Ian B
This does remind me though of a position which I’ve held for some time now which tends to get me denounced as a socialist. Which is that many libertarians are too ready to join the conservative chorus in blaming all our ills on benefits claimants and the idle underclass, whereas my take is that we have so many people on benefits because the State has “managed” the economy into ruin. Reform needs to be done at the top, not the bottom. If we can free the economy, benefits will naturally fall due to lack of need.
There is no denying, I agree, that there is a small proportion of people who are indeed so bone idle that they never want to work, and so stupid that they agree to appear in the Daily Mail, but this class has always existed (Marx’s “lumpenproletariat” of thieves and parasites) and is not the source of our economic or other social woes.
The major issue we have is a constant imbalance between supply and demand of labour caused by various Statist interventions. It is the case that many people currently on the sick are “fit to work” in the sense that they could, in theory, do something economically productive. The reality though is that many of these people will never be employed under current circumstances because there is always somebody healthier, fitter, younger and probably fresh off the boat to do the job instead. To simplify somewhat, if you have say 5% unemployment, it’ll always be the same 5% of least desirable marginal labour. This is only going to become worse when as IDS’s ludicrous minimum wage hike comes to fruition. If you’re only worth £7 per hour, nobody will pay you £9 per hour. After all, if wages could really be raised by the State, why not put up the minimum wage to £25 per hour? Or £100?
I must admit that on a personal level “IDS” really does offend me. To be ruled by persons of such poor quality is a humiliation no people should have to suffer.
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[quote]”I must admit that on a personal level “IDS” really does offend me. To be ruled by persons of such poor quality is a humiliation no people should have to suffer”.[unquote]
This reads like jealously. Is it because you don’t have his abilities? To be fair, I don’t have his abilities either. That’s why I’m not a Cabinet minister or an MP, whereas he is.
IDS, or whatever he’s called, hasn’t got to where he is because he lied on his CV. He’s got to where he is because he is talented and conscientious. He might also have lied on his CV, but that isn’t why he is Work and Pensions Secretary while you and me are nobodies.
I don’t particularly like Iain Duncan Smith, but I am in two minds about his overall agenda. It’s nasty, and it appeals to the lowest common denominator, and the ‘left-wing populist’ in me opposes it. At the same time, I think we have to admit that it’s not good to live in a society where large numbers of people think they are entitled to help from the state. I should stress this is not a moral point, or not just that, and I don’t claim any moral high ground in making the observation. The point has been made aptly enough by IDS himself a few years ago, when he observed how state welfarism encourages a depending culture.
Your point about the mismanagement of the economy and its link to Britain’s overall decline is well-made and I concur, but blaming this on the elites is easy and populist, and doesn’t address the need for individuals to be responsible for their own lives.
As a principle, shouldn’t libertarians be opposed to any attitude of entitlement, even if it may be justified? Doesn’t libertarianism have to start with the individual and his own life?
*dependency culture*
To blame individuals is to fall into the naive view that 99% of the population have any real influence over politics. Today we have an example; the “sugar tax”. This is the hobby horse of a minority of people with connections via activism and the media. Are people marching in the street demanding that the State save us from fizzy drinks? Of course not. And like wise, as public choice theory illuminates, it is very hard for the rest of us to organise sufficiently to stop this occurring.
To blame elites is to blame the people responsible. People go into politics with the intention of doing what they think fit, not what the great unwashed want them to do.
As to Duncan-Smith, no, it is not jealousy. I think he has a very poor quality mind indeed. This is not simply because I disagree with his policies. I can think that Clement Attlee was a great British statesman even if I disagree with nearly everything he did. IDS is not talented. He may be conscientious, in the sense of doggedly pursuing the dim ideas that percolate in his mind. But that is not admirable.
Broadly, his view of the lumpenproletariat is profoundly unoriginal; you could have found the same things said fifty or 150 years ago by the same type of person who believed that it was their mission to save the Residuum (as they were known in the Victorian Era for instance) from themselves. You can find the same ideas going back as far as Malthus, from the time where agrarianism started transitioning to industrialism, and employment, unemployment and the inevitable formation of an urbanised underclass became recognisable and significant.
