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But if you live in a successful welfare state, what need have you for help from your neighbours? The welfare state might help you even better, as it can benefit

But if you live in a successful welfare state, what need have you for help from your neighbours? The welfare state might help you even better, as it can benefit from economies of scale, and it will not demand anything in return from you except, once you are working a normal job, your taxes. Also, depictions of pre-welfare-state help from neighbours often underscore how that help was always conditional: sexual and racial minorities, women with children out of wedlock, people not members of the locally dominant church or political wing, etc. often found their pleas for help rejected.

vixen99 6y ago
The successful welfare state is the product of your neighbours who tacitly agree to maintain society in many ways including of course paying for it. It's a mistake to suppose that that stance is a given in perpetuity.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Definitely, but the point is that society found a way for neighbours to assist each other, without requiring individual neighbours to know (and carefully maintain friendships with) their individual neighbours. Of course support for this model could possibly weaken over time, but I think many people find the welfare state superior to the old way that took more effort and would only benefit you if you conformed to expectations.
kewrkewm53 6y ago
Yet it should be noted that a successful welfare state exists only as long as well-doing people feel enough solidarity and trust towards the poor to pay higher taxes in support of them, and as long as those receiving the welfare benefits genuinely do their best to find employment, at least most of them. I'm pretty sure Finland won't be a welfare state in 50 years. There's just too little left of the solidarity and common identity which helped creating the welfare state. Individualism and diversity seem to be today's trends, not community and social cohesion.
burntoutfire 6y ago
Welfare is basically mandatory charity - it's forcing everyone to chip in (via taxes) for the people who can't manage to support themselves. What I'm talking about is something else entirely - it's a setup where for example the neighbor takes care of your cows and other animals if you go to town for a day or two. Or you help him rebuild his house after a fire. Or, the older kids of your neighbor look after your younger kid, as they play together outside all day. Or somebody is the village's blacksmith and is fixing everyone's iron equipment. Or, you give excess of apples during harvest to someone and expect some other favor from them down the line. Essentially, it's deep interconnectedness with the people around you and essentially an opposite of welfare state, in which you interact not with your neighbors, but with bored and depressed bureucrats at the welfare office and the kafkesque rules that determine whether or not you will be granted the money.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform to cisgender- and heteronormativity, but your neighbour is a bigot? What if you are a politically active citizen, but your neighbor’s politics are hostile to yours? (Note that the rise of the Nordic welfare states in fact helped to smooth out some political polarization that was hurting those societies in the early 20th century.) In the past, neighbourly help often was refused to people like that. And what if you are a very introverted person who simply doesn’t want to interact with people outside your comfort zone? Also, “bored and depressed bureaucrats” and “Kafkaesque rules” is a caricature, it may not be how others perceive their country’s welfare state. Satisfaction in fact may run high.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform Then you vote with your feet and move to a community that's friendlier to your values. That community will in turn have strong values of its own, which will help preserve a sense of high social trust within it. It's easy to move out to a competing community, because these quasi-tribal dynamics are inherently limited in scale to a max of about 150 individuals.

vixen99 6y ago

The successful welfare state is the product of your neighbours who tacitly agree to maintain society in many ways including of course paying for it. It's a mistake to suppose that that stance is a given in perpetuity.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Definitely, but the point is that society found a way for neighbours to assist each other, without requiring individual neighbours to know (and carefully maintain friendships with) their individual neighbours. Of course support for this model could possibly weaken over time, but I think many people find the welfare state superior to the old way that took more effort and would only benefit you if you conformed to expectations.

kewrkewm53 6y ago

Yet it should be noted that a successful welfare state exists only as long as well-doing people feel enough solidarity and trust towards the poor to pay higher taxes in support of them, and as long as those receiving the welfare benefits genuinely do their best to find employment, at least most of them. I'm pretty sure Finland won't be a welfare state in 50 years. There's just too little left of the solidarity and common identity which helped creating the welfare state. Individualism and diversity seem to be today's trends, not community and social cohesion.

burntoutfire 6y ago

Welfare is basically mandatory charity - it's forcing everyone to chip in (via taxes) for the people who can't manage to support themselves. What I'm talking about is something else entirely - it's a setup where for example the neighbor takes care of your cows and other animals if you go to town for a day or two. Or you help him rebuild his house after a fire. Or, the older kids of your neighbor look after your younger kid, as they play together outside all day. Or somebody is the village's blacksmith and is fixing everyone's iron equipment. Or, you give excess of apples during harvest to someone and expect some other favor from them down the line. Essentially, it's deep interconnectedness with the people around you and essentially an opposite of welfare state, in which you interact not with your neighbors, but with bored and depressed bureucrats at the welfare office and the kafkesque rules that determine whether or not you will be granted the money.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform to cisgender- and heteronormativity, but your neighbour is a bigot? What if you are a politically active citizen, but your neighbor’s politics are hostile to yours? (Note that the rise of the Nordic welfare states in fact helped to smooth out some political polarization that was hurting those societies in the early 20th century.) In the past, neighbourly help often was refused to people like that. And what if you are a very introverted person who simply doesn’t want to interact with people outside your comfort zone? Also, “bored and depressed bureaucrats” and “Kafkaesque rules” is a caricature, it may not be how others perceive their country’s welfare state. Satisfaction in fact may run high.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform Then you vote with your feet and move to a community that's friendlier to your values. That community will in turn have strong values of its own, which will help preserve a sense of high social trust within it. It's easy to move out to a competing community, because these quasi-tribal dynamics are inherently limited in scale to a max of about 150 individuals.