This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Guest Post: The Domination of Government And The Decline Of Self-Reliance And Community
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
The Domination of Government and the Decline of Self-Reliance and Community
Is there a causal connection between the rise of the dominant Savior State and the decline of self-reliance and community? How could it not be a causal factor?
The now-classic book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2001, by Robert Putnam) documented the steep decline of community and "social capital" in the U.S.:
Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values--these and other changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live. Our growing social-capital deficit threatens educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health and happiness.
While the causal connections between the decline of community and TV, the Internet, two-earner households, suburban sprawl and long commutes, etc., are visible in a common-sense fashion, they miss the primary unspoken causal factor: the growing domination of the Central "Savior" State in every aspect of the economy and society.
From an anthropological or natural-selection point of view--i.e. one informed by sociobiology-- community and marriage alike are at root highly advantageous survival techniques: a group has far more resources than a similar number of isolated individuals, and offspring are more likely to survive and prosper if two parents are devoting resources to their upbringing rather than only one adult is carrying that burden.
In nations dominated by Savior States, there is less reason to invest in community or self-reliance, because the government handles everything.
There is no need to pick up litter in your neighborhood, because it's somebody's job in local government to pick up trash. (When was the last time you saw anyone pick up trash or litter in your neighborhood, town or city?)
There is no need to tutor your own child if they are performing poorly in school--that's the school's job. (This is what teachers hear all the time--"that's your job." Oh really? It's my job to get your kid to do homework instead of surfing the Web or watching TV? How many parents even know what their child is studying, beyond the title of the class?)
If Grandma is lonely then the government should provide a van and staffing to take her to the government-paid senior center.
While many people profess to "get it" that they won't be receiving any Social Security pension when they retire, exactly how has this realization informed their daily finances? Are they making the radical self-reliance adjustments needed to respond to the devolution of the Savior State?
How about Medicare? What are people doing in their day-to-day life to prepare for a future in which the Savior State can't "fix" whatever is wrong with their health? (My Mom has reported that some of her elderly acquaintances have baldly stated that they don't need to adjust their unhealthy lifestyle because "Medicare will give me a new (failing bit).")
We are constantly reassured that "there is plenty of money" for all the Savior State's vast (and ever-expanding) obligations, yet simple grade-school math calls all these happy assumptions into question. Even if we taxed the top 1% at a rate of 70%, that wouldn't be enough to fund the $100 trillion+ future obligations of Medicare, which rises inexorably by 6% a year even as the underlying economy grows at best at a rate of 2%.
Right now, as the 65 million-strong baby Boom generation has barely begun to retire, the nation is running a monumental deficit of $1.6 trillion (more if off-balance sheet borrowing is included), fully 12% of the nation's entire GDP. As I have documented here, Social Security is running deficits in 2011 that weren't supposed to occur until 2018.
There is no limit on the demands of citizens for "more more more" from the Savior State. There "should be" affordable housing for all, heightened security everywhere to keep us safe at all times (how about 200 million security cameras, as a start), and so on. Each Savior State project is needed, necessary, must-have to those receiving the funding.
In such a mindset and politics of experience, then the advantages provided by self-reliance and community wither. The world is complex, and it's the government's job to figure it all out, so we do't need to be informed or to vote. Or, the government is now so big, it doesn't make a difference how we vote.
And why exactly is it now so big, so dominant, so intrusive and so addicted to borrowing to fund its spending? Could it be that people want more "services" but they reject paying for them via higher taxes? This is precisely what polls have found.
In psychology, a dysfunctional, crippling relationship is called "co-dependent." The "taker" dependent on the "giver" is reduced to sullen resentment and abject terror should the "giver" withdraw support; on the other side, the "giver" is sullenly resentful of the burdens imposed by a demanding "taker" who never seems to get healthier or more independent.
Perhaps the dynamic between an ever-more dominant Savior State and a resentful, complicit, dependent-on-bread-and-circuses citizenry is best described as dysfunctionally co-dependent.
Promise people everything--education, housing, safety, retirement, healthcare, job placement, entertainment, the arts, you name it, regardless of their output and engagement--and what need do they have for "old" systems of "social capital" support such as community, marriage, church and other free associations that require commitment, reciprocity and tolerance for others?
