I wonder whether Al Jahom, who, debating the matter of benefits with mummylonglegs, says:
I’m having terrible difficulty reconciling the concept of a welfare-dependant libertarian…
…would consider me as a good example of such a thing.
I have been a libertarian for some time (though only recently a member of the LPUK). A few years ago my career in industry was cut short by my catching a rare disease, which causes unpredictable symptoms likely in turn to cause serious industrial accidents. I cannot therefore be employed, because no insurer will tolerate the presence in a workplace of someone thus afflicted. I cannot be self-employed for similar insurance reasons. These are not my suppositions but professional advice.
I was finally instructed by my last employer (a paragon) to claim Incapacity Benefit, and was told by the IB office to claim Disability Living Allowance. The DLA office told me to claim Council Tax Benefit.
I have not been told to claim anything else and have not done so. I am aware that people in similar circumstances to myself can collect some three times what I get in benefits, because one of them is an old friend of mine and we have compared notes.
What does Al Jahom feel that I should do? Should I feel obliged by my circumstances to attempt to abandon libertarianism? If so, why? Should I feel obliged by libertarianism to attempt to abandon my circumstances? If so, how?
I disagree. Through you’re income tax, you’ve been paying for a very very expensive Health and Unemployment insurance scheme.
Claim away.
Well, income tax and national insurance I meant. :P
Quite true. Another thing that has puzzled me is what to do about people who through no fault of their own have NEVER been able to work. Disabled from birth, that sort of thing. Presumably we wouldn’t want to pursue the National Socialist option…
That’s a difficult issue. I suspect the numbers of such people are small enough that the increased private charitable donations (through abolition of income tax) and the increased available support from family and friends (through the abolition of income tax) would be able to make up for the shortfall in state provision.
What ideally I’d expect to see happening, is some philanthropist (or group thereof) endowing a network of hospitals, care homes, and other “support facilities”, once we stop raping that aforementioned philanthropist through his tax returns.
There is historical evidence for such things happening, though whether the modern audience would put up for long with Victorian paternalist philanthropy would have to remain to be seen. Another problem with it in this context was that it tended to be confined to those actually working, or having worked, for the philanthropist in question. How it would apply in modern circumstances is somewhat debatable.
However, variants of the principle seem to work adequately, at least in the USA, to get things like astronomical observatories built, so it clearly isn’t impossible.
Over here at least, the well-to-do and frankly poor both give comparatively generously to things like Salvation Army (my favorite bunch!) But, you guessed it, the professionals snivel about how degrading “charity” is, the state “should” be responsible…and (you guessed it!) fork over very little.
As many of us here are having health insurance canceled just now, “because of the recession” and for the companies to try to sandbag dwindling profits, there is a lot to worry about of course. The alternative is destitution of all real property to pay off the hospitals (and their top-heavy expensive managers), and then a pittance from “off of the government.” Coping with this, too, is the purpose of a good classical education I think, Marcus Aurelius and all that. But it is not always easy work and starting to get old is not for the fainthearted.
Rest assured, Mr Underclass, I am not for casting anyone out of the tent. Not as if I have the say so anyway!!
This is a thought experiment. I merely wish to clarify my thinking.
I was discussing your own unfortunate predicament with my good lady a while back.
Me: Poor chap – went into hospital. Now he can’t build or drive motor vehicles, cycle, fly aircraft, go hillwalking or handle firearms.
Her: Blimey! What happened to him?
Me: Not sure – think it muts have been a sex change.
Amen.
AJ
Hmm. In my day it was a balloon, you know, and the debate preceding the inevitable ejection was called a ‘balloon debate’. Strange, but true.
“I keep telling you, Penelope: it’s not a baby, it’s a balloon.”
