To want a society where we just pay for ourselves

[LettingTheBadThingsGo]

Okay this is going to get some backs up but it's also how I feel so..
I wish we could just live in a society where we all just pay for ourselves.
So you want to have children - you pay for it all yourself. No benefits of any kind.
You want to see a GP - You pay a fee and get the service
You need the police - You pay a fee and get the service
You want education for your kids - you pay for it and get to choose where to send them

Nobody gets a pension or any benefits. However we all know this and as such we pay no tax/NI and save for ourselves.

Obviously there would have to be a phased input over a large number of years (like 30)

I want to know that if I need the police I can get them here in 5 mins. If I need an ambulance I want to know I can get it here in 5 mins. I don't want to not have these services because there is a rubbish 'free' service because there is not enough being allocated to them because it's all being spent on things I disagree with (welfare, council houses)

This would make everyone responsible for themselves. Those who work hard would be better off. Those who don't work will be worse off. Seems fair to me.

Everyone would save from day 1 in case they become ill or disabled and need to support themselves or have a disabled child (although they could choose not to have children in the first place).

I find it very weird that we live in a capitalist society where so many people are being supported by welfare. To me that is the opposite of a capitalist society.

Obviously there are some things that could never be allocated to each person such as defence of the country. There would have to still be a 'country charge' to every person to cover things that just could not be split. Street lighting would probably have to come under this as well. However roads could be covered by a charge to each person based on their mileage each year.

Yes it would take lots of thought and as I said would have to be implemented over a large number of years. However this would lead to a more productive society as well as better services. Obviously on the basis of a thread I haven't thought everything out but hopefully you all get the idea.

Anybody who didn't want to live like that could leave of course and live somewhere else.

So anyone else agree - no tax or ni - save and pay for yourself. Just pay a 'country charge' to cover things that can't be allocated like defence of country. Everything else is private (healthcare, police, pensions) and you save for it all yourself.

The only people who I can imagine not wanting this is those that live on the hard work of others ie life time welfare claimants. For everyone else surely they would be better off.

Yes. Because Britain before the welfare state was absolutely bloody brilliant 🤦🏼‍♀️
excellent for everyone when your spouse died and you couldn’t single handedly look after your children and work, so you sent them to the poorhouse or banardos never to be seen again.
Or when you got a workplace injury and had to stop

And yes I have a full time job and a mortgage and can afford my own children and cut my cloth accordingly
I just don’t really like the idea that others less fortunate than me should have a substandard living situation

Who regulates the police and decides what they’re allowed to do or not do? What if a cheaper new police company wants to undercut them on certain services, is that okay? Who decides? Who pays the people who decide? What if your neighbor thinks it’s easier and better value than working to simply steal from you and hire people to protect them and what they’ve taken? Who decides who was right and wrong, that the neighbor should now be punished, will you pay directly for them to be held in prison, because the crime was against you? And what exactly is that prison? Since you’re paying can you decide actually they get no food while they’re there, starve them to death? How will you pay to hold them captive when they have taken everything from you? Seems like they could pay instead to put you in prison!

Do you like living in a country with minimal gun violence? Who decides whether guns can be sold to the public or not? How are they paid? How is it enforced and who pays for that?

What about food standards? How do you know that the food you’re buying is okay to eat? Who are you paying to decide that, follow back the full supply chain to understand what chemicals were used to grow the food, how it was stored, what’s been added if it’s more processed food? And how do you know the person you’re paying to investigate all of that is actually qualified to do it?

Same with medicine. You want to pay directly for a doctor, fine. How do you know that they’re qualified? Who decided that and who paid them? Was it the doctor who paid for the qualification? Doesn’t that create a massive incentive for cheaper lower quality qualifications? Or you paid because you’re the one actually affected by whether they’re competent? They prescribe you some medication, how do you know which company to buy it from so it’s real and effective? Are you sure the doctor prescribed what will actually help or rather what they were paid to prescribe? Are you sure they’re really working for you, not for the drug company?

Capitalism works best when markets are highly regulated. Companies can succeed best where legal frameworks, transport, public health and education are all strong. All of those things need regulation and coordination which is effectively impossible without a system of government and taxation. This is why companies choose to locate in more developed countries even though everything costs more there. Capitalism also benefits from a reasonably flexible workforce where people are able to retrain and change jobs moving with demand. That works best when there’s a strong safety net. The uk has not got welfare spending right imo but some welfare spending genuinely helps capitalism.

You are so used to living in a highly regulated society where, despite all our complaints, many things just quietly work, that you don’t even see how much you benefit every single day from the existence of government.

ok, so in your utopia...

