What are people fairly held responsible for?

[Little_Nemo]

Both liberals and conservatives can look at issues either on the surface or in depth. Which viewpoint they choose is often based on what they want to see.

Consider a case of syphilis. A liberal will say syphilis is a disease and should be addressed simply as a medical problem. A conservative might look at the issue in depth and say there’s a difference between a nun who got syphilis because she was raped and a crack whore who got syphilis because she had unprotected sex with fifty men in a single day. So a liberal says you address syphilis be treating syphilis; a conservative says you address syphilis by addressing street crime.

Or consider drug dealing. A conservative might say it’s a crime and if you do it you deserve to be convicted. A liberal might look at the issue in depth and say there’s a difference between a person who had many opportunities but chose to deal drugs for easy money and a person who has lived his whole life in an area with no good education or job opportunities and was dealing drugs because he had no better alternative for earning a living. So a conservative says you address drug dealing by arresting drug dealers; a liberal says you address drug dealing by addressing poor education and unemployment.

Who’s right? Both sides usually. If you really want to address a problem, you should be addressing both the effects and the causes.

[Anne_Neville]

@Sal Ammoniac

As a liberal, I’m prepared to say that guy no. 2 (the grasshopper) is an idiot who deserves to lose his house and fancy car. So there!

I’d say so too. But he shouldn’t go from having a fancy house and car to sleeping on a street grate. Who benefits from that? There should be some sort of fairly spartan but adequate public housing available, or provisions in the bankruptcy laws that allow him to keep enough to have a place to live.

[scr4]

@Bricker

In fact, let’s take two guys that lose their jobs. One’s lived entirely within his means, forgoes expensive vacations and drives an older car so he has a six-month cushion of savings.

The second lives paycheck to paycheck, and drives newer cars, bought a fancier house, and takes nice vacations.

I assume you can see where I’m going with this comparison…

No, I’m not really sure where you’re going. Are you trying to say the second guy made the wrong choice and face the concequences? Of course. He shoudn’t expect the same standard of living as the first guy while they search for new jobs. But neither should he immediately lose health insurance for his family, ability to feed his children, etc.

[Tamerlane]

@Bricker

In fact, let’s take two guys that lose their jobs. One’s lived entirely within his means, forgoes expensive vacations and drives an older car so he has a six-month cushion of savings.

The second lives paycheck to paycheck, and drives newer cars, bought a fancier house, and takes nice vacations.

I assume you can see where I’m going with this comparison…

The guy who saves has a six-month window in which to get a new job and retrieve his situation before being forced into a state of destitution and needing government help. Also he will probably be able to keep his paid-for beater, etc.

The spendthrift guy will be destitute almost immediately, lose his not-yet-paid-for sports car, etc.

But both should get the same basic level of services from the government once they reach the threshhold where they’ll need it. Individual merit should have absolutely nothing to do with means tresting for basic services. Basic services are basic services and worthless douchebags should have the same right to them as upstanding citizens. Because they all are tax-paying citizens.

• Tamerlane ( unreconstructed supporter of the welfare state )

[Sal_Ammoniac]

@Anne Neville

I’d say so too. But he shouldn’t go from having a fancy house and car to sleeping on a street grate. Who benefits from that? There should be some sort of fairly spartan but adequate public housing available, or provisions in the bankruptcy laws that allow him to keep enough to have a place to live.

I could be argued (heck, will be argued) that the fear of ending up sleeping on a grate would have compelled him to act more responsibly in the first place. The trick, it seems to me, is to put the safety net at such a level that it doesn’t act as an inducement to fall into it.

[Mr.Moto]

@Tamerlane

But both should get the same basic level of services from the government once they reach the threshhold where they’ll need it. Individual merit should have absolutely nothing to do with means tresting for basic services.

Uh huh.

I have a different question, and it goes to the law of unintended consequences.

The role of AFDC in encouraging single parenthood is fairly well understood - welfare payments would be means tested, and any income from a present father would be counted against benefits. Some rather zealous welfare investigators would even check on their recipients to make sure dad wasn’t hanging around on the QT.

Of course, millions of boys and girls growing up without fathers around created some even worse social pathologies.

This sort of thing goes on even today - I know people who intentionally do not get married so that benefits of one kind or another won’t be jeopardized. So you don’t believe that individual merit should go towards the means test, but what if the means test encourages behavior that is manifestly bad for these individuals and for society both?

