Now Is the Time to Talk Not About “Happiness,” but “Survival”

[Market Economy Op-Ed] Policies Pursuing “Happiness and Welfare” Are in Direct Conflict with “Survival and Growth” Policies

Since the founding of the Republic of Korea, the central themes in our politics have consistently been “survival” and “growth.” Amid crushing poverty and an unstable security environment, politicians saw it as their mission to solve the problem of making a living and to protect the people from foreign aggression. Fortunately, the solutions we chose were capitalism and the Korea-U.S. alliance, and they brought us tremendous achievements.

At some point, however, the words “happiness” and “welfare” began to take the place of survival and growth. This trend, which emerged as our economic standard rose, became even stronger after the IMF crisis as low growth became entrenched. It is now almost impossible to find a politician, regardless of political faction, who does not campaign on “welfare.”

The problem is that policies pursuing “happiness and welfare” are in direct conflict with policies pursuing “survival and growth.”

When people think of welfare policy, they often understand it as providing subsidies or jobs to people in such difficult circumstances that they cannot support themselves, so that they can maintain their livelihood. There are probably not many who would oppose this kind of basic welfare policy for “survival.” But in our society, welfare policy has long since gone beyond that level. It has reached the point where even people who had been steadily keeping their jobs lose the will to work and come to see it as more rational to live dependent on welfare policy.

Most decisively, welfare began to degenerate when it made “happiness” its objective. Everyone started shouting, “I need these things in order to be happy,” freely expressing demands aimed at satisfying frustrated material desires. Of course, such demands could not be asserted too openly. To conceal this, they were packaged under labels such as the “freedom to give birth” requiring childcare support or the “right to enjoy a life with evenings,” as if the government had a legitimate obligation to guarantee such things under the names of the “freedom to do ~” or the “right to ~.” These demands are not entirely new. As Hayek pointed out, “the demand for new liberties is merely another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth.”

Welfare policies that pursue “happiness” carry fatal problems. First, such policies damage human dignity. Even when people are fully capable of supporting themselves, consuming what others have produced without giving anything in return is essentially no different from treating welfare recipients as if they were incapable of acting for themselves. Moreover, if people cannot consume what they produce, they will eventually stop producing. The level of taxation required to implement this kind of welfare policy will seriously undermine the incentive to produce. Therefore, it is not sustainable.

There is criticism that capitalism is far removed from happiness. Of course, capitalism is not a system that evolved for happiness. The development of capitalism has made modern people responsible for only a very small part within a vast system of division of labor. Unlike in the past, one person no longer oversees the entire production process of a particular good. For that reason, it is often difficult to grasp what social meaning one’s work has or specifically how it helps others. Nevertheless, there is a stark difference between producing something useful for others by participating in the great social cooperation of the division of labor, and living by parasitically depending on others while producing nothing despite having sufficient ability.

The important point is that the expanded division of labor has enabled more people to escape absolute poverty and live in diverse ways. Capitalism is clearly a system for “survival” rather than for “happiness.” Capitalism has given lives that otherwise would never have come into the world the chance to be born and the material conditions to live with human dignity.

Improved material conditions do not guarantee happiness, but they at least keep life from becoming miserable. Excessive welfare, by contrast, destroys even the minimum material foundation and leads to misery. A comparison between our country and Venezuela over the past several decades shows that a country that pursued mere survival overwhelmingly outperformed a country that pursued happiness. This is true not only at the national level, but also at the level of firms and individuals.

Policies that pursue welfare in the name of “happiness” are nothing more than policies of wealth redistribution. As Mises pointed out, “our entire civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in fending off the attacks of the redistributors.” The fate of our society likewise depends on whether we can drive out politicians who advocate redistribution and persuade those who have already become soaked in welfare to return to “jobs.” To do that, we must return once again to the theme of “survival.”

Now is the time to place renewed emphasis on growth policies grounded in the reality of survival.

Sangwoo Song, Director of Bohyun Korean Medicine Clinic

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Original title: 이제 ‘행복’이 아닌 ‘생존’을 이야기할 때

Author: Sang-woo Song

Date: 2019-12-30

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&pn=23&idx=22241