As a chiropractic student living on 60 dollars a week (“I’m on food stamps. Don’t hate me for it,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 19), Vicki Jones March hardly fits the stereotype of average or typical “welfare mom.”
March did just what our teachers, coaches and other authority figures tell us to: Admittedly “one of the charmed, lucky ones growing up,” she made exceptional marks in school, finished college, and headed for graduate school. But even at that, she hasn’t been able to escape the stigma that Americans attach to food stamps.
Much is made of food stamps this election season, on the heels of new data that show participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is up. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich started a media circus when he labeled Barack Obama “the food stamp president,” animating some of the most coarse reflexes surrounding issues of poverty.
American libertarians generally struggle with these issues. There are many reasons for that, but most stem from what are actually very basic misunderstandings about the system we’ve come to refer to as “capitalism.”
Confusing capitalism for a real free market, many libertarians feel driven to disparage welfare recipients like March as “freeloaders,” convinced that welfare is per se a scandal against libertarian principles. The mistake too often made is to abstract the lone issue of something like food stamps away from the broader context that it exists within.
But American libertarians of an earlier age would have been rather surprised — and probably more than a bit piqued — by the equating of capitalism with true laissez faire. And because of that, they had a much better understanding of the role that specific pieces of public policy aimed at the poor actually play.
Market anarchists like Victor Yarros, writing in 1887, went as far as maintaining that “as a class, the capitalists are utterly deprived of the power of effecting anything intrinsically good.” Yarros expressed moral indignation at “charity from the hands of the robber class” of capitalism, and argued that such apparent charity was a mere ruse, “a sugared pill” meant to lull the laboring classes into a false sense of security.
We can draw an analogy between Yarros’s philippic against the charity of the rich and anarchist critiques of the modern welfare state today. In the same way that the philanthropy of the nineteenth century robber barons was little more than a self-congratulatory propitiation of the poor, the measly welfare allotments of the present are meant to assuage the bitter deprivations of the corporate economy.
Libertarians, dedicated to the free market and to individual rights, shouldn’t feel compelled to demonize the poor as beneficiaries of “hand outs.” Rather, if our principles really do demand that people work for what they have, we ought to arraign the largest and most powerful global corporations; it is indeed they who benefit most from the wealth redistribution scheme currently prevailing.
When economic power and resources are unfairly and coercively monopolized through the power of the state, rampant poverty will be the result. Those who genuinely care about the overall cause of human freedom shouldn’t look down on the victims of the system we have today. They should instead should look forward to a truly libertarian age when competition actually does rule the day, without the special privileges for the rich.
Citations to this article:
- David D'Amato, Getting your due in America, Deming, New Mexico Headlight, 03/25/12
Except there is a benefit to demonizing the poor for being benefits of handouts; it makes them want to stop seeking handouts.
Per Bylund wrote (http://www.perbylund.com/the_library_howthewelfarestatecorrupted.htm) of how the Swedish welfare State fundamentally changed the nature of Swedish culture.
"My grandmother, born in 1920, was of the last generation to have that special personal pride, of having a firm and deeply rooted morality, of being a sovereign in life no matter what–to be the sole master of one’s fate. The people of her generation experienced and endured one or two world wars (though Sweden never took part) and were raised by poor Swedish farmers and industrial workers. They witnessed and were the driving force behind the Swedish “wonder.” … They would gladly offer to help those in need even if they only had little, but were not likely to accept anyone’s help if offered. They felt pride in being competent to take care of themselves; they cherished independence of others, of never having to ask for help. They figured, if they couldn’t make it themselves, they had no right to ask for help.
"The children of my grandparents’ generation, my parents among them, quickly learned and embraced a new morality based on the welfare “rights” offered by the social security system. While the older generation would not accept dependence on others (including state welfare benefits) they did not object to sending the younger generation to public schools to get educated. I am certain they never thought in terms of having a “right” to have their children educated. Rather, they accepted and appreciated the opportunity for their children to have a chance they themselves had never had–through “free” education. … Being an individual, they were taught, means having a right to support for your individual needs. Everybody has a right to all the resources necessary to pursue one’s own and society’s happiness, they were told. And everybody should enjoy the right to put their children in state daycare centers while working, making it possible for every family to earn two salaries (but not enough time to raise their children). The opportunities for “the good life,” at least financially, must have seemed enormous to the older generations. This new morality permeated the populace and became the “natural” state of things, at least in their minds."
