The Politics of Responsibility
There is an old adage that Democrats care about other people and Republicans do not.
Before you get your feathers in a rankle, consider this: Democrats support social welfare programs that help those in need and Republicans want to roll back the welfare state and make people responsible for their own lives.
Stated this way, the Republicans seem more palatable. After all, all they are doing is advocating personal responsibility. What’s wrong with expecting people to be responsible? Nothing.
But personal responsibility is only part of the responsibility equation. If it is true that our cherished rights come in exchange for being responsible members of society (the ever popular social contract), then we should expect people to be not only personally responsible, but socially responsible.
Socially responsible… like not littering.
Our responsibility as citizens includes both taking care of ourselves and taking care of others.
John Stuart Mills “harm principal” regarding rights says that an individual’s rights extend only so far that they do not infringe on someone else’s rights. Extending this logic to responsibility, a citizen exercises personal responsibility to ensure that they do not infringe on other citizens’ as they live their lives, but it also requires that citizen take responsibility for the community around them, especially with respect to public goods.
Public goods, according to economists, are goods available to all citizens. Public goods cannot be produced for profit because their use cannot be restricted. For example, clean air is a public good. We cannot prevent everyone from consuming it if it is available.
Social responsibility requires that citizens, collectively through community or government action, ensures that such goods are produced. Thus, it is often our social responsibility to pay taxes to fund programs that produce clean air, water, roads, and even the aquaduct (the aquaduct?… well, at one point in time it was a public good).
So the next time someone offers the politics of personal responsibility as a rhetorical counter to liberal policies, remind them that a responsible citizen must be both personally and socially responsible.