One of the most difficult things to get AEC's to see is that the sexual autonomy preached by today's 'liberals' and the economic autonomy evident in consumerism and corporate capitalism have the same Enlightenment patrimony.

And the implications of that are what? What do we do to avoid an 'enlightenment patrimony'

1. Re-institute hereditary subjection?
2. Reconstruct trade guilds?
3. Confer allodial property rights on those the nobility, clergy, and chartered foundations?
4. Re-construct open-field villages?

Ideas may have consequences. So does social habit. So does physical geography. So does technology. So does demographics. So do pre-articulate tendencies in human behaviour.

If you institute price controls, you get shortages. If you extend various sorts of benefits through public agency, you get rent-seeking behavior. It really matters very little what the 'patrimony' of your 'ideas' is (and no, I concede very little to Rob G on this point).

I would say rather that it's a perfectly reasonable view, and wonder why it produces such a snide reaction from you.

"I find it more useful to turn the question into whether that Enlightenment patrimony is a good or bad thing rather than whether it's conservative."

Yes, I agree. In those cases the terminology isn't nearly as important as the ideas behind it.

And of course, the Enlightenment patrimony isn't all bad. But Christians, especially Catholics, should be aware of how very anti-Christian, and specifically anti-Catholic, much Enlightenment thought was.

Art, I was very specific about what in the Enlightenment patrimony I believe is objectionable. Don't be one of these clowns who immediately accuses people like me of being against indoor plumbing and modern dentistry.

Art, I was very specific about what in the Enlightenment patrimony I believe is objectionable.

Rubbish.

Don't be one of these clowns who immediately accuses people like me of being against indoor plumbing and modern dentistry.

I challenged you to make plain the implications of your mess in terms of commonplace social phenomena. What does that look like? Thomas Storck and John Medaille at least make some attempts. Let's see our host stop running interference for you and let's see you put your cards on the table.

Does the Enlightenment patrimony offer us anything good, which the Church and the Gospel hadn't already provided?

I don't know enough to answer that question.

That's a difficult question to answer, Louise. We can certainly say, and I tend to believe, that anything good in the Enlightenment was present implicitly in Christendom. But the fact is that an explosion of technological progress, political freedom, and, broadly speaking, wealth followed the Enlightenment and a major diminishment of the Church's place in society. ("broadly speaking" because as we all know industrialism created terrible conditions for some people even as it raised the general material standard of living.) So to argue that those things would have happened in Christendom anyway, and perhaps without some of the harshest accompanying problems, is at best speculative.

"We can certainly say, and I tend to believe, that anything good in the Enlightenment was present implicitly in Christendom."

Yes, and Enlightenment thought itself contains opposing tendencies, some of which are reconciliable with the Faith and some that are not. The overall trend, however, seems to be that the liberal, "progressive" tendencies devour or at least undermine the Christian, conservative ones. Liberalism is inherently tyrannical, and I think that any strain of thought that's been affected by Enlightenment ideas has at least the potential to become the same, given that one of its foundations is individualistic human autonomy. This is why Christians should remain somewhat wary of all liberalisms, even "classical liberalism," and not just swallow the thing whole.

I'm at a loss to understand the level of hostility you bring to this topic, Art. It seems to tap some disproportionate resentment in you.

Each of these discussions has had one feature in common, Rob G striking poses but never referring to anything one could inspect or evaluate. Why he wishes to do that is a question he can answer himself. Yes it is irritating.

Now, consider the phrase, "contemporary corporate capitalism corrodes social values" blah blah. The obvious questions are:

1. What features distinguish 'contemporary corporate capitalism' from some other economic system?

2. What do you have in mind as an alternative to 'contemporary corporate capitalism'?

3. What social costs are incorporated in altering economic systems?

Life's full of trade-offs and it is stupid to evaluate economic and social systems with a purely configurative inspection. It is not as if there is a ready alternative to 'contemporary corporate capitalism' wherein we can see an absence of social corrosion. Soviet Russia embodied an alternative economic system; it was also a cesspit of divorce and abortion. Japan has more agreeable social metrics (except, ahem, with regard to abortion). It would be rash to attribute that to differences in the economic system. In any case, the place is a locus of 'contemporary corporate capitalism' (and garish advertising and the sex trade and twee popular music); it is also facing incipient demographic implosion, which the United States is not.

