A quick ramble around the topics of unemployment, welfare, surf carnivals and liberty

Whether or not the chagrin, anger or sometimes outright fury at the idea that some of us are having a good time organising surf carnivals at the Moonee Ponds Creek, while others have to earn a living by the sweat of their brow comes from a sense of fairness grounded in the norm of reciprocity, it does have a name. Chaucer nailed it in the last tale of his Canterbury Tales, the Parson’s Tale (no apologies to economists and social theories for dragging in a literary reference - I’m writing this piece and I’ll do it any way I damn well like):

After Pride wol I speken of the foule synne of Envye, which that is, as by the word of the philosophre, “sorwe of oother mans prosperitee”: and after the word of Seint Augustyn, it is “sorwe of oother mennes wele, and joye of othere mennes harm. This foule synne is platly agayns the Hooly Ghost.”

(Incidentally if you want to run a surfing carnival at your own local creek, you’ll need some two-pack epoxy resin glue, Paddle Pop sticks, plastic figurines - check out your local op-shop for toy soldiers and the like - and lead sinkers. Glue a plastic figurine to each Paddle Pop stick, then a sinker underneath it, to keep it upright when it goes in the water. Voila! You now have a collection of toy surfers.)

Mutual Obligation is the political expression of this unemployment-envy; its justification is to appease a substantial section who have, quite deliberately, been incited to near apoplectic resentment of the “idle unworthy poor”. Of whom there will always be too many, largely by definition.

Its effect on the unemployed, and welfare recipients in general, is to deprive them of freedom, both as freedom from coercion or domination (under the Mutual Obligation dogma, Centrelink “customers” live largely at the behest of Centrelink) and freedom of opportunity (the continuing fixation on the job-search as the way out of unemployment constrains Newstart Recipients from exercising personal initiative, beyond a limited range of Centrelink approved forms).

But what is going on when we impose “Mutual” Obligation on the unemployed, to satisfy the will to punish of the taxpayers who are being robbed of the wealth to which they have established a Nozickian entitlement? Perhaps John Stuart Mill points the way to an answer:

… such phrases as “self-government” and “the power of the people over themselves” do not express the true state of the case. The “people” who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the “self-government” spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or most active part of the people; the majority or those who succeed in making themselves the majority; the people, consequently may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. (J.S. Mill On Liberty)