Yushui Village in Lijiang, Yunnan, with snow mountain backdrop and cascading waterfalls.
1/08/2008
Hacking away at a fundamental principle
All these talks of how much people have in their Medisave, CPF savings, how rich they are and the introduction of Mean Testing is hacking away at a fundamental principle, or a basic right of an individual.
This is the right to determine your own life, how you want to spend your money, what services you want to indulge in and how much to save for the rainy day. It is not a crime to be frugal and prudence by squandering your hard earned money away.
This right belongs to the individual and not to somebody else. No one has the right to tell someone to spend his money the way he wants him to.
The govt should concentrate on providing services that the people need, put them on the shelf at the prices it wants to offer. Let the people choose, let the people decide what they want.
> This is the right to determine your own life, how you want to spend your money, what services you want to indulge in and how much to save for the rainy day. It is not a crime to be frugal and prudence by squandering your hard earned money away. <
ReplyDeleteYou don't have those rights anymore under a public healthcare system, and under govt-run social welfare systems like CPF and Medisave.
Your rights to choose only apply when you are free to choose, and not coerced into schemes like CPF and Medisave.
Since everyone pays taxes to fund the public healthcare system, your health now becomes my business and vice versa. Because your healthcare is being funded by regular contributions from myself, I have the right to get you to stop smoking, stop eating high fat/high sugar/high salt foods, get you to exercise regularly, and demand my govt prosecute you should you engage in risky behaviour like have unprotected sex. This is the very nature of the collectivism of public health, and why it is a serious threat to individual freedom.
Once collectivism is involved, the individual has no more individual rights (out of nature) he can CLAIM for himself. He is at the mercy of the collective to tell him WHAT his rights are.
There is no "middle ground" here. You either are an INDIVIDUAL or a COLLECTIVIST.