Hey, a mild form of socialism is great in many ways.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the rights to "Life, Freedom and Pursue of Happiness". In particular, I don't think the founders meant the right to Life to mean "right to not being killed by direct unjustified violent action". If you have the right to Life, you should have the right to the means to stay alive and healthy.
My critic to the Welfare State idea is not that we should not care for our own people. It has more to do with keeping the citizenship disempowered. If you cannot provide yourself with basic needs by your own means and work, because the barriers of entry are so high... then the only option left is to have someone bail you out of the mess.
As techies, I feel we are very vulnerable. Think Spolsky's Development Abstraction Layer (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstractio...). We can fall in a comfort zone by being productive within a larger organization that extracts economic benefits from our creations... but once we become severed from that infrastructure, many of us become helpless.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the rights to "Life, Freedom and Pursue of Happiness". In particular, I don't think the founders meant the right to Life to mean "right to not being killed by direct unjustified violent action". If you have the right to Life, you should have the right to the means to stay alive and healthy.
My critic to the Welfare State idea is not that we should not care for our own people. It has more to do with keeping the citizenship disempowered. If you cannot provide yourself with basic needs by your own means and work, because the barriers of entry are so high... then the only option left is to have someone bail you out of the mess.
As techies, I feel we are very vulnerable. Think Spolsky's Development Abstraction Layer (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstractio...). We can fall in a comfort zone by being productive within a larger organization that extracts economic benefits from our creations... but once we become severed from that infrastructure, many of us become helpless.