Replies (58)
very true.
I wonder if society just grew too large to care. There are no long term neighbors if you have to move around for jobs, making it harder to be in a community you’re familiar with? Fiat breaks everything.
In my opinion, fiat money has made society more selfish than it has ever been. When you’re spending so much time just to try to make it through life you don’t have the time or the energy to think about your neighbors.
State goes deeper into a bigger uncontrollable fiscal vortex. Robbery.
Hurts portion of society it is supposed to help the most. They become poorer.
Vicious cycle.
Couldn’t agree with you more.
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People bought the lie that the egregious theft they’ve experienced through taxation goes to helping others. Thus, they believe they’ve done their part to support the community by participating in the racket.
Expectations are too high plus there should be no tax on anything you own. If someone wants to be left alone growing potatoes salad and apples it should not be impossible. Now it is.
Excellent take! 💯
I think most people are good and generous too. The most unexpected ones will help or give you the shirt off their back.
Also let to people feeling not ashamed when they live of well fare their whole life.
I've been saying for decades that as we move responsibility up in our government heirarchy, we remove community.
JeffG
I find it tremendously ironic that the invention of the welfare state, ostensibly to help those in need, has effectively destroyed our sense of community duty and care for our neighbors.
It’s allowed us to convince ourselves that it’s “not our job” to look after each other like we used to.
People love to argue that without the state those in need would be left behind. I staunchly believe this to be untrue and downright patronizing. Most people, most of the time, are fundamentally good and generous.
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The levels of gaming the benefits system somewhat goes against this. In fact it's so bad/good that people come from other countries to game it.
100%. That’s a feature not a bug
It really depends. In Canada, there is quite a variation between the different provinces. In certain provinces they expect the government to do everything and for the other provinces to chip in. In other provinces, it’s much more civic-minded, helping each other and keeping the government as small as possible and as independent as possible.
Fix the money.
Dunbars number of 150 relationships at a time. We went from looking after our neighbors to needing to care for the whole country.
It’s not a speculation that without the state/formalized help people will get left behind, it’s demonstrated in the US’s past and in countries that don’t have welfare systems in place today. When federal/state systems don’t provide enough help in the US, especially in times of natural disaster, we see neighbors come together time and time again via donations, food pantries etc., I don’t think that has disappeared at all.
The most attractive function of state led help is outsourcing specialty aid and organizing aid such that it’s not sporadic. With technology we should be able to better organize locally in the near future and move away from top down systems, at least as a precision supplement.
Dark nostr may know a thing or two about this.
Is it ironic if it was intentional? Genuine question, I don't really know what irony means.
You know, I've been thinking a lot about this. Simply getting to know your neighbors is the first step to correcting the issue.
The government checks will begin to bounce (maybe soon). Desperate people are dangerous so keep an eye out and head off that desperation as it appears. It's both generous and self interested.
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I have family burned by this. Sure they get benefits, but if their family weren't so heavily taxed there would be money just in their immediate family to help them more.
True generosity can’t be taxed or legislated. It has to be chosen.
The opposite of a welfare state is individual welfare. For the latter you need to bring up your children to be kind and thoughtful of others. For the former you need to convince your children that the state has a right to take your property if someone else is in need
I think it's obvious which method will bring up a caring society.
It is and was intentional. Just read Marx. It's pretty much all there.
That just serves to illustrate the immense need for personal responsibility for generosity toward the needy, rather than universally delegating it to an easily abusable, inefficient system prone to corruption, lies, and theft.
Malthus’s discussions on England’s poor laws are fascinating (drawing middle class into the “poor zone”), but this gives another interesting perspective to it. If you don’t tax people, they have the cash to support the needy.
Was it ever different? We had sense before?
No, don't just read Marx. It is hard to believe that such epic stupidity has been taken seriously for the last 150 years. I read it thinking that it must have been very clever in being wrong, but now just pure illogical stupidity.
Yes, but it's pretty much all there.
Back then I think it was better than now, before welfare
People didnt starve, I think welfare was to buy votes
Welfare is outsourced personal charity. The more taxes we pay, the less generous we feel because we think the gov’t is taking care of the problem.
but most of that even stems from a 'printed money' housing bubble and creating a clear line between home owners and renters which is perpetuated as the rich vs poor, where its impossible for the poor to become rich/own a home. Bitcoin does not fix everything, but it will fix this.
