The ongoing issue re: statist dependency

Steven Welzer
1 min readMay 15, 2023

https://mishtalk.com/economics/understanding-house-speaker-mccarthys-limit-save-grow-act-on-free-government-aid

. . . is the latest iteration of a continual discussion about collectivized welfare provision. The liberal position is usually: “We’re all better off if poverty and its corollaries (ill-health and sociopathologies) are minimized. The country can afford it, so be generous about welfare provision.” The conservative position is usually: “Being overly-generous breeds dependency. Move people from dependence to independence as soon as possible.”

It’s been a perpetual discussion of statist modernity. It puts a liberal person with a communitarian perspective in a slightly awkward position. Cutting people off from needed provision is a bad idea. But dependency on the teat of the state is an impersonal, institutional, mega-system-based solution. Ultimately we want to work toward revamped lifeways where sustenance and support are local and direct.

Some in our movement make a utilitarian argument for such: “It will figure to be more resilient when the mega-state institutions start to fail.” But no one knows if or when they might start to fail.

I think our advocacy should take a positive framing: It’s just a way of life that’s more ecological, more communitarian, and more satisfying . . .

https://www.localfutures.org/

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Steven Welzer

The editor of Green Horizon Magazine, Steve has been a movement activist for many years (he was an original co-editor of DSA’s “Ecosocialist Review”).