Questions of Liberty (warning, under-informed politics)

[chess]

Inspired by the latest #obscenitytrial craziness, here are some under-informed thoughts on the different trade-off positions you can consistantly take on personal liberty. I notice that they line up quite well with the major UK political parties (at least in principle; the practice is much murkier, of cousre), so it's possible my views have been shaped by the political landscape in which I find myself.

There's the 'state-socialist' approach, typified by Labour. The state promises to keep you safe and healthy, but dictates how you should live your life, for your own good. This keeps down the amount the state has to spend on keeping you safe and healthy, because you are mandated to undertake preventative measures and avoid risks. At its extreme, this approach involves state-mandated exercise routines and a complete ban on any sex without condoms outside a carefully monitored breeding program.

There's the 'libertarian' approach, typified by the Conservatives (economically, anyway - social conservatism holds them back in this regard) and the Liberal wing of the Liberal Democrats. The state doesn't necessarily promise to keep you safe and healthy, but in return it doesn't place any restrictions on your behaviour; you can have as much risky sex or extreme sports or couch potato behaviour as you like, but you are also at liberty to die of starvation or preventable diseases if you can't pay for the consequences.

Then there's the 'universal welfare' approach, typified by the Social wing of the Liberal Democrats and the Green party. The state promises to keep you safe and healthy, and keeps out of dictating the terms of your life as far as it possibly can. However, it does require that you hand over a large percentage of your productivity to pay for the continued safety and health of all those people undertaking risky behaviours, even if you are personally very responsible in your life choices. Obviously you can see how this can be very unfair in practice!

Personally I support the 'universal welfare' approach, but I can see why it would require extremely careful management and education to avoid it completely wiping out productivity (why should I work at anything when all my money / reward for the work is just going to go to people who didn't bother?).

Comments

[naath.livejournal.com]

I'm in favour of a universal welfare approach, combined with providing information (and perhaps moderate incentives, but not compulsion)to make the healthy/safe choices where possible and also policy that aims to make those choices possible for as many people as possible.

Many of my issues with the current state of affairs however are to do with what I think is incorrect and indeed in places frankly dangerous information about what choices are "health" or "safe"; so perhaps the state shouldn't even bother to try providing information, because it sucks so hard.

I think that we (the UK) as a society could easily afford to provide basic but reasonable housing, food, and health care to everyone in the country; and it seems to me pure selfishness when we do not.

[ilanin.livejournal.com]

An objection I should have raised before now and haven't (either because it's so far internalised in my thinking it takes a while to remember other people might not take it into account, or because I was distracted by being unable to find my car keys - take your pick), because it's a centerpiece of right-wing thinking, is that there's a limit to how large a percentage of their productivity you can demand from people. Some people will be happy with whatever level of general taxation that you set, but as that amount rises an increasing number of people will become disaffected by this and begin to evade paying taxes using a range of gambits from paying accountants to find loopholes to underreporting income to emigration. This is particularly a problem because the people who are most able to employ these strategies are the highest-income strata who are responsible for a large percentage of state income and also (presumably) the least replaceable to the national economy, should they choose to emigrate. Therefore, the universal welfare approach actually requires a large supermajority of adherents to actually be workable, because not only do you need a political majority to implement it, you also need a populace that isn't going to brain drain to somewhere that operates on a libertarian model.

[passage.livejournal.com]

Is it significant that you've split the Liberal Democrats for this? Are they more united on other issues than the other parties (one thinks of Europe), or have they managed to be more heterogeneous than the Conservatives or Labour?

It could be a not being in power thing - it's easy to ignore your differences if you only have to criticise policy, but might suggest problems when in power, especially if their voter base is equally heterogeneous.