Conservatives in the last fifteen years or so tried to address one of these issues by removing barriers to work within welfare - this was bitterly opposed by many liberals and wasn’t supported by Bill Clinton until very late in the game. This is just one example of this - I have noted others.

You say you are an unreconstructed supporter of the welfare state - well, I’d support welfare more if it was reconstructed.

[Tamerlane]

@Mr. Moto

So you don’t believe that individual merit should go towards the means test, but what if the means test encourages behavior that is manifestly bad for these individuals and for society both?

I am well aware that welfare can create pathologies and has societal downsides. So does social darwinism and every other system, albeit of a different sort. Where I disagree with many conservatives, is that I think the downsides of the welfare state are worth it. One should strive to minimize abuses of course, but a greater social good is being served that is going to have to tolerate the occasional welfare cheat.

It’s just a question of which poison you prefer.

Conservatives in the last fifteen years or so tried to address one of these issues by removing barriers to work within welfare - this was bitterly opposed by many liberals and wasn’t supported by Bill Clinton until very late in the game.

You say you are an unreconstructed supporter of the welfare state - well, I’d support welfare more if it was reconstructed.

Well…perhaps I was being a bit polemic there with that unreconstructed stuff ;). I have no philosophical objection to workfare.

[Bricker]

@Sal Ammoniac

I could be argued (heck, will be argued) that the fear of ending up sleeping on a grate would have compelled him to act more responsibly in the first place. The trick, it seems to me, is to put the safety net at such a level that it doesn’t act as an inducement to fall into it.

Exactly. If the result of the social policy is little real consequence for acting irresponsibly, we’ve failed.

I don’t want anyone to starve.

[Mr.Moto]

@Bricker

I don’t want anyone to starve.

Neither do I, but selling the PlayStation and HDTV (or doing without in the first place) wouldn’t be out of line.

[sqweels]

@Mr. Moto

Therefore, in matters such as how welfare policy might affect individual choices, the role of the federal government cannot be overestimated. Conservatives understood this a long time back, but a lot of liberals tended to resist this seemingly commonsensical argument, opting instead to argue for just more spending.

“A lot” of liberals? How many? Don’t you think most liberals agree that there should be conditions on accepting welfare so that they don’t become dependant on it and can get off it within a short period of time? (And is welfare primarily a federal program?)

We see this sort of thing replicated today in things like the education debate and the Social Security debate, where it is conservatives that seem to argue for policy changes and liberals that simply argue for more money.

“Policy changes” or taking money away from these programs and giving it to people who don’t need it?

[Mytoehurts]

The question of free will needs to be settled before the question proposed by Bricker.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

@Mr. Moto

Neither do I, but selling the PlayStation and HDTV (or doing without in the first place) wouldn’t be out of line.

And I’d be shocked if you found a liberal to disagree with you on that. Unless he’s Danish.

[Revenant_Threshold]

Well, i’d probably say get rid of the Playstation 3 and the HD. Original PS probably wouldn’t sell for all that much.

[wonky]

As others have said, when it comes to a teenager getting pregnant talking about “fault” as if she did something horrible and illegal and vicious is troubling. Her actions led to that result, but what, specifically, is wrong with the result? Once that’s determined, how to proceed becomes more obvious. What’s wrong with the result is that her opportunities might be limited–so try to make sure they aren’t limited too much, etc.

Fault and blame and guilt don’t seem to work all that well for keeping certain things from happening, like sex. They do work better for keeping those things hidden, but hidden pregnancies are no better than open ones and may in many circumstances be much, much worse.

[sqweels]

@Mr. Moto

Conservatives in the last fifteen years or so tried to address one of these issues by removing barriers to work within welfare - this was bitterly opposed by many liberals and wasn’t supported by Bill Clinton until very late in the game.

Well there you go. Liberals are capable of changing their minds. Don’t attack liberals for what some other liberal thought 15 years ago. Ask them what they think right now. (Besides, I hadn’t heard that liberals–“many” or most–were “bitterly opposed” to removing barriers to work within welfare.)

[Mr.Moto]

@sqweels

(Besides, I hadn’t heard that liberals–“many” or most–were “bitterly opposed” to removing barriers to work within welfare.)

