(no subject)
I now recreate the welfare state. Watch me:
Capitalism in a democracy, slowly developing the ability to turn into consumerism. Marets have ebbs and flows due to the inherent "stickiness" of prices and information flow. That creates bubbles, which burst upon receipt of new information. When bubbles burst, hard times come, and people have to cut back or rely on saved resources. Some people, namely the least well off, do not have the logical or physical ability to maintain both any variety of first world standard of living (which if they didn't maintain, they would be shunned and be out of a job anyway for, say, smelling bad or looking too funny) and savings. So they march into failure when the bubbles burst.
People change their ways of thinking some in hard times. When people are starving they get desparate. Desparate people, particularly if they are the least educated and likely least able to deal with abstract thinking, can still vote. If there are to many desparate people, voting might take a turn toward the absolute abolishment of capitalism. There is a trade-off: allow people to starve to death and hope they don't rise to overthrow capitalism using their democracy (note that I do not suggest that an overthrow of democracy is possible or not possible -- in the short or long term -- in this country), or placate the individuals at the bottom to ensure that they do not feel desparate enough to vote for the systems that would completely demolish the ideological system. The powerful have the choice to take a risk or give a little.
Many of the powerful, at one point, chose to give a little. In closely knit communities, the communities bear some of the costs of individual failures. In industrialized countries, the communities are often spread making such private cost-sharing less plausile. Who, then, will give to ensure that democracy does not run amok? Why, the taxpayer: the ultimate spreading, run by a machine that will be able to spread across all lines, whether economic, social, racial, geographic, or political.
And thus the welfare state was born. How did it spread? Why, jealousy and a sense of entitlement, of course. For are not my hard times also hard, like the least well off? For are not my pains equally worthy of dignity from the government?
What then? Where does the sickness spread? And, to that end, where does it come from: the top or the bottom? Shall we be met in the middle by two beasts, stuck between the fear of the powerful and the entitlement of the weakest? Or do we shout to both that each must bear its own costs: that risk shall be private once again.
And we begin anew with the fear of the masses come a next hard time.
Capitalism in a democracy, slowly developing the ability to turn into consumerism. Marets have ebbs and flows due to the inherent "stickiness" of prices and information flow. That creates bubbles, which burst upon receipt of new information. When bubbles burst, hard times come, and people have to cut back or rely on saved resources. Some people, namely the least well off, do not have the logical or physical ability to maintain both any variety of first world standard of living (which if they didn't maintain, they would be shunned and be out of a job anyway for, say, smelling bad or looking too funny) and savings. So they march into failure when the bubbles burst.
People change their ways of thinking some in hard times. When people are starving they get desparate. Desparate people, particularly if they are the least educated and likely least able to deal with abstract thinking, can still vote. If there are to many desparate people, voting might take a turn toward the absolute abolishment of capitalism. There is a trade-off: allow people to starve to death and hope they don't rise to overthrow capitalism using their democracy (note that I do not suggest that an overthrow of democracy is possible or not possible -- in the short or long term -- in this country), or placate the individuals at the bottom to ensure that they do not feel desparate enough to vote for the systems that would completely demolish the ideological system. The powerful have the choice to take a risk or give a little.
Many of the powerful, at one point, chose to give a little. In closely knit communities, the communities bear some of the costs of individual failures. In industrialized countries, the communities are often spread making such private cost-sharing less plausile. Who, then, will give to ensure that democracy does not run amok? Why, the taxpayer: the ultimate spreading, run by a machine that will be able to spread across all lines, whether economic, social, racial, geographic, or political.
And thus the welfare state was born. How did it spread? Why, jealousy and a sense of entitlement, of course. For are not my hard times also hard, like the least well off? For are not my pains equally worthy of dignity from the government?
What then? Where does the sickness spread? And, to that end, where does it come from: the top or the bottom? Shall we be met in the middle by two beasts, stuck between the fear of the powerful and the entitlement of the weakest? Or do we shout to both that each must bear its own costs: that risk shall be private once again.
And we begin anew with the fear of the masses come a next hard time.