Welfare Straits

The global economic crisis will not bring about the collapse of Capitalism as there are no Capitalist countries today.But it will bring about the end of Welfare States as put simply, there is no money left.An end to welfare,the dream of Capitalists now looks close to becoming a reality.Welfare is approaching its 1989 moment.Countries across the world are etiolating their State power,cutting back on government programmes and as much as some of the inhabitants march and protest and 'occupy' this trend will not be reversed.Global max-out of State credit cards can mean only one thing,a contraction of State powers,a moving towards defacto Capitalism.The only alternative is a shift to totalitarian government and most people have no appetite for that,even lovers of State largesse entitlement programmes.

Advocates of unregulated laissez faire capitalism will be in the ascendancy if they seize the day and push home their advantage by delineating the parameters of State power,arguing for individual rights,phasing out of government programmes,across the board privatisations of all extant State bodies that do not fall under the essential role of the State such as armed forces,police and law courts.The economic arguments however will not suffice without a moral argument for Capitalism as people are not swayed by implacable logic so much as by moral ethical arguments and it is in this field that so called defenders of Capitalism have been so woefully and pitifully inadequate not to say delinquent.Once again it is the Conservatives who have been largely responsible for damning capitalism with faint praise,apologising for it,attempting to sneak in capitalism lite through the back door,watering down and emasculating it with hamstringing regulations and qualifications,in effect sabotaging it by contaminating and corrupting it with mixed economy policies thus discrediting the very thing they claim to advocate ie Capitalism.This then gives ammunition to the anti Capitalists who say it does not work.As most people have no idea what capitalism actually is -and believe absurdly that it means welfare and taxation - this is a successful gambit by capitalism's enemies.A little basic eduacation would explain that Capitalism is not about regulation,taxation,government picking winners,red tape,bureaucracy,quangoes and that all such things are the antithesis of Capitalism.But this alone will not suffice as it is in the realm of morality and ethics that as I have said, Capitalism needs to be explained and defended.Without this moral ethical philosophical foundation there will be no sea change in the public mind regarding capitalism.

Testimony to the truth that it is not economics that move and inform people's judgements but ethics and morality is the continued popularity in spite of all the economic arguments against it of Statism,welfare and Socialism.People want to believe that they are on the side of the angels,the good guys,the little man and Socialism has been so good at convincing people that it holds the moral high ground that it has managed to carry the day in the face of all the evidence to the contrary that it only delivers poverty crime,moral squalor,dependency, depradation,unemployment over-regulated markets,brain drain,global welfare dependency as peoples flood in from all over the world to batten on to the handout society funded by British taxpayers.In the face of all these self evidencies about the consequences of Socialism Conservatives are weak, vacillating,timorous and apologetic and effectively silent about Capitalism's virtues.In this moral vacuum the Socialists and Statists step in have carte blanche,occupying the moral highground entirely by default.

So we can see that it is in the realm of morality that Capitalism needs to be defended.Why it is the moral system.That will be my next post -unless something interrupts it first asnd I will return in due course to this central issue.