notion that providing essential services and goods like education, healthcare, and food
I can see the benefit of free education. When you educate people, it has a multiplicative effect on the mobility of the individuals. Education has the ability to unlock a great deal of potential in each person which has a seemingly obvious benefit for the rest of the society.
I would argue that giving completely free food and healthcare do weaken most societies. The problem is that there's an all-too-large portion of most societies that will avoid working if they can get basic necessities like food, healthcare, and housing met for free.
Working is good for people. It gets them out of bed, gets them thinking, gives some people their only exercise, forces people to deal with others socially, and quite literally keeps some folks out of trouble that they'd otherwise get into if they were completely idle.
I'm all for a safety net to keep people suffering from catastrophic health problems or temporary situations from dying/starving... but the notion that we should make "free food" a policy is just broken.
I can see the benefit of free education. When you educate people, it has a multiplicative effect on the mobility of the individuals. Education has the ability to unlock a great deal of potential in each person which has a seemingly obvious benefit for the rest of the society.
I would argue that giving completely free food and healthcare do weaken most societies. The problem is that there's an all-too-large portion of most societies that will avoid working if they can get basic necessities like food, healthcare, and housing met for free.
Working is good for people. It gets them out of bed, gets them thinking, gives some people their only exercise, forces people to deal with others socially, and quite literally keeps some folks out of trouble that they'd otherwise get into if they were completely idle.
I'm all for a safety net to keep people suffering from catastrophic health problems or temporary situations from dying/starving... but the notion that we should make "free food" a policy is just broken.