[ExI] A Small Request

[Lee Corbin]

Damien inquires

> Lee recommended
> 
>> the freedom of not having a tax collector turn to me
>> to finance every human aberration occuring anywhere in society.
> 
> Do you have a short list of the most serious aberrations in society 
> that you resent funding, and some estimate of how much they cost?

 - Social Security for *teenagers*!
 - women having children out of wedlock.
 - subsidized transportation for people who "can't afford" it
 - people who can't "find" work or who flat out won't

and really, God knows how many other things along this line
that keep social workers employed by the hundreds of thousands
(in the U.S.). Even more sadly, many of the items like this are
no longer regarded as "aberrations" by society. Take the manner
in which the Federal Government paid out $20 billion per year
back in the 1970s to encourage women to have children out of
wedlock. And that was back when $20 billion was really a lot
of money. Did the bureaucrats have sense enough to understand
what *incentive* is?  I think they did; I just think that they didn't
care.

I have at least two old friends who stopped working back in
their twenties.  One simply convinced the government that he
was insane (he's not a bit insane, far from it), and the other
has always taken so many weird drugs that his natural
hypocondria has been supplemented by real (though induced)
medical problems. Each of these people, in my opinion, would
have been better off if no such safety nets ever existed.

Oh yes, I can hear almost every reader exclaiming, but what
about those who really cannot work, or really are ill. Are you
going to let them starve? See once again the engineering 
mentality at work?  We are supposed to provide for every
conceivable case, regardless of the messages this sends out
or what influences it has on upcoming generations, or what
it does to people's incentives. I'm not opposed to charity
freely given.

I was so outraged back in the 80s when I learned that a 
perfectly innocent teenager may be called up by a social
worker eager to see if he qualifies for some program or
other. The government thus employs a numbe of "pushers"
for their kind of dependence, (the dependence that keeps
all the bureaucrats employed, and that makes damn sure
that no "aberrations" ever, ever go away).

> (I assume you're not speaking of such aberrations as
> jailing "soft drug" users, at vast expense,

Alas, no, that's an entire other ball of worms that our over-active
nanny state has chosen to saddle us with

> or punishing the wrong country for the crimes of a religious
> splinter group from elsewhere, at even vaster expense, 

knowing when, and if, to take pre-emptive military action is
incredibly difficult, and it wouldn't surprise me greatly if Ron
Paul and other libertarians are right that we should not "gamble"
on the benefits of that---but yes, that is an entirely different
story too

Lee

> although these might be good motives for disliking tax collection.)