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richardhutnik on 28 September 2012
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badgenome said:
richardhutnik said:

There is a portion of Republicans, and conservatives, who take issue with the concept that the free market will magically end up taking care of everything.  Individuals like Mike Huckabee, who have been governors, had to deal with issues and support having a welfare system of some sort, but making it work.  It isn't just gut the safety net and hope for the best.  

As for there being more poor people now, DUH!  When an economy tanks, there are more poor people.  That happens.  It doesn't mean, however, that a society that consists of a free market and the only values it has is that of the market, is going to end up teaching anyone to fish.  And a market driven by people who end up believing you fire bad customers (this is a business principle by the way), is going to end up having more people fishing sufficiently.  It just doesn't happen.  Cutting welfare benefits merely cuts the budget.  It doesn't make the people on it suddenly get benefits.

And if you want to ask me my views, I don't have issue with government welfare, per-se, if that is how a society decides to help the disadvantaged.  I also don't have issues with it sufficiently doing things on a private level.  What I do have issue is with individuals who don't even bother to think these matter, and just claim  some sort of neglect as being a magic solution to resolve things, or who end up making the helping the poor as some sort of mark of moral superiority and focused on the giver. 

I'm quite tired of having this conversation with you over and over again. The fact that I continue to engage you in it makes me question my own sanity because every single time we have it, you refuse to accept the fact that the government is not society. Just because a government doesn't make charity and economic interventionism its mission, doesn't mean that society's only value is the free market. It just means that that society believes that there is a limit to what a government can and should do. This idea was at the very foundation of the United States, and yet - quite amazingly - the generation of the founders somehow managed to have other values than sheer, unfettered capitalism for its own sake. Yet time and time and time again you conflate society with its government. They are not the same thing, or at least they are not in a healthy society, and when they do become one and the same, that's when you have a serious problem because the people who drive society and decide what its values shall be do so not by reason and argument but by force and graft.

I NEVER said government is society.  I don't accept that.  What I do accept is government of a society is a reflection of its collective values, what it does, and what it fails to do.  In a democratic society, the government will be a measure of what that society is.  And you will see government grow in areas where there are problems, where the public has concern, but fails to act.  So, if you see a growing welfare state, you will end up having a society with more poor people in it, and a society that wants there to be a semblance of a safety net.  You don't just dismantle the safety net, and expect the underlying causes of the safety net, to go away.

I also believe there is such a thing as a social contract in societies, and a set of collective values where rights are met with responsibilities, and there are degrees of expected outcomes people have when they meet these responsibilities.  And when these break down, you have problems.

If you want to understand the core of my concern, it is that I am NOT a destructionist.  I do not believe in revolutions.  I believe in more gradual change with things, and I hate to see people harmed from people just tearing stuff down.  In this sense I am pretty conservative.  And with this, I have issues with just getting rid of things and replacing it with nothing.  I found the rabble in Occupy wanting this to be inane, and I also find the GOP side wanting to slash and burn the safety net equally inane.