There is a vast amount one could write about economics in this (and as libertarians, that is what we would naturally do). But to be simple (but hopefully not too simplistic), if you have a deliberate policy of forcing down the wage rates of the average worker due to misunderstanding what productivity actually is, while forcing up basic subsistence costs (property, energy, food, travel and indirect taxation) you will inevitably shift marginal labour into an unemployability crisis. This is what we now have.
We do not live in a free market. The economy is the distorted and distended shape which has been fashioned by the past century of increasingly bad and expanding government. It is no use blaming those who are furthest from influence for this appalling state we are in.
You’re preaching to the converted on your main points. I understand that the country is being mismanaged, but I’m not sure we can just use that as a basis for simply blaming the ‘elites’ (whoever, or whatever, they are). Nothing I have said contradicts your position on causation, but you go further. You don’t just blame the elites in the sense that I would find understandable, you want to hold them responsible for the rest of us. I fundamentally disagree with that. I take the view that if the elites are making life harder for me, then it is for me to make life easier for myself. I don’t wait around for somebody else to improve my life for me or grant me freedom.
You purport to be a libertarian, yes? So you believe in individual sovereignty. Logically, it follows that your position of holding the elites responsible in the sense that you do disqualifies you as a libertarian. You’re more like a class warrior, whereas a true libertarian would just ignore the state and go his own way in life. That is surely how a libertarian society will be created.
Iain Duncan Smith must be talented, or at least have abilities, or he would not be where he is. Do you really think that the Establishment [an imprecise term that I use for want of something better] as a rule deliberately promote idiots or unthinking people? It’s similar to the line I have heard about Tony Blair, that he was just a nobody promoted beyond his abilities. It’s not true. He palpably had (has) brains and talent. Even if I hate Tony Blair (I certainly don’t like him), I must acknowledge his qualities, in the interests of putting forward an honest argument. Otherwise, all I am doing is just engaging in disguised ad hominen, which is what anti-elitism really is. It’s the Saxon with the pitchfork – and I admit I have something of that in me too. It wasn’t long ago that I was talking about joining the Moslem jihad on here, or something. Maybe that’s my Celtic genes.
I am not a libertarian, but I must admit that at least one aspect of libertarian thinking is factual: it’s down to you and me.
I am a libertarian because I desire liberty. That does not require me to think that I already have it, and indeed if I did think that it would be redundant being a libertarian. I believe people are capable of self government. I also observe that we are not allowed to self govern at the moment.
We cannot simply wish the current state of affairs away. We must deal with what is, and work from where we are, rather than where we wish we were.
As to IDS; well, we are into personal assessments of him here. I think he is neither intelligent nor talented, not just as a scattergun ad hominem insult, but as a genuine appraisal. He strikes me as the kind of person who, in a private company, would be running a small department where he cannot cause too much trouble, at best. And probably have his stapler and hole punch stolen quite a lot by colleagues, just to watch his annoyance.
I think the root of the problem here (limiting the analysis to the existing policy framework, and avoiding any ideological excursions) is that over time, welfare became a way of subsidising the lives of a permanent class of unemployed, who in effect became wards of the state. A whole industry then grew up around this underclass, involving prisons, government agencies, social work, the police, the judiciary, academic social scientists and so on. There you have your modern technocratic state – and a Huxleyian ‘therapeutic state’ at that.
Remember that even during the Industrial Revolution, with its necessary legislative interventions and (rightful) moral agenda of alleviating working conditions, it wasn’t necessary to technocratise British society or create a Leviathan in Whitehall. That’s an important clue for us, I think, about what has been going on.
The welfare has become an industry and is self-sustaining, so that the social policy analysis supports solutions geared towards ‘understanding’ people rather than demanding that people take responsibility for their lives. The latter self-help philosophy was not possible because successive governments, both Labour and Conservative, had abandoned any notion of a national industrial strategy in exchange for liberal dogma. From a macro perspective, Britain became a trading outpost of international capitalism, with all assets up for sale and fair game – even the water – and our people were just cheap waged units, with a proportion deliberately kept unemployed, an elite mentality that perhaps had its origins in the Industrial Revolution itself, when people were seen as manipulable economic units.