Jeff. This is an incredible post.
Well done
the state loves to take advantage of our tendency to have someone else do it.
True but the kids will def need more than a kind heart and good intentions. Sound money for a start and no drugs (phones) until they are old enough to be responsible, independent humans. The latter is completely overlooked or disregarded so the kind kids are still slaves to the state in the end.
I support leaving people behind. And same goes for public schools students. These interventions don’t work. The demographics of people losing ground in 1984 have not changed only exception we have more Arabs so more brown people collecting welfare and falling behind hopefully without a bomb or missile
Absolutely correct, and the logic behind this is also clear:
When the state takes your money with the excuse of using it to take care of others, people take that promise to mean something, even when it means next to nothing.
Then, as their money has been taken, they have neither the will nor the resources to help others. They already paid for the service, even if it's never delivered...
The state didn’t replace community. It killed it. Time to take it back.
People will need to realize in the near future that the state is not something to depend upon. Specially the youth.
Nailed it, up for #NoteOfTheYear
Not only that it is not our job. In my country we loose 75-ish% of our income to it and with what's left we have to take care of our families, extended families and beyond.
The welfare state is a justification for mass scale and unlimited theft and control. They took over the money and gave the banks the ability to print infinite money with tax payer bailouts.
Then they gave a token amount back as welfare, and call it even. It's a joke.
you can’t have people treating personal responsibility seriously if the aspect of your life you should feel THE MOST personally responsible for, your own safety, is delegated fully and entirely to the state
There is tremendous scientific evidence that humans are good by nature. Excluding a small percentage of psychopaths.
And: many people who say they are 100% good and 0% psychopath are usually the dangerous ones, because of a lack of selfreflection.
I find it tremendously ironic that you say people are fundamentally good but then say if they can’t keep 100% of what they earn they suddenly lose their sense of community duty and care for their neighbours. Seems like you’re trying to have it both ways
That's right. State aid is just an illusion. In most cases it is not helping the needy, but benefiting specific people. Corruption is at a very high level, but we are fooled into thinking that we are being helped.
How do we dig ourselves out of this mess? Looks like it will get worse before it gets better?
Caring for people requires us to love people.
Can the state love people?
No of course not.
when you’ve given the caring for those in need to a state centralized program we no longer have to face our own humanity of loving our neighbors, because after all that’s now the states job.
Outsourcing our responsibility to the state robs us of that responsibility.
I am so happy we moved into a neighborhood where most of the residents are retirees already we are the youngest family and have young kids. It’s very old school, people check on each other, come out and chat when you talking by, have coffee on the porch. It’s nice.
Yes!
We no longer have a patriarchy, and we haven’t for the last 80 years at least… we have an institution-archy.
Institutions have replaced family and community in almost every area of our lives… caring for our children and the elderly, providing income, providing food, “managing” our money. The list goes on!
True. There are many things needed for a free society. That is why it's easy for a society to spiral into serfdom.
I was focusing on the OP points.
What's that saying? "Every successful marriage looks the same but every failed one is uniquely different". I've got that wrong but something like that.
The people will always think they have no obligation to help one another if the government continues securing its monopolies.
I don't actually have anything against welfare. What I have a problem with is extorting the people and calling it "welfare."
This is yet another reason why I'm an agorist and a voluntaryist. If there were more private charities and mutual aid networks that competed with things like Social Security and Medicare for assistance, you would not hear as many people freaking out about cuts each year because government "welfare" won't have them by the balls.
View quoted note →The importation of 10s of millions of invaders that do not belong in our country caused this
Exactly.
Its bloody dangerous, I had to literally flee it...
And that was after creating several of these precious workplaces in the corrupt, insane system!
In my opinion, one of the reasons for the drain in our community ethics is the amount of effort by legislators who are fighting against the welfare state to focus on making welfare unavailable instead of a focus on making it unnecessary. If you don't want people on welfare, the solution is not to cut off the capital supply, but instead to boost the support structure beneath the people who need it, with education, health care and opportunities. So much of the efforts from one side of the aisle has been just wanting to cut off all funding instead of building up our communities so that we can take care of each other in the first place.
I don't want to take money from one group (the rich) and give it to other people (the poor). I want to build up the working class and those in poverty so that they don't need extra help.