The reason for shaming recipients of welfare of any kind is because they deserve the shame. C4SS associate Kevin Carson and Murray Rothbard have both written, at least in passing, on the nature of free and voluntary mutual aid. Both have made the case that these systems are superior to the bureaucratized State welfare mechanisms because as a matter of course they included not just support for those unable to support themselves, but STRONG social pressures to attempt to regain that self-sufficiency.
A case may be made that folks like Vicki demonstrate a NEED for social welfare institutions (I say "may" because social welfare as it exists is but one permeation of the social support structure, and IMO an ugly and inefficient one at that). But to conflate this with an argument against shame is reprehensible. Vicki may NEED the food stamps, but that does not mean we should pat her on the back and say "you did the best you could"; we should indeed make her feel a social shame for lacking self sufficiency.
Recipients of food stamps or any other charitable aid should always see them as an insult to themselves; they should, indeed, feel disgust at needing them, as the withering of that self-revulsion creates the entitlement mindset that Bylund relates has so fundamentally changed Sweden.
So yes, we should all be vocal and critical of the State-supported megacorporation and the destructive effects it has on the economy, and of course we should acknowledge and work toward the dissolution of such vampiric institutions. We should acknowledge that folks like Vicki are indeed themselves the victim of, to use the vernacular, bullshit fucking circumstances. But in the process we should not allow our culture to lose sight of the absolute virtues of self-sufficiency and freedom. We should blame the master for his destruction of the slave's ability to produce for himself but we should not, in the process, assuage the guilt of the slave who is becoming codependant on such a relationship.
A stateless society cannot come to exist, much less function, if society forgets how to function without the State to guide it. Vicki, and others like her, have a healthy level of disgust for what the statist society has done to her. That disgust, however, must be channeled toward the institutions responsible, and not dissipated into a sea of "don't feel bad"s and "you did your best"s.
My recent post how am i doing at integration?
Again, my point is the larger cultural ramifications of such a trend. Hence the lengthy Bylund quote. Which fo you think will come faster: the death of the State or the entrenchment of State-sufficiency as a cultural norm?
If you picked the former I heartily admire your optimism.
The State presents obstacles to dignified poverty and self-sufficient economic freedom. Enormous, nigh insurmountable obstacles for some. BUT, to use this as an excuse to handwave codependence on the State is exactly the OPPOSITE direction anyone interested in a stateless society should do. What's the Wobbly expression, "build the new society within the shell of the old"? That.
Look, you'll hear talk of the grand conspiracy of welfare in the capitalist system; to deprive people of their ability to independently thrive, then toss them handouts to keep them docile and build a codependency that entrenches the status quo. What amazes me is that a group of individuals can be so opposed to this in principle, and then in practice call for us all to APPLAUD THOSE DIVING INTO THAT CODEPENDENT STATE OF MIND. You can't have it both ways — you cannot, on the one hand, point to welfare statism as a way of keeping the masses docile and then withhold scorn for embracing that docility.
I'm reminded of a Kevin Carson piece on how disgusted he was with the FISH! Philosophy because it was being used as a tool to brainwash the labor force into smiling cheerfully and begging for their abuse at the hands of management. I'm sure he'd have had no shortage of scorn for employees who bought into such tripe. I'm simply applying the same standards to those who would call for us to support codependence on the State.
If a man breaks your legs and then tries to sell you crutches, buying crutches from him is just feeding his game. It's doing EXACTLY what he wants you to do. It's making a success of his vile extortions. But when the State breaks your legs economically and tries to sell you a crutch, suddenly the comrades are all calling for us to sympathize with such a purchase.
