The view from their parents' basement

Slowpoke makes a particularly spot-on point in a time when the rationalizations for selfishness and cruelty are getting a lot of friendly air time and Internet play.

The libertarian notion that people will take care of people relies on two utterly false premises:

1. That we live in a society that values and fosters community. Libertarians believe in a kind of small-scale socialism in which the greater groupings of state and nation are subservient to family and neighborhood. If that society ever existed -- and there's no real historical evidence to suggest it ever made it out of small, Stone Age villages --  we're certainly fragmented enough by issues of mobility (as Jen suggests in her third panel) as well as by issues of race and class that libertarians are simply asking for the world to be different than it is.

Any historical research that goes beyond second-grade Thanksgiving pageants clearly demonstrates the utter folly of the libertarian notion of community, friends and family.

It relies on an idealized view of the world that is childish and completely unrealistic. "When there is need in the community, we'll just put on a show in the old barn and raise the money!"

If the concept were valid, we wouldn't have, for instance, seen such disparities between white and black schools in the days of segregation because, even though choosing to educate their children separately, the communities would have pitched in to insure that "separate but equal" would indeed be equal.

Clearly, from the time when the first non-believer was cast out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, "communities" in the real world have been consciously selfish, self-selecting and, in a very real sense, self-serving. In fact, the Puritans came to this land so they wouldn't have to be part of the wider community, and all who followed demonstrated, in doing so, a willingness to abandon their communities in the Old World.

To suggest that we can count on "our neighbors" as a group is beyond ahistorical. It is a delusional folly with absolutely no connection to the real world.

Which brings us to the second false premise:

2. That churches and other local groups have not already been striving to serve their communities' needs. I've encountered several conservatives who claim to be generous donors to their churches. I want to believe them, but I have to assume their interaction with these groups is pretty minimal or they would know how stressed charities have been in recent years trying to keep up with needs, even with a governmental umbrella handling the lion's share of the task.

Anyone with any first-hand knowledge of community work would instantly recognize how unrealistic it is to assume that, in the absence of governmental mandates and with the loss of incentive that would follow the massive tax cuts these theorists envision, the churches and other local charities would be able to simply increase their efforts to cover the difference.

You can't put on a show in the old barn every night and expect the town to turn out and pack the place each time. And, to put that in a modern context (see panel four above), you can't expect that everyone with need will be able to appeal successfully for charity on the Internet any more than you can draw up a family budget that relies on winning the lottery.

Let me go out on a limb here. Only drawing on anecdotal observation and not any sort of massive scientific studies, let me say that the fact that libertarianism, in order to work, requires a highly cooperative sense of community, makes it a very odd fit with the personalities of the people I know who embrace libertarianism.

Last week, Mark Jackson posted a quote in the comments section that makes the point:

"There are two novels that can transform a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Atlas Shrugged.' One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs." - Raj Patel (possibly - the Internet provides assorted attributions)

 

Comments

[Dann]

Mike,

You daintily tip-toe around a couple of issues.

2) Churches and other community organizations used to do a lot more. Belonging to one...or better, many...of those groups helped out access jobs. They also did a lot more in the way of charity. I was born in an old Catholic hospital run by nuns. They were bought out by the local corporate "non-profit" and the building was razed.

People no longer feel the need to participate in those activities precisely because the government has relieved those organizations of their responsibilities.

1) Authority and responsibility are twin functions. Having one but not the other inevitably leads to disaster.

The specific question at the debate was:

"A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I'm healthy, I don't need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. Who's going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?"

The hypothetical assumes a healthy person with a good job that has the money to purchase health insurance but elects not to. He wasn't priced out of the market. He elected not to perform his public responsibility to maintain adequate coverage for whatever might come around the next bend.

And in the hypothetical above, he seeks the ultimate authority to compel the rest of us to cover for his irresponsibility.

That isn't really a problem when the number of people doing it are low. But the percentage hasn't been low for a long time. And it continues to rise.

At the bottom line is the eternal unanswered question, "how much of my paycheck do I have a right to keep?" With the current condition of quickly plummeting below 60% and headed for 40%, I think that the current trend of demanding an answer is long overdue.

I watch genuinely handicapped people go to work every day. I cannot imagine a better example for the rest of us to follow.

Regards,
Dann

[Mike Peterson]

I don't know about tiptoeing -- I just wasn't writing a book. And I won't write one here, though a quick answer to your last point is that, if the people you see going to work are "genuinely" handicapped, what about those people who are quadriplegic or brain-damaged or in a persistent vegetative state? They seem pretty genuinely handicapped to me, but I don't see "Get a job, slacker!" as a real answer to their needs.

A couple more substantive points: One is that the cheap nun labor you remember came in an earlier age, medically speaking. Today, I suspect most of those nuns would be LPNs at best and more would be classed as Nurse's Aids. Nursing is far more skilled and medical care is substantially advanced from a few decades ago, and, yes, it costs more. And many of those saintly women today are living in abject poverty -- trusting in Jesus and the church turned out to be a pretty lousy retirement plan, though they're too faithful to say so.

The powerful church you describe hasn't existed in over a century, and wasn't that powerful back then. What it had can certainly be questioned: The religious spoils system in which police and fightfighter jobs were handed out to fellow Micks was what led us to Tammany Hall and other abuses. You want to see waste of taxpayer money, take a look at what the Tweed Ring was charging for bridge repairs in its heyday. It makes your procurement boys at DoD look like Costco.

It's also a big reason the Democrats opposed the Civil War and the Irish rioted against the draft laws -- they didn't want a bunch of freedmen messing up the good deal they had. The blacks eventually controlled the porter's union, but it hardly (a) compensated for the construction and public sector jobs the Irish and Italians controlled or (b) represented an improvement in how things were done.

As for the debate question, the difference between that question and the infamous Kitty Dukakis question was that Dukakis was being asked if, facing a personal rather than theoretical case, he would abandon the teachings of Christ. Paul was being asked if, faced with a specific rather than a theoretical case, he would adopt the teachings of Christ.

Both men, in my always humble opinion, disqualified themselves with their answers, Dukakis by revealing himself to be an inarticulate dope, and Paul by answering honestly.

[f]

Furthermore, the hypothetical healthy 30-year-old who can afford insurance but chooses not to isn't all that realistic, in my experience. I've been without health insurance many times in my life, either because my job didn't offer it, I didn't have a job, or because it was so expensive that I could either have insurance or an apartment. I've met far more people in that situation than those who could afford it, but choose not to be covered.

[Mike Peterson]

Jen's blog (http://slowpokecomics.com/blog/) links to this Kos column about what happened when Ron Paul's own campaign manager turned to his "community" in a medical emergency.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/17/1017278/-Letting-them-die

Shameful that he persists, not just in cold-hearted theory, but in promoting what he now knows for sure is a lie.