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In the on-going pork barrel scandal and deliberation of
the 2014 budget, many sectors are advocating that the money for legislators’
pork barrel or PDAF that has been abolished will be inserted back to the budget
as additional funding of the different Departments for various welfare and
subsidy programs to the poor.
They make this suggestion because they believe that slow
but endless expansion of government spending and bureaucracies are fine so long
as the poor benefit from it, and that the Liberal government of President
Benigno Aquino has promised big anti-poverty programs by controlling
corruption.
If the poor have indeed benefited from previous welfare
and subsidy programs many years and decades ago, then poverty by now should be
small and negligible. This is not the case. What various welfarist and subsidy
programs have done many decades ago is to benefit the politicians and the
various bureaucracies that receive ever-rising budget and regulatory, prohibition
powers.
Many officials and members of the Liberal Party (LP)
forget that they are supposed to advance the philosophy of liberalism in their
service to the public, not the cousin of socialism which is endless subsidies
and no time table welfarism.
In a recent, short book published by the Friedrich
Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) Pakistan Office, Talking
Sense: Liberalism, The Greatest Misunderstandings, author Jana Licht
discussed the essence of liberalism. She wrote,
The word “liberalism” has its roots in the Latin words liber, which
means “free”, and respectively liberalis, which means “concerning the freedom”;
in short: it is all about freedom. Liberalism is a social and political
movement with the freedom of the individual as its basic idea, aim and decision
guideline….
The core of liberal philosophy is the individual whose freedom must be
secured and defended. This should be the highest standard and most important
norm of a liberal state. Liberals do not
refuse the state; on the contrary, the state is the guarantor of the freedom.
The state and its political as well as economic order must be directed to the
freedom of the individual, which is the basis of a humane society. Governmental
power must end where the individual freedom is touched. The state is only
allowed to come into action if the freedom of an individual is hurt. Its duties
are limited to the achievement and the sustainment of freedom and law.
Thus, the main function of the State in a liberal
government is to protect and expand individual freedom. Freedom against
murderers and aggressors (right to life), freedom against thieves and
destroyers of property (right to private property), and freedom against bullies
and dictators (right to liberty and self expression).
By extension, individuals have the freedom to be
hardworking and efficient, or be lazy and inefficient. They have the freedom to
be self-reliant, ambitious and responsible, or be dependent, mediocre and
irresponsible. Becoming thieves, land grabbers and kidnappers to compensate for
their poverty due to laziness or irresponsibility are explicitly disallowed and
will be dealt strongly by the State.
In a liberal society therefore, being industrious and
self-reliant is rewarded by prosperity while being lazy and dependent is
penalized by poverty. Welfarism and forced equality, giving endless and forever
subsidies is not a core function of the State in a liberal government.
Jana Licht wrote further,
Freedom” cannot be thought without “responsibility”, the other
important term of liberal philosophy. For liberals, freedom and responsibility
are two sides of the same coin. Freedom can only be lived by individuals who
take responsibility for themselves and for their fellow men. And freedom can
only be lived with responsibility, because the freedom of an individual is
limited by the freedom of the others. A surplus of freedom always implies more
self-responsibility. But this responsibility is not a burden. Liberals claim
it, because self-responsibility opens the door for more possibilities to choose
from. And this, in turn, is an essential aspect of freedom.
The economic order in a liberal state is based on free markets and private
property. The idea of a liberal economy disapproves overflowing governmental
regulation of the markets. This belief is justified by the idea of
self-responsibility. Liberals are convinced that individuals are better in
organising their economic life than any state authority, because they will
always have more information about their individual needs and wants.
So while socialism and welfarism emphasized lots of
“rights” – health is a right, education is a right, housing is a right, stable
job is a right,… -- liberalism strongly and emphatically emphasize that for
every right, there is a corresponding responsibility. Rights and freedom are
closely interlinked with responsibility, they cannot be divorced from each
other.
Thus, in a liberal society, health is a right and a
responsibility; education is a right and a responsibility, and so on. What does
this mean?
This means that people cannot over-drink, over-smoke, over-eat and over-sit and when they become sickly, they will rally and lobby that the government should give them free or highly subsidized healthcare. This means that students cannot be frequent flunkers and school repeaters because education is free anyway. This means that people can squat and occupy private lands for their housing and lobby that government should side with them.
This means that people cannot over-drink, over-smoke, over-eat and over-sit and when they become sickly, they will rally and lobby that the government should give them free or highly subsidized healthcare. This means that students cannot be frequent flunkers and school repeaters because education is free anyway. This means that people can squat and occupy private lands for their housing and lobby that government should side with them.
This also means that high and multiple taxation of the
people’s income and savings as codified into tax laws by the previous
governments is wrong. Such high taxation and forced equality is penalizing the
hard working and industrious people, while subsidizing the less or
non-industrious people, and the various government bureaucracies that do the
endless and forever subsidy distribution.
Many taxpayers are angry at the on-going pork barrel
scandal, at the large-scale corruption in many government departments and
agencies, at the inability of certain agencies like the Commission on Audit
(COA) and Congress that are tasked by the Constitution to check and disallow such wastes and
corruption to happen.
It is time for the Liberal government to go back to its
core function – to promulgate the rule of law. Punish the wrong doers after a
due process, give justice to taxpayers by slowly reducing or abolishing certain
taxes and fees that penalize hardwork and efficiency.
-------------See also:
Pol. Ideology 48: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Social Contract Theory, September 09, 2013
Pol. Ideology 49: Machiavelli, The Prince, Liberality and Meanness, September 11, 2013
Pol. Ideology 50: Plato, The Republic and Pork Barrel, September 14, 2013
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