Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

The destruction of self-help by state intervention

Posted on | June 6, 2009 | Comments Off by Aschwin de Wolf

The Independent Institute’s quarterly Independent  Review is a worthy publication. The journal produces well researched and innovative scholarly articles in the classical liberal tradition, avoiding excessive emphasis on “public policy libertarianism” on the one hand, and avoiding an exclusive emphasis on a single school of economic thought (such as Austrian Economics) on the other. The Winter 2009 issue features an article on health insurance before the welfare state. The authors conclude the article with the following general observation:

The rise of the state and simultaneous decline of voluntary means of provision of so-called public goods are among the most characteristic features of modern economic history. It is difficult now to say without ambiguity which way the causality runs, whether the decline of voluntary action came first and the state only subsequently filled the vacant space or the state interventions undermined the roots of the voluntary action, which later withered  away. Our examination of the history of British friendly societies suggests that the latter scenario is probably closer to reality, but more research must be done in economic and sociological theory and in the history of voluntary movements to provide a more definitive answer.

Pavel Chalupníček, Lukáš Dvořák – Health Insurance before the Welfare State: The Destruction of Self-Help by State Intervention

Category: Arts & Living, Economics, Politics, Voting
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