I thought the history of failed communist republics taught us that the "intermediary State" does not work as expected?
And of course, such a standard is never applied both ways. When trillions in bailouts are sent to crooked banks, nobody here would have the gall to defend such CORPORATE State welfare on the grounds that State intervention caused the need for it! But such intellectual rigor is set aside when a woman accepts food stamps? State handouts are State handouts are State handouts.
Folks like Vicki should give us cause to create effective community mutual aid systems which encourage a return to self-sufficiency. Enough will call for it in theory… But evidently when push comes to shove it's easier to let the State handle it, and worse, to chastise those who object to the State handling it as "wicked"!
My recent post />tories
All right. I see something of later date has got through moderation and has been placed after my comment, which this page is still telling me is awaiting moderation. I am not going to enter into any quibble about whether it is “really” in moderation if the system has not shown it to the moderator, but this page really is telling me that my comment is in moderation; in my book, that means it is in the moderating system, and if it is not reaching the moderator that just goes to show that the system is defective, not that it is not moderation (it’s exercising censorship, which is what moderation is, isn’t it?). Should I attempt to resubmit my comment or can the moderator reach it through the moderation system?
Every comment I've seen from you, I've approved. If you're not seeing it posted, it means I didn't see it submitted.
To change a dog's behavior, virtually the only tools at our disposal are reward and punishment. Humans, by contrast, are also moved by more sophisticated motivations like curiosity, hope, duty, and love, as well as hunger, acquisitiveness, and fear. So we don't have to treat welfare recipients as if they were dogs by using simple-minded conditioning – for example, making them feel ashamed while ignoring their natural desire for self-improvement. If libertarians want to influence events (as we should), then we have to get with the program – the real program of human nature, not an inaccurate simplification. We need to be as effective as we can. The future depends on it and on us.
Lawrence: your comment also vanished yesterday and reappeared today. I believe the IntenseDebate engine here is just acting up, and look forward to your response.
My recent post No. 2326180 by Anonymous
No, TK, if I’m not seeing a comment of mine posted, it means you didn’t see it submitted and the moderating system is defective, in that it is doing moderation according to its own settings without reference to you. That is still moderation, and I urge you to get in touch with whoever set it up that way and get them to fix it so you really do get to do the moderating. It’s odd that TB did get to see it briefly, or maybe my meta-comment, but that’s all the more indication that something needs to be sorted out. It’s hardly an isolated incident.
I am going to resubmit that comment right after this so you know to look out for it, with an introductory sentence to vary it slightly. It is quite long, but I deliberately avoided providing any links so as not to complicate matters.
The following is the comment I attempted to post earlier, which the system is still showing me with the description “P.M.Lawrence on Mar 27, 2012, 1:50 am: Your comment is awaiting moderation.“, which should be getting through as the 2nd comment:-
That’s a misleading half-truth, on the order of “when an iceberg tears a hole in a ship, it sinks, so those who genuinely don’t want ships to sink will look forward to ice free waters”.
All right. I see something of later date has got through moderation and has been placed after my comment, which this page is still telling me is awaiting moderation. I am not going to enter into any quibble about whether it is “really” in moderation if the system has not shown it to the moderator, but this page really is telling me that my comment is in moderation; in my book, that means it is in the moderating system, and if it is not reaching the moderator that just goes to show that the system is defective, not that it is not moderation (it’s exercising censorship, which is what moderation is, isn’t it?). Should I attempt to resubmit my comment or can the moderator reach it through the moderation system?
But, just as other things sink ships too, so also other things can cause poverty. Of course, just as icebergs are the main cause of shipwrecks in arctic waters and should be the priority worry there, so too the main driver of poverty and economic constraints on freedom today is state mediated economic structure; but that doesn’t mean that getting rid of either would get rid of “the” problem. After all, to give just one example by way of illustration, the English Enclosures of the Commons got under way in a time, place and manner that did not make use of state mediation. Just at the moment, state power crowds out those other abuses by its jealous monopoly of force, but a real solution would find the common theme and address those, merely dealing with the state variant incidentally in passing.