What Iain Duncan Smith and the Conservatives now seem to be doing is reversing the British welfare state back to its original social-democratic vision: i.e. welfare as a state-backed insurance policy, rather than as a lifestyle. Contrary to what many right-wingers, libertarians and Americans claim, the British welfare system was never intended as a hand-out or a free ride, and it is not ‘socialism’. It was clearly and explicitly intended as a system that you pay into to so that you are covered in the event something unfortunate happens. That principle needs to be restored, and it’s clear from IDS’s rhetoric in the matter that this is his intention. The reason for the anger about the Conservative policies isn’t because the Tories’ core ethics about welfare are wrong – in fact, any sensible person must agree with them, even if the details and execution are less than tactful and place suspicious reliance on private companies. The reason for the anger is in the fact that despite this necessary rolling-back of welfare, there hasn’t been a concomitant adjustment to economic and industrial policy, so that those who are unemployed have sustainable jobs that they can take up. The problem is essentially simple, and has been highlighted by luminaries as varied as Alan Clark, on the right, and John Prescott on the left. The Tories, like Blair’s Labour governments, are too attached to naive neo-Gladstonian economic dogma about free markets and trade.
I recall back in 1997, John Prescott was talking about a ‘national industrial policy’. In fact, he couldn’t stop talking about it. That never came to pass, which is tragic. Instead, in macro-economic policy at least, we had a neo-thatcherite government under the Blair cabal, and Labour’s welfare spending, as a result, reached an industrial scale; indeed, as I observed earlier, welfare has become an industry in its own right, embracing government agencies, prisons, the judiciary, as well as social work, the police, housing associations and all the other hangers-on. These are all branches of the technocratic welfare state, which appeals to social engineers who like to micro-manage ‘troubled’ people.
That point brings me to my own ethics on these policy questions. I am not a libertarian, but libertarianism appeals to me both intellectually and practically, and I think libertarianism is factual in its emphasis on the individual and individual sovereignty. We could argue back-and-forth about the rights and wrongs of neo-liberal economics. I happen to agree that the country has been mismanaged and this is due to the economic liberalism of both Labour and Conservative governments. I refer to neo-thatcherism, but neo-liberalism in Britain preceded Thatcher – it goes at least back to Wilson, and certainly under Heath (Selsdon Man), so both the main political parties bear equal responsibility.
But to blame this on the so-called ‘elite’ is, to my mind, unintellectual and not very insightful. Apart from anything else, what is meant by the ‘elite’. Who are they exactly? It seems to me that, in so far as an elite exist (and I don’t doubt they do), they are just a bunch of people who are more successful than the rest of us, due to a combination of good looks, greater charisma, talent and intelligence than average, a bit of luck, maybe some ethnic collaboration, as well as the application of greater diligence and conscientiousness than most people. Should I blame a group of people because they are more successful than me and better than me? Can I blame them if they want to protect their own interests at my expense? What should my response be?
I think the point where I start is from the ‘libertarian fact’ that I am a sovereign individual and I am allowed to govern myself – to a large degree – if I so choose. Although I am not myself a libertarian, I understand completely that liberty and self-government are my choice – whether I do so or not do so if for me to decide and is reflected in my actions, not just in any beliefs I might hold from time-to-time on this blog or anywhere else. Our society has some very serious problems, and there are outrageous curtailments on freedom, but we don’t live in an open prison. I could go abroad. Or I could make changes to my life here, within reason, to minimise my interaction with the government.
If I want to complain about the government, and oppose them, I can do so, but I must also be honest about this and ask some awkward, but necessary questions about myself and those around me.
Who voted for these governments? And if an underclass has been formed, don’t these people also have agency and responsibility for themselves? Or are they just slaves? Doesn’t the term ‘dependency’ imply a moral choice on the part of the person who is dependent and parasitical?