Clearly, there are functions such as national defense and protecting the citizenry from predation that government is designed to fulfill. But the evolution from a government tasked with limiting predation and exploitation to a Savior State for all is not as "win-win" as it is commonly depicted by enthusiasts buoyed by their rock-solid faith in the government's printing presses to "pay for everything for everybody forever."
The costs are not just financial. The government has paid for the lane, it's our "right," so now we bowl alone.
»
- 9721 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
This is why Sweden is such a hellhole.
Sweden, a hell for some perhaps
Thanks to unchecked immigration those girls now dye their hair black to avoid being targeted by the invaders.
http://forums.skadi.net/showthread.php?t=139004
The wonders of diversity.
As do beautiful redheads in Ireland. Sad.
You mean we're supposed to be self-reliant instead of dependent?
Of course. The question is whether or not you want to recognize that assisting those less fortunate than you provides a net benefit while you are working at it. The libertariantard attitude attempts to contend that this is impossible; it isn't.
"I'm all right so fuck all the rest" NEVER works in the long run, because "O fortuna, velat luna, statu variabilis...".
Anarcho capitalism will never happen; power vacuums always get filled. A true pipe dream.
Here, here, Hugh!
Government can only do FOR us in direction proportion to what government can do TO us! Collectivists never tell us, or even admit to this verity! Collectivism has eventually, but inevitably, destroyed every civilization it has ever touched!
It is now doing the same to America!
paracrine signaling.
Guess I see this less as a "Savior state" and more as a begger state. Look to most of rest of the world for the model. The state increases it's power and the clan that runs it (like the royal family in Saudi Arabia or power elite in France) gives out favours to the groups that keep it's clan in power. Since the regular folkes no longer see themselves as part of the goverment they pay in as little as possible and beg to the elites for their fair share of the goodies. Since what they recieve has nothing to do with the work that they do, nobody is really happy. There's always somebody else getting more free stuff than they are. America was of course founded on a completely different set of values but they have been educated out of too many of us to stop the process short of financial collapse or civil war. It is amusing to see the head of the IMF break the golden rule of these elites (getting caught in the act) and the reaction of their friends in high places.
Excellent article!!
As children we are considered dependent, and as we grow and mature(supposedly) we used to enable our children to move from a state of dependency to independency. This is what becoming an autonomous adult is all about. From there we can achieve interdependency thus enabling ourselves to still maintain our sense of self and form emotionally mature relationships based on cohesion and not parasitism.
However, in the last 40 years we have rejected self-respect, critical thinking, and a strong personal work ethic in favor of establishing a societal and personal victim mentality and the outright refusal to grow up. Self-reliance means personal responsibility and thinking for yourself. Many people love childlike dependency states, magical thinking, and that someone or some-thing takes care of everything in life for them. This is existence not living.
Much of this is our own fault. We can blame media persuasion, government, and a materialistic society, however, failure to pull up ones own bootstraps , make the best of a bad situation, or whine till you get your own way smacks of a narcissistic victim mentality in which it's all about you. The self-absorption of our present culture(s) has destroyed the fabric of family and community and when not just one but many stop caring, it all starts to fall apart.
A lack of work ethic, pulling together, and due diligence spawns incompetence both moral and mental. Thus the vast majority are blind, ignorant and stupid when it comes to personal responsibility, observing current events both financial and world based. Thus emotional retardation and ego's run amuck replace autonomy, community and critical thinking skills.
Well said! That's not what I got out of the post, but YOU'RE definitely on the right track.
Agree with above, well said.
The Church used to be the willing go-to place for those in need. Usually with no strings attached. Now, not so much, or even at all. I know of several churches that are trying to help with food banks and disaster relief, only to be told that welfare is handling the need and if they help with disaster, the insurance might not pay up.
The absolute best thing that could happen to our Traditional American Culture would be for a complete implosion of faerdel gnoevmenrt.
Abolish the fed, let's see the squid and jpm be self reliant.
No shit.
But, in the meantime leave it to CHS to beat the victims with the "we're all to blame meme."
It all comes down to one question: what is the limitation of the pervue of government? Until that gets answered, none of this social and fiscal nonsense will ever be straightened out. Once they construed the phrase 'provide for the common welfare' in the constitution to allow any kind of spending it was all over. If there is no limitation on the amount a government can extract from their citizens, then we are just slaves. Forget about a gold standard, they would just get around to debasing it eventually as they have done throughout history. Forget about a balanced budget amendment: that still does not limit the pervue of government, it just means they will tax you more. Until we kill this democracy and re-establish a republic that definitively constrains the pervue of government, it will only continue to the collapse point.
