So it is with privatizing Social Security. It's marginally better from a libertarian perspective than the mess we're in. But it's hardly libertarian.
Avocados, when they become guacomole (sp??) make for the best of thoughts.
On the basis of this post, I'm concluding we are, basically, in agreement, just emphasizing points of some slight disagreement. I don't mean we agree on political philosophy. That would be boring. Rather that we agree about the relation between libertarianism and Bush's attempt to privatize social security.
That's all I'm arguing, at the moment. Or, better put, joining Lind in arguing. To repeat. As I see it, the pure form of the libertarian argument on social security would be to do away with it. Because it's a very large intervention of that old demon "the state" in the private lives of individuals. Your life long work paid for my mother's social security. Etc. Well, rather, some several who died before they managed the crawl into 62 or 65 did so.
But it's that ideological frame that is the Grover Norquist frame that lies behind the notion of privatizing so many things--social security, schools, prisons, hospitals. And so on. And is well on its way to leading us to some serious social disasters with its propensity to heighten already heightened levels of social inequality.
The definitive critique of this, to my mind, is Michael Walzer's in his Spheres of Justice. |
