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Name: |
MAJ USA RET
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Subject: |
Darwin and the Republic
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Date:
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7/3/2012 10:09:22 AM
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The flaw in the Republic lies in the enfranchisement of the entitlement class. Those who do not work are allowed to vote. Of course they vote not only to entrench, but to increase, their forced largess… derived from the fruits of the labor and entrepreneur class(es).
A successful species breeds exponentially. And so is the representation of the indigent in the pool of voters.
Eventually the non-producers overwhelm the ability… and willingness… of the producers. The producers, being deprived of reward for their industry, either slow production… or depart for more favorable venues. The non-producers find that the teats have begun to dry up. They are being forcefully weaned… a trickle down consequence of their own indiscriminant behavior. Lacking industry and resourcefulness, they do not understand. They begin to fight (riot) around the common bowl. They demand that the producers come back… go back to work… turn the tap back on.
It is too late. The system is already crippled beyond healing.
As Charles Darwin observed, “Many species develop bizarre traits, just before they go extinct.”
Witness what is happening in California and Illinois.
Our Republic, exactly like that of Greece, is developing bizarre traits. WE THE PEOPLE have ignored history… past and present… and unless WE THE PEOPLE act like we are educated and connected with history… so shall befall us… THE LESSON OF GREECE.
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Name: |
copperline
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Subject: |
Darwin and the Republic
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Date:
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7/3/2012 2:15:07 PM
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OK, let me see if i can take this & add something
worthwhile. First, a qualifier. i’ve been a social worker all my life and
have worked extensively with people here in Alabama. Some
of them were born poor, some were well-to-do before coming into hard times for
one reason or another. They aren’t all
the same. Thinking back to your Milton
Friedman quote about judging programs by their outcome, not just by their
intentions…. i’ve spend a lot of my time pondering why our best intentions
could create lousy outcomes. it’s true. in a military operation, you would call it collateral
damage, unavoidable side-effects of a larger but necessary action. Public
assistance does seem to encourage dependence followed by an upward spiral of
costs. But what choice do we have? Really, you can’t let people starve or die
from lack of medical care… and you are surely right that people will not
quietly accept that they are on the losing end of some evolutionary process… i sure wouldn’t.
if you believe that the Fog of War makes it hard to
distinguish between friendlies and the bad guys, you should try making the
distinction between the Deserving and the Free-loading in an Emergency Room, or
a school lunch program, or a Food Stamp office. i never was able to tell the
difference. They’re people, not statistics,
when you meet them face to face.
Opponents of public assistance programs refer to the notion
that if these programs were not available, the recipients would simply get
jobs. That sounds pretty simple, and if
it were true would be a great idea. But what happens when there are no jobs, or
if a social problem like too many children, too little education, lack of
transportation, mental illness or medical disability plagues your life? The idea that by disassembling assistance
programs, we somehow simply & painlessly convert large numbers of people
into ‘productive citizens’ completely overlooks the suffering and social instability
that would follow. And i don’t have
confidence that the Free Market will graciously provide for widows and orphans,
the job of providing a social safety net... that job will always have to be provided by us collectively thru the government.
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Name: |
MAJ USA RET
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Subject: |
Feed them and they will come
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Date:
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7/3/2012 3:18:23 PM
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I am NOT an opponent of public assistance programs. These programs should not be available to people who CAN work but don’t.
There ARE jobs… some of them VERY hard work. But folks should be made to sweat before they grovel.
I don’t think “too many children” is a social problem. The children need our help… the mammas and daddies of this children don’t deserve our help – they need to a) quit indiscriminate breeding, b) take responsibility for the raising of their scion, and c) go to work. Why is there a campaign to neuter pets?
I believe in welfare and food stamps. I do not believe in providing cell phones, cigarettes, and fast food.
Welfare needs to end at six months. From then on it only continues with the presentation of a paystub. “Either mop floors, fling burgers, pick cotton, or toss hay… but, you WILL work if you are physically able.”
Mental illness… do you mean “incapacitating” mental illness? What do they do with the mentally incompetent in countries where there is socialized medical care?
Widows and orphans? There are two kinds of those: The kind that dig out... and the kind that dig in. I want to give them a hand… not a lifetime supply of handouts.
The Free Market capitalist system will graciously provide a social safety net. It certainly did better in the past when it wasn't crammed down our throats. We now provide an unlimited safety net... and we are up to our armpits in stray dogs and cats. Do you know how that happened? Tell us!
