Many people associate liberalism with anarchy because of the misconception that liberalism means lack of rules and regulations. on the contrary, i believe, a truly liberal society needs a bigger and more complex set of rules than what a conservative society needs. Well, liberalism definitely means more freedom, and rules need not always curtail freedom.
i believe that at present, the society treats its individuals like 5-year old children. we don't allow our children to watch violent movies because we believe that this will make violence look trivial to our children and this may make them violent. on similar grounds, the lawmakers don't want cigarette-smoking scenes in movies, claiming that such scenes will popularize smoking among youth. the two cases have one thing that's common and one thing that's different. the difference in the two cases is that while children do have feeble minds and need rules, the adults are supposed to be mature and responsible. now, what is common in both the cases is that rules are acting as a deterrent and preventive measure. and this is my point of contention. i'm not against rules but i'm against rules that are designed as a deterrent. and, why it is so? it is so because it is preventive rules which curtail freedom. there is another category of rules, it is corrective in nature and it does not curtail freedom but such rules are so scarce in society that we hardly notice that such a category exists. here, i must clarify that the term- corrective does not mean reshaping a person's character(as in corrective punishment), rather corrective means something that rectifies the fallout of crime. allow me to explain.
our societies will not legalize drug-consumption and prostitution. now, we all know about the harmful effects of these practices, and i need not elaborate them, but what about the ideals of personal freedom and liberalism? should we simply dump these after championing these causes thousands of times at countless blogs, forums and newspaper columns? well, i do believe that there is a middle path which also happens to be more inclusive. not legalizing these practices is a deterrent, a preventive measure and as i have said earlier, we can design a set of corrective rules which can solve the problem without digressing from liberalism. for example, in case of drugs, the govt. itself can sell drugs through a public distribution channel. further, we can have a drug-license like the driving-license and we could rule that drugs would be sold only to the license-holders. now here is the best part. the problem under consideration is the harmful effects of drugs on the individuals and the society. so, we can make a rule that owing to the damage done to brain by drug-addiction, the voting rights of the drug-license holder will be revoked. the govt. can also share its database of drug-license holders with banks and the credit-rating of such individuals will be zeroed. medical insurance will also be revoked. perhaps, the driving-license can also be revoked owing to irresponsible behavior and addiction. finally, when such an addict becomes unemployed and a financial-zero, then he won't be eligible for govt. schemes for the unemployed and the poor(like subsidized food and fuel). all in all, if a person wants to go down, we uphold the principles of freedom of the individual by allowing him to go down but only after making sure that such a person does not harm others. actually, such an addict would have to pay to the govt. for the license and the drugs and this "revenue" could be used for the education and the healthcare of the deserving productive people.
Recently, in India, there were talks about making voting compulsory for all due to the low voting-turnout. now, this thing certainly is against the very principle of democracy and freedom but we should also have a way for the making the irresponsible and the lazy pay for their irresponsibility and non-participation. here again, the solution is not some childish preventive measure like making voting compulsory, rather it is to design a set of repercussions. consider this; every Member of Parliament is allocated a local-area-development-fund which he can use at his discretion for development within his constituency. now perhaps we can make a rule that the M.P. would be given only that percentage of fund what the voting percentage was in the last election.(albeit, we can have a more sophisticated rule like 100% fund for over 80% voting and zero fund for under 40% voting and an exponential function in the 40-80 range) this scheme can be further extended by assigning weight to the constituency itself and to its representative also on the basis of percentage voting in the last election. this means that the vote of a representative in the assembly/parliament will be directly proportional to the voting percentage. maybe, the funds allocated to all the schemes in a constituency can be made proportional to the voting percentage. all these schemes have the drawback that we are making the whole constituency pay for the non-participation of some irresponsible persons. so, we can design individual based laws also like we can maintain a voting record of every person and if a person misses voting for more than a certain number, then his eligibility for some or all govt. schemes would be revoked. it's simple carrot and stick policy.
the main point behind all these is that you allow every person to do what he like to but you make him compensate for his actions if they are considered to be irresponsible. this is the way to behave with mature citizens, not by making childish, deterrent laws. the bigger picture is that it is the conservative society which needs preventive rules, a liberal society can achieve welfare for all as well as freedom for the individual by using corrective rules. the even bigger picture is that you allow people(who have crossed a certain age and are now classified as adults) to make mistakes and learn from them. this is Evolution after all.
Now some final words on liberalism. liberalism is not just about what kind of rules and regulations you have. its about freedom. opportunities. its like you need to have space; space wherein the lazy can relax and grow fat and the active one can flex and build his muscle. education and opportunities through education is an integral part of liberalism. entrepreneurship and opportunities through entrepreneurship are an integrals part of liberalism. if you have a liberal society and the society is sharply divided into the rich and the poor, then that is not really liberal. in a truly liberal society, a person should have the opportunity to raise himself financially if he is capable and is ready to work for it. the birth of a person should not bound him. similarly, if an irresponsible person has inherited resources, then such a person should be given enough openings to vent out his energies so that he may not bully the masses. the stairs which can take you upstairs can also bring you downstairs. and yeah, in this sense the fiscal bailouts are against the sentiment of liberalism.
No comments:
Post a Comment