Corruption of Democracy

A lot has been said recently of Labour's universal student allowances scheme, and it has been thoroughly debunked. The economics behind it is stupid, and so is the justification of "equality", "fairness", etc. So, I have nothing more to add to the general debates -apart from the fact that government hand-me-outs always work to destroy democracy and the political process.

Under a libertarian government which doesn't redistribute wealth, there is little incentive for different special interests and lobby groups (such as unions, businesses, organisations representing different groups of people) to heckle the government for cash -as the government recognises that it is not its job to hand out wealth. "Getting into bed" with government is a waste of resources. Similarly, in elections, the votes of a vast number of people don't go to whoever is promising the most benefits, as is the case today.

However, we have a government which is active in the redistribution of wealth -and when the government has money to give away, there's always going to be fighting about who should get it. Suddenly, it becomes worthy to try and get government to swing your way. The only problem is, that money could've gone to any other group, so different politically -minded groups start competing for money, and the end result is that whoever promises the biggest payouts gets the vote.

This is exactly what we're seeing today in New Zealand, and this "universal student allowance" is simply the latest bribe. And until government gets its hand out of our pockets, we'll continue having different lobby groups fighting and bribing politicians for resources.