DH and I saved from 18 to when we had kids. we knew we had enough savings to cover the delivery and all the usual costs. a bit extra in case of a C Sec. our anomaly and subsequent scans were all clear so we go ahead with the delivery.

dS was unexpectedly born very ill. critically. genuinely. resuscitated at birth and on full ventilation.

are they running a bank check before they resus my newborn baby or holding out for hubby to sign a bill?

having covered the cost of my ECS and DSs resusitation and ventilators, plus all the meds he needed and his nurse, we are then given a diagnosis and told he needs emergency surgery.

if we can't pay, because this cost is practically unprecedented, do we leave him in the hospital to die or can we carry it as a debt?

assuming we operate, at 10 months old he got ill from a complication of that initial surgery. true story. odd so miniscule and actually the next 4 months full of things that were very unlikely to happen, our bill would have been virtually impossible to cover. . picu stays, operation after operation. 4 months hospitalisation, ton feeds, meds, long lines, scans, x-rays etc.

at this point are you ok with us saying you know what, we can't pay this. how much is euthanisaia or else we can leave him to just die from complications.

is that genuinely the world you want?

unless you only expect multimillionaires to have children, and honestly I think DS' care would have been a struggle for some of them.

We've had more ops over the last two years, minor but necessary. presumably i wouldn't be charged with neglect for refusing to pay for the surgery if the costs got too high, especially as his health meant leaving work to care for him. he spent 18 months in and out of hospital, months of appointments here there and everywhere. work wasn't tenable.

presumably at some point we'd have slipped something into all of our drinks and just quietly died together peacefully rather than in pain from his medical needs, giving you your perfect world full of only the mega rich worthwhile people

And you keep saying that we'd have saved up our tax and NI but we wouldn't have saved it all, because we'd be paying out health insurance and for bins to be collected, our streets to be swept, the local park to be maintained. Anyone we needed the police or ambulance, we'd be paying for school and more for public transport. We'd still pay for road maintenance etc. We wouldn't be saving anything at all.

Some of us would be paying for our ex's to be prison or our rapists. That costs £25k a year. Most people don't pay £25k per year in tax and NI.

So OP what happens to Mr Hardworker who gets a chronic illness that prevents him carrying on working and his built-up savings pot is spent on his healthcare without curing it?

What happens to him then? He did all the right things that you propose - now what?

I have spent time in some countries that effectively operate this system.

i’ll use Laos as an example.

Laos is quite a nice place to live if you are a rich foreigner. It’s officially communist (one of the few places that still is).

there are a few (free) state schools but very few people use them. Most education is done through the Buddhist monasteries which only take boys so the education of girls is very far behind.

it’s only a couple of decades since the police used to shoot people for random shit (trying to leave the country, saying bad things about communism etc and the re-education camps are I believe still open).

no-one in their right mind goes anywhere near the police. If bad things happen to you either the government did it in which case you try to leave the country or someone else did in which case you try to negotiate if it’s land rights of whatever or take your own revenge if it’s murder or rape.

most families that don’t live in the cities are living on a subsistence basis ie they eat what they grow and nothing else. There are food markets in the towns and there’s a few people making money from the backpackers that come through.

obviously being where it is the country is awash with drugs and drugs cartels.

many families will invest money in the education of one child (usually a boy because the monasteries will take him) and he’ll try to get a job in a city to earn some money. Most families don’t see money from one year end to the s other.

if he earns money they might be able to afford to put another child through school.

healthcare - a few clinics run by charities. If you get ill you die or put up with it. Foreigners fly to Thailand for any sort of healthcare. I had to have insurance that covered this.

it’s ok if you are a wealthy foreigner. The police won’t fuck with foreigners because the government want their hard currency. Healthcare you get from Thailand. Schooling - yeah, ther’s a couple of international French schools in the capital but no westerner would use the local system.

sure that’s what you want?

Hi Kemi! Not even the USA is this extreme.

I am so sorry to hear this and I hope your treatment is going as well as possible. The OP has just posted that they had a career in finance which is staggering given that they seem to lack the most basic grasp of maths let alone any understanding of how a resonably decent society functions

Sounds like a great idea...if you are a sociopath!

No Conservative was ever this extreme - not even Thatcher!!

There's not enough public money for education...so we should just scrap it altogether?

Yeh. Let’s pull up the ladder and fuck all the disabled. I mean, you’re all right jack.

Anybody who didn't want to live like that could leave of course and live somewhere else.
OP—Surely a lot simpler if you move away, since you don’t like the system we have in place.

bright, average and disabled?
are you actually serious?

you realised not all SEN kids or disabled kids are thick and disruptive right? and not all your perfect "normal" children are bright and angelic?

perfectly normal kids can have shit behaviour, bad attitudes and poor attainment through lack of effort or capability. plenty of very bright children have autism. a physical disability has no effect on academic ability.

clearly in this new world, you wouldn't be in the bright class

The aim of the thread is should adults pay for themselves? I honestly can't see why this answer is no.

