SOCIETY: A FAILURE?

Like many of us, during my teenage years and during my twenties I had a bit of an issue with rules and authority. 

Why can’t I do whatever I want? Why do I need to follow the rules? Why do we need to pay taxes? I mean I work hard from that money right? Taxes is pretty much robbing me of my hard earned cash. 

I think that most grown ups these days feel that way when it comes to paying taxes, don’t you agree? 

During my second year of college I took a course that would come to enlighten me as to the why, and it actually makes sense. It has changed the manner in which I see the world. And it has shown me how wrong it is for people to label social support systems as socialist. 

THE CONTRACT

I won’t go deep into the course, but rather get straight to the point. 

Society was formed out of necessity. There is simply safety in numbers. So people group together to help protect themselves from external threats. But of course a certain system is required internally to protect people from with in as well. That is where all the rules in society essentially come from. 

Take all of that and you get a simple ideal from the whole thing. 

“You are in contract with society and society is in contract with you.” 

YOUR CONTRACT

From the time you are born in a society you are expected to contribute to it. You grow up in it, and when you are of age you work and provide something to society. And this isn’t just your job, what you make, the services you provide, but also the taxes you pay, the culture you contribute to and so on. 

SOCIETY’S CONTRACT WITH YOU

But this contract is not a one way street. Society is supposed to provide you with all you need in order to thrive. Think about it for a minute. Would the massive corporations in the United States be able to operate as they do, and make all the money they make, if there were no roads, train systems, airports, electricity, sanitation, and well every thing that the city provides?

FREEDOM

It may seem counter intuitive but the rule and laws that are in place and enforced in a society is meant to grant its members more freedom, not less.

You are not free to rob, assault, murder, enslave others. It is a “freedom” that is removed from everyone, but its intend is to provide more freedom to EVERYONE. You can walk down the street without the fear of having these things happen to you. At least that is how it should be ideally.

TAXES

As I already implied. Society provides us with a lot. And it costs money to actually make those things happen. There are rules in place that does not allow for governments to actually own for profit businesses.

Take NASA as an example. It belongs the the US government. However, whenever NASA comes up with something it doesn’t start a daughter company to produce and sell that product. Often those items are provided to the private sector to develop further.

The reason for this should be obvious. There would be a massive conflict of interest if the US government ran retail businesses.

So the main manner in which the government makes its money is through taxes. Those roads, airports, parts, playgrounds, railways, and many many other services not provided by private corporations will need to be provided by “society”.

SOCIALISM vs SOCIAL PROGRAMS

Due to the Cold War Americans are particularly sensitive to anything socialist, as the first thing they think of is communism. But that is not the point of social programs.

In communism, you don’t pay any taxes at all. You basically work, and the government pays you. That is it, they determine what you get whether you like it or not. The idea being that resources and money is distributed equally. Of course as we know such a system ran by humans results in all sorts of issues regarding corruption, not to mention oppression by the state and all of that.

Social programs on the other hand are programs that are put in place in order to better society. Here is an example.

One of the cleanest places I have ever been to in the world in The Netherlands. And one of the dirties is Barcelona. I point them both out since they are both in Europe. So why is this the case?

Taxes in The Netherlands is quite high. But the Dutch government uses its tax revenue to pump I back into the economy and to provide social benefits to raise the bar for all its citizens. Is this free money given out so you can stick in your trailer, get fat, and do nothing? Absolutely not.

On any given day you will notice a gang of workers working around picking up trash, and cleaning side walks with leaf blowers. The in fracture is always being upgraded, maintained, or expanded in some way or another. Within a day of a massive festival held in a public park, that park is squeaky clean.

The social program is set in place to ensure that everyone is contributing to society, to keep people off of the streets, out of jail, and so on. As a result the city you live in is generally always in tip top shape, public transportation is great, and most importantly safe. Poverty in The Netherlands is not as big of an issue as it is in other western countries.

FAILURE

When society has not levelled the playing field and disproportionately benefits a group over others it has FAILED.

TAXES

Taxes is a good example of this. The rich argue that it is unfair to pay more taxes than those who aren’t. They make it sound as if the money they have made is completely independent from the societies in which they live in.

However, as I explained above, their success is almost entirely thanks to society. Society provided them with an environment to succeed. In particular the education systems that allowed them to gain the knowledge they need. How about everything that the State Department does abroad in order for corporations to make money abroad?

How those rich people think they can operate as leeches? Essentially suck as much money as they can out of the system, and hoard it? When currency is taking out of circulation it negatively impacts the economy, and it decrease the value of the dollar (inflation).

RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION

The recent protesting going on in the US… have been a long time coming. I am fully supportive of them, except for the fact that the timing couldn’t be worse, with the pandemic and all.

But racism is an example of how society has failed. By all measures out there it is clear that people of colour have it worse than whites. Society is supposed to level the playing field remember? As such it makes little sense when people complain that measure that are supposed to help level the playing field (such as affirmative action) is discriminatory to whites. After all the systems seems to be largely setup to benefit whites over people of colour.

The Trump administration over the past three years has tried to roll back protections for the LGBT community. That is a blatant societal failure. As you can see in this post I have never raised religion as a fundamental part of society. So arguments to oppress people because of religious believes is never a sound argument. Most of the arguments allowing for the discrimination against LGBT people is on religious grounds. You can easily execute a thought experiment that completely blows such a point of view apart.

Take Middle Eastern countries as an example. Most western countries agree that the fact that women in the Middle East do not enjoy the same freedoms as men is wrong. However, all of that is based on religion. So why are they wrong to use religion as an argument while Christians can? Their society has completely failed 50% of their population, just like western societies that discriminate against a group of people have failed them.

THE FUTURE

Plastic polution

Climate change

Mass extinction

These are 3 massive issues that we currently face on this planet. It is the 21st century and we can’t even get racism/discrimination under control. We are apparently in the age if disinformation, the age of global division… How, will we deal with these existential crisis if we can’t even stop hating people because of the colour of their skin, who they choose to love, and well if we can’t be mindful to one other?

We are all in contract with the societies in which we live. We are obliged to pay back into it for the betterment of said society, and for the next generation. And society, and those who are its stuarts are obliged to take actions to keep society’s end of the bargain. And we should hold them to account when they fail in their obligations.