One should note that social practice in the United States is decadent in a way it was not the year my father was born, albeit street crime and a certain institutionalized cruelty are less present today. Yet both the world of 1928 and the world today feature 'contemporary corporate capitalism'. It might just occur to us that culture and social relations are influenced by economic practice but not a function of it. (Aside from occurring to us that when you run from some place you run to some place else).

I suppose the question is, without getting into the emotional whirlwind, "What practicable public policies might move us in the direction of a smaller-scale, more local, more family friendly economy." The fact is, the concentration of capital gives the corporations excessive influence in our public life. And that influence, though not always negative, often seeks to undermine social cohesion so as to create more markets and seeks to reduce the expenditure of capital on supporting non-material (spiritual) goods. Hence, we tend to value and through corporate and government money at technical education and the sciences, but not the humanities.

Obviously, the move in the right direction starts with the self and personal choices, and with efforts to educate others as to true values. If we can decrease the consumerist impulse and increase the spiritual impulse, the corporations will have less influence.

In those days it was the big business Republicans who were supporters of Planned Parenthood, as the original Cheaper by the Dozen hints at.

"the move in the right direction starts with the self and personal choices, and with efforts to educate others as to true values. If we can decrease the consumerist impulse and increase the spiritual impulse, the corporations will have less influence."

Well said, Robert. I fully concur. I guess where I see a problem is in getting many conservatives to realize that the consumerist and spiritual impulses are at odds!

I am not sure that Mr. Gotcher is correct when he suggests the balance between the commercial sector and the philanthropic sector has run increasingly against the latter, nor that the study of the humanities is particularly valuable given the condition of the academic humanities in our time.

Work rules are likely more agreeable ('family friendly') than they have been at any time since the advent of industrial discipline in the first three decades of the 19th century. Heavy industry is a rather less prominent part of the economy than it has been at any time in the post-reconstruction era, so the pathologies of scale are not arriving from that front. Mr. Gotcher appears to be referring to the irritants which derive from branded retail trade.

On the contrary, I notice both Rob G's offering sketches. Obviously you want something more detailed: "2. What do you have in mind as an alternative to 'contemporary corporate capitalism'?"

I repeat that to criticize the Enlightenment and attempt to trace the consequences of its errors does not place one under an obligation to supply that alternative.

On the contrary, I notice both Rob G's offering sketches. Obviously you want something more detailed: "2. What do you have in mind as an alternative to 'contemporary corporate capitalism'?"

He provided no sketch.

I repeat that to criticize the Enlightenment and attempt to trace the consequences of its errors does not place one under an obligation to supply that alternative.

Intellectual genealogies are not my deal. Criticise the Enlightenment all you care to; parsing the effects of this aspect of culture on the run of both public life and mundane life is difficult. When you are done making sport of Voltaire or Gibbon or Hume or Thomas Paine, you are still in the society you are in or contemplating a past world which had a particular set of social relations.

Rob G has not said anything in this discussion that would indicate he has a hypothesis which isolates the ill effects of corporate organization and advertising from anything else that might cause things to go wrong in a society. (Quite apart from having any alternative in mind).

I have a deep sympathy with conservative ideas and ideals and a deep disgust for the Conservative Party, precisely because the latter's enthralment to the money markets means they will sacrifice any of their ideas and ideals, and indeed the nation's industrial base, to please the bankers and financiers.

To make neoliberal economics and enthralment to the money markets *part of* the ideas and ideals of conservatism, rather than recognise how inimical they are to them, is to make political conservatism a self-contradicting joke. It is possible to point out that this is a problem without having any idea what a practicable solution might be, just as it is possible to point out that somebody is bleeding without having a clue about tourniquets.

Very well said, Robert.

I believe that Enlightenment economics attempted to turn greed into a good by redefining avarice as "self interest," thus effectively removing it from the list of deadly sins (Edward Skidelsky has called this the "emancipation of avarice"). This idea loosed into the world a new philosophical view of the getting and keeping of wealth, one which went against the classical/Christian understanding of same. This economic idea, coupled with the Enlightenment's emphasis on the autonomy of the individual, set in motion a system whereby monetary accumulation is not only seen as a good, but is seen as the primary measure of progress.

