Quotulatiousness

January 18, 2012

First they came for the smokers, then the drinkers, and now the meat-eaters

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:52

Rob Lyons on the flimsy case for declaring that “eating meat causes cancer”, and the rising tide of buttinsky government and their nudge, hector, prod, and persecute urges:

Meat causes cancer. It’s been said so many times that you’d have to be an idiot not to believe it, right?

The latest confirmation of this apparent common sense was a report published last week in the British Journal of Cancer Research. The authors, from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, brought together 11 studies — published between 1993 and 2011 — that assessed the risk of pancreatic cancer from eating red meat and ‘processed’ meat. From this meta-analysis, the authors found that red meat increased the risk of pancreatic cancer for men, but not for women, and that the risk of pancreatic cancer rose by 19 per cent for every 50 grams of processed meat consumed.

The simple claim that ‘processed meat causes cancer’ was widely reported after the study was published. However, it would be wrong to assume that such claims about risk are all they are cracked up to be.

[. . .]

There are so many ways in which the crude tools of epidemiology could screw up the result of studies like this that it is normal for fairly small risks — like the 19 per cent increase in this case — to be treated with a massive pinch of salt. The authors of this study even note: ‘All studies controlled for age and smoking, but only a few studies adjusted for other potential confounders such as body mass index and history of diabetes.’

[. . .]

So, to sum up: the association between processed meat and pancreatic cancer is so weak it might well be a mirage; the increased risk might not be caused by the processed meat itself; and even if it is, the risk is so low that it’s really not worth bothering about. Yet still we are advised to consider cutting down on our red meat and processed meat consumption. Life is, frankly, too short to miss out on such tasty foods on the slim chance that we might lose a few years of life in old age.

[. . .]

Now that the precedent has been set for the government to lambast those who engage in unapproved habits, it’s open season on any habit that a campaigner or columnist disapproves of. Ban it! Tax it! Make them get a prescription for it! Deny them medical care! Ellen’s article is objectionable but it only follows the remorseless logic of so many others.

There is another lesson from the meat-and-cancer story: at a time when all sorts of dubious claims are made based on junk science and dodgy statistics, only some panics get wide publicity; others just pop up and disappear again in a matter of hours. The difference is that some play to an existing political or media agenda and some do not. The idea that meat causes cancer appeals to health busybodies, politicians scrabbling around for a sense of purpose, vegetarians who can’t win a moral argument about animal rights, and environmentalists who have failed to convince us that increasing the ‘human footprint’ — by wanting to eat more meat, for example — is killing the planet.

January 17, 2012

Stop SOPA!

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:25

Although this is a Canadian blog and SOPA is proposed legislation in the United States, it is extremely likely that Canadian websites and internet users will be directly affected by provisions of it. Michael Geist has a list of reasons why Canadians should be concerned:

First, the SOPA provisions are designed to have an extra-territorial effect that manifests itself particularly strongly in Canada. As I discussed in a column last year, SOPA treats all dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org domain as domestic domain names for U.S. law purposes. Moreover, it defines “domestic Internet protocol addresses” — the numeric strings that constitute the actual address of a website or Internet connection — as “an Internet Protocol address for which the corresponding Internet Protocol allocation entity is located within a judicial district of the United States.” Yet IP addresses are allocated by regional organizations, not national ones. The allocation entity located in the U.S. is called ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. Its territory includes the U.S., Canada, and 20 Caribbean nations. This bill treats all IP addresses in this region as domestic for U.S. law purposes. To put this is context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on ARIN for its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the block of IP addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The U.S. bill would treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.

Second, Canadian businesses and websites could easily find themselves targeted by SOPA. The bill grants the U.S. “in rem” jurisdiction over any website that does not have a domestic jurisdictional connection. For those sites, the U.S. grants jurisdiction over the property of the site and opens the door to court orders requiring Internet providers to block the site and Internet search engines to stop linking to it. Should a Canadian website owner wish to challenge the court order, U.S. law asserts itself in another way, since in order for an owner to file a challenge (described as a “counter notification”), the owner must first consent to the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts.

Along with thousands of other bloggers and major internet sites like Wikipedia, Quotulatiousness will be marking the anti-SOPA effort tomorrow. Unless I’ve misconfigured it, you should see a “Down Against SOPA” page the first time you visit the blog tomorrow (either on the main page or on a particular post), but then it should allow you to have normal access. I considered going “dark” as Wikipedia will be, but this seems to be a better way of registering my opposition without inconveniencing my readers too much.

