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.

So you are extremely right wing and have no empathy for people who are not able to pay their way or whose early disadvantages mean they are unlikely to achieve at the same rate as a more privileged person? JFC.

There is no proof Shakespeare did not go to university, he could have any time after the age of 12 (1576), not necessarily in England (though it is possible for him e.g. to have fathered all 3 of his children in the vacations from Cambridge). His father was a member of the local council and a tradesman of good standing - a glover, a high-end trade - and his mother was a member of the local gentry, the Ardens. A councillors' sons could attend the grammar school for free. The grammar school curriculum in Elizabethan England included Latin, Greek, performance of plays (in Latin and Greek), rhetoric etc. Thus Shakespeare would have the tools for further reading (some of his plays are based on Latin originals).
And Shakespeare had access to libraries in London, most likely those of Burghley and Lord Stanley.
What Socrates did in Classical Athens in respect of the upper classes is not possible in a society where everyone must be educated. And you need a curriculum. And phonics if using an alphabetical language (which both Greek and English are) which need teaching in a systematic way. Socrates does not discuss the teaching of reading, he presumes his audience (or Plato's audience, we only see Socrates through Plato) can read.
NB Anyone who thinks Shakespeare's work was written by anyone other than Shakespeare has not read his plays, or his sonnets.

Are all the doctors in your fantasy land male, OP?

So far everyone is saying my idea is terrible. I wonder if most of the people who have posted so far are unemployed, claiming benefits and sitting at home. Thus of course they want the free money to continue.
I just can't understand why Mr Hardworker who pays a ton of tax and gets nothing for it would want to continue like this

Um, because we're not empathy-free sociopaths with the critical thinking of a gnat?

Because we want a functional society?

Because we are inherently a sociable communally minded species not just every man for themselves?

I suggest you go to some very poor countries and spend some time in the slums if you want to know what the poverty could look like if we took your insane approach.

If you got pregnant before you'd magically saved up all your money, you wouldn't be able to afford an abortion!!

Oh and I doubt v much most people on MN are unemployed, don't you know the trope that we all earn bucket loads and think 120k is a terrible salary?

There is a familiarity to the way this OP writes.

Sounds like the olden days OP when if you paid for fire insurance they gave you a plaque to put on your house so the fire services would put your fire out. No plaque, no firefighters.

” Hello, can you send an ambulance and police? It’s an emergency”.

“ Certainly madam. Can you enter your 15 digit identity code and answer the following confirmation questions.”

” Please hurry. He has a knife. “

” Certainly madam. Please enter your identity code and confirm your identity “

My favorite idea is that if you want the police you pay for them. I really look forward to murder victims picking up the phone to make a complaint before getting out their credit card to pay for the service 😂

Hmm, are all the desirable members of the OP's brave new world male?

How exactly do people pay to become Drs as well? What about professions where training is currently funded? No one will fund it so no one will do the jobs.

I actually can’t 🤣🤣🤣

Or because we have degrees in economics and understand that pooling money gives us economies of scale and planning and purchasing power a broken down model made of multiple smaller private corporations would never have 👀

Pay per use policing would create a lawless society where you'd need an armoured car and personal security to go anywhere op. Utterly ridiculous.

Tbf, many private schools are also non-profit. A great many of them are registered charities.

I have been a net contributor all my working life and I think you are badly wrong

😂Another fatal flaw in the OP's theory exposed right here. It would be up to the nearest and dearest of a murder victim to pay to call the police to report and have the crime investigated. What if nobody wanted to foot the bill? I can imagine a thread on here: "MIL found dead with stab wounds, am I being ABU not to pay up to have her murder investigated"

To me , it’s more Some people’s leave of entitlement now is ridiculous.For example They are over crowned at home, and thats somehow the councils responsibility . I find a lot of time people don’t take responsibility for them self’s and it’s the same people that will normally blame immigrants etc . But not because they don’t think no one should get help . But because they think they should get more help . Then say I get nothing while claiming UC getting help with childcare , rent , etc . Ungrateful

Posters like the OP always assume they’ll have the money to protect themselves. They never consider the likelihood that someone will come along with more money and divert their ‘5-minute ambulance’.

US is a good place to look for this.