1. Whatever physiocratic theoreticians thought they were doing or proposed in the realm of normative considerations, contemporary economics seeks to provide a description of collective behavior through stylized models and statistical research. Working economists are very clear that prescriptive answers to distributional questions are not to be had with these methods. Again, the descriptions are stylized. The models assume self-interest because that is the sort of behavior which can be treated most systmatically.

2. It is absolutely madcap to conflate 'self-interest' with 'greed'.

3. You seem to have confounded quite a mass of people, including the ordinary run of economist, with Scrooge McDuck. It is fairly common to see improvements in the production of goods and services as a measure of progress, but that is a different thing than 'monetary accumulation'.

4. Advertising is meretricious, but for established goods and services it serves mainly as an attempt to persuade people to make use of one provider rather than another for some object they already have.

5. One thing that occurs to me reading this is that you do not give people much credit. Do you honestly think large swaths of middle-aged adults think their personal happiness is contingent on replacing their Allstate insurance with GEICO insurance? People do have a lower threshhold of tolerance for discomfort than they once did. Just as an aside, my grandmother at age 75 had lost about 2/3 of the teeth on her upper plate; my mother at that age was having some novel problems but had 29 of her original teeth, albeit a great deal of gold in her mouth; nearing fifty, I have hardly a filling. There's a reason my grandmother had a higher tolerance for discomfort than I do, and not because she listened to too many Pepsi Cola ads on the radio.

As a matter of fact, I do. I'd argue for a "small-market" form of capitalism with active localist/Distributist principles. I'd like to see far less collusion between Big Business and Big Government.

The principal colluders are as follows:

1. The financial sector. The trouble is that the impetus to suborn the state is a function of being heavily regulated, but the option of deregulation cannot be properly pursued in this sector;

2. Extractive industries;

3. Agribusiness, which is generally fairly decentralized.

4. Real estate, which is also quite deconcentrated (and heavily regulated).

A good deal of this is driven not by business, the political activities of which are often prophylactic and defensive, but by sleazy politicians. Your problem is less 'corporate consumer capitalism' than it is chuckschumerism.

What you gonna do? I miss the small bookstores which used to populate various neighborhoods where I have lived, but it is difficult to see how you preserve a position for them without being quite coercive and promoting rent-seeking behavior.

The fact that there are other forms of abuse at other times does not in any way impact the evil of the type of abuse we are describing in modern, capitalistic systems. It is a non-sequitur and a red herring to bring feudalism up.

No one, I think, is saying that modern post-enlightenment capitalism is the worst human society EVER. We are simply saying that some of the more anti-Christian principles of the enlightenment (not all the principles) have endarkened our society in a particularly and peculiarly insidious way. It is an evil effect of bad ideas.

I don't have time to say much here, but just one quick observation, not necessarily on the main point: I do think there's a valid distinction between the idea that people should be left to themselves to work out economic matters to their own benefit, and the enshrinement of greed. Obviously there have to be some pretty strong limits on what's permissible in that first case, but the basic idea is fine. The more fundamental problem with the Enlightenment legacy, I think, is the elimination of the transcendent as a real factor in social and political matters, and the concomitant elimination of purpose beyond the immediate material.

Our modern Leviathan has two heads.

I'm not sure it has. It might just be two faces.

It is a non-sequitur and a red herring to bring feudalism up.

No, it is not. The feudal and manorial order is among the alternatives to 'contemporary corporate capitalism'. Different manifestations of it show you how that works out in practice. It puts things in perspective.

Left-libs always blame the corporations, right-libs and libertarians always blame the state. Fact is, the abuses are driven by both. Our modern Leviathan has two heads.

1. I blamed politicians, not 'the state'. IRS employees get saddled with administering the goodies characters like Barney Frank arrange for their clientele, but these employees are not to blame for this sort of corruption.

2. "Always"? Don't be a knucklehead.

On middle class consumerism, look what "large swaths of middle ages adults" do on Black Friday. Look at the knuckleheads who line up overnight in freezing weather or rain to get the latest piece of junk that Apple or Microsoft convinces them is so much better than what they currently have that they just have to have it.

I agree that's vulgar, but what share of the population actually does that?