January 16, 2012

An unwelcome kind of “Top Ten Reasons” list

Filed under: Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

Jonathan Turley, writing in the Washington Post:

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

January 15, 2012

What’s next, allowing only “registered journalists” to report the news?

Filed under: Government, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

A brief item that should send a frisson down the spine of anyone who collects and disseminates information from the web and social media outlets:

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.”

H/T to Chris Myrick for the link.

January 12, 2012

QotD: When a figure is too high to be repaid, it won’t be repaid

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 15:31

It’s hardly news anymore that public-sector pension promises will be made good (or not) on the backs of taxpayers, but I still think that the average private-sector packmule has no idea of the amount they’re going to have to pony up to vouchsafe the various municipal, state, and federal pension promises. The amount required over the next several decades beggars the imagination. In fact, the amount is preposterous: there’s no way the money is ever going to be paid out as promised. Even if it were mathematically possible (which it isn’t), taxpayers would revolt over the massive increases that would be required. If I were a public-sector worker, I’d be making a point of saving every dime of my own money that I could, because that fat public sector pension is unlikely to ever be paid out in full. (And I’m not even getting into the healthcare benefits, which are even more onerous than the pension benefits.) Basically, the bedrock truth is this: money that can’t be paid out, won’t be, no matter what agreements were signed or what the courts say.

Monty, “The Daily DOOM”, Ace of Spades HQ, 2012-01-12

January 10, 2012

Parents (absolving themselves from any responsibility) want Ottawa to solve child obesity problem

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

Parents who fear to let their children go outside want the federal government to magically fix the problem the parents have created:

The majority of parents believe they play a major role in whether their children are overweight, but many also want the government to build more recreation centres.

[. . .]

The survey done by Ipsos Reid talked to 1,200 people, and most feel obesity is the leading health issue facing children today — more so than drugs, smoking and alcohol.

The survey found that 61 per cent of Canadians don’t think Ottawa is doing enough, and 70 per cent strongly support government initiatives that would educate children on healthy choices.

If you don’t let your children go outside unattended (hence the desire for “recreation centres”, where the little snowflakes will be supervised at all times), they won’t get as much exercise. Without exercise, on a typical modern diet, they’ll gain weight. Having gained weight, they’ll be even less likely to voluntarily exercise. Rinse and repeat for 18 years.

Scottish independence on the front-burner

Filed under: Britain, Government, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

An interesting summary of the independence debate in Scotland from The Economist:

Put up or shut up. That is the risky (but arguably rather canny) message that David Cameron has sent to the pro-independence head of the Scottish devolved government in Edinburgh, Alex Salmond. Specifically, Mr Cameron has announced that the British government and Westminster Parliament are willing to give Mr Salmond the referendum on Scotland’s future that he says he wants — as long as it is a proper, straight up-and-down vote on whether to stay in the United Kingdom or leave, and is held sooner rather than later.

It is not that Mr Cameron wants to break the three hundred year old union between London and Edinburgh. Both emotionally and intellectually, he is fiercely committed to the union as a source of strength for both Scotland and Britain, insist Conservative colleagues who have discussed the question with him. Publicly, he has pledged to oppose Scottish independence with “every fibre” of his being.

But Mr Cameron and his ministers also feel that Scotland has been drifting in a constitutional limbo, ever since Mr Salmond’s Scottish National Party (SNP) won an outright majority at Scottish parliamentary elections in 2011 (a feat that was supposed to be impossible, under the complex voting system used in Scotland). The SNP campaigned on a simple manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on the future of Scotland. But after his thumping win Mr Salmond slammed on the brakes and started talking about holding a consultative vote in the second half of his term in office, ie, some time between 2014 and 2016.

Political geometry

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:16

L. Neil Smith on the inadequacy of “left” and “right” to properly describe the political spectrum:

When I took my one and only Political Science course in college, in 1966, the instructor told us that when certain opinions show up in the polls he and his colleagues conduct — chiefly those of admirers of Ayn Rand, or followers of Henry George — their opinions have to be thrown out, since they don’t fit anywhere on the traditional political spectrum.

