Two Freedoms. Hugh Segal

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СКАЧАТЬ Socialism, in its most raw form, seeks to legislate outcomes, usually through the resource and priority allocation role of the state and its minions. The enforcement of equality of outcomes, however difficult and unlikely, requires a disproportionately large regulatory and taxing role for state infrastructure that, by definition, has to hold some people back from making all the progress they might. This is anathema to citizens who believe that human and economic potential restrained, repressed, or in some ways confiscated by a state apparatus is not only freedom denied but mediocrity imposed. Dividing and redividing the same pie will not only create a situation that is unfair, but will also usually result in a deployment of efforts better used in growing the pie. Results and outcomes are usually typically beyond any state to competently or fairly legislate, tax, or control.

      And if over-legislating in the interest of equality of outcomes is a vice, so too is the excessive faith in laissez-faire economics so often favoured by the far right, since it is a destabilizer of permission to hope, which depends upon the freedom from want and a basic competitive order of fairness. Moderation in the approach to these challenges is not a weak-kneed response but the only rational instrument by which the balance of freedoms can be sustained.

      When governments of the right or left try to legislate outcomes, they usually spawn a huge expansion of contraband, a dilution of foreign direct investment, and a detached and self-centred upper-income economy, with a “rentier” class that seeks gain outside the system by cozying up to the political or regulatory power structure. Of course, the ruling parties or political classes rarely deny themselves the best of what is available, which they get first, so those seeking to share in the bounty are required to seek accommodation with the political elite in order to gain access to the spoils. As a result, social democracy, rigidly imposed, frequently results in the replacement of open competition for income increases and market share with a competition for advantage in the “who you know” network that can be just as inequitable and exclusive.

      The similarities between the old Communist nomenklatura of the defunct Soviet Union, the new democracy-lite oligarchy of modern Russia, the zero-democracy rulers of China, and many African dictators, past and present, are remarkable in many regards — what is instructive is their basic problem with corruption. Freedom from want cannot exist in these kinds of societies because not only is there no equality of opportunity, but no distribution of opportunity anywhere beyond the self-preening and militarily protected dictators’ circle, however large or small, defined by ethnicity, tribe, family, religion, or political allegiance. Are there serious analogous exclusionary examples among the 0.20 percent of the top 1 percent in many countries of the West? I think so.

      The principal target for countries seeking to advance freedom from want must be a recognizable minimum definition of “equality of opportunity” rights for each society, intelligently sustained and constantly evaluated and updated. There will be local leaders who fight progress in the name of preserving local control. The failure to ratify a good-faith $2 billion funding agreement between the Government of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations’ national chief in 2012 for a properly financed national Aboriginal school board and curriculum was caused, in part, by local band council chiefs who vetoed the agreement because they were upset about not getting their share and not being duly consulted by the chief of the AFN. While the consensual and consultative culture of our First Nations in Canada is to be celebrated, localism that stands in the way of higher standards of education nationwide for First Nations children should not be celebrated.

      There are, of course, divergent definitions as to what “equality of opportunity” really means. To be fair, different societies and cultures, with their different geographies and histories, will, within the context of available resources, have different answers to this question.

      For some in developing countries, ensuring that most of the population has more than two dollars a day to meet subsistence needs will appear a reasonable interim step in the effort to free people from want. For others, measures of access to education, basic food, and shelter form a more practical composite indicator.

      The efforts of national governments to intervene in the economy in order to improve the lifestyle of the poor with such strategies as income minimums can run into “localism” champions, who do not always have local opportunity in mind. In fact, they may be seeking to preserve their own local privilege and the economic dominance they hold by virtue of inherited property or community standing. Non-unitary states and nascent or recent democracies, where trust in those who govern from afar is not yet robust, often find the obstacles to opportunity fairness erected by these opposing figures paralyzing. Of course, every well-developed, economically vigorous, long-standing democracy will have deep political divisions on this issue of equality of opportunity. However, countries where the gaps between rich and poor are stagnant or growing have not only the most heated debates but also the most glaring inequities in relative terms.

      The fact that the poorest Canadians, Americans, and Europeans live on more money than poorer populations in parts of Africa or rural China does not in any way diminish the absence of freedom from want for the lower income classes of the Canadian, American, and European populations. Having to negotiate through Plexiglas for enough to feed one’s children under welfare programs in rural Ontario or Swiss cantons may seem less daunting than what is faced by the rural poor in Afghanistan. But for the families in North America confronting that hurdle, many of whom also face a series of problems caused by such things as substance abuse, educational failure, poor health, and dramatically shorter life spans than their better-off Canadian and American neighbours, the comparison of their situation to others elsewhere around the globe is the essence of a meaningless measure. It provides no comfort and less hope. And the absence of hope equals the absence of freedom from want. In the more developed states, the direct attack on freedom from want — the core challenge of confronting poverty head-on — in both absolute and relative terms — is frustrated by the ideologies on the right and left that simply and directly get in the way.

      Governments, whether local, regional, or national, often find it hard to address the core inequality of opportunity; it is politically difficult to confront. Many find it easier to address the supposed contributing factors to poverty rather than poverty itself. In some ways, this is like replacing rational triage in a trauma centre or the emergency department of a hospital, trying to stop a patient’s bleeding or diminish her pain with detailed inquiries into the patient’s nutritional status.

      In many countries, unless the suffering individual falls into a commonly approved category, such as a senior citizen, veteran, disabled person, et cetera, the notion of dealing directly with the reality of poverty is considered too politically risky. What we find in these places, and my own Canada definitely falls into this category (as does the United States), is that poverty is not seen as a treatable cause for all the negative pathologies that produce crime and health problems. So, instead, well-intentioned billions are spent in a dehumanizing welfare system, in educational investment, and in special programs aimed at the impacts of or the alleged causes of poverty rather than on poverty itself. Some public sector unions on the left prefer investing in plans where the professionals, through government, hire civil servants (usually unionized) to run targeted programs aimed at different aspects of the lives of the poor. Efforts to stem family violence, anti-substance abuse initiatives, work programs tied to welfare (or food stamps in the United States) are all seen as preferable to topping up the low incomes, however insufficient, of the genuinely poor. Interesting mythologies are constructed that, when broken down, assume that poor people cannot be trusted to spend an anti-poverty top-up responsibly. There is a Victorian presumption that those living in poverty are imbued with an intrinsic “moral weakness.”

      On the right, “paying someone to do nothing” is considered the ultimate fiscal and moral sin, and so automatic top-ups are set aside as creating huge disincentives to work. The problem with this bias is that it is utterly disconnected from facts on the ground. The vast majority of people living under the poverty line in Canada, the United States, and most other countries are actually working — sometimes holding down more than one low-paying job. Single mothers with infants or toddlers СКАЧАТЬ