Of course what's unsaid in this piece is that nobody CHOOSES to not educate their kids, to not feed themselves, or ship grandma off to some unsanitary home.
REAL people - people who WORK for a living - do these things out of necessity in order to survive. They do so because, in our backwards economic system that puts money and greed before all else, the pursuit of paper occurs at the expense of all existing social relations.
People enslave themselves, by 'choice' or at gunpoint (i.e., the entire history of Capitalism from Columbus to the present), because the economic system demands it. They either become a wage slave or starve to death. The other matters emerge out of the material conditions and not by choice, which the author suggests.
Columbus = capitalism?? LMFAO.
Here's the REAL enslavement-gunpoint history:
http://www.scottmanning.com/content/communist-body-count/
Before he started enslaving and murdering everyone, he stole their gold. That's pretty much the 500 year ascension of Capitalism in a nutshell.
Then, by your definition, 'capitalism' began when the first ape descended from the trees to get more ripe fruit (via gravity) than his brethren. lmao, still..
Part of it is due to the gov, part is due to ignorance, part of it has to do with the overloards beyond gov't. The internet is beginning to correct some of the misconceptions people have. In time all will be well. Unfortunately, that is time we don't presently have to spare. Buckle up, we're going for a real bad ride.
the decline of self-reliance and community?
Robert Putnam observed that people in multiracial societies are distrustful not only of other racial and ethnic groups, but also members of their own race or ethnicity.[Robert Putnam: Diversity Is Our Destruction, By Patrick J. Buchanan, August 09, 2007] This is an obvious recipe for stress, anxiety and depression.
And you get scheiss like this:
A-G Holder: No Hate Crime Protection for White Christians
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u6eGRvGinc
Those poor abused White Christians! Banana Republic must have run out of khakis.
Americans tend to lump libertarians, conservatives, republicans and fascists into one big dumb pool. The dumbing-down of ideology to black vs. red and right vs. left.
Every president since FDR has been a welfare-state president so your point is moot.
that comment was actually meant for NOTW777 and not Tyler..
The Re-Shuffle
You know you have reached the peak of the consumption half-cycle when the truth is ruled verbal abuse subject to imprisonment, and the bred sexists are throwing each other under the bus (IMF), because they can’t change their behavior in real time and they have no other out.
The chauvinists are all out, the feminists are all in, and this is where the witch trials begin, war is initiated, and the polarity of Family Law is swapped during the ensuing melee. Anyone left in the big cities or isolated towns dependent on distribution are idiots, want to go down with the ship, or both. In any case, they should not be expecting assistance.
The velvet glove has mapped out all the migration pinch points and placed them “under construction,” and the false military is already ramping up for when that glove comes off. At this point, if you have any functioning brain cells, you should have your choice of homes to occupy. Think about you basic needs – energy, soil, and clean water.
This is the empire’s last gasp for breath. Watch Saudi Arabia on the downhill slide and false durable goods orders for QEIII. In the investment half-cycle, fundamentals predominate. In the consumption half-cycle, misdirection prevails. Your misdirection algorithm doesn’t care which way prices are going; it only cares about relative change, plus or minus. Your algorithm is going to put its “invisible hand” on the empire’s head and push it under for the last time. You beat the casino by betting on misdirection to occur.
There is nothing nastier than a grandma, except a grandpa that encourages you to apply at McDonalds. The limousine liberals are much nastier than the conservatives ever thought of being. I kept our girl away from the other black holes for 6 weeks so she could get a re-start and what do you suppose she did? Went back to a small town, dependent on distribution, and controlled by her fellow feminists, which threw her under the bus in the first place. Surprise, surprise, like bugs to a light (oncoming train).
The deck is about to be re-shuffled. You want to be ready for that first deal, which will be the only “fair” one relative to instantaneous time, at that moment when there is 0 volts in the neutral line. Manage that moment; compounding will do the rest for you. At some point soon, one of those replacements is going to blow up the wrong/right component on the global IC chip, start a chain reaction, and it’s going to be all over, except the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Under Caesar, and there is always a Caesar under development, possession is 9/10s of the law. The other 1/10 is relative. Gotta love quantum physics; it’s like death and taxes.
