500 this week, 5000 next week…five million the week after?The left have an interesting but simplistic angle on the Lampedusa tragedy, in which several hundred would-be immigrants to Europe died in sight of land when their ship sank. We have a humanitarian duty, they say, to rescue the drowning. So of course we must then bring them back to land and share them out equitably between EU member-states, in the interests of mutual solidarity and burden sharing.
Of course we have to rescue the drowning. No one but a brute would suggest otherwise. But we cannot simply accept without question the second half of the proposition – that we must therefore admit these people to the EU, and give them passports and welfare and social housing.
The left never wants to think about motivation and incentives. The fallacy at the core of Communism was the proposition “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. It fails because it provides no incentive to work and to achieve, and every incentive to get away with doing as little as possible. Men and women will work for themselves, for their children, perhaps for friends and family. They may work selflessly for the national interest during times of war, when facing a general and existential threat, but not in normal times.
28 Oct 2013, 7:12 am
