Dear Friends,
It seems to me, that the modern incarnation of welfare state capitalism, punishes virtue and rewards vice, (in all things and in all ways). Then those very people, who have created such a system of incentives and disincentives, whine and complain that there is so much corruption in the world… it is apparent that people need more government to solve the problems in society. Those new policies mesh with the old, rewarding corruption and punishing virtue, and continue the slide.
Any time government takes away, intentionally or unintentionally, the negative consequences of negative behavior, government encourages that negative behavior. People are people you and I we all respond to encouragement. But for government to take on the role of protecting people from the consequences of their behavior government also takes on the responsibility for future negative behavior and the consequences.
If we consider the whole of human society, as a great big complex entity, made up of individuals, diverse in many ways, interconnected and interdependent, but most of all… able to learn. Apply a negative incentive and some fraction of society will respond by engaging in more of that behavior or starting engaging in behavior that would otherwise seem out of the question. People will learn to engage in behavior that will be rewarded by the government.
As you continue to add negative incentives, in a hypothetical society, the negative behaviors multiply logarithmically. Individuals learn that the lack of self control gets rewarded by the State. Some see and learn by example and others are educated by the cultural medium, to lack self control, because the State will reward it.
But even welfare State capitalism requires someone who will work, to produce for the increasing many, who do not have the ability to engage in the market system. The results of government policies that reward negative behavior, (lack of self control), create people who, amazingly, have no self control. As such they are useless in the workplace. Where self control is the hallmark of a civilized man.
Because to maintain the productivity that allows so many to become unfit for labor, the market must grow productivity, at a rate that meets the needs of not only those that are still fit to engage in work, but for those that increasingly are unfit for work. With so many people unfit to interact in the market system, the apparent need for government programs that negate the consequences of negative behavior, grows exponentially.
Lets now consider government regulation that increasingly produces friction for the proper functioning of the market. This results in a slowing of market productivity. Slowing the growth of productivity, squeezes the resources in our hypothetical society, so that all of society comes into some form of low level conflict over the diminishing resources. This creates conditions that are ripe for stratification of a society. Similar to the stratification we see in the oligarchal capitalist societies in Latin America.
But wait a moment, government in a welfare State capitalist society, has the ability to borrow money, in the name of it’s citizens. Under this system even as government policies make more and more people unfit for work and slows productivity growth, through regulation, it can borrow money sufficient to mask the negative consequences of government’s negative behaviors.
Et cetera, et cetera…
