Preamble
To begin with a little bit of history. Back when liberalism was originally created, the western world was a class-based society. Status, inherited from one's parents determined one's wealth and place in society. Children of nobility enjoyed privileged existence at expense of everyone else. Actual privileges vary between countries but very often nobility owned all land in the nation, were tax except and even had special privileged laws and courts just for them. Police could arrest a commoner but not a nobleman, only fellow noblemen could judge another nobleman. The majority of common people, had to pay, rent to nobility, tax to the state and were treated as inferiors in law, in court and in social situations. Such an unfair and unjust society. As we are now it's hard to believe all that was the case mere 250 years ago and, in some places, even less than that.
Back then Liberalism aimed to fight against all that. Liberalism aimed to bring people equality and freedom, abolish unfair class system and special laws based on social status. It both succeeded and failed at the same time. Liberalism did succeed in changing the laws and abolishing any legal inequalities. Nowadays we have equality before law and nobility special privileges were relegated to history books (mostly).
On the other hand, liberalism created a new different kind of social stratification, based on wealth instead of legal status. Marx called them bourgeoisie and proletariat. Rich (bourgeoisie) had enough money and knowledge to create new businesses and shape the world as we know it. Poor (proletariat) did not have enough money or knowledge and thus were relegated to working for the rich.
All in all, liberalism failed to achieve its original objectives of creating equal and fair world for everyone. Rich and poor replaced lords and commons, but fundamentally society was just as divided into two tiers of people as it was before. Technically new division is not based on heredity, but in practice most wealth is inherited rather than created from scratch. Nobility too was once conditional to military service but gradually became just a set of inherited privileges. See the pattern here.
What liberalism initially meant to be, before it gradually fused with its original enemy and formed conservative liberalism or liberal conservatism. An alliance made in hell. Conservatism embraced certain aspects of liberalism to stay relevant and electable meanwhile liberalism lost its soul and became shell of its former self, touting token achievements while failing to notice glaring problems. So much so that Socialism came to supplant its place as champion of the people. However, Socialism has different rather illiberal ethos and far from a successor to the dreams and aspirations of freedom loving people.
Social Libertarianism is a resurrection of the original classical principles of liberalism. Social Libertarianism is neither Socialist nor it is Conservative in its principles. It's an adaptation of liberal principles to the realities of life as well as to the realities of 21st century socio-economic environment. An ideology to achieve real freedom, equality and justice. To that end Social Libertarianism embraces those policies and ideas that are conductive to achieving its objectives while opposing those that are contrary to its aims.
Three Main Pillars
There are many aspects of economic and social policy that require sound policy for the nation to be successful and prosperous. Listing them all here will certainly take too much, time. So, I will skip those areas where I will not advocate for major changes and will focus on the three main pillars of Social Libertarianism:
- Equality not Equity
- No Rent Seeking
- Selective Competitive Natalism
Equality not Equity
For quite some time now it was fashionable to hail equity as the right way to. Left leaning people like to select certain groups they believe deserve more help than the others. They justify it by various reasons, some of which are dubious at best and downright incorrect at worst.
In pursuit of equity people often advocate things such as gender and race quotas, affirmative action and other fundamentally unequal and unfair measures.
There are several reasons why equity is bad.
To begin with, who gets to decide who deserves more and who does not. To begin with there are no objective criteria who is more or less deserving, it's all a matter of individual opinion. What one considers a deserving case; the other will dismiss as nonsense. Arguments over who deserves and who does not will often devolve into each group advocating for their own cause while dismissing everyone else claims as nonsense.
Many claims that certain groups are more disenfranchised that others and thus deserve more help are incorrect. Take for example the often-repeated claim that women are routinely paid less than men, that is based on flawed data and does not hold against impartial scrutiny.
To make matters worse these principles can be applied arbitrary by the people in charge. Corrupt officers in charge of distribution of welfare will give all the stuff to their relatives, friends as well as people who bribed them while denying any aid to everyone else, claiming they do not qualify the criteria.
Second problem is that equity, or needs based distribution, breeds abuse from the users. If you get more help if you have more needs, then it's only natural to increase your needs to qualify for more help. Some will feign disability to quality for disability support; others will have more children just to receive more child support payments.
