Observations on Irresponsible Behavior in Modern Welfare States

By Ali H. Massoud

"Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have." So said former Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964. Looking back forty-one years later it seems Goldwater was correct too.

No one, even most paleo-conservatives and libertarians wants to see people suffer and hurt. (Well there may be a few.) The problem today in the relatively prosperous and free liberal democracies of the world is that the cultural impulse toward liberty is trumped by the natural human empathy most of us feel toward the commonplace suffering that visits people in this world.

Suffering or misfortune is what it is regardless the cause. Whether caused by stupid, immoderate or feckless personal behavior or by random misfortune the suffering is just as painful. It is how we react as a society and as individuals that determine what comes from our suffering and misfortune.

This I fear is the largest unresolved problem in American political culture today. People are told that it is their right to do as they wish regardless of whatever that happens to be. If they want to smoke, use drugs or alcohol, have unprotected sex, get deeply into debt or any other form of folly or indulgence it is OK, as long as they don’t hurt or infringe on the rights others. Yet in a modern social democracy, which is what most of the liberal democracies have been morphing into, the social wreckage caused by these actions becomes a problem for every one else too. Especially when it comes to paying for it all.

I remember back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s AIDS activists were infuriated that many people were dying or ill from HIV mainly caused in those times by unprotected sex and drug use. So whom did these activists blame for all this? President Reagan, that’s who. Their rationale was that Mr. Reagan "didn’t care enough" and was also stingy about funding for AIDS research. Now whatever ever else you can blame the Gipper for, and the list is long, he wasn’t the one who gave or caused, or failed to prevent people from being infected.

Many if not most of America’s social problems are framed the same way today. People that can’t or won’t control their impulses are told to blame society by assorted ad hoc activist groups. The entire afflicted and victimized class is told to dump their issues at the doorstep of "society" for correction, aid, or redress, which really of course means the government.

And their voices are heard in a big way too. That is the nature of a nominally democratic society that is also the most media saturated in the history of the world. So the government gains yet more money, power, and authority to deal with these problems. Yet despite these additional powers the government gains it never seems able to solve these problems. And be that as it may that doesn’t stop the socio-political blame game and so the cycle of futility continues on.

People are encouraged by the individualist ethos of American political culture to demand respect for their choices and preferences; but if the results of any stupid or ill-considered choices blow back at them it’s the government’s responsibility to make it all better. And so it is the whole of society acting through the state that then pays the tab with both funds and lost liberty.

The principle purpose of government operations in a welfare state is to discern people’s needs and then try to satisfy them. If too many people are getting shot for example, the state decides it needs to restrict (unto extinction) the ability of people to have access to firearms. This is because when a kid is shot at school people’s hearts are touched by it. Even if the child’s parents irresponsibly allowed their child access to a firearm or if the child was a street gang member, a drug user, or was involved in committing a crime or many other circumstances that conclusively show the victim was mainly or wholly responsible for their own injury or death.

These additional details are usually of no matter in the subsequent policy debate and this information is most often glossed over or given very slight or no consideration. Very few people indeed will ever admit that any child ever deserves to be shot regardless of the circumstances.

Objectively of course this is not true. Irresponsible, stupid, or reckless behaviors do have consequences whether the final outcome touches our hearts or not. These consequences can be foreseen as well.

However pressure is nevertheless still applied by advocacy groups toward the state (who in these times acts as the solver of all problems) to "do something". And so it does.

This saying summates one of guiding principles of liberal democratic philosophy: "The ultimate result of protecting fools from their folly is to fill the planet full of fools."" Harsh words, but largely true as empirical evidence shows anyone willing to look.

Sir James Russell Lowell no doubt never heard of the term "moral hazard" (which is what his bon mot quoted above speaks to) since the iteration of this age old wisdom had not been formulated yet. However the verisimilitude of the concept that it speaks to comes right through in the clearest possible way like sunshine through a windowpane doesn’t it?

And while few want to see people suffer (whether they deserve it or not), voluntary charity efforts are often inadequate because they lack the exigency and the scourge of the state. So the state steps in to fill in the gaps and its power accretes from there. The sheep-like whiners who make up the large and ever growing dependency class the modern social democracies breed are the main beneficiaries of these efforts. Some times these efforts do in fact help some members of the under-class. Laws and programs such as affirmative action or civil rights measures help but are hardly worth the liberty and treasure lost by the rest of society for the small gains the underclass realizes.

Plans by today’s classic liberals to return American society back to its liberal democratic roots are going to require much work to be successful. For this to happen a major cultural shift will have to occur first, one which again makes individual responsibility the dominant social meme in American culture.

This could happen too, but it will likely take much time and effort to accomplish. I am not holding my breath here, but it could happen.

Ali Massoud writes for the Internet and blogs.