrayed as 'You can ring the bell Jack, I'm on the bus'