This is fundamentally a destructive trend as it does encourage people do worse and be rewarded for it. In the long run it will produce a nation of losers who try to fail and get help instead of trying to succeed. That is detrimental to the long-term prosperity of the nation.
Historically USSR used equity and in end it was one of the things that led to its downfall. Due to how Soviet welfare rules worked, people would marry and have a kid only to jump the housing queue as families with children were first in line for free social housing and were entitled to a bigger accommodation too. Overtime these people overwhelmed the housing system and made homes ever harder to get. Eventually the entire USSR fell under the weight of ever-increasing social obligations.
Some may say it encourages birth rates, but on closer inspection one can notice the glaring problem. People who only had kids to get a free apartment will not make good parents. They will think of children as of investment of sorts and will only provide them with minimal care, just to make sure they do not die, and state will not take the apartment back. These unloved children will likely grow up with all sorts of childhood traumas that will impede their future prospects. Most will likely live off the welfare or worse.
UBI and Welfare Equality
Instead of equity or needs based welfare, we should have a welfare that is equal for everyone. UBI is the best example of such welfare. That is why we need UBI. It is a plain a simple flat and equal frothingly lump sum money for every citizen of the country, no foreigners unless they are naturalised and became citizens.
Advantages of UBI over the traditional welfare are many. Since its paid for everyone, it does not need complex bureaucracy to determine if one is eligible or not. That will save time and money wasted on paperwork and people who process it, allowing more money to go to people's pockets.
Since its paid to everyone regardless of their needs, there is no welfare trap. All you earn elsewhere is extra money for you, meanwhile in traditional welfare any side income reduces your welfare, sometimes making you worse off than just being on the dole.
Unlike traditional welfare, UBI does not disincentivise efforts to advance yourself. In that way it is the only welfare system that is in line with classical liberal values. Welfare that preserves meritocratic ethic of classical liberalism, rather than erodes it like needs-based system.
UBI is like dividends in a joint-stock company. Just like company pays dividends to its investors, the state should pay UBI to its citizens. You can call it a citizen's dividend. It's both fair and in like with best practices of capitalism.
That is why it should be one of the core pillars of Social Libertarianism.
Why UBI is Essential for Capitalism's Survival
Some more radically right Libertarians will question necessity of UBI or welfare in general, arguing things such as "free stuff is wrong and immoral" or "there are no such things as free sandwich". Such views are shortsighted at best and dangerous at worst. Absence of welfare will always eventually lead to the thing Libertarians hate and fear most, communism.
Welfare is essential because majority of people are poor. They have neither knowledge, nor ability, nor money needed to create business or succeed in life. Their parents were either equally poor and could not teach them how to create a business or had some ideological problems.
Thus, people like that are forever doomed to be the underclass who live off either wage paid by business owners or welfare paid by the state, depend on which is bigger. It is pointless to talk to them about tax, as tax is what their bosses pay, not them. All they care is who can give them more money directly.
Businesspeople like to talk about competitiveness in business, they should apply the same logic to politics. Since we live in a democracy and these people do have a vote, different parties have to compete to get this vote. If left offers them welfare and best right can offer is calling them moochers and saying free stuff is immoral, it's not hard to guess they will choose left over right. All the right will get for its overly principal approach to welfare will be Gulag or a bullet through the head.
Historical examples confirm that. During Russian Civil War, the Whites also called people to oppose Bolsheviks because communism is immoral. You can see for yourself just how far it got them. If libertarianism does not want to repeat failure of the White Army, it should start being competitive and embrace UBI.
Finally, UBI is the thing that gives people one of the most valuable to a capitalist ethos thing, the opportunity. For centuries the US used to brand itself as land of opportunity. Chance to make it big and reach the American Dream is part of social contract that the US and its economic system offer to its people.
However, everything cost money and without money people will have no real opportunity to get anywhere in life. Thus, UBI is necessary to make that opportunity promise true. Even when one is completely broke, the UBI can give them another chance. So long as they are alive there will be more money to try again for as long as they can. The very fact it is there will push them to try again and again.
