Free Dignity

In a community where self-reliance or community-reliance is valued, it is undignified to be one of the protected class. To be someone who cannot negotiate or create or trade for the value of their own upkeep, let alone contribute surplus value, has a stigma attached. The social and personal self-esteem price we pay is a mechanism preventing us from simply being full-time bludgers. Dignity, in Western Culture, is to be earned. Because we want dignity we keep earning, keep being productive, avoid falling into the Welfare “safety net” or at least from making a hammock of it.

By defining dignity itself as a Public Good, the politician is dismantling our culture and our economic incentives. The end result of making dignity into something distributed as a second-hand good from the Welfare State is that people will want to be on welfare for the free dignity rather than because they even need the money!

Indeed, we are already at the point where politicians and public servants experience dignity coursing through their veins (and in their lush upholstery and expensive car pools) as if they were important or had done something to earn it. As if they were something other than liars and thieves.