[Peter Cook]
I did, until last year have the very great privilige of knowing what was once known as a ‘Banardo’s Baby,’ a product of just the sort of philanthropism you describe. He was a self-made man who had come from being abandoned on a doorstep as a newborn to running his own very successful business. In retirement, he wound up his business with a very tidy nest-egg and went on to work well into his seventies (until his death) for somebody else, which is how I knew him. Even when dying of cancer and ravaged by chemotherapy he still managed to come into work at least three days a week. He was the wisest human being I have ever had the good fortune to meet. I wonder if, had he been raised by The State he would have fared so well. I suspect not.
I’d be inclined to agree. I don’t suppose that it never happens, but only that it may not be sufficiently consistent to be relied upon, at least in the short term.
“though whether the modern audience would put up for long with Victorian paternalist philanthropy”
And yet through our corporatist state we have new wings of their PFI funded hospitals and schools round these parts named after their favourite entrepreneur-turned-government-peers for *relatively* little financial contribution compared with those philanthropists of a previous era.
On the substantive though – I can see Al’s point of view, though I’m not at all sure that I would agree, in this state of welfare we slave under. In a libertarian society, first when (if) we were working we’d have a greater ability to provide for our own futures both through saving towards financial independence and through insurance schemes to protect us against the unforseen (which even in 1909 when national insurance for those unable to work because their employers had turfed them out or through ill-health was proposed the government did recognize private insurance provision had worked for most – 90% – of people so affected).
Second, if our ability to earn were somehow limited but not completely prevented by circumstance, the disincentives to working (benefits trap) having been removed people able to earn small amounts, as much as they were capable of doing, without penalty would tend to do so (at least the theory goes that they would feel more personal dignity in asking for help if *they* knew they were doing their best) and philanthropy, family and social connections would no doubt be more amenable to supporting those they knew were doing that best to support themselves but for whatever reason unable to manage entirely alone.
It is all very well to say that we have a moral obligation not to be a drain, but there are clearly circumstances under the current system that create dependency and prevent self-provision, and whilst we are not living in that libertarian world we cannot deride those who, whilst penalized by that very system, would nevertheless like to be able to hold their heads up high.
There’s a counter-argument in fact – that those very people who are currently dependent on the state of welfare we have become yet still advocate the eradication of that system are to be applauded. It is relatively easy if we are not in that position to want a system that would leave us more of our own earnings and so on, but for those in the safety net that would be pulled away by that to want it also is an incredibly powerful part of the argument for such change.
That’s an encouraging point; I’ll remember that!
[...] For what it’s worth, some interesting ideas on this are being punted about in the comments over at Landed Underclass, who saw my original post and responded in his own inimitable way. [...]
“There’s a counter-argument in fact – that those very people who are currently dependent on the state of welfare we have become yet still advocate the eradication of that system are to be applauded. It is relatively easy if we are not in that position to want a system that would leave us more of our own earnings and so on, but for those in the safety net that would be pulled away by that to want it also is an incredibly powerful part of the argument for such change.”
Who exactly are these people you are talking about?
I thought it was self-explanatory; people like our host here, landedunderclass, who whilst currently dependent through no fault of their own are nevertheless calling for an end to this state of welfare. Ostensibly, if they got their way they would be getting rid of what safety net they currently have – trusting that all the arguments libertarians make about mutual support and voluntary charity and the greater ability to support onesself would see to it that they were not left destitute. They are more powerful advocates in a sense than those of us who are relatively comfortable and who would arguably be made more confortable by not having to pay out of our earnings for that state of welfare.
[...] is still active discussion in the comments to a much earlier piece about the curious position of the welfare-dependent [...]
I feel I must point out that it’s not only the benefits system that needs to be dealt with. If one does not at the same time suppress the system of making work for politically reliable public employees by giving them millions of petty regulations to enforce upon those earning their own living, then it will still be very difficult indeed for people like me, who have been banned from the air, the road and the conventional workplace, to find any way of making ends meet.
At the same time means should be sought to abolish the present unnecessary and undesirable system under which everyone sues everyone else all the time, and everyone has to be insured against being sued, and everyone has to ban everything for the sake of the insurance, thus giving complete social control to underwriters who are not only unelected and unaccountable but also completely anonymous.