Without UBI there is no such opportunities. All is lost and a person is literary cornered with no way out. Wise people say to never corner people or animals. Because when they are cornered and have nothing to lose, they can do radical things that are outside of law, like robing people. They can even do things like going columbine and mass shooting everyone. UBI will prevent such things from happening. Because do you want to risk someone who lost it all in casino to attempt to club you to death with a stick to take your wallet to pay for a meal?
With UBI, the right will finally have an alternative welfare system to the left's socialist needs-based system. Such welfare will give liberalism the competitive edge to not only survive in 21st century but to also defeat socialism for good. "UBI is easier simple and puts more money in your pocket than stinky bureaucratic socialist needs-based welfare." That sound like an election winning slogan.
Just like in business world, where having a stake in the company makes one interested in its success, having a stake in the nation and the system will make people interested in preservation of the system that feeds them. Without UBI they will instead be likely to support the system change as well as enemies of the system and the nation. When they have nothing to lose, they will not do anything to stop the enemy from taking your wealth and heads.
No Rent Seeking
This is a seamlessly small but actually very important issue, that got only more important recently. After Financial Crisis of 2008 rent became a very pressing issue that could wreak the entire society if not handled timely and properly.
Broadly speaking people who only collect rent off their lucrative properties and do not do any other work are essentially no less of a parasite as those who live off social security. In fact, they are even worse, as those who live on welfare are poorest members of society, while many of those who live off rent are one of the wealthiest people in the world.
Rent seeking breaks the very essence of capitalist ethos. How one can believe that hard work and business skill can get you to the top, when the wealthiest people are rent seekers who got all their wealth from owning a lucrative property or shares portfolio and often did not work a single day in their lives. Just looking at people like this make people support the most radical socialist ideas like "eating the rich".
Even when you look at history you can easily notice that affluent rent seeker class always lead towards communist revolution. Countries as different as late Russian Empire and South Vietnam had only this single trait in common. Both eventually fell to a communist revolution.
Back in 19th century capitalist themselves despised the aristocratic class precisely because the latter did not do anything but collect rent of their numerous properties and from that alone lead a more affluent life that even most successful business could afford. It is a real shame to see modern capitalism devolving into essentially the same thing, it used to despise just two centuries ago.
How to Avoid Rent Seeking
As to actual measures that would prevent rent seeking, then it is up to the sound government policy. We already have a model in a Copyright Law. Creators of new content get legal rights on their creations but only for a limited time. After that the copyright ceases and the intellectual property becomes public domain.
The same principle should be applied to housing and land. Once the new home or apartment block is built. the construction company will have a lime limited ownership right for the property they have built. That will allow them to recoup the expenses as well as make profit. However, after the time limit elapses, the property should revert to government ownership. Government can then use the property as a social housing to solve the homelessness problem.
This system will incentivise the developers to build more and more to maximise their profits. In contrast the current system encourages people to cling to the most lucrative land plots as their very location brings more money than any new development could possibly make. Needless to say, that former is better than latter for pretty much every member of society, with exception of owners of these most lucrative plots themselves.
People who buy the property as their primary residence will be entitled to it until their death, but if they already have a residence and wish to use it as investment property the same time limit will apply to them and their property will revert to the state after that time.
I think a fair duration of the property title is 30 years, but I can consider making it shorter or longer if there such adjustments would incentivise more intense construction better.
Industrial buildings and offices can be excepted, but this exception is waved if they are used as housing instead.
A more conservative people might say that this erodes property rights. To that I would like to add that in the world of ever-growing population, the Distributism ideal where everyone can own a property is no longer achievable. Renting is unavoidable reality for modern people and it's only going to increase.
Because of that we have to make renting both humane and right, or public will turn towards socialism.
Better Renting Rules
Currently renting feels like being a second-class citizen. Landlords and REAs exploit their power over tenants. Tenants could not fight back as that moving properties is both costly and time consuming. Thus, landlords and REAs get away with increasingly worse treatment of tenants. By now tenancy have become worse than feudal medieval villeinage. It's not a service where tenants pay money for the service provided for them, but a slave like bondage to their landlords and their agents.
