Pave: The Eleemosynary State

Le jour 109 de Sarko

For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good...

Mark 14:7 (KJV)

Few knowingly choose poverty. Poverty is most often visited as an accident of birth or circumstances, a physical or social or mental handicap -- bad cess. When it is not circumstantial, poverty is the result of mistakes, bad choices or bad judgements.

The pre-modern aspiration had been to escape poverty, to better one's lot, to make a brighter future for one's children. Contemporary liberal social theory deprecates betterment as an unfair burden on the poor. Instead it celebrates poverty as a lifestyle. Civil libertarians then argue if poverty is a lifestyle, it is a choice, an exercise of personal liberty. As such it attaches to the dignity of the person and must not be challenged or curtailed by public order or property law.

A cash-strapped, job-poor state is all too happy to play along.

Nanny states support and accommodate the lifestyle of subsistence living because it is cheaper than providing institutional mental and medical care, vocational training and placement, four-walls housing, and the prospect of betterment. The nanny state is prepared to maintain the poor as poor. The homeless never show up in unemployment numbers. They have no lobby or union to pester the state. There are no metrics or objectives to judge the the progress or success of government subsistence programs.

And every taxpayer sleeps easy knowing the nanny state is his brother's keeper.

Our friends over at Modèle Social français have a little movie showing the real-world results of airy libertarian theory, socialism sans social contract, and the abdication of compassion and charity to the state.

Between 500 and 1000 people live on Paris 33km beltway. Most live in tents in the fumes of engines and 75dB noise. Some live in pillars sustaining the beltway, or in "technical premises" tunnels underneath. Here are some of the tens of tents that can be seen by million commuters every day.

PFFT (What is this?): Poverty as choice 4½ | Choose responsibly 4 | Or not ½ | Rayonnement français 0