The Consequences of Freedom

Today's SCOTUS ruling has developed a lot of conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Forums, and remarkably even face-to-face discussion on health care, health insurance, charity, working and what it all means in a civil society that is supposedly geared toward enlarged freedom for the individual person. The issue at hand is, I think, does a person have a "right" to health insurance from the federal government, which is "funded," yes funded, by taxpaying citizens? Some seem to think so, particularly the Left and even some on the Right (compassionate conservatism - a unique beast). I don't think so, but I'm not going to dive into why I think so, instead I want to share a post written by a person of the Left I read on a friend's FB (Facebook) wall/timeline/whatever.

The context of the conversation is that people should work to provide income and health insurance for themselves and their families if they have they have a family, but basically work to pay for his health insurance. If you don't work then you shouldn't have health insurance provided for you because obviously you can't pay for it. I think it was also stated that if you don't work you shouldn't expect the government to give you food, water, and shelter either instead that kind of care should be given from charities. This gentleman of the Left disagreed.

"No. Poor people SHOULD NOT starve if they don't work. To make that claim is to say that people have NO inherent value except for the wealth they have.

Nor should providing the safety net be left to charity. Charity is for specia l case disasters and people who slip through the system. It is NOT to cover up a gaping hole where a system should be.

You can get (most) people to work though the same laws of supply and demand that function everywhere else in the economy, without requiring that the people in the worst jobs have absolutely no alternative.

There will be exceptions of course - mostly drug addicts, the mentally ill and "hippies" for want of a better word. Some of them are going to have lots of money and won't bother the system anyway. If you feel the rest should be given the choice: lose their lives or lose their freedom (and that is what coerced work is), then fine. But tell me, is it these people's lives, or their freedom which you feel has no value at all?"  

There is a lot to cover just from this post alone (he has wrote many more, but he sticks to this foundation mostly) so I didn't have time to respond quickly and thought a blog post would be more profitable because I would have time to leave it and then come back to it. I'll go through this line by line. 

"No. Poor people SHOULD NOT starve if they don't work. To make that claim is to say that people have NO inherent value except for the wealth they have."

I don't know where he got the impression that we (conservatives/libertarians/the right) ever said that those who don't work should starve. However the question must be asked "If I don't work will I starve?" If the man doesn't have a close bond with loving family then he just may starve if he doesn't work. I think that if a man has lost his job, is single and has a close bond with family or friends then he has a better chance of getting shelter and food provided he doesn't find another job soon. If a man has a working spouse loses his job then they can adjust their expenditures and live differently until he can find new work. There are many examples, but let's focus on the man who doesn't want to work. Should this man starve for not working? I don't think any person with properly functioning moral faculties would say this man should starve, but it doesn't follow that we can't say this man will starve if he doesn't work to sustain his life. Who honestly thinks that it's up to someone else to provide food, shelter, and health care for this man who doesn't want to work? Am I morally obligated to sustain the lazy person? No. I am morally obligated to provide a hand-up, but not a hand-out. What is a hand-up? Providing for a person until he finds work. This person needs to be actively searching for work, not actively searching for a career. There is a difference, which I will tackle later in this post. I also think it's important to make clear those who cannot work, those who are disable in some way should be taken care of by their family and friends. Some people truly cannot work. These people need care from family, friends, and private institutions, not government.

If I did say that people should starve if they don't work; I don't understand why it would follow that I think such a person has no value except for the wealth they have. That doesn't make sense to me. If I said a person should starve for not working I would be saying that there is a certain truth that if you don't work, then you don't eat, which actually makes sense. If a man is able to work then he should work to provide for himself. If he doesn't work, then he is lazy. This kind of person, who is able to work, is infectious in a social way. The working men who see the lazy bum continue to be fed, clothed, and sheltered might think, "Gee, here I am working for a living and the lazy guy capable of working has must as much, maybe more, than I do. Why am I working?" The lazy man supported by the government is infectious. It gives the impression that a person has a right to government sustainment, which again is funded by the hard-working citizens paying taxes. Does the lazy man have a right to government sustainment? Not at all and thinking so doesn't mean he has no value. I actually think each human being has intrinsic value meaning each human being in himself is valuable no matter what someone else thinks or says. Even though each man is intrinsically valuable, it doesn't follow that his government is obligated to sustain his life through food, shelter and/or health insurance. I'm confused why some think so. I would think a government having people dependent on it would devalue a human being. The government is essentially saying you're not good enough to take care of yourself; you're not smart enough to know what is best for your life, i.e. your vocation, where your money is coming from, what doctor to choose, what you should eat. That is devaluing a human being. It creates a life of dependency. It takes away freedom to sustain yourself and to live your own life whatever the consequences. I don't, nor would I like anyone to, find self-worth or value in what a government gives me. I'm reminded of a statement philosopher Allan Bloom wrote on Rawls' Theory of Justice: "What Rawls creates is an enormously active government whose goal is to provide the primary goods, including the sense of one’s own worth, and therefore to encourage the attitudes that support the production and equal distribution of those goods. What can the future of liberty be in such a scheme?" 1

Nor should providing the safety net be left to charity. Charity is for specia l case disasters and people who slip through the system. It is NOT to cover up a gaping hole where a system should be

I wonder why a system must be in place? What is this hole? Who dug the hole? I think the hole is debt and it was dug by a new deal. I agree charity is for special cases. I'm confused on why there must be a government run safety system. I think individuals in need could depend on private institutions for difficult times.