TheBaker wrote:-
That’s like saying there’s a benefit to closing hospital casualty departments; it stops people presenting as casualties. The point is, when they are poor you do want them to seek handouts, just as you do want them to seek emergency treatment when they really need it, because stopping that creates other problems – and not just for them. Granted, you don’t want welfare queen behaviour from those who don’t need welfare, any more than you want hospitals flooded with hypochondriacs and malingerers, but applying that sort of pressure necessarily moves some people in genuine need into a zone where they and their burdens spill over onto yet others while they still suffer themselves. Remember that the point of this article is to explore how to cope tactically within existing constraints; the real “right” answer is to fix things in a way that engineers out the needs, but within the constraints demonising the poor does not have a benefit, because the behaviour change is not a benefit after all. (Demonising the better off who take welfare, now, that’s a different story, but it’s also not what the article is about.)
Wrong, and in fact wicked. It is a shame when people need welfare, and it is shameful to take it when it is not needed, but to seek to shame recipients sight unseen is to defeat both charitable and prudential motives.
That makes about as much sense as criticising evicted peasants for not being self sufficient. Since it has nothing to do with their motivation, it’s senseless and unconstructive, as well as cruel. It fits the case of a fit hunter-gatherer too lazy to hunt or gather in the midst of plenty, but here it’s more a case of asking for mud bricks without there being the straw needed to make them. At least put the car in gear and take off the brakes before you try pressing the accelerator.
Oops – I accidentally copied and pasted my meta-comment inside the main body of the text just now. Feel free to delete that part.
In other words when you said you weren't going to enter into any quibble, you didn't mean it.
If I don't see your comments in moderation, I can't act on them. It's just that simple.
If you don't want to have to worry about your comments ending up in moderation in the first place, establish a wordpress or intensedebate account and I'll whitelist it. If not, I'll approve the comments I see, and not approve the ones I don't see.
When I say I am not going to enter into any quibble, here, I mean that I am about to describe actual facts and categorise them accurately, but that I shall not entertain any argument that something that is self described as moderation isn’t really moderation because the moderator hasn’t seen it. Now, if the comments here didn’t come up asserting that they were under moderation, that would be different – but they do. For me to assert that that is moderation is precisely the reverse of quibbling. Moderation isn’t what the moderator does but what the moderation system does; it’s what the moderator should do, but it appears that he hasn’t been given the privileges and access needed for that.
Now, I am not worried about my comments ending up in moderation in the first place. I am concerned that the moderator is not, in fact, in control of the moderation, and that that means the system is broken. It should be fixed, on general principles. Even if I were given a special way to get around that, it wouldn’t solve the problem – there could still be comments from other people caught in that limbo.
OK, I'll keep this as simple as possible.
I have tested (and in some other cases, still use) various commenting systems.
In my professional opinion (I get paid to administer/moderate some of those installations), IntenseDebate is either the best one or the second best one, depending on which criteria one judges by.
I have submitted more than one bug report on it, and its operators are constantly trying to improve it and fix any problems which arise with it. It is not, however, perfect, and it is unlikely to ever be perfect.
On this installation, you seem to be the only one having this problem — or at least you're the only one reporting it. I haven't been able to reproduce it, and the material I've found on similar problems is dated and the problems seems to appear sporadically, and are usually in one of two categories: 1) User-specific, or 2) linked to connection/sync problems.
Since you are the only one reporting the problem, my tentative classification is that the problem is user-specific — in other words, that originates on your end of the process, not on C4SS's or IntenseDebate's — but I've not found any way of getting any further than that (I haven't found reports linking the problem to specific browser, OS, etc.).
But, as I said: I have given you an option which will probably solve the problem. If you want the problem solved, give it a try. If you don't, well, I've got better things to do than constantly rehash a curable bellyache.
I seem to recall seeing someone else reporting something similar. You may wish to check for it. If you do not, that risks your assessment jumping to conclusions; keep it tentative at least until you have scanned through the comments over the last few months.