I hear this statement often: "There is no limit on the demands of citizens for "more more more" from the Savior State." What BS. The only such demands I hear are from pro-government shills. Look around you. How many of your friends are demanding more from government. Everyone I know is asking the government to stop dictating to them and complicating their lives. Turn on the news, however, and you see heads of government shill organizations demanding more: teachers unions, social workers, doctors, lawyers, environmental groups, universities etc. These are the same sycophants and cryers the Roman Senate hired to surround the Imperial seat of power.
"Turn on the news, however, and you see heads of government shill organizations demanding more: teachers unions, social workers, doctors, lawyers, environmental groups, universities etc. These are the same sycophants and cryers the Roman Senate hired to surround the Imperial seat of power." Speaking of "shill"(sic)...
Hunh, no mention of the military industrial complex (750 billion tax fiatscos/ year) but teachers (at 53 billion tax fiatscos/year) are the 'big' drain? I notice that no TBTF bailouts made your list either, just a schwack of people whose occupations result in actual benefits for the whole of society, interesting.
...and apparently you want to keep it that way.
No Goin. The banksters and hawksters simply pay off the politicians directly. They don't like to be in front of the cameras.
All the more reason to bring them up in a comment on spending, rather than wholly omit them and focus on the little fish who, in addition to providing valuable services that produce a NET benefit for the country, cost a small tithe when compared to the price of supporting those who contribute little if anything at all to society (or are even being outright detrimental to its well-being).
The more functions that the Savior State assumes from the private sector, the more that citizens will focus on political considerations than on economic ones. We can see this today in how much air time of talk radio is filled with politics rather than economics or business.
The Savior State destroys liberty if only because that when it assumes a previously private function, choice becomes restricted or forbidden. What government will do or won't do will come to define the service. Cost considerations give way to political ones. Often, as with Social Security and the new "health care", escape will be forbidden or only granted to favored parties. The actual cost of the service and the real quality becomes irrelevant, for customers cannot really register their displeasure by going elsewhere or choosing a different vendor.
We're from the government and we're here to help...
Thought provoking post.
When did our culture change? When did we cede the public virtue of personal responsiblity?
When I worked with the homeless long ago I was stung by how few were willing to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Everything that happened to many of them was someone else's fault: The landlord wouldn't give them an extra week to make the rent; bosses fired them because they were late for work too many times, it was the pushers fault for getting them hooked on meth, crack, etc.
Shelter staff and volunteers nightly held classes on what we called 'Life Skills' sessions which is a lofty term for what parents (or even one) should have done in the first place.
My take aways from that experience were:
I began to perceive other problems our society has through the same filter: The obese get Medicare funded mobility chairs and open heart surgery; Taxpayer bailouts go to banks too big, funding retirement is a public responsibility not a personal one. The list can go on and on.
How US citizen typical.
Always the other's fault. It is always funny how US citizens exclude themselves of behaviours that are typical US citizen behaviours.
The post exhibits the middle class syndrom that prevails in the US. The issues lie both in the upper class and the lower class, not the middle class. The middle class is the backbone of the US and so.
Of course, having a discrete approach to responsibility, that is claiming responsibility for rewarding consequences and rejecting responsibility for adverse consequences is US behaviour. It has nothing to do with class as US citizens engage in this behaviour. Poor, middle and rich act the same. They are US citizens after all. And since since the very beginning, as exhibited by Indians' testimonies going at length about that trait. Showing once again that the US citizen nature is eternal.
And here, the poster, as a true US citizen, states the usual song. Instead of admitting that selective approach to responsibility is US citizen trademark, the poster goes into "I am responsible, my peers are, the others are not".
Interesting comment. You're correct, to a point.
No matter how you feel about it, the middle class in the US has always been held as the ideal. It's in our national literature, our national experience, and our national character. From Jefferson's yeoman farmer, to novelists like Fitzgerald, to sites like ZH the ideal is the same: the best citizens are the most virtuous, and the most virtuous are found to be the most self-reliant; and the most self-reliant are found to be in the middle class or striving for the middle class, for they do not rely on the State. Their idea of the State is one that maintains order, ensuring a stable society, with the minimum of intrusion.
The upper classes depend upon the state to help them create the conditions to enhance their wealth. The poor rely upon the state to aleviate their suffering. Both rich and poor constantly make demands on the State. Contrasted with them, the middle class often just want to be left alone by that State.
