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Yes, Why Did Government Do the Welfare State Thing?
I’m reading a curious book right now, Two Paths to Prosperity by Greif, Mokyr, and Tabellini. They are writing about the methods of community support in China and Europe since, more or less, 1000AD.
China had a system of education, insurance, and support of the poor and widows based on kin and “lineage.” Europe had a system of education, insurance, and support of the poor and widows with “corporations” meaning not businesses but non-profit membership organizations of non-related people.
In Europe there were Friendly Societies providing insurance. And, of course, by the end of the 19th century almost everyone belonged to a fraternal organization like the Masons or the Elks. Not to mention churches.
In England the so-called “public schools” that became private schools were originally set up by charitable organizations. I went to Oundle School in England where Prince George visited a while back. It was founded by the Worshipful Company of Grocers of London in 1556, and when I attended, cost about £500 a year. Today it costs about £59,000 a year. Yikes!
In England, when I was growing up, my Dad belonged to the Masons. I now understand that husbands did that because the Masons looked after widows. My cousin in the United States liked to boast that his kid’s birth, born in the 1930s, was attended by a “lodge doctor.” ‘Cos it was cheap! Want to know about lodge doctors? You could look it up.
And then, in the 20th century, we demolished the whole thing with the welfare state. And the Commies demolished the whole thing and the business economy as well with communism.
Houston We Have a Problem.
Today the whole universe of social cooperation and care, from education to insurance to health care to care of the poor and the aged, is run by the government.
What happened with education? You can read all about it in England here. Britain went to government education in 1870. In the US we had Horace Mann and the “common school” in the 1840s
Let’s make it Real Simple. By the middle of the 19th Century all good people agreed that schools were a mess. So let’s have a uniform system of schooling and let’s have the government organize and fund it. By the early 21st century, anyone with half a brain realized that government schools were a mess. So let’s have a…
Yeah. What do we do now after a couple centuries of gubmint child custodial facilities? Hand the whole thing over to AI?
I propose that the problem is the whole idea that “we” can organize a comprehensive uniform system for anything. I propose that the market economy shows us the error of this thinking. Lots of businesses are created; some of them thrive; a few become shooting stars, like GM and Ford in their day, and Costco and Amazon in our day. But then they reach their peak and decline and get replaced by something better.
Whatever the “system” is, it has to be flexible; it has to let successful ideas grow and multiply; it has to let failed ideas fail and get replaced by something better.
But when government is involved it is almost impossible to terminate failed ideas.
How does government fail? By losing a war or by losing a revolution. There has to be a way to fix failed ideas short of war or revolution.
So our mission, if we accept it, is to slowly reform the current failed system by allowing new ideas to get planted and gradually replace the government-dominated system of education and charity.
I believe that this will not happen until women lose their present faith in government, and discover that it does not protect them, does not protect their children, and does not protect their mothers.
I think that the women’s movement to stop men coming into the women’s bathroom, JK Rowling, Prop., is the foundation event of the new world that is a-borning.
| Sat, 11 Jul 2026 01:35:40 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
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A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Reign of Terror equals Great Purge equals Cultural Revolution equals Cancel Culture
In Melanesia the Big Man earns the community’s trust on his ability to distribute pigs, shell money, and other resources. In the welfare state the politician gets elected by promising to distribute checks, jobs, and subsidies.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Against Government Education
