The Welfare Discussion
I've been re-watching a documentary called The Century of the Self, written and directed by Adam Curtis and aired by BBC in 2002. It's a great 4-hour piece about the history of how Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind of human beings migrated from psychological and heavily influenced the creation of modern advertising and modern politics.
This resonated with my readings of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Throughout Ayn Rand's work, and particularly in her masterpiece, a recurring theme is formulated by the following questions: why worry about them? why not let them have some of what's ours? After all, we are strong enough for the both of us.
These questions refer directly to the political matter of welfare. The main characters of Rand's novels are industrialists who outperform all others and seem to be her ideal of a human being: the doer. This idea is still very much present in our modern society, Nike's "Just do it" slogan being but one example. In Rand's mind, the doer is the one who carries the world - society - on his shoulders, moving it forward in spite of all the non-doers. Thus, the doer is thought of as similar to Atlas.
In the documentary cited earlier, a large part of the discussion of the fourth episode revolves around politicians such as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, and the use of a PR technique known as focus group in their campaigns. In short, the focus group is nothing but taking the group that matters (in politics, the voters that are likelier to change their vote) and encouraging them to speak freely, like in a therapy session.
Having heard the unconscious mind of voters (consumers), the politicians could then adjust their speeches and political agenda in order to get better responses and thus more votes.
What resonated between these two loosely related works was the discussion about welfare and taxes. Personally, I've complained hugely about the "excessive" taxes in Brazil, because they've kept me from buying cooler gadgets. Nevertheless, there is a lot of people out there in need of help. People who just can't get back on their feet by themselves. I've seen and lived side by side with extreme poverty, and I had learned to hate capitalism because of that. Recently this has taken an interesting turn, and brought to light some interesting distinctions.
Ayn Rand advocates a completely unregulated market with no taxes and no giving nothing whatsoever to nobody. That is pure cruelty.
I'd go for higher taxes on richer people, but the democratic governmental system is broken too. We've seen plenty of worst alternatives, but there are also abounding proof out there of how democracy is not without flaws. I find it preposterous that the richest guys on the planet pay a lower tax percentage than their secretaries. And still there are a lot of guys who got extremely rich and started paying back through charity, NPOs or NGOs.
There's a lot to be done, and the discussion on welfare and government is important, but they can't wait.
This resonated with my readings of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Throughout Ayn Rand's work, and particularly in her masterpiece, a recurring theme is formulated by the following questions: why worry about them? why not let them have some of what's ours? After all, we are strong enough for the both of us.
These questions refer directly to the political matter of welfare. The main characters of Rand's novels are industrialists who outperform all others and seem to be her ideal of a human being: the doer. This idea is still very much present in our modern society, Nike's "Just do it" slogan being but one example. In Rand's mind, the doer is the one who carries the world - society - on his shoulders, moving it forward in spite of all the non-doers. Thus, the doer is thought of as similar to Atlas.
In the documentary cited earlier, a large part of the discussion of the fourth episode revolves around politicians such as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, and the use of a PR technique known as focus group in their campaigns. In short, the focus group is nothing but taking the group that matters (in politics, the voters that are likelier to change their vote) and encouraging them to speak freely, like in a therapy session.
Having heard the unconscious mind of voters (consumers), the politicians could then adjust their speeches and political agenda in order to get better responses and thus more votes.
What resonated between these two loosely related works was the discussion about welfare and taxes. Personally, I've complained hugely about the "excessive" taxes in Brazil, because they've kept me from buying cooler gadgets. Nevertheless, there is a lot of people out there in need of help. People who just can't get back on their feet by themselves. I've seen and lived side by side with extreme poverty, and I had learned to hate capitalism because of that. Recently this has taken an interesting turn, and brought to light some interesting distinctions.
Ayn Rand advocates a completely unregulated market with no taxes and no giving nothing whatsoever to nobody. That is pure cruelty.
I'd go for higher taxes on richer people, but the democratic governmental system is broken too. We've seen plenty of worst alternatives, but there are also abounding proof out there of how democracy is not without flaws. I find it preposterous that the richest guys on the planet pay a lower tax percentage than their secretaries. And still there are a lot of guys who got extremely rich and started paying back through charity, NPOs or NGOs.
There's a lot to be done, and the discussion on welfare and government is important, but they can't wait.
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