To think that it's not the job of government to make people happy?

[FloPen]

This is on the back of a programme on loneliness on r4 this morning. There seemed to be a general consensus that it's a responsibility of the government to make people happy. So, money to be spent on consultants, commissions etc.
Surely the job of government is to keep the peace, mend the roads, and otherwise create a framework where people can be happy. But it's not their job to ensure that they are?

and, while I appreciate your response enirem, when you say
But it is their responsibility not to engender an epidemic of atomised, halted, fractured communities by their actions and inactions.
I do not believe that government is able to do that. I worked in planning at a time when working class communities were being split and dispersed by the demolition of old housing and their replacement with tower blocks. The whole issue, at the time, was of messianic zeal. Planners really believed that people's lives would be immeasurably improved by this.
And yes, people were rehoused in far superior accommodation, and yes, their societies were damaged beyond repair.
This is what 'experts' do. And experts (very well paid ones) will always do, with the best of intentions.
Wouldn't it be better to not buy into thinking that our government is good at social intervention?

Some people would say its nots the governments job to sort your childs education or for running health care or in some cases doing anything thats not related to national defence or law making.
Well, I'm sure people will say lots of things. But do you think they are responsible for your happiness?

Op I agree on this issue.

Well said echt

I was speaking to my pharmacist this morning, who was telling me he'd just come back from visiting family if Africa, and how his sister and DIL were both doctors.

So this is a family who have moved half way around the world for a better life and a great career to better themselves. All the time the British are sitting on their arses complaining how unhappy they are that the Gvmt. have closed the community ctr, the council can't possibly re-home home them in the next town and how their job is NMW so they can't afford to make themselves happy.

But Flo I'm not saying the proposed schemes are the solution. I don't know enough about them to pass comment. But I know the real solution is for government to heavily control capitalism and make it possible for the average person to prioritise their families and interpersonal relationships and rebuild the "do it yourself" networks of support that used to ward off loneliness for most. To enable people to work to live, some of the time, and the rest of the time be caring for the vulnerable in their families and communities, being active in those communities and making them worthy of the name. People say that "everyone's so selfish these days", bewail the days granny would have been looked after at home instead of bunged into a care facility or left to freeze and go doolally all alone in her empty house. But it isn't the case people suddenly became heartless cunts who want nothing to do with their extended families; the rules of the game changed so substantially that now the pursuit of an adequate standard of living is a full time occupation for many and there is simply no time and no structure to care for our elderly and involve them in family life. Who can afford the spare room, the time off work, to say they won't move house so they can be close to granny as the rent rises around them?

That was the government's job - not to stop loneliness, but to protect the spontaneous social fabric of kin and community which used to keep it in check. Not allow capitalism to turn us all into interchangeable endlessly movable units.

Fundamentally, it is precisely the government's job to keep people happy, in the sense that if they are seriously unhappy there will be revolutions and riots.

But as far as loneliness goes, the reason they are doing something is not to make people happy per se, but to avoid the expense of treating the physical issues that have been shown to be more prevalent in people who report feelings of loneliness.

One can't help wondering whether closure of most adult education outlets, along with many other activities and places which allowed to people to meet has contributed to the increase in loneliness. And the increase in pressure on young people, the feeling that there will be no chance for you without a university degree, when even now half of our young people will not get a degree. But when there's that pressure, what time do you have for learning to socialise and making supportive friendships?

It's not even about the poverty so much as the disconnection. I am not poor at all. But I live miles from my and my DPs family, be side we had to go where we could get an job and afford a house if we wanted to have a baby. So now we have job, house and baby, but no family network - and they won't have us (not available easily anyway) when they grow older and frailer or are widowed and need support and company. The economic situation prohibits the extended family. And if we lose our jobs to redundancy and cuts (mooted in our current workplace), well we'll have to move again for work - lose our new friends, our daughter's nursery, everything we've built since moving. Resisting loneliness in such a state of imposes transience is aost impossible.