The replacement of AFDC with TANF in the mid-1990s was bitterly opposed by the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Marian Wright Edelman’s response was, sadly, typical of these:

Both the Senate and House welfare bills are morally and practically indefensible. Rather than solve widespread child deprivation, they simply shift the burden onto states and localities with far fewer federal resources, weakened state maintenance of effort, and little or no state accountability. As you well know, these block grants are not designed primarily to help children or to make families more self-sufficient. They are Trojan horses for massive budget cuts and for imposing an ideological agenda that says that government assistance for the poor and children should be dismantled and cut while government assistance for wealthy individuals and corporations should be maintained and even increased. Do you think the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Micah, and Amos–or Jesus Christ–would support such policies?

Neither the Senate nor House welfare bill is an example of the good competing with the perfect. Both are fatally flawed, callous, anti-child assaults. Both bills eviscerate the moral compact between the nation and its children and its poor.

If child investments are unfairly and indiscriminately cut by many billions of dollars, there is perhaps some prospect of recouping the money over time when new child suffering becomes apparent, as it did after the Reagan cuts and as it will this time as pending cuts are many times worse. But longer-term and perhaps irreparable damage will be inflicted on children if you permit to be destroyed the fundamental moral principle that an American child, regardless of the state or parents the child chanced to draw, is entitled to protection of last resort by his or her national government. If any piece of the framework or cornerstone of the laws–AFDC, Medicaid, family and child nutrition–is dismantled, we may not get them back in our lifetime or our children’s.

What a tragic step backward for America when so many children already are left behind. Both you and I know that there are lessons from American history, including the end of Reconstruction, when the immoral abandonment of structures of law and equity led to decades of setbacks for powerless Americans and battles we still are fighting today. What a tragic irony it would be for this regressive attack on children and the poor to occur on your watch. For me, this is a defining moral litmus test for your presidency.

We cannot heal our racial divisions or prepare our nation for the future unless we give poor Black, Brown, and White children a healthy and fair start in life. These pending block grants will make that task so much harder. Together with the proposed tax policies, they widen the income gulf between America’s haves and have-nots. You have spoken too eloquently and worked too long for children to wipe it out with your signature now.

Rhetoric from people like Senators Lautenberg and Kennedy was equally overheated. Senator Wellstone voted against the bill. Several Clinton Administration officials resigned in protest, including Peter Edelman, Marion Wright Edelman’s husband.

So it isn’t as if welfare reform of this type was universally approved of. These days it is relatively uncontroversial, far less controversial than AFDC, which should not have been defended in its state at that time by anyone, liberal or conservative.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Mytoehurts

The question of free will needs to be settled before the question proposed by Bricker.

I disagree. If all we are is self-aggrandizing computers, who respond to input A with output B–if we have no choice in the matter–then it makes even more sense to hold people responsible for poor “choices.” By doing so, you’re changing input A, in hopes of achieving a different output B.

For example, assume that someone who robs a convenience store did not make a free will decision to rob the store: given his genetic makeup, combined with the events in his life, there was no other possibility except that he would rob the convenience store. Does it then make sense to punish him for an action that he could not control?

I’d say it does. By punishing him, you change the events in his life, such that next time he faces such a decision, he may have no other possibility except NOT to rob the store. Similarly, you change the events in the lives of everyone who hears about his case, possibly creating a situation in which someone else will be forced to not rob a store, given the events in their own life.

Daniel

[enigm4tic]

I would say that it seems the way the OP specified, the problem “they” have with liberals is that it looks as if the liberals are supporting bad decisions by mitigating their personal impact across society via the welfare state: that is, you won’t have as bad an outcome in a welfare (liberal) state, than you would all alone in a libertarian, or otherwise limited state. At least, that’s how I would read it.

It’s an extremely difficult balance to say which poor decisions we should and should not subsidize. As pointed out, even a foolish teen pregnancy is harmful to society as a whole because without subsidization it may create more deadweight to society. On the other hand, why should I be held responsible for a bad decision that I had no hand in? Therein lies the difference between the “conservative” and “liberal” position.

IOW, the thread basically comes down to are you a “softie” who helps out people who make bad decisions more, or a “hard-ass” who rewards good decisions more?

[Evil_Captor]

I have addressed that topic on my blog, from the opposite end:

What do conservatives mean by "personal responsibility"?

But in asking “What Do Conservatives Mean By Personal Responsibility?” I also spelled out my notions on the topic as a liberal. In a (rather large) nutshell:

I do NOT believe that just because people have to be personally responsible for taking care of themselves, that every scum-sucking corporate greedhead, every fiery-eyed, hateful religious zealot, every uncaring plutocrat is therefore absolved of all responsibility for the actions of their organizations, corporations and minions on society.