To avoid this, rights of tenancy should be near equated with outright ownership. To avoid pro-landlord bias, tenancies should be managed by government agencies who can absorb all the problems with so called bad tenants and so on and provide the investor with steady return for their investment. After all this is what people who invest into property want, a return on investment. This system will help to ensure that better and cheaper than cherry picking obedient exploitable tenants, then forcing them to keep the investment property clean.
From tenant perspective this is much better than what they currently have to deal with. Instead of having to apply in many places, hoping that this REAs or landlords will finally approve the application, they will be able to just get the property and move in. No unreasonable demands from REAs during the tenancy, the infamous routine inspections inquisitions will definitely make renting much more appealing and livable.
I wrote several articles in the past about details of this arrangement. The only difference with them is that while investors will lose control over their rental properties, they will still be able to retain their financial benefits in a form of constant income stream from the property.
Selective Competitive Natalism
At first, I wanted to all this tenet anti-natalism but then decided that this will be inaccurate. My aim is not to depopulate the earth of humans altogether, but to bring population levels to a more sustainable level.
While doing that we can also aim for a secondary objective. Improving quality of population by encouraging better people to pass on their genes to next generations and preventing worse ones from breeding altogether.
History of Family Policy
First a little bit of history. During 19th and 20th centuries humanity experienced historically unprecedented growth of its numbers. Medical revolution and induction of vaccines is often credited for that outcome. That however overlooks the real reasons behind this growth.
The real reasons for growth were economical. Pre-automation factories required large workforce to man the equipment. That fact made population growths economically viable and beneficial, since the more people the state has, the more factories it can afford to build and man and the more factories one has, the more weapons and other things one has. So, more people meant more growth and more everything in general. More people better became an axiom. The entire world re-adjusted itself around the factory and population growth. I wrote a separate article about it so I will not go in detail about it here.
In addition to factory there was another thing that benefited from ever increasing population, that is colonialism. Colonial nations such as the US, Australia and Canada were able to vastly expand their frontiers and settle the entirety of their continents with the population surplus, produced by medical revolution.
However, things have. Development of computers and automation allowed to create nearly completely automated factories that no longer required large workforce. The US and even Australia eventually ran out of free land, suitable for settlement. At the turn of the century further population grows was no longer needed.
That led to multitude of social and economic changes in society. They called it transition towards service economy, but service economy is fundamentally unsustainable and not needed. It's just a way to phase people out, much like horses were phased out when motorcars became available.
Because of historical reasons, outlined above, we currently have legacy pro-natalist policy and legislation that encourages people to have as many children as possible. Child support payments are paid for every child one has, encouraging people to have more babies to get more money. Public attitude towards mothers and parents are generally positive as well. That drive some people to have children to win approval of people around them. Various child friendly services aim to make parenting as effortless and rewarding as possible.
All that however leads to overbreeding where people have more children that they could pay for and more children that economy could possibly employ. That is unsustainable and fundamentally detrimental to society. All these surplus children will have to be cared for using taxpayers' money.
While in the past that was reasonable due to economic benefits of higher population, in our modern times it's completely unreasonable to expect the rest of society to pay and support the unsustainable desire for breeding of few select individuals with many children.
To that end a radical policy change in area of child support and family matters is needed to meet challenges of modern times.
New Policy
To meet challenges of times new policy needs to balance need to procreation with economic realities. It also has to take in consideration the fact that people are biologically programmed to have children, so barring them from doing it altogether will likely push them to have children illegally.
On the other hand, government should make it clear, that it's up to people to pay for their desire to procreate and pass on their genes to the next generation. These are your kids with your genes, not other people's genes, so you cannot expect others to pay for them. "Your genes, your pay." Because of that government and public will no longer pay for their kids so if they want any, they should work for it. It is also up to parents, not the public or the state, to support these children financially as well as to recompensate the society for increasing total population count. If parents renege on their obligations to their children, there will be consequences like prison times and/or forced sterilisation.
As for the actual policy then, when each child is conceived and parents want to keep the baby instead of doing an abortion, a sum of money is paid to the state. The sum is a Social Security Contribution and is needed because the kid might need to rely on welfare state sometime in future. It will also pay for a hospital stay during the childbirth. For the first kid, it's a token sum of couple of thousand dollars. but for each consecutive child, the sum will grow further and further, putting a soft limit on how many children one can afford.