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Name: |
Lifer
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Subject: |
Darwin and the Republic
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Date:
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7/3/2012 3:30:31 PM
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Quote:
"But what happens when there are no jobs, or
if a social problem like too many children, too little education, lack of
transportation, mental illness or medical disability plagues your life? The idea that by disassembling assistance
programs, we somehow simply & painlessly convert large numbers of people
into ‘productive citizens’ completely overlooks the suffering and social instability
that would follow. And i don’t have
confidence that the Free Market will graciously provide for widows and orphans,
the job of providing a social safety net... that job will always have to be provided by us collectively thru the government.".
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
First of all congrats on a very intelligent and cogent response. I was with you right up until the end. I copied the part of the post I have issues with. Your list of social problems, excluding mental illness and medical disability, are problems of choice. Choices one makes that have consequences. Are they "social problems"? Yes. Should they be protected by the safety net of government intervention? Not IMHO. As stated, these are due to poor choices one makes in life. One chooses to have children without the benefit of marriage, that almost always leads to a life of poverty. Multiple children by different sperm donors most definitely leads to a life of dependence. We now are into the 3rd and 4th generations of such dependence. Positive reinforcement works almost to 100% certainty. Take away the governmental safety net and the behavior will cease to near zero.
As for the government providing the social safety net, well that didn't start until the the New Deal of FDR, and expanded by Johnson with the "War on Poverty". So we are talking 50-70 years max. Prior to that, the 'safety net' was provided exclusively by the private sector via mostly family, churches and synagogues. I didn't include mosques because they would, and still do, stone a woman to death for out of wedlock births. How do you account for the thousands of years of human history without the governmental safety net?
As always if I was in charge, things would be much different! Anyone can make a mistake, but survival requires a species to learn from it's mistakes. The breakdown of the family unit has led us to the place we find ourselves. IMHO help should only be offered for the 1st illegitimate child, and then in limited amounts/time. Get an education that leads to gainful employment or loose the child to responsible adoptive parents that can care for them. Second illegitimate child, don't come crying to me (the government) for help. Call your family, church or synagogue.
As for 'widow's and orphans', well society took care of them for thousands of years before the government progressives decided it was a social responsibility of the government to do so. I personally think that offering them a life of dependency is not 'saving' them at all, it only breeds more dependency and lower self esteem of an entire class of people. Time was in this world most folks wouldn't take a hand out, now society breeds an entire population that wants nothing but handouts.
I will climb down from my soapbox now. No need to tell me what a heartless b@stard I am. I already know.
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Name: |
copperline
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Subject: |
Feed them and they will come
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Date:
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7/3/2012 4:46:36 PM
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This
isn’t stray dogs and cats. i wouldn’t
know how to operationalize & implement the ideas you have. That’s the problem i’m having. For instance, if children are deserving of
our help… you can’t really give it to them without somehow aiding the parents
who bore them. And just telling people
to stop having children isn’t working, that’s why we try sex education and fund
planned parenthood. if people were
always practical and rational, generous and self-disciplined this wouldn’t be
such a problem.
i’d
be the first to admit that social programs have more in common with blunt
instruments than scalpels though.
An
idea like ending assistance at some arbitrary point sounds good, but isn’t
simple to apply. Cutting people off comes
with an immediate cost in human terms, cutting an adult off means their
children go, too. When you look at the food stamp program and
see some people buy junk food, i don’t like it. Same with cigarettes. But you can’t throw the entire baby out with
the bathwater. And when it comes right
down to it, you can’t easily make distinctions between those that need and
those that don’t, those who will use the program to pull themselves out of a
hole and those who just stay stuck. A 6 month window of assistance won’t do
that. Over the years, i just comforted myself with
the notion that most people won’t choose to be poor if they can help it, nor
would they put up with the humiliations and hassles of the welfare system if
they can get to a better alternative.
The
safety net isn’t unlimited, i assure you.
i’ve sent many a person out of my office having no idea how they were
going to make it because there was no program, no funds, & little to no
personal capacity to solve their predicament.
i once sent a fellow out of the ER who was completely delusional but had
no insurance, and the next day he wrestled a gun away from a policeman and
caused the local elementary school to have to be shut down. Other people wanted to work couldn’t walk
the distance to the job that was available.
it gets complicated quickly and there are no easy answers that i can
see.
i’m
concerned too that we are in for a more difficult future….. and i vacillate
between thinking about the suffering of individuals & a dispassionate
macro-economic view sometimes. But in
the end, we talking about real people, not theory.
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Name: |
MAJ USA RET
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Subject: |
Don't feed them and they will still come
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Date:
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7/3/2012 5:21:29 PM
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And, if new solutions… somewhere outside of the current box… maybe “tough love” solutions… are not found, the entire system will collapse. The truly needy, the indigent, the producers, and the entrepreneurs… will all go down.