I have a cousin who's a Black Friday denizen. Her mother thinks it a waste of time. The thing is, she is a human being with many sides to her. She and her husband will celebrate her 40th anniversary in August, they raised 3 capable children who are fond of them, and she and her older daughter have between them have about 35 years under their belts as elementary school teachers in New York's maddening public systems. I am disinclined to be all that critical of her because she has recreational shopping as a hobby. Her husband prefers baseball.

"Call me Dave" can do whatever he wants with his own mouth, Art. I'm sure your teeth are pearly white and lined up neatly, and that you're very proud of the fact, but we don't have an obsession with dentistry, or much interest in other people's.

They are lined up adequately, because the use of the service of orthodontists was modal in our part of the country after about 1968. No they are not pearly white; I smoked quite heavily for many years. My meals are wholesome and edible and I have blood left in my alcohol stream, so I am not promising material for true British living.

The idea that the recession is best met by instituting expensive policies to harass the unfortunate and squaddies, or simply make life harder for people out of work, and lining the pockets of their friends in the City, while insisting that "we're all in this together", shows a clear non-grasp of old-fashioned Toryism. Although admittedly, talking unity while sowing divisiveness has a long, if undistinguished, political pedigree.

I think by 'squaddies' you mean trespassers. Yes, sheriff's deputies defend people's property rights. If they do not, you do not have property rights.

The rest of what you say is stated in the most tendentious terms. There are real social costs to extending unemployment benefits and any government has to attempt to find an optimum point. Crises in the financial sector are not like crises in any other - the boundaries of the damage done to people's economic welfare are difficult to discern and unpredictable. Here in this country, the central government was for a period of 16 months resolute about not 'lining the pockets of [the banks]' and simply closed insolvent institutions and told their creditors to make their claims in bankruptcy court. The 16 month period in question ran from November of 1930 to March of 1932. There is a reason we have central banks to make bridge loans to the rest of the financial sector. Here in this country, there are large numbers of people who think banks were just handed cash grants no strings attached. They were not. The money puke went to General Motors and the two mortgage maws, both long-term clients of the Democratic Party.

"The feudal and manorial order is among the alternatives to 'contemporary corporate capitalism'."

It is an alternative that no one (except perhaps Andrew Cusack, just kidding) is advocating. Our choice is not "monster capitalism" vs. "go back to feudalism." Even for Chesterton.

It is a scare tactic to say, "If you chuck capitalism you'll wind up with icky old feudalism."

You have a great deal of trouble with reading comprehension, Mr. Gotcher. I neither stated nor implied that.

Feudal and manorial systems were quite variegated in their forms and practices. I merely pointed out that some manifestations of feudalism were fairly cruel. Not so others.

Look, if you wish to consider the problems in social systems, one element of your inquiry ought to be to put the ways people have ordered society on the table and to understand how these came about. That will give you a sense of what the boundaries of possibility are.

"Rob G" is taking features off the shelf and saying he would like a social order which has these characteristics. The question is, can you assemble the parts into a machine which runs and goes where you want it to go. Writing 40 years ago, Robert Packenham said one feature of post-war liberal discourse was the assumption that all good things could go together. (A fair example of that is the Paul-bot insistence that we face no dilemmas in foreign relations not of our own manufacture). I am just saying to Rob G and the rest of you that it ain't necessarily so. (Which it appears makes me into a neocon right-liberal militarist, or something like that).

I'm in fundamental agreement with Rob G (and Robert G, and Paul), but I don't think "consumerism" is a good place to put the emphasis. It's a vague term, and I think much of what we put into that category is a fairly natural reaction to our unprecedented abundance. Most people in any culture are mostly preoccupied with their physical well-being. We have made it possible for that to manifest itself in really baroque ways, e.g. Black Friday. I don't think Americans (or Europeans) are really any more materialistic, in the immediate sense, than anyone else; we just have greater scope to exercise the impulse.

The more fundamental problem is that our dominant culture is implicitly based on a materialist philosophy, and on that idea of the imperial self which you, Rob, mentioned early on (not in those terms). I think there's more clarity and greater effect in hitting those points.

The more fundamental problem is that our dominant culture is implicitly based on a materialist philosophy, and on that idea of the imperial self which you, Rob, mentioned early on (not in those terms). I think there's more clarity and greater effect in hitting those points.

