Eben rightly highlights the dangers of a state-monopolised National Care Service, and shifting the focus toward individual ownership and family wealth is a welcome move.
However, the proposal retains two fundamental contradictions:
1) Mandating thrift is still state coercion: Forcing individuals into state-sanctioned savings vehicles prevents the government from acting as a neutral umpire and maintains paternalistic compulsion.
2) Statutory protection keeps bureaucracy in the game: Ring-fencing accounts via special legislation requires state regulators to police how citizens spend their own money, leaving the rules vulnerable to political meddling with every election cycle.
Eben rightly highlights the dangers of a state-monopolised National Care Service, and shifting the focus toward individual ownership and family wealth is a welcome move.
However, the proposal retains two fundamental contradictions:
1) Mandating thrift is still state coercion: Forcing individuals into state-sanctioned savings vehicles prevents the government from acting as a neutral umpire and maintains paternalistic compulsion.
2) Statutory protection keeps bureaucracy in the game: Ring-fencing accounts via special legislation requires state regulators to police how citizens spend their own money, leaving the rules vulnerable to political meddling with every election cycle.
A genuinely free society shouldn't rely on state-managed financial planning, but on voluntary savings, private contract, and civil society. I explore this tension further in tow posts, Can a Free and Prosperous Society Survive an Expansive Welfare State? - https://fightingforafreefuture.substack.com/p/can-a-free-and-prosperous-society and Umpire or Player: What Should The State Be? - https://voices.fightingforafreefuture.com/p/umpire-or-player-what-should-the