Welfare as a stick for conservatives

Money is a necessity in society. It's our agreed upon standard for facilitating most transactions. This fact alone justifies the need for welfare, because without it people cannot function in our society.

Its necessity doesn't mean it's well catered for, however, with crackdowns frequent and even modest increases being politically untenable on either side of politics. I used to think that it was because they're an easy target - a group that can be demonised who have little recourse to fight back - but I think that explanation excludes the basic moral impulses in play. Rather the unfairness of getting something for nothing makes them an easy target.

In short, there is a tension between the necessity of welfare and the perceived unfairness of a welfare state.

People can, if they choose to, live their whole life without needing to work, which requires that others in the society do the so-called heavy lifting. The welfare rhetoric often focuses on abuse of the system for this reason, even if those abuses are rare and end up affecting those who aren't abusing the system.

This is why programs to restrict welfare to the deserving are part of populist politics, irrespective of whether it provides good societal outcomes. Drug testing welfare recipients is one policy that's expensive, counter-productive, yet gets popular support. After all, drugs are illegal, and welfare is meant to look after individuals. Cards that restrict purchases or even food stamps are another. They are the tacit recognition that welfare is necessary but that out shouldn't go beyond that.

The current contention over welfare in Australia currently is that the rate is so low that it's not even performing its necessary function. Again, for conservatives, this is a good thing because it means welfare shouldn't be relied upon, so it should only be used as a last resort. Combine this with the complaint that welfare recipients find ways to get on higher payments (such as disability pensions, which again get repeated crackdowns) or that they are supplementing their income without declaring (see: robodebt) and we've got a punitive system that makes it harder for those on welfare to survive.

Yet all these measures don't address some of the problems associated with unemployment. People in vulnerable jobs can be exploited. Long-term unemployed have weakened job prospects. There can never be full employment, and many who work now are underemployed. No amount of sticks within the welfare system are going to change that.

Instead, what is needed are practical steps to overcoming barriers for entry. There needs to be better support to get people into work, from better training, to employer incentives. These should be driven by practical results.

At the same time, we really need to change how we view welfare from a handout to the ability to participate in society. This would be more in line with the role welfare plays in a society, allowing for economic activity. Money given to welfare tends to go back into the economy, so the money isn't being lost, but encouraging economic engagement.

So when the the rate jobseekers get remains stagnant while the cost of living goes up, the outcome will be pushing more people into deeper poverty. The stick methods may be a deterrent effect for people in crappy jobs not to quit and live off welfare, but it's not going to get many people off welfare without other changes that make it easier to work. The necessary function of welfare needs to be depoliticised because of how easy it is to perceive it as a straightforward unfairness problem.

Morality is sanctioned discrimination

With the question of religious freedom once again popping up, we get reminded that what people most want is the ability to discriminate against others.

In this case, religious schools want to be be exempt from anti-discrimination legislation in order to keep the school's environment within their set moral boundaries.

Similarly sitting the "I can't believe it's not a plebiscite" postal survey on gay marriage, a woman was fired for her "immoral" posting on Facebook against the proposition.

Or take the case of Louis C.K. His career definitely took a hit from the emergence of his masturbatory habits, but him performing again at all has some #MeToo advocates outraged. His punishment is deemed insufficient in that he's gone forever.

And even safe zones around abortion clinics draw this same ire as it prevents the moral crusaders from directly confronting the sinners using the service.

I could go all day with examples, and those examples would be from all across the political spectrum. But the point with the examples is to illustrate how morality is targeted at individuals and groups seen to break it.

Tolerance under "normal" conditions

A pluralistic society survives by allowing a personal moral compass - at least to the extent that is allowable by law. Our society can accommodate both those who choose to hunt animals and those who think it's immoral to do so. Each may teeth to convince the other of its validity, but there's no need to solve the problem via societal enforcement.

That's not to say there's no tension or coercion. Moral issues ignite our passions, after all, and invoke strong outrage. Impassioned pleas and organised protests are a healthy part of democracy.

Arguments are made in the public sphere in a variety of ways, and over time values can and do change. A majority of people in Australia choose to vote for gay marriage despite a majority seeing homosexuality as immoral less than a generation ago.

The key factor to my mind is tolerance - that we have learnt that our personal convictions most of the time are not necessarily what others hold it even ought to hold. This is not the same as relativism, though may be described as a pragmatic relativism. Christians and Muslims have truth as they see it, and they are allowed to practice those truths, insofar as they don't affect our ability to do the same. Likewise for vegans and hunters, capitalists and communists, etc.