What galls the writer of the Guest Post and me is the effort to change our national character to one of dependence from self-reliance. It's a debate Americans have been having for generations under the heading of entitlements; and we should debate this, for it affects our national character.
A good book to read to understand this character ideal is The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter.
Amazing how time and energy was wasted here on Blue v. Red.
Might it be considered the ultimate capitalist model (if not patriotic) for an individual to attempt to fleece the very State upon which it subsists? Would Machiavelli agree with or de Tocqueville expect just such an outcome if they could peer over the hedge and view our timeline?
Dave Harrison
www.tradewithdave.com
Need your advice ZH'ers. This blog and its constituents fascinates me. Thought I would crowdsource avice from y'all: I'm 38. Not married. I've saved about $700k much of it from the sale of a small biz. Now I'm unemployed with a couple of licensing projects that might produce another $500k over the next few years if they pan out. I live in expensive NorCal. I don't want to keep spending my savings down to zero while I look for work that may or may not materialize. I like to think of myself as capable of everything, qualified for nothing. I've interviewed for a few $75k per year jobs with 2 weeks vacation at tech start-ups. The jobs depress me: essentially white color sweatshop - make dozens of outbound calls selling some product, your performance is wired to a CRM tool monitoring # of calls, length of calls, etc. Dehumanizing.
What would you do if you were me? Keep playing the "corporate" system that seems increasingly rigged and gives me a sense of anomie? Move? Where to? Do what? I already have some gold.
Wow, you already have more money than anyone else could ever imagine saving in a lifetime! I will be lucky to save that much by the time (if I make it that far) I am in my late 40s- early 50s.
Here, here! Don't worry, the rest of us will be unemployed shortly. (If you can't beat them, then bring the rest down to your level)
"Promise people everything--education, housing, safety, retirement, healthcare, job placement, entertainment, the arts, you name it, regardless of their output and engagement--and what need do they have for "old" systems of "social capital" support such as community, marriage, church and other free associations that require commitment, reciprocity and tolerance for others?"
I tend to agree. However, you may be putting the cart a bit ahead of the horse, or at least not acknowledging what is, in effect, a viscious feedback loop. The decay of social structure has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of the totalitarian nanny state. However, in many cases, it is the decay of long-standing social institutions that causes government to provide for social functions previously performed by communities, families, and churches.
There is an enormous elephant in the room, by the way, that no one ever discusses in America: I mean NO ONE. That is feminism. Feminism has produced more profound and pervasive social, political, and cultural changes than communism or naziism could have hoped to. There is no question that divorce rates and neglect of children has risen precipitously as the ideas of feminism have spred: spewing broken families, drug-addled children, and dysfunctional citizens across the American landscape, filling the American prisons, destroying American education, and perverting general morals. Women entering the workforce in droves has done as much or more to drive down wages as Mexican immigration and Chinese outsourcing combined. Broken families lead to financial distress for the parents as well as psychological illness for the children. American foodstamp rolls, welfare rolls, and medical assistance rolls are filled with divorced or single mothers and their progeny.
There is much more broken in America than her government. She is indeed the mother of whores.
As a vistor to your country, one of the things that sticks out is when you get in an airplane and fly over it. The shear amount of land, most of it favourable for agriculture, tourism, industry, resource extraction. The shear space, even in the cities, still larger than most EU cities. A natural resource endowment beyond most, if not all other countries in the world.
Apparently, some people have decided, via offshoring, financial devices (debt) and political spin that this now belongs to other countries like China because the global workforce has to be merged together and pushed to the lowest common denominator.
The whole of the western world faces these problems. The questions are:
WHAT has happened ?
WHY has it happened ?
HOW has it happened ?
WHO made it happen ?
Then, only then can anyone know what should be done. Smaller government is only half the answer. Smaller corporations who are bound tighter to the law is as much as part of the solution, and obviously that especially includes banks.
We have to make a choice, make globalisation LOCAL. Consume less and produce more. None of this happens without identifying who is responsible and removing them from the system is mandatory. Destruction of failure IS CAPITALISM. This applies to leadership and politics, as well as industry.
If the Chinese/India et al can't sell to the West, they will have to sell else where (preferably in their homeland).
If the COST of this is less stuff, fewer holidays or maybe none at all, older cars and smaller homes, but the benefit is keep your job, keep your savings, have a better work / life balance with your family, which is the better choice.
There will always be economic progress due to technology, so its a VALUES choice.