Furthermore, once the kid is born, an Upbringing Account will be created for them. Upbringing Account will function broadly the same as Superannuation. After the initial opening deposit of $10,000 (subject to indexation), parents will be expected to regularly transfer fraction of their salary to this account, similar to salary sacrifice towards their superannuation account. Second and more children will require double or triple the sacrifice across several accounts for each individual child. If their salary is too low to afford such contribution, then government may bar them from having additional children.
The child will get partial access to this account once they reach age of maturity and will be able to use this money to pay their tuition fees in university as well as regular everyday living allowance. Other essential expenses such as car, driving licence and various fees could also be covered. That will make sure that all children will have means to support themselves in the adulthood.
Contribution towards the Upbringing Account could be larger than minimum amount but could not be smaller. If a parent loses their job and could not afford the same level of contribution, contribution towards Upbringing Account will be taken from their superannuation. That will make sure their children will not go without. People who work part time should look for a full-time work before having any children, if someone is not paid enough, they should take extra hours and so on.
Those who cannot afford Upbringing Account contributions should either refrain or from having children altogether or defer it until their financial situation improves. That does not completely preclude them from having children as they can still find a better paying job to afford the payments and therefore should defer having children until they have secured such a job. Opportunity is always there for those who want it.
Those who do not wish to pay will not be allowed to have children altogether.
Finally, if a child dies either before or after they reach age of majority, the money will not be returned to the parents. The money also could not be reused towards their other siblings. That will make sure that parents will not deliberately kill their less loved children so that more money will go towards their favorite ones. The money could be used towards their funeral expenses, and the rest will be claimed by the state.
The Results
The policy will limit population growth and will make sure that every child has enough money to afford them a decent start in life. There will be no longer abandon kids with no money and no one to support them. Such children are at risk of becoming criminals or a burden on welfare state. Selective Natalism will dramatically reduce such occurrences.
The policy will also prevent irresponsible parents from having children that will later become burden on their community, broader society and the state. It will also safeguard children if their parents will get disillusioned with them and cut all their support early in their lives. It will ensure that parents either live to their legal responsibilities to their children or face consequences.
There is one other significant benefit from Selective Natalism, that is the overall improvement of the quality of population and their abilities.
Disincentivise poor and unsuccessful people from breeding will ensure that better genes are passed on to the next generation, and worse ones do not. More intelligent, smart, educated and productive members of society will be able to afford more children and this their superior genes will pass on to next generation. On the other hand, poor people will not be able to procreate, thus reducing the poverty rates and burden on society.
A single mother who lives off child support for her many children can only this lifestyle to teach her offsprings. Thus, one generation on you will have double or triple welfare dependent people. That is something this policy will prevent from happening by removing insensitive for single mothers to breed. Even if some of children of such mothers will wish to lead and different life, lack of money for education and other necessities will prevent them from getting far in life. Children who do not get enough financial support from their parents do not do well in life.
On the other hand, rich and successful people will be able to have many children, passing on their successful genes and teaching their children how to succeed in life. This will increase the number of successful people in society and improve overall wellbeing and quality of life. The money they will contribute to Upbringings Account will further ensure that these children will have all they need to succeed in life.
A few exceptionally talented people with abilities in science and technology could even get special insensitive to make sure they have more children and multiply their savant genes.
Overall Selective Natalism will not only ensures that population levels reduce to sustainable levels but will also dramatically improve the quality of population and their abilities, by preventing poor and unsuccessful people from breeding.
Conclusion
Three Pillars of Social Libertarianism are the tools for successful, prosperous, happy and self-fulfilling society, that fits economic and social realities of 21st century. These three policies will ensure the future will be glorious and worth living for.
There are currently no feasible alternatives to these policies. With Socialism and broader left being perpetually mentally stuck in early 20th century and right wing instead crave return to early 19th century, it is very unlikely that traditional left or right could possibly produce a better policy. Thus, is boils down to this or collapse and fall in irrelevance.
Our society should act fast to implement these policies to ensure that society is ready for fully automated future that awaits us very soon.
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