This is science? When the data refuse to fit the model, throw out the data, rather than the model? If this is “science”, it’s exactly the same “science” that brought us Global Warming. And it is from at least forty years of corrupt, lazy, irresponsible academics like this poli-sci instructor that we get our present generation of news media “personalities”.

Let’s throw out the model, instead, and see what happens.

Imagine a triangle, with a lower right corner, a lower left corner, and a corner, or apex, at the top. Even at this stage — when the picture is far from complete — such a diagram comes closer to representing the real shape of our political landscape than a simple line.

Label the right-hand corner paternalistic. Those who occupy this corner, and the positions they take, tend to be autocratic, strongly oriented to the past, concerned with what they believe (often falsely) is history and tradition, and with, above all, punishment, which they offer as a cure for every social ill. Their mysticism tends to focus mostly on an ancient, angry father-god. In their view, others should be adequately organized, even regimented, properly disciplined, and controlled. They maintain a posture of perpetual threat-display. People of the right either want to be spanked, or to do the spanking, themselves.

Think of the patrician George F. Will or the late William F. Buckley.

Individuals who occupy the left-hand corner are inclined to be maternalistic, majoritarian — as long as the vote goes their way — oriented toward the present (they call it “living in the now”), and prone to medicalizing social problems and “healing” everybody whether they wish to be “healed” or not. They substitute animism and other mystical nonsense for traditional religion. They believe people must be watched over, taken care of, institutionalized, and medicated. When their veneer of altruism is stripped away, they become hysterical and violent. People of the left either want to be mommied, or to be Mommy, themselves.

Think of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or the repulsive Elizabeth Warren.

Inhabitants of the upper corner of the triangle typically think of themselves as self-determined, self-motivated, individualistic, and oriented toward the future. It is less common for them to be mystical or religious than otherwise. They display a live-and-let-live attitude of respect toward others — believing they should be left alone rather than meddled with — and favor restitution rather than punishment or therapy in the case of wrongdoing. The other two positions, right and left, are basically infantile. The apex is the only place for real adults.

Good examples would be LeFevre, Robert A. Heinlein, or Dr. Mary Ruwart.

It should be reasonably clear by now that the left-hand corner is where socialism lives — if you want to call it living — the ethical view that the rights of the group come before those of the individual. However the right-hand corner is often misidentified, as with the case of Mussolini, Hitler, and the Nazis. Look over the characteristics associated with it: the correct political expression of the right is monarchism. Long after revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries, loyal advocates of the king are still out there, pressing his royal case.

January 9, 2012

What is really meant by the term “Deliberative democracy”

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:21

Frank Furedi explains the intent of “consultations”, “public conversations”, and “deliberative democracy” — which are neither conversations nor democratic in nature:

In these situations, ‘consultation’ is turned into a tool of management masquerading as genuine deliberation. The demand for deliberation always comes from above, and the terms of these ‘public conversations’ are always set by professional consultants. The process of deliberation depends on ‘procedures, techniques and methods’ worked out by experts. The exercise itself is overseen by professional facilitators, whose rules are really designed to assist in the observation and management of the participants. These phoney conversations are not forums where the participants interact as equals — rather, skilled facilitators are employed to create the right kind of environment and desirable outcomes. One writer sings the praises of ‘citizens’ juries’ — a common form of deliberative democracy — by saying that such juries rely on ‘trained moderators’ who ensure ‘fair proceedings’. With zero self-consciousness, the writers endorses such a highly manipulative environment as being superior to ‘liberal institutions’, which apparently only encourage passivity amongst citizens. What we have is a pretence of deliberation and a reality of manipulation.

Deliberative democracy is neither deliberative nor democratic. Rather, it is about promoting propaganda through the pretence of having an open conversation. However, when it comes to manipulating the public imagination, ‘deliberative polling’ beats deliberative democracy to the finishing line. Deliberative polling stage-manages an allegedly open discussion on a controversial issue in order subliminally to alter people’s views and convictions. According to one of the advocates of deliberative polling, the beauty of this exercise is that ‘many participants changed their voting intentions as a result of the dialogue’. The author, Carne Ross, offers a scenario where, prior to an exercise in deliberative polling, 40 per cent of people surveyed said they would vote for mainstream centrist parties, 22 per cent for socialists, nine per cent for centrist liberals and eight per cent for greens. However, by carefully finessing the wording of the choices available to the participants, the deliberative manipulators successfully increased the number of participants who wanted to ‘emphasise the fight against climate change’ from 49 to 61 per cent.