Ennirem puts it well

I meant particularly in the long post at 12.40.57

really interesting answers -

I think that we just come from drastically different viewpoints ennirem
Though I respect what you say.
When was the golden time of strong social networks? Victorian times? Or post war? To me, strong social networks are predicated by a common culture/religion, and common views of how society should be run. I'm not saying that, to live in that state is necessarily comfortable or desirable. But if society is homogenous, it is stronger.
What society is battling with is not capitalism but social dislocation. The acceptance of fluidity in family groups. Different social mores. The general attitude of it being more important than anything else to be true to yourself.
And there's your broken society on a plate. Nothing to do with government.
I'm one of the (many) winners in all of this. I've moved around all my life, and created social networks as I've gone along. It's difficult sometimes, but, for me, much better than staying put. I think earlier societies would have been stultifying.
The biggest issue is women going to work. Should women be free to work? Yes, of course we should. But there goes your child care. There goes the care for the elderly. Shuffled onto the state. Yes I know men are equally responsable, but the greatest shift in society has been women working outside the home.
Anyway, I'm going to stop rambling.

You're not rambling at all Flo, it's a fair point. I disagree with you that capitalism is not involved - things like the housing bubble and the employment market make it impossible for most people to choose the "stultifying" life with family and community at the centre of it. But yes, the social progress we have made was always going to cause some quakes in the social fabric. Communities were tighter when they shared more commonality. But that isn't the only way societies could be bound together. The creation of more choices of one type doesn't mean that the options that existed previously have to be defunct.

Things like women working: of course women should be able to work (and in a world with divorce and multiple relationships across a long lifetime, it's very wise to keep your hand in even if you don't need/want to particularly). But how many people wouldn't rather work part time if they could afford to? Hie many people do you know who wouldn't prefer to spend more time with their children? Men and women. If every profitable business raised their salaries and encouraged job sharing, for example, it would enable people to have the best of both worlds,not to mention increasing available jobs. Why would that never happen? Because it would hurt profit. Ergo it's capitalism's fault

There should be work done to help society optimise cohesion and happiness while encouraging diversity and choice. It doesn't have to be the old way or the new way. None of the choices individuals might want for themselves actually preclude anyone else's, as long as the profit motive is removed from the equation.

I am guessing what has driven this onto the agenda was the studies reported on int the media that loneliness was bad for your health. My nephew who gets all his information from the internet told me it's worse than smoking. (He was cheerful about it as he smokes but has lots of friends!)

Being part of a religious congregation is good for health i seem to remember. Should the government to advise church attendance?

The government needs to decouple from the information soundbite / reaction loop IF this is where its coming from.

A bit of googling and it's turned out loneliness is a social justice / human rights issue. So that's why the government has the bit between the teeth.

Please could some other organisation step in and mend our ( lethal) potholes. Oh and run us a bus service to help those that want to socialise to get out..

I really want not to be simplistic, but surely you can't blame capitalism when it occurs in communist countries.
I agree that, to a certain extent, the economy is driving this. But I remember, back in the day as a young mum, and well before issues of overpriced housing, I definately felt like a 2nd class citizen because I stayed at home and looked after my children. Politicians like Harriet Harman were firmly selling the narrative that you had to have a job to have meaning. and that's not capitalism. It's social engineering.

New Labour weren't socialists though! That's why I said the last 30 plus years in my original post - the current crop of Tories are doing it on speed, but the narrative that work is everything and the ability to generate money is what makes someone worthwhile is a message which has been pushed in some form or another since Thatcher.

I'd like to know more about what you mean when you say it happens in communist countries... Not that I advocate communism, I'm a socialist.

Patricia Hewitt: women who stay at home with children are a problem.

I suspect unhappy citizens can band together and overthrow a government so on a very basic level governments do try to make people happy.

Patricia Hewitt: women who stay at home with children are a problem.

One of Blair's. QED.

Total wierdo in my book.

The government should serve the people...otherwise what is the point? Part of serving people is providing jobs and financial security as well as a financial safety net.

Part of serving people is providing jobs and financial security as well as a financial safety net.
Yes, but I'm talking about the many people who have both of these and are happy/lonely. Is it the government's job to help with this?
I here what you say emirren, but can you give an example of any government that has been able to do this? I don't think it exists, outside of an ideal world. And once people start trying to build an ideal world, we are usually in deep trouble.

sorry, I meant UNhappy/lonely

Likewise I hear what you say, but I think nothing would ever have been achieved in this world if we only tried to do things which had been achieved already by someone else. We'll never have a perfect world, but it won't get to be a better one if we don't aim in that general direction. Who is the person who is in an objective enough position to decide we have reached the limits of what is possible in terms of structures that promote positive outcomes for society? Zealotry is dangerous, but idealism is essential for progressive government. But that's my view, it's just that.

I think we should always aspire and work towards a fairer world. But recognise that where those aspirations have been wholesale adopted by government, the results have always been disastrous.