We can argue passionately for our against these positions without the need to dictate how anyone lives within these bounds. This holds even when we vehemently disagree.

Localised sanctioned discrimination

The pluralism generally succeeds when the moral impulses are confined to limited areas where they are sanctioned. A church is a straight-forward example of this, as is a group of vegans. The organising principles of the group allow the group to police the behaviours of their own members irrespective of what those in the wider society believe.

When these sanctions aren't reflected in the wider society, there is a tension whenever these individuals deal with outsiders. The boundary of where discrimination is sanctioned can see seen where public services are provided, such as in businesses, or in schools.

When local groups create a bubble of like-minded individuals, the wider community can be seen as downright immoral for failing to grasp those moral truths. This raises the legitimate concern that outsiders are dehumanised, and that there is the threat of exertion of power. One strategy is playing the political game (and why abortion is a perennial issue), but others include shaming, ostracism, and even taking the law into their own hands.

The ideological bindings of the group shape the individual. There are few true lone wolves, but those who attack abortion clinic doctors, homosexuals, GM crops, politicians, civilian populations, etc. all share a common morality with a local group that holds them as moral and the outside society as dangerously immoral in need of rectification.

The rule of law as a proxy to justice

Law is the ultimate standard in any given society. While psychologically we may feel morality transcends law (we are all familiar with the notion of an unjust law), we know that the law is the arbiter of disputes.

Movements like #MeToo exist because of the failure of law to sufficiently address systemic problems. Conversely laws like anti-discrimination legislation exist because of a need to address systemic injustice in a society.

The law needs to be seen by enough of the population as being fair. Not perfect - no set of rules can be perfect, let alone satisfy the myriad of different moral beliefs - but good enough that major problems will be addressed so that we don't need to settle them ourselves. If enough see the law as insufficient or capricious, we get mob justice. And while mob justice might be satisfying when it comes to your beliefs (e.g. taking down serial sex offenders), it can be an outrage when it goes the other way (e.g. gay bashing).

The reason we have due process, innocent until proven guilty, tolerance, etc. is that the other way has been tried and it leads to more barbaric societies. It's not always satisfying to think that some can get away with immoral behaviour, but the alternative is far worse.

Happy Labour Day!

It's always good to have a day off work, and public holidays are a great way to enshrine the balance between life and work into law. Labour Day is unique along public holidays in that it celebrates this victory for the rights of workers.

Yet it's another day off.

We don't really celebrate labour day here, not in the sense that we celebrate Anzac Day or Christmas. There's no reminder of what importance the day has, nor what it was like before for workers.

Yet it's another day off.

What was fought for and won by the labour movement is more important than ever at a time when wages are stagnant and working conditions are gradually being eroded in the name of efficiency (i.e. shareholder profits). We have a proven way to give better working conditions and help share the success of the economy among the people.

Unions should be using this as an opportunity to show their relevance, especially at a time when they are only ever in the media when there's corruption or strikes. Without collective bargaining, the forces of supply and demand fix wages. Unskilled or low-skilled work is vulnerable to tougher conditions, lower pay, and exploitation.

Yet it's another day off.

We need more attention given to why it is we have this day off because without that attention there's too much power for those who can gradually erode the gains made by the labour movement. We are seeing the effects of that already, and as technology and globalisation continue to push forward, we will see greater effects.

It's no wonder MAGA was a thing, or Brexit was a thing, or that far-right national parties around the world are taking more and more of the protest vote of vulnerable workers feeling betrayed and marginalised by a political system that seems to serve the wealthy. It's no wonder many young people see communism as a solution despite every implementation of communism being a dismal failure that made workers worse off than a market-driven economy.

Yet it's another day off.

Every company wants to maximise its profits, and that means trying to get the most out of the workers for the least amount of money. The human capital - our wellbeing and our lives above and beyond work - doesn't factor into it. That's our responsibility, and we can only get that as a greater society reflecting on itself.

Labour Day is important because it's a reminder of how everyone can be made better off by collective action, and that we as a society ought to be having the conversation of how we want to live. It's a reminder that conditions can improve and that we aren't fully beholden to the relentless pursuit of profit.

It's another day off, and that's worth celebrating.

Terrorism As A Theological Statement

What's important to remember about any religiously-motivated act of terrorism is that the act itself is a theological statement. Any such act must be countered swiftly and vehemently with the denial of the truth of their interpretation of the doctrine, such that the argument is put in its place once and for all. And the fact that it hasn't seemed to get through is all the more reason to repeat it loudly and often - such is the role of the layman in theological disputes.