Deliberative democrats are not shy about acknowledging that their support for conversational forums is contingent upon the participants reaching the ‘right’ decisions. Deliberative democracy is often promoted on the basis that it provides an environment conducive to changing people’s minds and having them adopt the ethos of the forum’s organisers. Deliberation is the preferred method of communication, because it can be a useful tool for transmitting the outlook of the organisers. To ensure that this objective is achieved, the group’s interpersonal dynamic is carefully controlled. To prevent the spontaneous emergence of informal group leaders, ‘most moderators are alert to the manner in which deliberations can be dominated by confident and outspoken individuals’, assures one assessment of deliberative democracy. It appears that deliberative democracy works best when ‘confident and outspoken individuals’ are put in their place.

The depiction of an exercise in brainwashing as a new form of democracy shows that political rhetoric is just that these days — empty rhetoric. It is a sign of the times that a procedure that could have come straight out of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four can be presented as an enlightened alternative to representative democracy. The assumption that the professional facilitator has the moral authority to determine how people should think and emote speaks volumes about the patronising attitude of today’s ‘deliberators’.

Calling it “austerity” doesn’t make it so

Filed under: Economics, Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:11

Nick Gillespie provides a reality check on some particularly imaginative use of “austerity” in describing the end of the Bush administration and the start of the Obama administration:

In constant 2010 dollars, the federal government spent about $2.3 trillion in 2001. By 2010, the total was around $3.6 trillion. And though the federal government has not passed (and will not pass) a budget for a third straight year, the two plans currently on the table envision spending either $4.7 trillion or $5.7 trillion in 2021. The lowball figure comes from the budget that passed the GOP-controlled House last spring. The higher number comes from President Obama’s budget proposal.

If austerity is the new black, the news has yet to reach the people who actually wield power in the capital. And if the Washington elite aren’t serious about cutting spending, they sure aren’t hell-bent on cutting red tape and regulations either.

For self-evident reasons, George W. Bush and the Republicans soft-pedaled the fact that, over the course of his presidency, he hired 90,000 net new regulators, signed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill that radically complicated corporate accounting practices, passed a record number of “economically significant” regulations costing the economy $100 million or more and, says economist Veronique de Rugy, spent more money issuing and enforcing federal regulations than any previous chief executive.

Obama is continuing the trend by increasing employment at regulatory agencies by more than 13 percent and issuing 75 major rules in his first two years.

All this happened during what Frank calls “the golden years of libertarianism.” So I have problems understanding what he is talking about when he issues dicta such as “free-market theory has proven itself to be a philosophy of ruination and fraud.”

January 8, 2012

George F. Will on big government

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:54

Even fans of bigger government should recognize the accuracy of this short summary:

Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today’s redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.

Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.

The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth — to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of — the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.

[. . .]

The tax code, government’s favorite instrument for distributing wealth to favored factions, has been tweaked about 4,500 times in 10 years. Generally, the beneficiaries of these changes are interests sufficiently strong and sophisticated to practice rent-seeking.

Not only does redistributionist government direct wealth upward; in asserting a right to do so it siphons power into itself. A puzzling aspect of our politically contentious era is how little contention there is about the ethics of coercive redistribution by progressive taxation and other government “corrections” of social outcomes it considers unethical or unaesthetic.

January 6, 2012

Paul Wells: Harper has big plans for 2012 … maybe

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:13

Yes, it’s the constantly threatening hidden agenda!

What does Stephen Harper want to do with his parliamentary majority? “I want to make sure that we use it,” he told CTV’s Lisa LaFlamme in a year-end interview. “You know, I’ve seen too many majority governments, the bureaucracy talks them into going to sleep for three years, and then they all of a sudden realize they’re close to an election.”

[. . .]

You don’t have to like this list. I’m not saying Harper’s predecessors were heroes. I am saying they were not sleeping. If the Prime Minister’s comments have any meaning, he must have something up his sleeve at least as big as those accomplishments. If he doesn’t, he won’t be the first politician to congratulate himself for his achievements before he fails to achieve them.

His interviews suggest Harper plans something big. Four times during his CTV interview, and once with the Chinese-language Fairchild network, he used the adjective “major” to describe his plans for 2012.