If you think that’s Draconian. Then you aren’t watching what’s happening in Greece. And we will watch that get even worse. We have people in this country buying ammo because they apprehend that the “have nots” will come to their house and take their hoards of food by force.
Far fetched? Please, tell me the definition of looting.
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Name: |
copperline
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Subject: |
Darwin and the Republic
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Date:
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7/3/2012 7:44:50 PM
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i really doubt you are heartless about all this, it's a really complex problem with no easy answers.
i really agree with you that people should have to live with
the consequences of their choices. As a
general principle, it’s spot on. But the
devil is in the details & consequences of how you make that happen. Some of the choices we are
talking about are mistakes that have lasting consequences not just on the
individual but on people in the social network around them. Most
people would agree that we have to have safety net protection for innocent
bystanders (like unwanted children). A grandparent who has to quit their job to
provide care for the grands is a fair example. if we provide daycare so grandma can keep
working, are we just encouraging her dead-beat kids to keep churning out
babies?
And what about the reasons that people make the choices that
they do? Doesn’t education, imagination,
opportunity, culture, values and religious belief create the choices we see? Seems to me that people don’t respond to crisis
the way we want them to… they respond with choosing the path least threatening
& most familiar.
For instance, a guy loses his factory job because of changes
in the industry. We might think it’s a
good idea for him to assess his future employment prospects, & get
retrained quickly with new skills so he can move his family to the next state
where a different job can be found. in practice, he is more likely to try to
refrain from changing too much, uprooting his family too much. His choice to stay in place after the jobs
have left is illogical and full of risk….if his choice leads to poverty, do we
want to just ignore him & hope that he figures it out?
in the 1920’s, my (ex)wife’s grandfather lost his leg while
working on the railroad. He succumbed a
few years later, but a one-legged man couldn’t do farm work. There was no social security, no social
safety net…. His wife and two young sons eked by in disparate poverty for many
years. Eventually, the sons got an
education and good job skills, went to work and pulled out of poverty
completely. They were industrious, but
also very lucky. When i was young, a
friend’s Dad committed suicide leaving his wife, two sons and a daughter behind. Social Security made it possible for all of
them to go to right on to college where they got advanced degrees, but without suffering
the grueling effects of poverty. They
were industrious, but also very lucky.
The welfare system made choices available to them that otherwise may not
have existed, but they had to carry their own water.
So, both examples have pretty good outcomes, but which one
would you bet to have the better chances of keeping that next generation out of
poverty? With safety net, or without?
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Name: |
comrade
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Subject: |
Darwin and the Republic
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Date:
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7/4/2012 12:43:20 AM
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So Copperline -
Do you believe in God?
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Name: |
copperline
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Subject: |
Darwin and the Republic
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Date:
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7/4/2012 9:29:37 AM
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Why do you ask that?
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Name: |
wix
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Subject: |
Darwin and the Republic
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Date:
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7/4/2012 9:40:55 AM
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So here we have a conversation between a guvment social justice arbiter and a recipient. Each is trying to justify his actions in a world gone crazy by the collective efforts of the groups they represent.
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Name: |
wix
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Subject: |
Comrade
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Date:
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7/4/2012 9:44:37 AM
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My post did not mean you.
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Name: |
Jim Dandy
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Subject: |
Darwin and the Republic
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Date:
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7/4/2012 11:12:47 AM
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Means testing to qualify for benefits - I've told this story before. My wife has an employee (degreed accountant making mid $50s) who announced she and her boy friend were having a baby. Wife congratulates her and ask when she is getting married. Answer - "Oh no, that would reduce our benefits"
Drug screen to qualify for benefits - I have to undergo a drug screen, background and credit check to get a job. Why should someone who benefits from the taxes I pay be held to a different standard?
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Name: |
MartiniMan
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Subject: |
Actually more like De Tocqueville than Darwin
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Date:
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7/4/2012 12:07:24 PM
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It is exactly what he predicted as the main flaw of our form of government is that at some point the people learn they can raid the public treasury with their votes. But as Maggie Thatcher said so well, "the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money".
Liberals and progressives just don't get that or they subscribe to the Keynsian philosophy of not worrying about what you leave for the future as you will be dead anyway. Conservatives actually seem to care about what they leave future generations.
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Name: |
MartiniMan
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Subject: |
Darwin and the Republic
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Date:
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7/4/2012 12:11:26 PM
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Just looked what happened in Wisconsin under Tommy Thomspon when they just announced that welfare would be ended. Within a year over 600,000 people got off the welfare rolls and went back to work, and that was before the program was actually implemented. No doubt it is a complex issue and there is no easy answer. But when the government advertises to get people on food stamps you know something is wrong. The problem is that for liberal politicians welfare is just another way to buy votes, just like union membership dues.
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