And if that fails, there's always politics to fall back on, as true theology is never political in nature...

The Parable of the Atom Seeker

A young student grows up in a society that holds the belief where she, like everything else, is made up of tiny unseen particles called atoms. So after learning something about the methodologies of science, she decides to understand what the science is behind the atom.

What strikes her at first is how the explanations for the atom didn't fit at all into the scientific method, but relied heavily on everyday experience. Furthermore, no modern physicists have witnessed such experiences, but rely solely on the accounts of early physicists. Some physicists claimed to have experiences that tangentially supported the experiences of the original physicists, but none of them could produce any evidence remotely like that which holds for other theories.

Upon further investigation, she realises that physicists disagree among themselves as to which experiences count as evidence of the atom. Some physicists argue that the experiences are interpreted too literally, while others hold to as literal a reading as possible. Some argue that the experiences can only be understood in light of arcane mystic writings and ancient mythic tales, and there is disagreement among those physicists as to the process this takes.

The quality of evidence is further called into question when other physical theories adequately account for the evidence for atoms without needing to posit atomic theory. She finds physicists will admit this in parts, but again there is disagreement between physicists over which scientific phenomena explain away the need for atoms in any given case. Some physicists spoke of the atom in metaphor, some shrouded knowledge of atoms in mystery, and some asserted that certain experiences of atoms were brute facts.

But not all physicists even agreed that evidence was important. Some physicists argued from first principles alone, invoking philosophical arguments that spoke of the atom's necessity in some respect. There were multiple of these arguments, though physicists disagreed among themselves as to the validity and significance of various arguments. Entire classes of arguments were championed by some physicists, while others favoured a different kind of arguments. She found the arguments for the most part lacking in any detail, and where there was detail it contradicted other established science. There was just no way to reconcile the arguments with the claims made about atoms.

She found some physicists who disagreed with both the arguments and the evidential approach. Some argued for the beauty of the idea as proof of the reality of atoms. Other physicists argued that atoms fit with our emotional needs. Some argued that the atoms were needed to keep social order. Some argued that their emotional response to the theory is its proof. Finally, some physicists admitted that a belief in atoms is a matter of faith, which a few embracing the idea of atoms precisely because they are an absurd concept.

The only constant she found in the exercise was the belief itself. Physicists couldn't decide among themselves what the implications were, let alone any detail that could be subject to the same scrutiny that other physical theories have. What follows is that the consensus among physicists is an artificial one, with no two physicist sharing quite the same view of what an atom is or how we know about it. And, finally, the reasons and evidence given in favour of atomic theory were unlike the various successful epistemologies that she had learnt about. At that point, there was nothing to do for the idea of atoms than to just walk away until such time the concept became more scientific... though she doubts that would ever be the case.

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The question "does God exist?" has been the focus of more than enough academic inquiry that the inquiry itself deserves to be taken seriously. In any given field, outsiders looking in are looking at the promise of a discipline to be able to provide satisfactory answers on the questions it purports to cover. This isn't always easy, as academic discourse tends to become self-sustaining making it harder for outsiders to be able to make sense of it. So some latitude must be given for outsiders simply not to "get it" when it comes to the validity of the questions and the approach to answers the discipline offers.

Two things to recognise are that a) no human endeavour is truly in isolation, and b) there are a lot of ways to spend a lot of time asking wrong questions. Astrology and alchemy good examples of both. The methods of astrologers and alchemists throughout the ages have overlap with the methods used in science and philosophy. And both astrology and alchemy are nonsense notions that had a lot of ink spilled over a long time by some very smart and learned people. Very few of us are astrologers today, and none are alchemists, yet as outsiders we feel sufficiently qualified to write off both intellectual disciplines as failed truth-telling endeavours about the universe. It could have turned out both were true. It turned out neither were.

What I tried to do in the parable above was highlight my own experiences trying to understand the question of God as believers see it, including what philosophers and theologians have said about the question. I grant the possibility that there could be a theologian out there who has a legitimate case for God's existence, but I don't see the worth of exploring the subject in any great detail. Despite the towering intellects and sheer amount of manpower thrown at the problem, there doesn't seem to be the same conversation among learned believers about what God is and does - let alone a case made with the successful epistemologies we have developed. This stands out in contrast to the actual atomic theory - or any other scientific theory - where the scientists have general agreement as to what theories are and the state of the evidence, even if they sometimes disagree on detail.