Other recent articles under: Liberalism as of Feb 11, 2008
Topic: Liberalism
A Meditation Concerning Liberal Morality
Does true freedom rest with the left? I would say no - it's just a different set of chains. by Kishi
(centrist)
Monday, February 11, 2008
I'm going to come out and say it right now: I like the idea of socialism. I like the idea of a national safety net that can catch people who just somehow got it wrong. I'm fond of the idea of equitable spread of wealth. Really, I am.
I used to identify myself as an economic communist in my high school days. I grew out of it eventually – not because of the crowd it meant hanging with, but because I came to the conclusion that it just requires more faith in human goodness than I have. But I never grew out of the general ideas of it: the idea of freedom and economic equity.
Now, the Democratic Party has a history of fielding candidates who espouse what I call ‘liberal morality.' This is a series of beliefs that is designed to see us free of what I‘m sure they think of as the evils of conservatism. Amongst other things, they want: universal healthcare, a government that competes with corporate interests, and social welfare. They want all of this on top of an expanded government. They believe that a free society needs a bigger government to… ah, participate in the freedom.
Hmm. I see.
You'd think I should be cheering these guys on, right? I mean, why not? It sounds like they're down with everything I'd aimed for, and if they got just one of these things to work right, the others couldn't be far behind!
There's just one problem. I haven't met the liberal who's comfortable discussing the steps it would take to actually make this morality a reality. And even if it becomes a reality, they don't discuss the downside of it.
Let me give you an example. Social welfare is a nice idea. You tax corporations more to help people who somehow just can't get back on their feet. Eventually, these people are able to, and they do so without starving or going below the poverty line.
Leaving aside the part where you can't help everyone, this opens up a major problem: it's possible for people to be lazy enough to actually choose unemployment, and live off the government's handouts.
Think about it. If I'm an unmotivated high school dropout with a knocked up girlfriend who dropped out to take care of the kid – we being good Christians, we'd never think to abort – what is my incentive to work if the government's going to take care of me? All I have to do is be content living in a third rate singlewide out in the middle of Armpit, USA. If I'm content with that, why should I change it? I get enough money to get by. That's all that matters.
Well, wait. That's an easy enough problem to solve, right? Just keep people accountable and monitor them. Which means expanding the government and extending it into people's lives more so than it is already.
Hmm…
Well, let's move on to universal healthcare. Now, everyone, this is a huge selling point with our two Democrat candidates. Obama has specified a state health program, and while Clinton hasn't said the same, she wants citizens to, quote, ‘have the same program that the policy makers have,' if I quote her rightly. Since they're looked after by the State, that's basically a sign for being pro-universal healthcare.
And what a wonderful idea! Imagine that. No more need to worry about competing insurance rates and wondering if you're going to take the shaft on this deal. No, not this time. The government's got your back. No more worries about corporate health insurance trying to compete and lower the rates. Because lowered rates lead to lowered service. Why throw so much chaos into the system when people's lives and livelihood can ride the balance?
I'll grant that free market medicine scares me more than a little. Money should not be a factor when it comes to people doing the right thing. That doesn't necessarily apply to doctors – parents should be able to take care of their families without money being a factor. Without that easy access to necessary medicines, life is just that much harder.
On the other hand, no liberal seems to like admitting that the most likely way to fund this is to raise taxes. They won't just tax corporations because some of them are based in medicine, and the government is stripping them of their role, thus denying them profit and forcing them under. The easy answer is to rebalance the budget and cut military spending down to size, but with the sizable conservative population who fight this sort of thing, how likely is it that they'll make any significant cuts to redistribute? I honestly don't know. I don't think it's too likely, though.
So, they can't pull the money from elsewhere in the budget. They can pull from the corporations, to be sure, but corporate money can only go so far. And if you want to keep corporations here, you can't tax them too heavily – they'll outsource and withdraw, leaving lots of people without jobs and applying for the welfare, straining the government's financial power even more.
The only easy answer – the type that government loves anyway – is to tax the lower classes. Like we need another tax on top of what we have already. And mark my words, it'll be a heavy one. If we're to have ‘the same program that the policy makers have,' it can only be the best, and the best don't come cheap. It's a case of something designed for our aid being used to make our lives harder.
It's one of those things that makes you go ‘hmmmmm.'
The idea that the government can just step in and save us from the corporations doesn't seem realistic precisely for that reason. If everyone is employed by the state, you're basically being paid just to pay the government later. It's part of socialist idealism for the people and the state to become one, and for currency to disappear.
That leads to a major problem. We cannot exist as a currency-free economy when the rest of the world – the people we'll compete with, import from, and export to – deals in currency. You'd have to revamp the exchange system, such that x goods are worth y goods in trade. Good luck with that. Because you won't have a standard trade – foreign goods being of variable quality – you lose opportunities to embrace the ‘cultural enrichment and diversification' that liberals are so fond of.
This leads to another problem: if we become one with the state, we effectively give the state free reign to dictate everything – right and wrong, sacred and profane, who stays and who goes. This is because the state, in being one with us, presumably speaks for us, and if we are one, then we have no voice but what the state gives us. We, in seeking to be free, become slaves.
Great idea, at least.
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The views expressed
in this article are those of Kishi only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
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Your logic is like a snowball rolling down hill. Your agrument is made of many interesting points when addressed individually. The conclusion jumps at me as if your multiple mildly associated assertions have caused an avalanche...with the entire US system crashing down upon itself. Our country will never be without a currency (paper though it might be), and admittedly, the state seeks to define our morals, the momentum for that comes from "conservatives" not liberals by and large.
I think by making simple decisions to buy or not buy, consumers have changed entire industries — banking, travel, cell phones. A little pressure from consumers typically produces a lot of innovation that shifts products, competition, prices, quality, choices, and ultimately value. The problem with personal and corporate health insurance is that it has been built around providers, insurers, the government, employers — and not around consumers. We've ended up with spiralling costs and few consumer choices, primarily because many of the regulations and mindsets governing health care have inhibited the kind of broad-scale consumer innovation that's happened in other industries.
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