osan

Originally Posted by Voluntarist
Unrestricted and unfettered pregnancy is simply something that is incompatible with a welfare state. Until the welfare state is abolished, controls will have to be tolerated on what some people think of as rights.

Originally Posted by ProIndividual

I hope this was total sarcasm, given your name on these forums.

I suspect it is not, and he is right. If the welfare state is to exist, then human rights MUST be curtailed. Why? Because the two are fundamentally incompatible where the tacit assumption underlying the existence of the state is the guaranty of survival.

In the "real" world, those people who cannot support one more mouth to feed either choose to limit their own numbers, seek the charity of others to help them, watch their offspring die, give up said issue for adoption, or sacrifice themselves so their issue might survive. That last bit is not likely to meet with success, BTW.

In the second case, charity will go only so far, beyond which those who give will have to limit their generosity for the sake of their own survival. The third option speaks for itself, of course, as does the fourth. Given enough time for this reality to sink in, people would return to natural sense. Furthermore, given the available technological conveniences for preventing undesired pregnancies, those who could not afford another mouth to feed would likely avail themselves of the easy ability to limit their issue. Those who choose otherwise pay the price, as had always been the case prior to the advent of the idiocy of the so-called "welfare state". This more natural arrangement preserves the rights of men optimally, whereas the welfare state must perforce diminish those rights if it is itself to remain viable. That is because there is only so much of other people's resources that is available for the welfare recipient.

When one examines the bare structure of such welfare institutions as energy systems, stripping away the noise of the window dressing that seemingly differentiates one nation from another, a stark and glaring truth emerges. The sourcing, distribution, and disposition of the energy of such systems is precisely the same between them, leaning heavily in favor of increasing entropy as the recipient-class grows in proportion to the supporting-class, such growth being virtually guaranteed without the intercession of force to curtail it.

What happens to an electrical grid when the load upon it grows beyond the capacity of the generation source to provide? Voltages drop. This cannot be avoided as it is pure elementary physics that determines this reality. Increase the load and eventually the stress on the generator will cause physical failure for all the reasons well known to electrical engineers. It is no different with a welfare system. Over-tax the provider-class and it will inevitably collapse, bringing the system to a sudden and very violent halt. This is why fundamental pragmatism dictates that the so-called "state" disparage at least some of the rights of the individual, which is alone sufficient to assess a welfare state as morally repugnant and invalid. In theory, the very purpose of such a state violates fundamental realities of this world, one centrally important element of that reality being that people cannot have their cakes and eat it, too - all cost-free. This alone demonstrates the mere notion of a welfare state as pure clinical insanity.

Futhermore, the welfare state is self-contradicting through its internal inconsistency. It (at least tacitly) asserts that all humans have "rights" such as the right to survive, the right to food, the right to (look to the right and cough, AHEM) healthcare, and so forth. The underlying basis of this is the presumption that these rights are unalienable and universal, which is the bedrock upon which those who administer such states claim the authority to use force in the redistribution of wealth. This irrevocably implies the existence of an authority above and beyond the state itself (God? Banish the thought and burn the witches!), even though that selfsame state will incredibly deny it (more barking madness). The state then, in the spirit of the ghost of Alinsky, ignores reality and all logic and reason as it wields its chainsaw and does a hack-job upon those rights that are incompatible NOT with humanity's interests, but that of the authority of the state itself. The "state" has conjured a demonic system of self-destruction, calls it "the greater good", and must tailor the rights of men with a dull and rusty ax in order to best assure that the system in question is perpetuated in the name of an impossible objective: the survival of all men. And part of the strategy for achieving the goal is to murder some of those men whose survival is supposed to be the paramount concern of the state which murders them. This inconvenient and ugly little detail must, of course, be ignored, but there are those who refuse to look the other way. Therefore, the "state" must then find a means of explaining away their murder. They do this through the assumption that a fetus is not a human being. They COULD be right, but they have not proven the case. Rather, they operate on the ASSUMPTION that they are right. How convenient.

At the end of the day, the purpose of the welfare state is not the survival of all men, but the survival of its own authority over those men.

Given all this, we are individually faced with a decision to answer the question: are human rights real or are they not? If they are, are they equal or are they differing between men? If equal, then the welfare state must be abolished and kept in the ground where it belongs because there is NO valid basis for curtailing those rights, especially the first right, which is the claim to life itself. If differing, how do we know that they are; how do we know how they differ; who decides; what is the standard of judgment; and so on down a virtually endless line of questions that arise invariably as the result of the previous answers given.

I do believe I have just demonstrated the invalidity of the welfare state; that I have just completely crushed the concept for all time. The only thing left is for men to act in proper accord with the greater truths of physical and moral reality. I will not hold my breath in wait.