d9baca3e352056622d4cceb6b34f3e03 by Hans-Adam II The reigning Prince of Liechtenstein

Author:Hans-Adam II The reigning Prince of Liechtenstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-01-05T08:32:41+00:00

10.2 The welfare state

As discussed in Chapter 3, social behavior is a fundamental part of human nature. However, should the state of the future maintain the welfare state as it exists today, or perhaps even expand it further?

Our genetically influenced social behavior still corresponds to a large degree to the political and economic structures of hunter-gatherer societies. There, mutual support and the sharing of resources are necessary for the survival of the individual and the group. This system is quite efficient, because social control of the individual by the group is much easier than in a large state. In hunter-gatherer societies the source of wealth is the common territory, which sometimes has to be defended against other groups. Hunter-gatherers harvest, but they do not sow. Personal property is essentially restricted to clothing, weapons, a few household items, and a tent or simple hut.

In the agrarian age, personal ownership of land and with it the means of production had already attained central importance. The farmer now had to till, sow, and harvest his land year in and year out. Nature was still important, but it was no longer the primary producer of wealth. In exchange for the payment of taxes and duties, monarchs and oligarchs, or the state, took on tasks previously handled by the small group or tribe, such as protection against acts of aggression from outside the territory and the maintenance of law and order inside it. Sharing and support remained with the traditional groups such as the extended family, village communities, or the region.

The genetically influenced social behavior of humanity and state structures slowly started to diverge. In villages and small towns, social control, sharing, and support by the group were still possible because everyone knew everyone else. In large cities and states, however, this was no longer possible. Industrialization, migration from the countryside to the cities, and the loss of the extended family and the traditional social structures of the villages accelerated

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The State in the Third Millennium this divergent evolution between genetically influenced social behavior and social structures. In industrialized states, a growing proportion of the population was no longer integrated within traditional social groups. Consequently, the practice of sharing and support was lost, along with the social control exerted by small, traditional social groups. A state with a large population can no longer exert the same kind of control. Attempts to do so lead inevitably to the police state, corruption, and the loss of freedom.

The attempt by communism to return to the hunter-gatherer model of shared and equal distribution of property turned out to be an economic and political catastrophe. The individual was no longer motivated to produce new wealth every year because the state’s oligarchy distributed it to others. There was no longer competition over the best methods of producing wealth, but only over how to distribute it. The social behavior of the Stone Age cannot be applied to the social, economic, and political environment of the agrarian and industrialized state.

The social market

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