Collective bargaining power keeps drug costs down in NHS - so we all pay less.

People having kids means the next lot of tax payers and workers being born.

Infrastucture is hard to fund privately - was done with trains and canals in Victorian Britain - but we did have the buying slaves out money and money from empire and industrail rfevolution sloshing round.

Defense also tend to need a collective funding behind it.

Having en edcuated worker force tends to pay off for country as a whole - reaosn why edcuation is funded.

United we tend to have more options than not. Not to say I don't think NHS needs reform or restructoring or something - or edcuation doesn't need looking at - just the solution isn't rampant indudualism and sod everyone else.

I was so hoping that this would be a thread about how to do socialism better, living in a state where exploitation was more firmly tackled, and increasing levels of education and opportunity for all, and where vulnerable people had more not less. I am now laughing, ruefully, having read the OP.

Supporting vulnerable people is the hallmark of a civilised society, @LettingTheBadThingsGo . If we did it better, it would be for the good of all.

Who would pay for central and local government , for roads, pavements, parks, prisons?
If your neighbour house is on fire on a windy day, but they haven't paid for the fire brigade, you are okay with your house burning down too?
You haven't really thought this through have you?

Great idea e.g you call 999 "thank you for calling, to enable us to employ someone to answer this call please press 1 to pay the standard £200 charge, please note this may take up to 14 working days".

I was wondering if the OP might be Nigel given he has been having a nightmare few weeks and it has been suggested he takes some time out and maybe he's opened an account on here for a bit of therapy

Anyone can end up bankrupt at any point in their lives. Through illness or or an accident. Or a relationship breakdown or a death. You yourself or your family/relative might need the help of the state in the future.

You are selfish and foolish.
You said you worked in finance so you must know that the situation you are proposing just won’t work. Taxes are paid as part of the social contract we have with our government. We pay them and we expect certain things in return.

I’m wondering does this plan also include not paying for insurance, but that’s the same as paying taxes, we all pay insurance hoping we will never need it but the fact we all pay it is what keeps the price down.

Reading your replies, you appear very bitter that some people might be getting a ‘better deal’ out of taxes than you are. That’s just silly, I’ve got a good deal out of taxes because I was badly injured in a car crash which was required multiple operations to keep me walking followed by breast cancer.

Also just how would this swap happen, suddenly the government stops taking taxes and just how is the NHS, police, defence, bin collections and all the other things we depend on, get paid?

I haven't read the whole thread yet. In fact I'm still on page 1. Thanks to the posters who actually bothered to try and explain why they disagree. To the others just posting silly responses or insulting me, really what is the point.

I'm off to cut the grass but I'll be back at some point to read the rest. Just before there are shouts of I must be a troll/bot or I have abandoned the thread because I didn't like the answers.

My thread is actually getting quite alot of 'agree' responses. Now I know you all can't see that, only I can. The point is I am not the only one that thinks like this. I'm guessing these people are at work and don't have time to write long responses just now. For those thinking I am some sort of outlier and nobody else thinks like this I'm afraid that isn't correct.

I look forward to reading the differing view points when I return.

Also @LettingTheBadThingsGo how do you propose this runs is we don’t have wage equity?
you think people who’ve “worked harder” should be paid more.
but I assume you still want people to work in the supermarket so you can buy your food, you want there to be a phlebotomist and a receptionist at the doctors surgery to make sure you’re clerked in and your tests done, you’d want bin men, and teaching assistants, and other low wage jobs to be done wouldn’t you? How do you propose that people in those jobs, with the cost of rent and food are able to save enough to safety net them in the event of an emergency/deterioration/change in their circumstances?
I am a masters educated professional, I don’t think those working in entry level jobs in my field deserve less than what I have, they’re the backbone of our industry

I've read all the OPs responses and can only conclude that sadly, she really is as thick, cruel and selfish as the opening post suggested. How depressing that there are people around us like this.

Very similar story with my son except he was perfectly healthy until he was 8 and diagnosed with cancer which usually comes with complications and most definitely did in his case.

17 minute cardiac arrest.

7 week PICU stay. Including ventilator & dialysis for 4 weeks, ECMO for 1 week. They told me he was 'probably the sickest child in the country'.

10 month hospital stay.

5 surgeries.

4 rounds of chemotherapy

NHS funded rehab with physio and OT which he still has 2 years later

medication he will be on for life

Unless you are Elon, no one can afford all of that.