One of the things about everyone paying for their own stuff is that billing/accounting infrastructure of this type is really expensive. This is why American healthcare for example costs so much - its not just paying for healthcare but for the billing stuff. If you think the NHS has too many managers then try looking the the admin costs in the US! US health care costs are 3-5 times per capita next to the UK and they have the worst infant mortality in the first world. This also makes drugs really expensive - I tried to buy some psoriasis spray (£30 in the UK) and it was $2000.

Also what you think is the cost of something in the UK is actually the subsidised cost underpinned by gov spending. So private healthcare is supported by the NHS infrastructure. Roads, transport, utilities are all subsidised to some extent. Emergency services are paid for. In your world this would stop

Infrastructure costs become difficult to manage - in the US local areas become responsible for their own roads so you end up with both rubbish roads AND tolls. In US these are paid for out of sales tax which which can be 20%. There has to be some taxation for at least regulation of things we all use and without which we cannot function like roads, sewage and water. Otherwise this can go horribly wrong like the water supply in Flint. And because its private you have no pushback except to sue or do without which is expensive too. Fire services out of cities are often volunteer run.

I have heard many examples of people being bankrupted by health issues in the us despite good incomes and insurance. I know personally of people who buy one tablet at a time ( at $15 each) for their intermittent condition, and people i consider wealthy juggling insurance contracts to make medication for long term conditions affordable, for it to cost between $20,000 and $25,000 to have a healthy baby in hospital, and have the cost multiply quickly if anything goes wrong.

Similarly education. Do you have a spare half a million to send your 2 kids to the good university?

Your idea of the costs is skewed low, as in the UK its all subsidised to some extent. And your version relies on people who cant afford things simply not getting them, and dying or living miserable lives. And unless you earn way above average you will be one them, working two or three jobs to paid for your child's birth, or college or your diabetes meds or husbands prostate cancer treatment at some point.

🤐the DIL did it

Why stop there? Why not have individuals defend the country if there was an attack. Why shouldn't lighting be paid for by individuals or just tell people carry a torch. Same with fire fighters they could also be available only to those that can pay for their service.

@LettingTheBadThingsGo What you really want is for all the “undesirable” people to be killed off. No Disabled, no SEN children, no Neurodivergent people, no Riff-raff. You want your own “Aryan” race!!!!

Oh ok then. So it’s not the businesses who don’t pay their employees enough to make work worthwhile burdening the Government and hard working taxpayers but the work-shy individuals who don’t feel like doing those minimum wage jobs even if they’re financially worse off by doing so? And those troublesome individuals who actually do take the minimum wage jobs, work really hard and still require top up financial support from the Government to cover the basics?

If we cut those people off from their state funded healthcare, education, the protection of police and the fire brigade maybe they’d learn to be less lazy….

You can pay for private medical treatment, security etc

The trouble is what you’re suggesting would impact the most disadvantaged the greatest.

I’m assuming you have a decent career, no disabilities, no severe MH issues and no matter what life throws at you you’ll still have a cushion behind you.

If you’re a MN regular you will know how a couple choosing to have children can have a seemingly perfect life one minute and then a very different life next minute.

So you could have a couple, both with decent careers and they choose to have kids.
The kids could have disabilities, one parent could then become disabled and the other parent leave or need to become a carer.

Some families will be extremely more financially disadvantaged through no fault of their own.

If I’m getting attacked by multiple men, I don’t want the police to not come unless I have the money.
I don’t want my injuries only treated if I have the money to pay for it.

I do think that there should be an incentive for those well off to go private, perhaps by reducing the amount of tax they pay.
It would massively reduce the strain for those that can’t afford it.

This place exists…it’s called America and it’s a shit show. People have to decide whether to eat that week or take their child to a doctor.

Their life expectancy is declining, their infant mortality rate is higher than Cuba, they have encampments full of homeless people in all of their major cities.

People literally work themselves to death, and the disabled can live in squalor.

However I think your post is rage bait, in which case…yeah let’s make the change, why not 🤷‍♀️

Ok, so you clearly must come from a privileged position to not understand the millions of people for who this would not work. It sounds like a plot for a very poor dystopian movie. Aside from all that, practically, I don’t think it would be possible for any service to plan their costs/ staff needed etc if you could just call police etc on a whim if you had the means.