Let’s say I am one of the long-term unemployed, don’t I still have a responsibility to find employment, moving around the country if necessary, and undertaking training and further education within my capabilities? And if I can’t find employment, don’t I still have a responsibility to find some other way to make a living? If I have a criminal record and nobody will consider me for a job, shouldn’t I consider going self-employed and creating my own job, or finding a job or career where such things don’t matter? If I am disabled, don’t I still have a responsibility to develop independence, however difficult that may be? Aren’t these responsibilities paramount, before I start whinging and complaining about what other people are doing? Shouldn’t I be seeking to live as a complete and dignified human being, rather than as a ward of the state? Or are we all to depend on the state and live off welfare if times get harsh? If we are, then are we a real people at all and do we deserve to survive? I firmly believe not.
When Iain Duncan Smith speaks of a dependency culture and the need to end lifestyle welfare and the entitlement mentality among benefit claimants, I know that he is fairground charlatan playing to the gallery and appealing to the lowest common denominator among the democratic masses, and I know it is people like him with their accent on economic liberalism that have contributed to creating the problem in the first place. But I also know he has a point about people who claim and the need to discourage dependency, which is destructive.
I don’t have a personal assessment of IDS exactly, other than that I must acknowledge certain facts about him. He has got to where he is for a reason. It’s not because he’s stupid, and to pretend that he is in some way insubstantial is to relegate the discussion to womanly gossiping – and, crucially, it also lets the politician off the hook, by implicitly denying him full responsibility for his agenda and decisions, both the good and the bad. Was George W. Bush stupid or insubstantial? No. He knew what he was doing. Stupid people don’t make it to the White House. The liberal narrative that he was stupid was always a deceit, designed to encourage the masses to take their eyes off the ball. Likewise, the personality attacks on unsympathetic Tory politicians are for the masses and the dimwitted. It serves a left-liberal agenda, which involves expanding the state’s client base and denying us a society where people take responsibility for themselves.
I’m not being priggish about your personal assessments of Mr Duncan Smith, such as they are. I am under no illusions about the nature of people who succeed in politics and the attributes necessary, but it’s obvious from your language that your comments aren’t a genuine personal assessment. You just don’t like him.
It seems to me that Iain Duncan Smith has got himself into the position where he is dishing it out. For somebody who lied on his CV and is neither intelligent nor talented, that’s not bad going. I shudder to think what he could have achieved with an ounce of intelligence. Perhaps, if he hadn’t been dropped on his head as an infant, we would have been worshipping him in the Church of IDS by now?
Problem is most people are not talented or cunning or what have you – they’re just smart enough to get by and no more (evolutionary fitness). But people no longer have to provide for the means to existence for themselves, there’s division of labour. To provide the necessities of life, thanks to the Industrial Revolution, takes only a fraction of the population. Essentially, the rest are doing make-work. Maybe the market could take of this if it weren’t for government intervention, because with free time people will fritter away the lives using products of some sort. But maybe in the post industrial age a large proportion of people (whether disabled or not) are objectively useless. The jobs that it will be the most difficult to automate away are the menial heavy labour jobs which are the lowest paid and need able bodied workers – such as long term care for elderly and disabled, hotel housekeeping, cooks and bottle washers, what have you. Jobs which people do only when they have no alternative and which because they require no unusual skills, and often no ability to speak the local language, are filled by immigrants and migrant workers in the welfare state countries.
To my mind there are two really problematic issues: what to do about psychopaths and what to do about people who are unable to support themselves and have no family to do that. Both categories are dismaying large, the second especially given a lot of people currently employed today are in jobs that will probably go away thanks to autonomous robotics.
Smith–like the rest–is a callous git with a level of animal cunning who has crawled and slimed up the chain of evil until he is in a position to shower his stupidity over everyone else. Simple as that . Most of the ZaNu/ Bluelab cunts would be utterly incapable of even holding their own on this blog never mind being “intellectual” heavyweights.
Saying “cunt” would probably within their capabilities tho’.
They seem to manage “prole” well enough.