Regarding those checks — and the issue of statist dependencies

The wealth/power elites prefer stability. The masses can get rebellious when things are not running smoothly or people don’t have enough to eat.

The capitalist world-system, with its globalized markets, enabled unbelievable fortunes to be made. But its instabilities (depressions/recessions) and deficiencies (unemployment) were disturbing. Programs for amelioration were implemented. They’ve resulted in more and more in the way of statist provision.

Naturally, progressives view the ameliorative programs as beneficial reforms. And under the nation-state paradigm, provision by the central government can be advantageous. Single-payer would be a simplification relative to the health-insurance industry zoo. UBI would be simpler than the welfare labyrinth.

The government has the ability to fund these things. The Federal Reserve has the ability to manage the markets. So the system generally has the ability to provide adequate stability and sufficiency.

In times of economic disruption: Checks from the government. Under the circumstances these are needed and beneficial.

But the circumstances are problematic.

As usual, scale is a factor in the discussion. Collective provision for the welfare of members of a community has always been a positive facet of human lifeways. It’s beneficial for all, it’s the righteous thing to do — to take care of each other within the context of family, extended family, and local community. It makes sense in a straightforward way to collectively do the needed work, allocate the available resources, and create together the pleasures and comforts that make life healthy and satisfying.

A broader and more generalized degree of provision within the context of a humanly-scaled bioregional commonwealth could be judicious and consonant with the principle of communitarian self-reliance. Provision out of thin air from the huge, impersonal, remote centralized government of the modern nation-state engenders a kind of unreality and dependency that’s not so healthy. There’s high-level political dickering about who gets the largesse, when, how much.

Again . . . under the circumstances, it’s needed. In the modern world, self-reliance has broken down as the communitarian level of social organization has been decimated. It’s now a sorry world of nuclear families embedded within statist-scale governments (in our country: the municipal-county-state-federal complex).

We should strive to ultimately free ourselves from this unreal, unhealthy paradigm.

The extant system doesn’t provide well enough in the absence of the social programs, so the fullest and best possible (most egalitarian) implementation of such has to remain a priority. Sure, progressives should clamor for the checks, the programs, the reforms. But as we keep in mind the goal of greening our society we also should be working toward an ultimately more sane, more healthy communitarian self-reliance.