As baldly stated in the OP, “Naiveland” is preferable. But one danger is that those who game the system deplete its resources to such an extent that there’s not enough available to really help those who need it, or that society as a whole is improverished. Conversely, “Cynicalistan” is just fine if those who need help but don’t get it from government programs can find help or opportunities from private individuals or institutions.
I think the U.S., and probably the civilized world as a whole, is closer to “Naiveland” today than it was decades ago. Where it fits on an absolute scale, I’m not sure.
Naiveland. I’m cynical enough to know that “In Cynicalistan, if you get help you definitely need it. At the same time, there are people who do need help who don’t get it,” means the same people will get screwed over again and again; it won’t be that this time I don’t get help, but next time you might. It will be: you’re poor and black and can drown in a flood for all we care.
ETA: I’m an American and I absolutely believe it is Cynicalistan, workers are enslaved to their employers by lack of public health insurance.
More like Cynicalwithaheavyleaveningofmalicestan actually.
Some of my reasons for preferring “Naiveland” ( a name I think somewhat inappropriate, since it’s only naive if you don’t know that people are gaming the system ) :
Helping those who need help is more important than saving a little money in a wealthy nation.
I simply can’t bring myself to care much if people are “gaming the system”. People are always gaming the system, whatever system that may be.
I suspect that we spend more money defending ourselves from the terrifying risk that some poor person might get a few extra dollars than we save, anyway.
The sheer pettiness, malignance , hatred and greed of the “Cynics” makes my skin crawl. I recall hearing people back a few years ago during the debate over “welfare reform” working themselves into a frothing rage over the fact that people on welfare were allowed furniture, for example. And then there’s the “let them die” attitude shared by many; prominent in the current debate over health care.
It’s ridiculously hypocritical to care about the “undeserving” poor getting a few extra dollars considering how we let the wealthy root through our collective pockets.
If the redded/bolded part is true (i.e., the percentage of people “gaming” the system isn’t so high that it destroys the system!) then I prefer Naiveland.
I think Israel is generally someplace in the middle (some programs benefiting the undeserving, and some not benfiting all the deserving. And, unfortunately, some encompassing the worst of both – with truly needing people not able to benefit from a program that is at the same time being “gamed” by non-needing ones A breakdown of the part I highlighted above)
This probably doesn’t belong in a poll thread, but I decided to post it anyway. The dichotomy posed in the OP prompted a lot of thoughts on how I came to answer the poll as I did.
Up until a few years ago, I was a conservative Republican and a deeply committed Christian who knew he lived in Cynicalistan and liked it that way. When I thought about safety nets and social welfare programs, I was much more concerned about the prevention of freeloading than I was about government helping the needy. I thought private charity was the answer when it came to delivering help to folks who weren’t making it, and that private charities could and would prevent handouts to the undeserving.
Then I got involved in a ministry called Kairos. It’s a ministry aimed at building and maintaining Christian communities inside prisons. The prison I volunteer in is a maximum security prison in southern Ohio. My experiences in this prison have brought me into close contact with dozens of felons, people whose experiences and circumstances have encouraged them to be master “gamers of the system”.
Many of the men I visit appear to have undergone significant changes in their approach to life since they began to take part in the Kairos program. Friends and family have asked me, and I continually ask myself, if these changes are real, or are they an act? Are these inmates taking part in and pretending to be influenced by our sessions for reasons that have nothing to do with a relationship with Jesus? I have reached the conclusion that I can’t know the answer to these questions with any certainty, and that it is important to me that I learn to not care. How many fakers and manipulators can I tolerate to reach one or two men? I have decided that the answer to that is many.
This thought process eventually led to my leaving the Republican Party and changing my mind about social welfare programs. I began to recognize that even private charities can’t possibly dispense benefits only to the deserving, so some tolerance of benefits to the undeserving seems inevitable. By getting to know some felons, I learned first-hand that making benefits too difficult to get for the “undeserving” punishes their children, some of whom become felons. I have come to believe that we must accept a degree of cheating and gaming in our social safety net program in order to make sure that we help everyone who needs help.
Naiveland. Because “In Naiveland, if you need help you’ll definitely get it” That’s all that concerns me. System gaming don’t matter in the face of that.
Hard to say. South Africa fails the first phrase of both definitions, in that not everyone is helped, but also, some people do game the system (especially Affirm. Action and welfare systems). Still, at heart, the system is much closer to naiveland - the government intent is certainly there to provide universal welfare and health care, and it only fails because it is inefficient and quite frankly incompetent, not because it differs philosophically from the ideal.
A breakdown of the part I highlighted above)