Reading Ayn Rand in combination with discussing fuel subsidies for the energy poor in rural Scotland has gotten me thinking about the sort of world I want to live in. Serious stuff. Lets start with this: I know what I don't want.
I don't want to live in a society where pool old ladies freeze to death in their homes to be found via the spring floods the next year, where people loose their homes in those spring floods and are left to make their kids sweep chimneys, where those kids grow up not having a chance at a decent education, life and achieving something more than just basic survival. Or even just survival.
If you are young or old and things are not working out for you, in my mind, it's easy, you need help and I am willing to pick up the tab, but given that life turns out to be a big of a progression, this totally doesn't work out as smoothly as anticipated.
Needy kids become needy adults and who is to say on your 18th or 21st or 25th birthday all of a sudden you have it in you to seek your chance to be happy, healthy and independent when all you have known is a parent who switches on the TV once they roll out of bed at 11 and call the pizza delivery to bring extra beer while they are at it?
That's not really our likely Harvard candidate, is it? Even the better if she is. Lets stick with or her sad brother for a moment though. Can it be that someone is somehow excused from ever taking responsibility for their own life? Lets assume for a second that had they been born in Borneo 200 years ago they might have been a chief fighter and it's only this crap society that made them paralyzed on his couch and beer guzzling? Don't the winners of today who would have been eaten by this chief fighter in Borneo 200 years ago, owe him help? But help to keep up the beer guzzling or what? I mean, can you force someone to do something they don't want to? Can you assume they want what you think is good for them? And once you are old and you spent your whole life beer guzzling, do I still feel the need to pay for your happy retirement (from beer guzzling) just because you are old? Also what about the Harvard goer from this family? She made it, maybe the rest just didn't try hard enough and should be left to beer guzzling because that is what they do best?
My first instinct is that I love my independence and I hate to be told what to do. Beyond that, I think, on average I trust myself more than any unknown person. If you were to tell me a thing or two about what I might need or should want in life, I am all about it, because I already hand picked you to be my friend and thus either we agree on certain things or we don't but I respect your view. In any case, I will not have an unknown entity, lets call it the state tell me what to do. I like my rights. So does beer guzzler.
In return I am willing to accept that the state is not responsible to figure my life out for me, instead that responsibility lies with myself. I don't expect to be handed things. Oh wait, really? I do expect health care, especially now that I pay taxes, I do expect help if due to bad luck or bad decisions I am temporarily in a bad spot, I do expect the cops to hunt down those people were they to break into my apartment and take my pretty things, I expect people not to take my pretty things, I do expect public transport to work for me, I expect to get TV reception (which I don't get) and so on. I do expect lots of things. I am very lucky that I am not lacking anything, but I do feel that given how good and virtuous I am now, someone should take care of me, in case things turn bad. So I think we have established here that not only do I like my rights, I do have a few expectations too. So does beer guzzler.
Rights are great , how about responsibilities? I do think every woman, man and child (when kid's meals are 29 cents on Wednesdays at least), have a right to eat their dirty double whopper. I don't necessarily want to exercise that right but I want to have it and I want you to have it, including beer guzzler, as long as that does not hurt people around you. Same for that great Argentinian wine. Same for riding motor cycles fast, same for traveling to diseased countries. Of course hurting others is relative in a society of socialist health care, which I already established I think is a right in itself. So what IS my responsibility then? How do I not hurt someone yet at the same time exercise my rights? This is getting very complicated.
So beer guzzling brother of Harvard-going hard working beating-the-odds-sister has the right to be beer guzzling and also the right to get his stomach pumped whenever necessary because I would want that right? Or not because he in fact is not paying taxes? Is it about paying in that qualifies you to get something out? Is that the responsibility bit of the bargain? Harvard-going sister on a freshmen year binge weekend certainly has the right to be taken care of, after all she will contribute great things to society just as soon as she becomes that social worker or Aids fighting scientist. So, is contributing great things, even future great things, living up to your responsibilities? But his poor granny who watched her own kids turn into beer guzzlers, worked hard her entire life, failed miserably, and now had a heart attack from all her fried chicken...oh come on, are you going to let her die? Not in the place I want to live in! So is the responsibility bit really about being a good person. A good person by whose standard?
Is it a value judgement about how people live their lives that makes them eligible to claim their rights? Whose value judgement? I trust my friends judgement and I trust my own. I bet beer guzzler does too. I want to have my burger and eat it too, don't you?
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