[. . .]

It’s striking how rarely Harper sounds bold when any discussion descends from slogans to details. Take foreign policy. On Syria, he pleads the lack of a Security Council resolution. On Egypt: “We’ll try and do what we can do to encourage stability and encourage the forces of democracy, but we don’t go into these things blind. There are some very real risks.”

A policy of bold action only where success is assured is a policy of offering help where none is needed. It is a bold decision to join others’ victory parades. There is nothing major about it.

Incidentally, the bureaucrats I talk to aren’t plotting to put Harper to sleep. On the contrary. Many wonder whether this government will wake up. One of Ottawa’s most experienced civil servants tells me the widespread belief is that Harper’s government is so obsessed with each morning’s headlines that it cannot plan. This official predicts a year of high-level early retirements from the civil service if Harper does not start using his majority.

Ten years later: Ron Paul’s 2002 predictions

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:31

January 4, 2012

Santorum is the “Spock with a beard” universe version of Ron Paul

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:55

Michael Tanner enumerates the Santorum attributes his evangelical conservative fans seem to find most attractive:

There is no doubt that Santorum is deeply conservative on social issues. He is ardently anti-abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, and no one takes a stronger stand against gay rights. In fact, with his comparison of gay sex to “man on dog” relationships, Santorum seldom even makes a pretense of tolerance. While that sort of rhetoric may play well in Iowa pulpits, it will be far less well received elsewhere in the nation.

[. . .]

Santorum’s voting record shows that he embraced George Bush–style “big-government conservatism.” For example, he supported the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind.

He never met an earmark that he didn’t like. In fact, it wasn’t just earmarks for his own state that he favored, which might be forgiven as pure electoral pragmatism, but earmarks for everyone, including the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere.” The quintessential Washington insider, he worked closely with Tom DeLay to set up the “K Street Project,” linking lobbyists with the GOP leadership.

He voted against NAFTA and has long opposed free trade. He backed higher tariffs on everything from steel to honey. He still supports an industrial policy with the government tilting the playing field toward manufacturing industries and picking winners and losers.

In fact, Santorum might be viewed as the mirror image of Ron Paul. If Ron Paul’s campaign has been based on the concept of simply having government leave us alone, Santorum rejects that entire concept. True liberty, he writes, is not “the freedom to be left alone,” but “the freedom to attend to one’s duties to God, to family, and to neighbors.” And he seems fully prepared to use the power of government to support his interpretation of those duties.

A call to reform the welfare state … from the pages of the Guardian

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:27

Brendan O’Neill links to Liam Byrne’s column in the Guardian, suggesting not only is Byrne right, but that he doesn’t go far enough:

The Left won’t thank him for it, but in the Guardian Liam Byrne has tried to kickstart a potentially interesting debate about the welfare state. For many well-off Liberal commentators — who, notably, have no interaction with the welfare state, except in the sense that buddies of theirs probably manage huge chunks of it for a fat wage packet — the welfare state is a sacred thing and criticism of it is the equivalent of blasphemy. Yet Byrne surely has a point when he says the welfare state is in need of “radical reform” and we should seriously explore how to get “communities working again”. Indeed, I would go further and say that the expansion of the welfare state into more and more areas of less well-off people’s lives is one of the worst developments of recent years, seriously zapping resourcefulness and social solidarity from working-class communities.

Byrne’s mistake is that he seems motivated by a narrow desire to save the state money. The financial cost of social welfare is “simply too high”, he says, and we should “bring down [the] benefits bill to help pay down the national debt”. That is a Scrooge’s approach to the problem of the welfare state. The really terrible cost of ever-expanding welfarism is measured not in cash, but in the impact welfarism has on working communities, on those who have been made increasingly reliant upon the charity, largesse and therapeutic meddling of the massive and monolithic welfare machine. Relentless financial and therapeutic intervention by the state into poor people’s lives has, not surprisingly, had a pretty devastating impact both on social interaction and individual aspiration.

When people come to be more reliant on the state than they are on each other, community bonds fray and social solidarity falls into disrepair. When the struggling mum looks to the state for help, rather than turning to family, friends, neighbours, the end result is that she becomes more isolated from her community. When a 17-year-old school student short of cash turns to the state for a weekly handout, he never really develops skills of self-sufficiency or dependency on friends and neighbours.

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