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.

Nah. I don't want half measures with this approach. If I am fully responsible for myself and need to pay for all services, fuck the country charge. If I want to contribute to defence then I can but if I prefer an extra GP visit instead of funding a nuclear warhead that's MY capitalist choice.

Letting the bad things go

shojld be

letting things go bad

Okay. So one way to think about this is you have to go into a cave. And a sheet or a veil goes across the door. And while you’re in the cave you can come up with your ideas about a just society. But while you’re in the cave you don’t know anything about yourself. Are you intelligent or not, able bodied or not, beautiful or not, good with your hands or not. You know absolutely nothing.

now, given you could be anyone in the society that you’re going to create , what rules / social norms would you create?

in your thinking, you’ve missed out the key first bit - the cave and the ignorance bit. So your society will be inherently unfair and unjust because you’re basing it on yourself.

Give John Rawls a read (Theory of Justice). I’m not being facetious, honestly it’s interesting reading. Then if you like that, try Nozick - who disagrees with lots of what Rawls says.

What would happen to minimum wage jobs? No one would be able to afford to do them.

OP, have you ever tried to understand the world around you, how taxation and economies work, or ever even left the house?

Not paying tax doesn’t cover healthcare costs.

For example, if you look at Singapore, where private health insurance is mandatory.

the government provides a back up medifund for when health insurance runs out.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy-center/countries/singapore

privatised healthcare for something like a stroke or multiple years of cancer treatments can go into the hundreds of thousands very easily.

some cancer drugs costs tens of thousands per treatment.

I can't believe anyone would want to go back to a time when disabled children were left to die because they were too expensive, when only children from rich households could go to school or go to the doctor , only rich people could have children, when people die from very simple illnesses. And that's just scratched the surface of how ridiculous that policy is.
It's moving back in time several hundred years!

Absolutely batshit insane.

What about people who are born disabled?

May I suggest you read A Christmas Carol by Dickens. I teach it to 14 year olds and they read it and figure out pretty quickly why what you are proposing won’t work.

You are???
When was the last time you were on here 😅

Basically OP you are talking about privatising everything

as we can see that hasn’t led to cheaper telecoms or energy

and we can see that water and trains are increasingly being returned to the state because they failed so badly

And Pay for the use of street lights only for the time you use them. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me

have at it @LettingTheBadThingsGo

I see where your are coming from but it's not sustainable and I cannot agree. I am disabled and I worked a lot longer than I should have cos I needed the money to live on. Now i live on PIP and ESA, what would you suggest I live on if those were not available? I understand the frustration toward those who can work refusing to cos they can live in benefits, but that was never me. There needs to be more done to encourage able-bodied people to work, instead of giving them money, what about food and transport tokens, an incentive for attending interviews, job events or volunteering. The national living wage needs to be higher so that people working are better off than those on benefits in the hope of encouraging people to get into work. But people who can't work, people like me still need to be supported. I can't pay for my hospital or doctors appointments. Can people who work? Is that fair that they should?

After reading the OP I need one!

Sounds a bit like America. Would you like that.
Plus Britain isn't really a capitalist country. It's much more leaning towards socialism, as is Europe in general

Still cheering to see that most people can see how ridiculous this is !

Why is it you think removing welfare entirely is the solution to shoddy services?

A communist for example would argue that if all private businesses were commonly owned, all profits would go towards services to be distributed evenly rather than hoarded by individuals.

@LettingTheBadThingsGo Who looks after children (especially disabled children) if parents die or they can’t cope anymore. Do they die on the street?

I wish we could just live in a society where we all just pay for ourselves This is the sort of thing A-level politics students say before they have learned anything about how politics and society actually work, and have no idea how much it would cost for each person to pay for each service individually!

What a load of right-wing drivel. You sound like Ayn Rand, an extreme right-wing libertarian in the USA who had the same views as you.

When she retired, despite her objections to government-run social programs, she claimed Social Security and Medicare with the aid of a representative from her lawyers.

In the USA, even if people have expensive medical insurance, cancer treatment either for themselves or their children can end up bankrupting them.

Most of our doctors are trained within the NHS. Who will do this once everything is privatised?

Like most people, you could be one step away from a catastrophic accident or medical event that could cost more money to treat than you have managed to save.

Be very careful what you wish for.

Their parents have to pay. No choice about it. Deducted from income at source. The child maintenance service may actually become effective so a silver lining maybe 🤷‍♀️.

It reminds me of the conversation I had with my child when she was about 6- why do we have to pay for food and nobody should have to work. She relented and said there’ll have to be teachers doctors and a mayor. Oh and bus drivers.

That's fine. Nobody would be forced to live here.

I mean should you pay for your neighbour three doors down to go to tesco and get their food for a week.
Of course not. Why would you. I mean you probably don't even know them.

So why are you paying for their lazy son who has decided he has anxiety and can't work.
Why are you paying for their choice to have 3 kids when they don't have jobs or savings. I mean having kids is not obligatory.

Are you really saying you are delighted to go out to work, pay lots of tax and watch it going to others that you don't know. In return services which you might need ocassionally like police are so poor that they may as well not exist in some cases.

Nonsense

kids get beyond this level of analysis in their early teens

OP I'm seriously concerned for your ability to function if this is what you think is an ideal way of living.

Like I said, batshit insane.