There’s nothing romantic about talk of welfare state; it’s actually nightmare

By Someshwar Nayak*
It is time one talked about social welfare. Social welfare according to most of the people is like magic trick played by state; but to be precise there is nothing like social welfare, social welfare is most illogical and faulty concept which people all across the globe ever came in touch with. Contagiousness of such concepts are a matter of concern; because growing youth and dormant people are their prime target, which covers most of the population and plethora of human resources.
Such concepts are insanely dangerous because it drives people to grow sapling of slavery which eventually end up taking form of giant lurky oak with several poisonous limbs. Later on such limbs are the one and solely reason why we face state of chaos and miseries, like we have already seen what happened during the collapse of centrally planned state like Soviet Union and Eastern European economies in early 1990s.
James Buchanan who won Nobel in Economics Science talked about one robust term which was apart from so called conventional term called ‘market failure’. He talked about something called ‘government failure’, he further said that government composed allocations of resources are not perfectly efficient either. His precise insight was that democratic political systems create their own inevitable externalities and some people can use the system to impose costs on other.
Precise observation of what Buchanan is saying is that there’s nothing like state as benevolent lord of the individuals, there’s nothing like welfare state and welfare only applies to individuals not to groups. He was well aware of what welfare state is and our hope is to make every single individual awake of what welfare state romance is all about.
Even if we will talk about well respected Economist like Adam Smith then we can observe that he clearly assigned the duties of sovereign in his book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”. He clearly writes that the sovereign has only three duties to attend: first, the duty of protecting the society from violence; second, the duty to protect every member of society from injustice and oppression of every other member of it; third, the duty of maintaining certain public institutions and certain public works.
So thinking of state as welfare state is nothing more or less than idiocy of each and every individual because it is the way to take individual rights away. It is coercive force which takes all our liberty and freedom; which in turn end up hurting one individual to feed gain to other.
Even what French Economist Frederic Bastiat said drives us toward individual rights we recieve from nature, he basically said that in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders; individuality, liberty, property are three gifts from God precede all human legislation and are superior to it. And we are well aware that in social welfare such godly gifts are taken away by honouring state as the name of God.
Social welfare is always faulty because it romanticize the reality, we can’t create God like bodies which can compose something called paradise. As Milton Friedman very robustly said there’s no paradise. People who romanticize state are insanely unaware of concept of individuality and concept of self interest. State too are driven by self interest force; but in more pathetic fashion.
Harsh truth is that social welfare is highly immoral bulldozing force that cheats people on the name of so called welfare, if we really concerned about people then it will be really good if we start thinking in terms of individual as soon as possible. Genesis of thinking in terms of individual will be the only coordinate when well-being and prosperity will start peeping into the soul of the individuals; which in turn will lead to the well-being and prosperity of nation.
The points basically we are discussing is that there’s nothing like lord or guardian state who will create paradise for individuals, it is quite logical to think that what kind of paradise they are talking about by taking our rights away; on one place they are taking our individual rights and on other they are blabbering about welfare. This doesn’t need any complex economic calculations but instead we just need simple and basic logic to understand.
That’s why problem is not in its complexity but problem is that people talk about stuffs but they don’t even analyze how misleading the whole idea is about; critical thinking is scarce and tons of nonsense is floating all around the globe and people are romantically consuming it.
Again ending my value with the observation that social welfare is most illogical and faulty concept, we need to make everyone aware of what state is doing to take our individual rights away. We need to stop people; not forcefully but by making aware that the romantic dreams they are consuming about state is not romantic dreams at all; it is a big nightmare!
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*Economics graduate, University of Delhi