more personal responsibility - less government

[mahogany]

As much as I like the idea of government sponsored safety net - I often think the price of having the government as a caregiver is too high. It's not even the fact that we pay for it through our taxes. The money of it through higher taxes isn't even the part that bugs me. I guess it's some residue of my leftist tendencies from my youth, but I do feel responsibility for the wellbeing of others. Over the past few years, I've the increasing belief that the government should not be the caregiver of the people. We give up too much in personal freedoms, and it leads to disasters like this heartbreaking situation:

http://sites.google.com/site/homeschoolinginsweden/sweden---the-next-germany-/the-state-abduction-of-dominic-johannsson

http://friendsofdomenic.blogspot.com/p/because-they-loved.html


I don't even think this is a slippery slope. I think what's happening with this case in Sweden is the natural and inevitable result when people give up the personal liberties in exchange for an extensive social safety net.

ETA: This is excellent - LONG, but excellent: http://youtu.be/rEED4yFltCE

Comments

[toezontheground.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced by one cherry-picked case, however appalling. I mean you could - on the other side - pick out terrible cases about places where there's ineffectual government and many kids miss altogether out on education, or where they're NOT taken by government from a home where they're being abused or whatever.

I agree about the need to be diligent about protecting our liberties, I agree that we need to be very cautious about giving them up to government, I'm just not so sure there's always a direct and equivalent link between "government sponsored safety net" and loss of liberties.

Freedom can also be 'just another word for nothing left to lose'. How do you weigh up the freedom of a well-educated person who has a good, steady job, to choose to holiday in Fiji every year thanks to a tax-cut versus the loss of freedom of a beneficiary to have enough support to be able to buy groceries to feed her family, due to government measures enacted to 'tighten-up' the welfare system in part to close the budget gap created by the tax-cut? That choice is exactly what has happened here in NZ - we see the effects of it everyday at the Centre.