You can get (most) people to work though the same laws of supply and demand that function everywhere else in the economy, without requiring that the people in the worst jobs have absolutely no alternative.

Worst jobs? While it's not the foundation for my thought, but I'm reminded of immigrants who come to the U.S. in search of work and are actually satisfied and proud of what the "privileged" call the "worst" jobs, e.g. landscaping, shoveling manure at a zoo, construction etc. Aside from illegal work or immoral work (prostitution, hitmen), is there really a "worse" job to being lazy? I would think laziness is worse than working at a zoo in order to provide for yourself. Temporary "demeaning" work is better than laziness. I cannot imagine laziness ever being respected. Take a job, provide for yourself. You might ask: "Well what if he's a struggling artist?" I've heard plenty of musical and artistic success stories and most of them involve the band or artist working part-time some even full-time until they "hit it big."  

If you feel the rest should be given the choice: lose their lives or lose their freedom (and that is what coerced work is), then fine. But tell me, is it these people's lives, or their freedom which you feel has no value at all?

Is it truly such a terrible thing that every able man have to work to provide for himself? Again, I ask, is laziness to be preferred to one of the "worst" jobs if that is all the work a man can find? For three and a half years I worked as a custodian at a college until I found work in my field. I don't say this to prop myself up on a pedestal, but to give an example that I did what some call demeaning work until I found a computer science job. I suppose I could have chosen to live off of the government cheese until I found preferred work, but why? Why would I have chose that instead of a "lowly" job that enabled me to personally pay for my bills? Further why is custodial work even "lowly" or one of the "worst" jobs? There is a terrible view that some jobs are demeaning, lowly, and/or one of those "worst" jobs. I say no. All work, that is legal and moral, is good work. It's good to work and provide for yourself and your family if you have one. Some jobs pay higher than others, for sure, but that doesn't make the job itself inherently better than some other job. 

Do I understand that statement correctly If you feel the rest should be given the choice: lose their lives or lose their freedom (and that is what coerced work is) to mean that having to work for a living is somehow losing freedom? If the lazy man doesn't want to work for "the man" to sustain his life he can leave the city and live in the woods to be as free as he wants to be; he can join an Amish community; he can live off the land, not pay bills, etc. If his family and/or friends don't mind feeding, clothing, and sheltering him I suppose he can live that life too. He doesn't need the government's welfare system to sustain himself outside of private or public employment. To think so is ridiculous. The government is also not forcing the lazy man to find work. It's simply a conclusion that if a single man who can't depend on family and friends doesn't work then he doesn't eat. It is in the realm of freedom that he makes that choice.

But tell me, is it these people's lives, or their freedom which you feel has no value at all?

I think freedom is a part of every human being's life. We are free creatures. Every human being has intrinsic value, which is to say we are valuable because we are human beings. Saying a man will starve if he doesn't work isn't claiming in any way that he is invaluable.

What of a Leftist government? I think a government that provides your every "need" or your welfare produces an artificial happiness and an artificial man. It promises to create a great society, but it actually produces a desert. It promises great tales that the unequal are actually equal and its dependents feed on this philosophy that government can take away your problems and greatest fears, which result from a fear of death. The rich Leftists have the artificial happiness of thinking they are maximizing liberty, diversity, and breaking down class walls, but in actuality they are only dividing, restricting liberty, and igniting class warfare; at least their self-satisfaction is served. Commenting on "big" government Bloom wrote: "Democracy, which was to free us from the myths which perverted nature, becomes the platform for a strident propaganda that denies nature for the sake of equality, as the myths of conventional aristocracies denied nature for the sake of inequality. The community desired is one without tension, without guilt (except for those who do not go along), without longing, without great sacrifices or great risks, one made for men’s idle wishes and for the sake of which man has been remade." 2 

True freedom involves risks. It involves the possibility of starvation if you choose to not provide for yourself. Those who think such a thing do not devalue freedom or the human being. On the contrary, the one who sees a person in need is truly free to help in whatever way he can the one who is suffering (even if the sufferer is suffering as a result of a poor life decision). A safety net cast out by a government takes away freedom I would think. Freedom is precious. Sometimes in the moment of suffering, the cost of giving up freedom doesn't seem like much, maybe only a little cost. Before you know it, your freedom is gone. A nudge here a nudge there into the government's direction instead of the direction you would like to take. 

The freedom lover notices the inherent value in a human being as a human being and freedom itself. There are consequences to freedom, but hopefully there is a free individual nearby who, for the sake of freedom, will give you a hand-up. 

Sources

1. Allan Bloom, “Justice: John Rawls Vs. The Tradition of Political Philosophy,” The American Political Science Review 69 [June 1975]: 648-62, at 662

2. ibid.