“Restoration Decree”, worse and worse: in fact an alms, in theory a conception of welfare
No, we're not really there, from any point of view. The so-called provision to give "refreshment" to the categories damaged by the further restrictive measures decided by the government is inadequate in fact as much as it appears distorted and dangerous in the conception of society it reveals.
In terms of substance, of quantum , we are talking about sums that have no serious chance of preventing the closure of hundreds of thousands of businesses. Let's say I am a restaurateur with an annual turnover – in normal times – around 400 thousand euros, with about ten employees, and with – now – the empty space and the almost total absence of reservations between now and New Year. Even if 4,000 euros were received as a one-off payment, what could I possibly do with it, if not to use it to pay the accountant to help me organize the termination of my business in an orderly manner?
Not to mention those activities that, according to the latest Dpcm, remain formally open, without any limitation, but will inevitably be struck by the fact that cities are reduced to ghostly scenarios, and people's propensity to consume has been literally killed. If I have a clothing or shoe shop, or if I manage a car dealership, how can I think of getting by, when the expected revenues will be incomparably lower even than the level of fixed costs that I will have to bear anyway?
As you can see, from a factual point of view, we are facing a disaster, an authentic Caporetto. But no less serious is the cultural sinking behind all this, the conception of society that the government provision makes us glimpse.
As far as they are from the idea of free initiative, extraneous as they are to the entrepreneurial spirit, to individual enterprise, they think they can get by with a sort of universalization of citizenship income, a subsidy here and a patch there. It is time – also from a cultural point of view – that a sleeping right (and in turn confused from the point of view of the ideal compass) begins to regain confidence with principles that should be fundamental: individual responsibility, self-sufficiency, no dependence on external actors (including: lowercase script as Luigi Einaudi suggested), the fact that it is primarily the parents' responsibility to put the bread on the table for their children.
Mind you: this approach, cynically presented by some as punitive, is actually the best possible defense against bad rulers. Because it should prevent a priori government (any government) from seizing free enterprise, from caging what is not of the state nor can belong to it, from interfering with our private choices. We pay taxes so that the state does some services to us, not so that it authoritatively prevents us from earning a loaf of bread.
Unfortunately, the non-liberal approach of the current Constitution (other than "the most beautiful in the world") does not help, where it binds and subordinates initiative and private property for social purposes, social functions, social utility, thereby laying the foundations for authoritative and illiberal interventions. And yet, even within that framework, it pains (but not surprisingly) the silence and insensitivity of the highest institutions of the Republic with respect to these issues and these needs.
The alms decided this week are completely insufficient. But even if – absurdly – they had been more substantial, they would not have resolved the basic question that will sooner or later be faced: the relationship between citizen and state, the theme of freedom, sacredness (or instead the sacrifice, for the “Official” Italy of today) of adventure and personal and individual enterprise.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/decreto-ristori-sempre-peggio-nei-fatti-unelemosina-nella-teoria-una-concezione-assistenzialista/ on Thu, 29 Oct 2020 03:48:00 +0000.