Well I said it might get a bit involved so strap yourselves in peeps.
The fundamental difference between left and right is one of
personal responsibility
Those of a rightist mind believe the world is a better ordered and scaled place when the people (particularly in the embodiment of the ‘family unit’) take responsibility for their own actions. Informed self interest is what economics and human interaction is in fact all about, that’s what drives us and every other species and always has done. Before you say it, no it doesn’t obviate philanthropy and social responsibility, (btw your referenced Socialist (group) think tank the L.S.E. was initiated on the back of private philanthropy) it leaves it up to the individual. If they make the ‘wrong’ decision (personal, social or financial) then personal and national harm may be the result. That is
their judgement for them to make for good or ill, they will thrive or suffer on the strength of their judgements and are content with that condition of things.
The left take the opposing view, that life is far too complicated for those that actually live it and that human affairs must be surrendered to the ‘experts’ and the great and good and administered centrally on the model of a ‘benign dictatorship’ masquerading under the name of ‘society’ or the ‘greater good’. They see the vagaries of market forces as akin to a law of the jungle, they see people’s differing talents and abilities to deal with the jungle as monstrous “inequalities”.
From this springs their erroneous conclusion that there can be no such thing as personal failure it is always a societal failure for which read “someone else’s fault”. From this flawed and fundamentally totalitarian dogma flows the systemic need to redress the ‘inequalities’ they see as the cause of all the “unfairness”. But seeing as it is difficult if not impossible to drag the least capable up to the level of the most capable, (though this hasn’t stopped them trying to defy Darwin through imposition of affirmative action, political correction, +ve discrimination and ridiculous concepts like “deferred success”) their only option to reduce the ‘gap’ is to disprivilege and reduce the highest to the level of the lowest. This is a darn sight easier to achieve (through taxation and crippling legislation) than the former so this is the tactic they deploy.
So in brief summary, the socialist vision means I have to submit to a regime of statist interfering b@stards
who have licence to demand money from me with menaces ( if I don’t pay them I go to gaol) for the express purpose of impoverishing and disprivileging me for the direct benefit of someone else. Following that logic to it’s conclusion; any incentive to better oneself by the application of one’s talent and genetic advantages is immediately clamped to earth by the realisation that any benefit I may gain thereby will be appropriated to the state and diverted to its social engineering programmes. The net result of this is a fatalistic
dis-incentivised personal and national mental stasis. The proof of this? Every nation
without exception that has implemented socialism/communism has become the poorer for it and the state has had to usurp ever more executive power to itself in order to prop up the egalitarian façade. Freedom is made subservient to security as they adopt the
policy of total control Not one of these regimes have managed to elevate its people above the standard of living enjoyed by non comm./socialist societies. Socialism is a headlong race to the bottom with no winners. (just deferred success eh?)
As for the “Third Way” this has been variously described by pundits and theorists but basically boils down to the following. The Third Way, as I have always understood it, is simply a label for the renewal of social democracy. Centre-left parties across the world have revised their doctrines in the light of social and economic changes: the disappearance of socialist utopias, globalisation, the development of a service economy and ageing populations. In the face of these, the First Way - classical social democracy, based on Keynesianism and traditional statism - has become largely obsolete. The Second Way - Thatcherism or free-market fundamentalism - proved a disastrously mis-managed alternative. The aim of Third Way thinking - revisionist social democracy (a fancy name for cherry-picking) - is to create policies for the centre left that respond to these changes. It encompasses the idea that it’s not capitalism that creates wealth but competition (Thatcher’s carry-over without which Zanu Labour would have been unelectable anyway) allied to a strong welfare state.
Well let’s get this straight right now, the welfare/state creates NOTHING, certainly NOT wealth, it steals with menaces from those who actually generate the wealth/value. It then distributes it (very inefficiently) to those more ‘deserving’ of it and along the way provides what are deemed to be ‘essential’ services, again very inefficiently as I have outlined in a previous post. Go buy this
The TaxPayers' Alliance - Burning our Money: The Bumper Book of Government Waste 2008 if you don’t believe me then come and argue that state control of service procurement and provision is cost effective.
So the third way relies on competition but a skewed version of it in which those of us who thrive on the competitive field (or at least accept it as preferable to dictatorship benign or otherwise) are hobbled by taxation and invasive legislation. Part P is just a very minor manifestation of the greater project of imposing ever more criminalizing, centrist legislation. This cannot be denied as you will be aware that this administration has created one imprisonable offence for every day it has been ‘in control’. Nice one!
As for its distributive credentials well they’re obviously bo!!ocks aren’t they, why is the poverty gap acknowledged as having widened and still widening???? They are proficient at distributing OUR MONEY into the pockets of the chosen elite, witness the £5.5mill Les Blairs stumped up for their modest pied-a-terre. You seriously think we should be happy with that and cry for more of the same????
They also distribute it on a biblical scale amongst an army of civil service/pub sector administrators, investigators, ‘elf ‘n safety elephants, wonks, consultants, outreach workers, think tanks, hangers on, over-promoted chancers, obstructive jobsworths, career busybodies and snoopers. None of whom actually contribute a thing to the nation but all are comfortably pensioned and very difficult to sack. At the height of the British Empire the Foreign & Commonwealth Office employed a grand total of 180 civil servants, what is it now/ 30,000? It is estimated that the administration of and compliance with the Inland Revenue system occupies the time of 400,000 essentially mono-skilled individuals.
continued.....
) (no power stations on Mars, no Chelsea Tractors..