I think it is perfectly acceptable and all right to examine ways in which society can be organized so that human suffering is minimized and human growth and opportunity are maximized.

I don’t think letting greedy credit card corporations make it harder for regular folks to declare bankruptcy in a time when the credit card companies are making record profits is a good idea. Negotiating the economic minefield is your personal responsibility, but that doesn’t mean we should go crazy in letting corporations lay out the mines.

I don’t think restricting a woman’s freedom to choose how to deal with pregnancy is society’s provenance. It’s a woman’s personal responsibility to deal with pregnancy, let her be the ones to choose the options, not religious zealots.

I think it is an overweight person’s responsiblity to lose weight or deal with the consequences of being overweight, but I have no problem with considering the factors that might make them overweight, other than overeating and lack of exercise. I have no problem with looking at things that might make it easier for them to lose weight, other than condemning them as lazy and piggish. If there were a pill that could allow people to lose weight without effort, I’d have no problem with it.

(In fact, I think the main reasons Americans are overweight as a group is not some tremendous lack of energy and self-control, but the fact that we all drive to work rather than walking or cycling there, and while we’re there we park our butts in chairs all day, and we eat lots of food. We COULD exercise at the end of the workday, and some of us do, but asking people to put in a hard workout at the end of the workday is actually a pretty extraordinary thing to ask people to do, especially people with families, and most don’t do it.)

I think conservatives and libertarians don’t share these notions, otherwise they wouldn’t be constantly crying “personal responsibility” whenever some attempt is made to curtail the efforts of some vile corporation or group, or when people otherwise try to make society work better for people.

I could be wrong, though. For example, I think many conservatives and libertarians think I don’t believe in any concept of personal responsibility. I hope I have made it clear that I do. I just think there’s such a thing as social responsibility, and organizational responsibility, too. I get the impression that conservatives think that by invoking “personal responsibility” they absolve society of all need for social and organizational responsibility. I hereby put conservatives on notice: that flag won’t fly around here.

[Triskadecamus]

Bricker,

I am not really sure it’s about liberal, or conservative at all. Although I am sure it can be made into it, if that is the way you choose to look at things. For me, there is a different dichotomy than the one you propose. It might be true that it is the fault of the person making, or failing to make the decision that would have avoided the tragedy at issue, in any particular case. But the realities of life and the realities of social systems dealing with life are that whose fault it was is only an important issue before the fact. After the fact, it only really serves the society to deal with the consequences.

Lots of people, especially young people make really stupid choices. Look at the shit people get tattooed onto their asses! Yeah, it’s their fault. But the child has harmed himself, and the responsibility of the adult remains unchanged. Sadly, lots of adults make really bad choices too. Some of the bad choices are criminal, but most are just really stupid and self destructive. I am not an advocate for indiscriminate sex as a means of improving ones social status. But I am not willing to join in on the contempt party for whores and I don’t care if the horrors of the lives they end up living are caused by their choices, I wish to alleviate the horrors. I wish my society to assist me in that endeavor.

Morality is not legality. Drug addicts are idiots. But they are really sick idiots, and they need treatment. The ones that commit crimes should not expect that their addiction mitigates their responsibility for the crimes they commit. But, if they are unemployable because of the addiction, their responsibility for the addiction does not change the fact that they need to eat, and be sheltered. The cost of living in a great society is caring for those that need. Justifying that need is not useful. The cure for illiteracy is not remonstrations against the schools, or the students. The cure is to continue teaching people how to read. No one gets sexually transmitted infections except people who have sex, and their children, but dealing with the disease means treating everyone. Just saying “just say no”, just doesn’t help.

Yes, folks should hold themselves to a higher standard of conduct, and if they did most of the ills of society would not happen. But they don’t, and they do. And we, as a society should hold ourselves to a higher standard. Yes, indiscriminate risk taking harms us all. But ignoring the harm done because someone deserves it is an answer I want my society to reject out of hand. You must be the change you wish to see in the world. And you have to keep it up, even though it probably won’t really change the world. It will change the part of the world you can reach, for as long as you keep on reaching.

It’s about good and evil. It’s not teams. It’s ethics.

Tris

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“When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice.” ~ Lin Yutang ~