“Australian government policies over the past 25 years have not been as mean-spirited as many critics would have us believe”

You are talking about the ethics of the expenditures. But what about the ethics of getting the revenues to pay for them?

Is it ‘mean-spirited’ to get the money for these expenditures by beating people into submission, tasering them, handcuffing them, locking people in a government cage where they are at real risk of being further violated or brutalised, or threatening the whole population with that treatment? Because that’s how they get the money.

When people recite their concerns for the disadvantaged as a reason for further government interventions, it never seems to occur to them that there might be some connection between government interventions in the first place, and the phenomena of disadvantage they are witnessing.

For example, each member of each rising generation has effectively 50 percent of the product of their working life confiscated by government, and then, surprise surprise, we have a problem with the aged not being able to support themselves.

Government licensing of occupations spreads a plague of mediaeval-like guilds across the economic landscape, privileging the better paid and organised. These actively reduce production, exclude the poorest and least skilled, and drive up the price of everything. A veritable thornbush of laws penalises employers for the class-warfare economic crime of employing people.

And then – surprise surprise – we have systemic problems of disadvantage and unemployment.

Equitable does not mean equal, and equal does not mean equitable.

By far the biggest single factor causing Australia’s social disadvantage and privilege is government intervention intended to replace human freedom with a better and fairer ‘system’, using coercion to penalise and confiscate production here, so as to confer privileges, handouts and dependence over there.

Rather than priding ourselves on forced redistributions of other people’s property based on the idiotic ideology of the old Soviet Union, we should be priding ourselves on how much we are reducing government-sponsored confiscations, privileges and animal farming, in favour of a society based on more freedom and consent-, not coercion-based co-operation.

Wing,

Fair reponse. i don't necessarily disagree with some of what you say, although i do support a reasonable level of govt intervention to assist the vulnerable.

Point of my article was to indicate that the generlisaiton made that Aust govts having been more mean-spirited in recent years not exactly true.

As should be evident from my articles, I am very much interested in the balance between compassion and competitiveness. This is why, as someone more interested in battlers than anything else, I do support freer trade and liberalism as the concepts best suited to appeasing competitive nations in both ideological and economic terms to help people everywhere (at least that is my hope).

But I will never make the mistake of believing that freer trade or markets are the perfect solution. That it is why I will question any trend when it is ordinary people that suffer most. Point is that Howard govt, for all of the talk about so-called neoliberal policies, did also recognise the need to help the vulnerable as well, as illustrated by the evidence in the article.

‘Compassion’ or ‘competition’ is a false dichotomy.

Provision for the less fortunate can be funded either under coercion, or not.

Therefore the ethical issue is not whether to provide for the disadvantaged, but whether or not to use coercion to get the money. You have not given any reason to justify it.

The issue in practice is whether government interventions make matters worse for the disadvantaged, or not. I have given brief reasons showing that government interventions are the major single avoidable cause of the privilege, disadvantage and poverty that are then used as a pretext for more government interventions.

This is just more of a pattern of such interventions failing to achieve their intended purpose – (and causing unintended consequences that are worse than the original problem) - and their supporters externalising the blame, and calling for more government intervention.

But no-one will answer the question: if people are too dim or too greedy to know what transactions to enter into, how does government - how does majority opinion, or a monopoly of force and threats – supply a super-competence of knowledge, virtue, or capacity, that the same people lack?

Answer?

Wing, you said

Compassion’ or ‘competition’ is a false dichotomy.

However, I would argue that democratic politics is a pragmatic game: players give and take. Anything else, is just dreamland. THe Howard govt would have found it hard to adopt the reforms it did if it had not provided other extensive assistance.

Yes, we need to adopt polices that ensure that the Aust remains competitive, but this never meant not providing welfare assistance. Please note welfare includes education and health spending.

This is the trouble facing Western nations. We are now uncompetitive against other countries in terms of higher labour costs.

Is the solution minimal govt intervention. Yes, if you believe in an equal playing field for all nations. However, my gut feeling is this is not going to happen. I suspect, when Westerners realise just how uncompetitive they are, after decades of relying on debt, there is going to be considerable change. And yes, the majority will want a significant welfare system whether you like it or not.

You need to prove to me how human welfare considerations can be met without extensive welfare assistance. You certainly have not convinced any major political party in the Western world.

Agree with Wing Ah Ling :

By far the biggest single factor causing Australia’s social disadvantage and privilege is government intervention intended to replace human freedom with a better and fairer ‘system’, using coercion to penalise and confiscate production here, so as to confer privileges, handouts and dependence over there.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Problem is not the occurrence of inconvenient problems, as being human and not perfect we all fail from time to time, Our problems are barriers constructed to prevent problems as appear from being brought out into the open, from being properly considered and resolved through both judicial and/or political process.

Failing here partly result of Tweedle-Dee Tweedle-Dum lets swap hats approach of our politicians, concerned more with appearance, convenience, than resolving of underlaying issues.

Problems in NT communities known for ages, yet far to long not possible to have them considered as have been inconvenient to the decision makers....

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Chris

The idea that ‘human welfare considerations’ require forced state expropriations is just a modern version of the ancient Roman idea that the public welfare depended on slavery to man the public utilities.

Whether systematically violating people’s right to self-ownership makes us as a society better off does not depend on majority opinion in favour of violating people’s right to self-ownership.

It is not a ‘dreamland’ to point out the missing ethical element, nor to point out that the pro-violence argument is factually wrong in terms of its supposed benefits of higher productivity.

Your reply confuses questions of fact with questions of value: what *is*, with what *should be*.

It is a *fact* that I have not convinced any major political party in the Western world, nor any socialist state in the 20th century for that matter, that socialism is bad in principle and bad in practice.

But that does not mean that we *should* support socialism as good in theory or workable in practice. Socialism is still based on force or threats of force; and it still generates greater poverty not greater wealth.

If what you were saying were true, there would be no need for human freedom or private property. We could just abolish them and achieve a better and fairer outcome by total government control of every aspect of human action.

The arguments against government interventions do not depend on a need to believe in an ‘equal playing field for all nations’. (If we were equal, people would not obtain any benefit from human society.)

The arguments are that such interventions are not ethical, and they produce unintended negative outcomes that are worse than the original problems they are intended to solve.

You have not addressed the fact that most of the disadvantage such welfare state interventions are intended to solve, are themselves the unintended outcomes of prior welfare state interventions, such as unemployment caused by government taxing employers, by government’s manipulation of the money supply causing economic depressions, and by government’s occupational licensing.