Listening to Alan Duncan


A British Conservative has lessons for the US (and his own country)
I need to pay more attention to this British MP.

Finally, to Duncan's third point: For all the new powers of the government -- to bamboozle, to intimidate -- there's a dirty secret at the base of all that state power: It doesn't work very well. The state has feet of clay.

As the Tory told us, for all the state's efforts to channel behavior in certain socially approved directions, it usually achieves the opposite. That is, if the state sets out to make people better off, it ends up making them worse off. As Duncan said, Britons end up, "less rich, less free, and less moral." The welfare system encourages "social collapse," and the schools "don't teach." And the net effect is visible across the country: The United Kingdom, once renowned for its politeness and good behavior, now, by some measures, has a higher crime rate than the United States.

And Duncan made another good point: The effect of such misgovernance is actually to increase inequality.

This is a point worth pausing over: The redistributionist welfare state was created to narrow inequalities, but in fact, in the way that it works, it ends up widening those inequalities. That is, if people are rendered ill-equipped to work, they will likely end up with even less earning power. And oh, by the way, they will end up suffering at the low end of other kinds of equality, too, including poor health and lousy educational attainment. So yes, as Duncan says, the Saturn-state devours its own children.

Remarkably like what has happened in the United States as well, isn't it?

It's a Christian saying, but it applies. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - May 11, 2006 at 04:44 AM  Tag


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