Why are Canadians disengaged from public affairs? A former Clerk of the Privy Council hazards a guess: A lack of social trust:
High social trust implies solidarity, the sense that the members of a society share a common fate and mutual responsibility and this is reflected in greater commitment to helping others. Individuals take responsibility not only for themselves and those in their social milieu, but also for the stranger, and for the direction of their society.
Contrary to the Margaret Thatcher view of the world, we are or at least can be more than isolated, atomized individuals fiercely pursuing our self-interest. We live in relationships with others, we live in society, and the strength of those relationships and our fellow feeling matters profoundly. High trust societies work; they have less crime and corruption, more effective governments, and stronger economies.
Except Mrs Thatcher never said that. Her famous quip about there being no such thing as society was not an attack on society, it was an attack on socialism. Too often people, especially senior bureaucrats, use the word society in a hazy and disconnected way, a floating abstraction that can mean anything. Mrs Thatcher was attempting to concretize the discussion. Here is the full quote:
They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation.
That doesn't sound like someone who believes in atomistic individualism. It's sounds like someone who does very much believe in society. Thatcher, however, was disgusted by how the word was being used by shirkers who insisted that everything was someone's else responsibility. In other words she believed in high social trust, except she understood that such trust cannot be sustained in highly statist societies.
The classic exemplars of high tax rate societies that function extremely well are the Scandinavia states. Strangely they are almost always the only examples cited. Britain had very high tax rates and very high social spending for decades after the war. The result was not increased social trust, instead it was gradual social disintegration. For the first time in living memory, certainly in peacetime, Britain saw the emergence of petty corruption and a black market. The council flats of Britain became rapidly degenerating slums. Trades unions held the nation to ransom.
This is how highly statist societies tend to function. It's a fair description of modern Southern and Eastern Europe, two regions that have had various shades of socialism for decades. What makes Scandinavia work is the Scandinavians.
A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: "In Scandinavia we have no poverty." Milton Friedman replied, "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either." Indeed, the poverty rate for Americans with Swedish ancestry is only 6.7%, half the U.S average. Economists Geranda Notten and Chris de Neubourg have calculated the poverty rate in Sweden using the American poverty threshold, finding it to be an identical 6.7%.
Culture trumps economics. Indeed it can overcome a multitude of economic sins. It should also be noted that for much of Sweden's history it was among the freest nations in the world. The country was weakly feudalized during the Dark and Middle Ages. It was a society of semi-independent farmers for centuries. If it was not quite a laissez-faire state, Sweden still has a long tradition of stable government and rule of law. Sweden's hard turn Left dates only from the 1960s.
Pre-Trudeaupian Canada was a nation characterized by a high level of social trust, though admittedly little of that trust crossed between the Two Solitudes. Both English and French Canada were peaceful, stable and essentially humane societies. The former was richer than the latter for well documented reasons, the latter was somewhat more corrupt than the former. For the era the whole place worked very well.
Canada worked well because Canadians worked well. Our enormous social capital, which rivaled far more established societies in old Europe, was accumulated during a period of low taxes and little government regulation. In the century between Macdonald and Pearson the only serious meddling in the market was for tariffs and railways. If Canadians of 2013 are less trusting than those of 1963, then perhaps the fault does not lie in a lack of government spending.
A statist society, as Mrs Thatcher noted, is one that relieves the individual of responsibility. Not simply those individuals incapable of fending for themselves, but ALL individuals in society. You don't have to take care of yourself, or your family or your friends. The result is a nation of people who regard their fellow citizens as ciphers either to be ignored or exploited. There cannot be trust without responsibility. In a market society you improve your lot in life by co-operating with others. In a statist society you improve your lot by exploiting others through coercion.
What is more likely to instill trust in others? A government edict or a polite request?
Of course Canadians lack trust. They've been sold a false bill of goods for half a century.
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