The most egregious manifestations of the imperial self are expressive divorce, abortion, and routinized bastardy. None of these are antique practices. They were very odd and stigmatized as recently as 1966. To what do we attribute them? A devotion to Christian ethics (or a devotion to good breeding or social habit or whatever) managed to suffice to contain any underlying tendencies to engage in these behaviors even as the world slid into 'consumer corporate capitalism' and it did so for three generations. To what degree can we attribute these social pathologies to the economic system, or to some posited philosophical antecedent to the economic system?

One of my minor hobbies is reading Early American Life, and one of the recent issues I was looking over had an article on the shoe trade in colonial America. There was such a thing as fashion even in an impoverished world without mass advertising. If you are tempted to attribute that to ambient Enlightenment notions, do recall that there were sumptuary laws in medieval and early modern Europe.

~~I'm in fundamental agreement with Rob G (and Robert G, and Paul), but I don't think "consumerism" is a good place to put the emphasis.~~

I guess I see consumerism as a fairly obvious symptom of the worship of the self, and was using it as an example.

"'Cronyism' is not a function of size but of particular histories in the development of the relationship between commercial companies, politicians, and public agencies."

Uh, who'll get the ear of Washington, Mike's Feed Store or Monsanto? Don't make me laugh by saying that size doesn't matter. That's utter crap.

Worth reading on this subject:

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2012/11/the-politics-of-gratitude-scale-place-and-community-in-a-global-age/

"Naive or ridiculously ideological my great-grandparents' generation may have been, they nonetheless managed it."

It was a much different culture then. The rot hadn't progressed as far, but the tension could be held only for so long. The dragon of choice is ultimately self-devouring.

one caller kept repeating, in the most outraged tone They're interfering with a BUSINESS!.

There are rude libertarians in and among Mr. Limbaugh's body of listeners. Is he to blame for that?

That large corporations are willing to put up with heavy regulations which they can afford to deal with and smaller businesses cannot is a commonly held view even among very pro-business types. That large-scale cronyism works very effectively for large-scale enterprises seems pretty obvious.

I am not sure it 'works effectively', but they likely can afford in-house counsel to manage compliance costs. Whether the cost to them is worth it from the advantage they gain over small competitors I suspect varies case by case.

One thing not here mentioned is that bon bons distributed by public agencies can provoke the formation of trade associations to defend them. The beneficiary is often not the initiating party. Another thing not mentioned is that regulation, particularly financial regulation and health and safety regulation, partakes of esoteric knowledge. The people who can understand the implications of regulation are also often interested parties. They have legitimate interests to protect as well as rents to protect, and it can be difficult for 3d parties to tell one from the other.

Art, the idea that the families of serving members of the armed forces should lose housing benefit for having an "empty bedroom" is grotesque, whatever your view of the justice of the causes in which they currently serve. And would you count those on basis in Canada and Germany as trespassers, as much as those in Afghanistan and Kosovo?

Nor is increasing unemployment benefit by any means at issue. The question is how legal it is for the government to force those on unemployment benefit to enter "work training schemes" that effectively mean doing menial tasks for free for such companies as are wiling to offer the "training" of doing menial work. Being obliged to work for free used to be called "forced labour", and subsidising companies by supporting workers with dole instead of wages is an interesting variant on Speenhamland.

In the 1930s the Conservatives could with some justice have been accused of neglecting the problems of the working class. Now they seem to be going to some lengths to find ways to exacerbate them. But turning tax money into bankers' bonuses, or getting chummy with companies that might like a bit of free menial labour, that obviously isn't a problem. That's just in the great tradition of Burke and Cobbett, and all of a piece with the policies of Disraeli, Churchill and Macmillan.

Sounds unlikely Mac - when did squatters ever get rent support?

Art, the idea that the families of serving members of the armed forces should lose housing benefit for having an "empty bedroom" is grotesque, whatever your view of the justice of the causes in which they currently serve. And would you count those on basis in Canada and Germany as trespassers, as much as those in Afghanistan and Kosovo?

I missed the link; my regrets. I thought you were talking about people appropriating vacant apartments, which was common in Britain and the Netherlands ca 1985. I haven't any opinion on particular housing benefits for military families.

