A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Socialism’s bite into everyday incentive,” The Australian Financial Review, June 14, 1974, p. 3.

It is comparatively easy to arouse the suspicions of non-socialists by painting frightening pictures of the dangers of socialism.

You can point to the performance of the railways and the Post Office in recent years and draw grim parallels of what would happen if the steel industry was to be taken over and run on socialistic lines.

But awful as that prospect may be, it is not this aspect of socialism that is the most frightening in the final analysis.

Far more serious is the enervating effect of socialistic thinking on the behaviour of individual people rather than industries.

Let me give an example: I have a small but dedicated group of people in my district who have been working for some time now to raise money for a pre-school kindergarten. It is certainly not an affluent area but the group felt that there was real need for a kindergarten so they set to work to raise money by running raffles and arranging balls and doing all the menial but necessary things that fundraising entails.

And gradually, and with infinite effort, the interest of the citizens of the district was aroused and they began to talk about “their kindergarten,” and as a result the committee had $12,000 in hand and were in the process of drawing up plans for a rather exciting kind of a building.

Then the bombshell burst. The committee has now been informed that because they have the $12,000 in hand, the grant from the Government will be reduced by that amount.

Naturally the enthusiasm of the committee has evaporated. “What’s the sense in trying to help ourselves,” the say, “if by so doing all we do is save money for the Government so that there is more money available to build kindergartens in other districts that are not prepared to help themselves?”

This, of course, is the socialist approach to the problem. They assume that any district that can raise money to help itself must be affluent and that the limited funds must be used to help others which are not affluent.

So there is clearly no incentive for self-help.

It is the same with schools, if a school is generously helped by the school family, it gets less help from the Government.

And because the spirit to help themselves is now gone, the continuing involvement of the local people in “their kindergarten” will be weakened. The things you get for nothing you value as such.

So the Government’s kindergarten will suffer when it is eventually built because the local community will not feel involved as they would if they had worked and suffered for it.

One of the virtues of country life is the feeling of local involvement. It is true that there is often the feeling that the burden falls on too few.

“It’s always the same people who have to do the work,” people complain. And this is often all too true. But the results are usually worthwhile because gradually the district becomes involved and from then on the project is carried along by its own momentum.

The Aged Persons’ Home Scheme is a classic example of this approach. People know that the more money they raise for their Aged Persons’ Home, the more money they will get from the Government.

Sometimes this encourages groups to extra endeavour because the prospect of making the government shell out a bit extra is an inducement for extra effort.

And we regard our country hospitals in the same light. We all appreciate the devoted work of the hospital auxiliary members who run the stalls on the street on market days, sell pasties at the football and put on wedding receptions to raise money for “our hospital.”

But this is not the socialistic approach; the district that makes an effort to help itself is regarded with suspicion as affluent, but a district that waits around to be helped gets it.

When people talk about the “dead hand” of socialism they usually think of running large government-owned monopolies with the same lack of enthusiasm as the railways.

But the danger of socialism is much wider and deeper than that. The destruction of the incentive for self help by the citizen and by local communities will eat away the spirit of our people and will do even more harm than socialising industries.
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Further reading for Economics.org.au readers:

  1. Bob Howard, “The Discipline of Necessity,” The Optimist, July-August 1985, p. 9.
  2. “Clarkson Says” column [Bert Kelly], “Insure one, insure the lot,” Country Life, June 23-29, 1976, p. 40.
  3. A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “We’re quick to get sick of socialism,” The Australian Financial Review, November 23, 1973, p. 3.
  4. A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Helping the farmers help themselves,” The Australian Financial Review, February 25, 1972, p. 3.
  5. A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Incentive slices for a bigger cake?,” The Australian Financial Review, May 8, 1970, p. 3.
  6. Welfare state incentivises bludging and being thrown out of work — A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Rationalising unemployment figures,” The Australian Financial Review, February 2, 1973, p. 3; and A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “The unknown bludgers are our problem,” The Australian Financial Review, August 9, 1974, p. 3.
  7. A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “That sod in the Rolls smoking a big cigar …,” The Australian Financial Review, November 4, 1977, p. 3.
  8. “Dave’s Diary” column [Bert Kelly], “Governments love to be popular!,” Adelaide Stock & Station Journal, August 24, 1966, p. 83.
  9. John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 83-87, the “Education” entry; pp. 96-97, the section “Fittest, Survival of the”; and pp. 267-73, under the heading “Welfare”. Excerpt from the “Education” entry: “If you owned a store, and the government guaranteed that a certain number of people would, every day, spend a certain amount of money in your store, what would happen? (Assuming that the amount you would receive was enough to satisfy you.) What would happen to your store, your service and your attitude? Nothing is what. And that is the situation in our schools. The teachers are guaranteed classes. The schools are guaranteed customers by the zoning regulations and compulsory attendance laws. As a result, there is no market function relating what is offered by way of facilities, teachers and syllabuses to the demands of the market. We are forced to accept what we get. This is why compulsory schooling has to go.”
  10. Shit State Subsidised Socialist Schooling Should Cease Says Singo — John Singleton, “The day the parents became citizens,” Nation Review, August 6-12, 1976, p. 1044. Excerpt: “There is only one thing wrong with our whole education system and this is our whole education system.” And: “As there is no profit incentive in the education system, it is monolithic, incompetent and generally not worth pissing on.”
  11. Padraic P. McGuinness, “Pay peanuts, get monkeys,” The Australian Financial Review, May 19, 1988, pp. 80-79. Excerpt: “If you make education available for nothing, it will be fed to pigs. Moreover, if the producers are paid regardless of quality and know that their product is going to be cast before swine, they will produce a product which is fit for pigs. In other words, it is a matter of ensuring that education is valued by those who receive it, and that the quality of education offered is worthwhile. A pricing system, by way of fees charged to students, is one way of moving towards such a goal. It is not perfect, but it at least means that a school-leaver contemplating tertiary studies will have some motive to think seriously about what those studies are worth, either in the form of future income or in terms of self-improvement. There will be an incentive to study, in order to get a return on the cost of the education, and to complete a course in order to increase the capacity to earn income to offset that cost.”