People think of welfare and other forms of social assistance to the poor as somehow socialist. But it is my contention that they are actually a beautiful example of the efficiency of a capitalist society. And one only needs to contrast them with prisons in order to see why.

Prisons are extremely expensive. Taking total control of someone’s life like that is wildly inefficient. By taking criminals and putting them into jails, we are essentially taking them out of the market economy and into a socialist microcosm where we have to take care of the prisoner’s every basic need via a planned economy. Everything must be chosen and implemented by the system if it is to exist at all, and so even the best run prisons is a slow, inefficient, moribund socialist institution.

Contrast that with the smooth efficiency of social assistance programs. All they require is a transfer of a very modest amount of money to the recipients and the capitalist market economy takes care of the rest.

The system doesn’t have to take care of all the the various needs of the recipients. They take care of those themselves. They buy their own food, they find their own accommodations, said accommodations have all the facilities needed for basic human life. And said life is far more pleasant than if we shoved those people into some kind of bloated government institution.

The result? Social assistance is the cheapest way to keep people afloat imaginable. It is a model of how efficient a government institution can be when it uses the efficiency of a market driven economy instead of trying to create something apart from it.

In fact, I think we should look into closing more prisons in favour of some sort of house arrest. Sure, you still need someone to go get the groceries for the inmates (now outmates). But I bet it still would be loads cheaper.

And way less chance of getting shanked in the shower too. Prison brutalizes people. We might as well call them criminal college. It takes people in the exact opposite direction than the one society wants. It makes them less civilized and more barbaric, and it does so with great efficiency.

If we no longer put our criminals together in one place, a large part of criminal culture would wither and die. Without an active peer group that supports and endorses criminality, potential criminals would be subject to the usual social pressures that keep most of us in line.

Well, that’s all I have to say about THAT.

That’s the problem I have been having lately : I have plenty of article ideas, but none that are the sort of thing that would fill up 1000 words. Plus, I tend to forget them. Need to do more of that writing things down… thing.

Maybe the “problem” is just that I am getting good at expressing myself in fewer words. I don’t know. If that WAS the case, then it’s probably good news because the Internet does not like large chunks of text like the stuff I generate.

I have thought about breaking up my 1000 words a day into smaller chunks, five blog entries instead of one. But that does not at all fit how I think or work. I have long thoughts that connect to other long thoughts. I don’t think in infobites. I like to explore a topic, not just get it over with as quickly as possible.

I suppose I could learn to think in more compartmentalized ways, but I really don’t want to. Creativity is about wide open spaces allowing for maximum possibility of connection. Chopping that up into pieces would be akin to physical violence on my person.

Perhaps that is why I have such trouble generating list comedy of the Cracked style.

If someone else made the lists, I am sure I could turn them into hilarious listicles in the Cracked style. But I have no head for long hours of research.

Speaking of Cracked, I listened to one of their podcasts recently and one of the things they talked about is this new culture of people watching other people do things. Videos of things like someone playing a video game, someone unboxing a recent acquisition, sharing all the pretty clothes they just bought, or even just someone eating lunch… all of these things have followers who are keen fans.

The Cracked crew was wondering why this was. I think the answer is obvious : the amount of time we spend actually interacting with people is in a drastic decline, and this has created a market for simulated shared experiences. That way, people can get some of the feeling of being with others while still within the warmth and safety of the Internet.

If a YouTube personality makes videos in a style that makes you feel like you are there with them, even if it’s something as mundane as eating a Pop-Tart, that scratches the itch of the need for human contact without it even having to be in realtime. In an era where actually doing things is at an all time low, it makes perfect sense that the “next best thing” would rise in value to the point where some dude who calls himself Pooty Pie (or something like that) is making 4 million dollars a year from YouTube ad revenue just for recording himself playing video games and shouting amusing things.

It’s tempting to see this furthering of the trend towards virtualization of everything as sad, and in many ways it is. But that is what the Internet does, it becomes whatever is needed.

I hate to think we are slowly becoming a world full of agoraphobic shut-ins who need YouTube videos of people doing mundane things just to feel like we are part of humanity. And I am not so hysterical as to think this will mean the downfall of society or any of that nonsense.

But the fact remains that the more we share ourselves to the world via the Internet, the less of us there is left to go on with the actual business of living.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.