Nor is increasing unemployment benefit by any means at issue. The question is how legal it is for the government to force those on unemployment benefit to enter "work training schemes" that effectively mean doing menial tasks for free for such companies as are wiling to offer the "training" of doing menial work. Being obliged to work for free used to be called "forced labour", and subsidising companies by supporting workers with dole instead of wages is an interesting variant on Speenhamland.

You are not being forced to work for free if you are receiving conjoined cash benefits.

As for menial employment, bad jobs are common if not modal in any economy. I once saw a datum from a labor economist that around 40% of the jobs in the labor pool featured low pay, little opportunity for advancement, and little in the way of fringe benefits. So, while one chap is working off his state unemployment benefit, another chap is not drawing benefits and doing the same sort of work for a wage. I am sorry, I do not see that as outrageous.

Art, the idea that the families of serving members of the armed forces should lose housing benefit for having an "empty bedroom" is grotesque, whatever your view of the justice of the causes in which they currently serve. And would you count those on basis in Canada and Germany as trespassers, as much as those in Afghanistan and Kosovo?

Nor is increasing unemployment benefit by any means at issue. The question is how legal it is for the government to force those on unemployment benefit to enter "work training schemes" that effectively mean doing menial tasks for free for such companies as are wiling to offer the "training" of doing menial work. Being obliged to work for free used to be called "forced labour", and subsidising companies by supporting workers with dole instead of wages is an interesting variant on Speenhamland.

In the 1930s the Conservatives could with some justice have been accused of neglecting the problems of the working class. Now they seem to be going to some lengths to find ways to exacerbate them.

There are all manner of public policies which exacerbate the problems of wage earners. In this country, the progenitor of most of them if not all is the party of the teachers unions, the trial lawyers, and Hollywood. I tend to be skeptical that the Labour Party is all that much better, just serving a different set of rent-seeking demagogues while imposing various irritants on the man in the street.

"Intellectual genealogies are not my deal."

The intellectual in general does not seem to be your deal. You offer lots of nuts-and-bolts arguments but don't seem to see that philosophy and theology can affect the nuts and bolts.

When a major intellectual shift like the Enlightenment releases a new concept like individual autonomy into the world, especially at the expense of Christendom, you can be damn sure it's going to affect the stuff in the toolbox eventually.

Sigh. Your suggestion is that I peruse imaginative literature and manifestos by literary critics and the like. Doesn't cut it.

If you want to understand the demise of blue laws, I suggest consulting a sociological work on the judiciary. Both in New York and in Virginia blue laws were annulled by court decrees. Ordinary consumers and elected officials did not have much to do with it.

The entire advertising industry is based on just such an understanding, by the way. What should be on our currency is not "In God We Trust" but "Have It Your Way!"

Art's 7:35 comment does very much clarify the reasons why this discussion has been so frustrating.

People like me, who pay a disproportionate percentage of their turnover in social security contributions and see very little in return, don't do it to subsidise free work at other companies, but to provide minimal social security for people unable, for whatever reason, to work. Those on unemployment benefit already lose it if they are offered a job and turn it down. Why not have the big retailers offer them minimum wage jobs and cut off benefit if they refuse them? Why make them work minimum wage jobs, but at the expense of the social security budget rather than at the expense of the company they're doing the work for? It's all very well to call it a "work training scheme", but what kind of skills are they acquiring while stacking shelves and cleaning toilets?

Thanks, I enjoyed reading this comment, it makes a lot of sense.

By the way, Art, there are quite a few political science and economist types that you could read who would in general support the conclusions of the more literary sort of observer: Patrick Deneen, Mark Mitchell, Ted McAllister, Edward Skidelsky, Albino Barrera, Jeffrey Polet, Wilfred McClay, Christopher Shannon, Eric Miller and Brad Gregory come to mind.

By the way, Art, there are quite a few political science and economist types

Many years ago I had a conversation with Jonathan Kirshner, now on the political science faculty at Cornell. He was considering at that time studying some other subject after years immersed in international political theory. "It's just that...you can't prove anything...".

As for economists, they are not immune to speaking in other capacities. This discussion itself likely could not be translated into the language of economic theory and empirical study.