I will grant that there is indeed something user-specific about me: I tend not to let go. But for that very reason, I should be regarded as the tip of the iceberg and not as having an isolated problem. And indeed, the first couple of times I myself merely tried again, rather than conscientiously giving you a heads up. And even if it were entirely at my end, and unique to me, it would still be a failure on the part of the system that it could not deal with whoever came along.
Even so, I would accept platform incompatibility or some such leading to comments being lost – but that is clearly not what has been happening; the system is taking them and mishandling them without reference to you, but it is not losing them. Regardless of just where the error originates, it is a fact that:-
– The system at that end does hold the blocked material somewhere and somehow, or it would not be able to present it to me (as it is doing right now on this occasion, numbering it comment 2).
– The system is indeed describing itself as “Your comment is awaiting moderation” (complete with italics), so whatever any ultimate cause, there is a proximate problem that is within that system.
I have already told you, what you have proposed is not a fix, and I have told you why it isn’t: it would only serve to sideline matters for me alone. That is, it would reduce the complaints you receive without addressing the issue for anyone else without my particular temperament. But for that very reason, that it would prevent me from being able to find and give diagnostic feedback from examples, I would not want to adopt your suggestion anyway. I have always regarded software fixes as corruptly designed when the test for success is merely a reduction in errors reported, and I see no reason to alter that view when I am no longer one of those involved in fixing things.
I am pleased to hear that you have referred matters to those who should be dealing with them, which (as opposed to eventually suggesting what you consider a fix just a few days ago) is not something you have ever mentioned doing before. I am not pleased that they have not reported success, considering how long this sort of thing has been happening (since longer ago than the first complaint I made, though that is the start point that should be used for assessing their responsiveness).
Of course the bellyache is curable; cure it, or get those who are in a position to do something about it to do so (if necessary they can liaise directly with me to get my own description or cut and paste of symptoms), but do not represent changing my system as a cure, when that merely leaves matters as they stand for anyone else to trigger under the right (wrong) circumstances. Fixing things just for me is no fix! I have no intention of suppressing any future opportunity to obtain diagnostic data for the maintainers.
I have just posted a full and complete comment explaining how your suggestions do not meet the actual need.
I suspect that length may have something to do with what triggers the failure, so if you see this and not that you will have further diagnostic data to pass to the system maintainers.
I'm not so much talking about "conditioning" people to get back to work. What I'm more referring to, and my later comment touched on it, is refusing to be supportive of codependency on the STATE specifically.
When I say "a stateless society cannot come to exist, much less function, if society forgets how to function without the State to guide it" that point isn't a criticism of mutual aid but of State largesse. To again reference Carson, mutual aid groups were not about CHARITY but obligation. One paid in to gain access to benefits. That is accepting responsibility through voluntary interaction.
I'm not concerned about the cultural impetus to "sitting lazy on welfare", but the cultural impetus to come to rely on the State, rather than ourselves and each other, as the go-to problem solver.
Yes, part of that is encouraging people to get back to work. But as the Bylund quote demonstrates, the urging of people back to work was part of a larger social trend which valued INDEPENDENT SOLUTIONS to problems. That's the key trend.
I'd object to State welfare even if it encouraged people to resume working as part of its structure.
Rereading my initial post, I feel I focused too much on the specific aspect of shame; my point was meant to be indignance at a stateless institution sympathizing with State codependency. The "entitlement mindset" is my centra issue. We see it in our workplaces; people have foregone labor unions for State-mandated benefits. That doesn't mean the benefits are a problem… but the way they are achieved is.
I saw it, and approved it.
IntenseDebate's maintainers are aware of the problem. IF it is the same problem as the similar problem I've found in old user reports, it's been around — and they've been trying to solve it — since at least as early as 2009, so I'm not optimistic that a solution is in the offing, unless it's by happenstance (e.g. it is specific to some browser, OS, etc., and a change in that browser or OS causes the problem to go away).
I'm a huge supporter of chiropractic care and can't wait to see it implemented in healthcare plans as an alternative to medication and drugs.