Paul, I am wretchedly confused by your remarks and I do not have a granular knowledge of what conditions are attached to British unemployment compensation or what people's expectations are, reasonable or not. I do know the following:

1. Public service jobs (called the "Job Corps" in this country) and unemployment compensation are two aspects of a social practice with the same purpose: tiding over involuntarily idled workers and providing automatic stabilizers to aggregate demand in recessions.

2. The terms 'social insurance' and 'unemployment insurance' are misnomers. With few exceptions, programs of this nature do not function like actuarially sound annuity programs, but are income transfers. Nothing wrong with income transfers; we just need to state what they are.

3. Providing open-ended doles to people who are neither elderly, disabled, or specifically tasked with caring for a crippled family member is bad policy. It encourages perverse and socially corrosive behavior and leads to the deterioration in the aggregate stock of human capital as well as the capital of individuals; it consequently damages the lubrication of the labor market.

4. Impersonal and systemic public policies should be governed by a discrete number of parameters. The civil service is the civil service and is not very nimble and cannot be trusted with a whole lot of discretion. The more you attempt to adapt public programs to the individual situation of potential clients, the more baroque and incomprehensible they get and the more they can be gamed.

5. The forces incorporated in point 3 and point 4 mean the state has to adopt some fairly crude decision rules that do injure an irreducible number of people. The only passable answer to this is vigorous private charity to catch people who fall through the slats.

6. 'Menial jobs' are what a large fraction of humanity refers to as, simply, 'jobs'. In this country, we were having public discussions of workfare a generation ago which had some of the tropes you have uttered here. You had all these social work academics saying things like "I think workfare is slavery". So you had the mad business of social workers, politicians, and academics arguing that we should continue to pay slum women with bastard children a monthly sum (with ancillary benefits) to stay home because it was unreasonable to expect them to do the sort of wage work their neighbors (often similiarly situated) were doing and often did all their lives, the sort of wage work a huge swath of the population does in their younger years. It was all mad.

7. It is common that modern governments follow policies which injure the operation of their labor markets and exacerbate the amount of frictional unemployment. The thing is, there are vested interests which favor these policies and salutary alternative policies are subject to demagogy. Our own government has for four years repeatedly advocated policies which damage the operation of the labor market.

And my problem with *your* commentary, Art, is that you're rather missing the point.

You have identified no 'point' I am missing. There is nothing esoteric about what Rob G is pushing. I am just not persuaded.

Sorry not to have been clearer. The precise details of "welfare to work" and the "bedroom tax" (a misnomer, since it's a question of cutting rent support for poor families living in a house with a "spare" bedroom) are not really relevant. These are just two recent examples of Conservative Party policies being entirely at odds with anything that earlier generations of conservatives would have recognised as their purposes or principles. They are, rather, ways of chivvying the poor to benefit their bosses. There was a time when conservatives deplored liberals doing that kind of thing, and equally deplored socialists micromanaging everyday life to benefit the state.

I'm pretty sure that if I tried to explain it you would not be any happier.

So what? Worry about Mrs. Horton's happiness. I will take care of myself.

Sorry not to have been clearer. The precise details of "welfare to work" and the "bedroom tax" (a misnomer, since it's a question of cutting rent support for poor families living in a house with a "spare" bedroom) are not really relevant. These are just two recent examples of Conservative Party policies being entirely at odds with anything that earlier generations of conservatives would have recognised as their purposes or principles. They are, rather, ways of chivvying the poor to benefit their bosses.

1. You put the worst construction on what the purposes of the policy are.

2. Is it so that benefit programs are forever optimal in their levels, structure, and portfolio of beneficiaries? If they are not, is it so that it is illegitimate ever to reduce benefits which accrue to an identifiable class of people?

Here's the business. In this country, there are some systemic problems with how benefit programs are ordered (a great deal of which has to do with means testing). If you correct the problems, some people gain and some people lose. I can generally identify people whose real income will decline under an amendment to any program. In rent seeking societies, there are invariably identifiable beneficiaries of corporate welfare and they have their tribunes among politicians. So, there comes a time when I can fix the problem with redistributive programs but I cannot scrape away all the rent extraction. That's just politics (and the limits to the attention I can deploy to any given problem at one time). See how easy it is to say I am shivving the workers to benefit the bosses?