Pardon me, but Moore McDowell is quite right: why on earth should taxpayers be expected to compensate their fellow citizens in Ringsend-Sandymount who were flooded recently? There is already a voluntary, communal compensation scheme against disasters of various kinds, which is called insurance., says Kevin Myers.
Companies providing this protection are licensed, and are publicly accountable - through the law, the insurance ombudsman and their shareholders; they act as a broker for a service which - for a fee, naturally -enables one part of the community to subsidise another part of the community after its misfortunes.
To be sure, insurance companies are not charities, but they are nonetheless one of the great civilising institutions of society. Not merely do they offer us protection in our daily lives against those personal vicissitudes which might otherwise crush us individually, but they also form part of a social contract which binds us to the welfare of complete strangers. Their money will bail me out in disaster, and mine will do the same for them. It is a classic example of how enlightened self-interest becomes a civic virtue.
But insurance works only if it applies just to subscribers; else what is the point in subscribing? So why is the Government compensating all flooded householders in Sandymount, when that is what their insurance companies should be doing anyway?
Two avenues
The Government move opens two interesting avenues. One is that people who live beside the sea and who improvidently choose not to insure themselves against the actuarial certainty of the sea coming over the sea wall will be compensated in exactly the same way as those who did invest in insurance.
The other avenue results from the Government compensating flooded residents, regardless of whether or not they were insured. Well, now, if that's the case, stand back, I'm getting into the flood insurance business. It's the one for me. You get your clients to pay insurance premiums against flooding, but when flooding comes, you don't have to pay out anything at all (especially if it's coming up to election time) because here comes the Government, screaming like a drunk trying to buy a round: No, no, no, let me, I'll get it. What is it now, 300 flooded attics, 500 soiled carpets, 300 destroyed chairs, a pint of Guinness and a packet of crisps, please.
Isn't that something? You collect the premiums, but come pay-out time, far from your being expected to reimburse policy-holders, the Government pays them instead. Sounds brilliant; except, it's not really. Though the insurance companies might well be bailed out the first time there's a claim on their policies, in the longer term, they're not being bailed out at all.
For who would be an insurance rep trying to sell a floods insurance policy in Ringsend-Sandymount now? The only mantra you'd ever hear would be: No, no, that's all right, thanks very much, but we don't need insurance any more; the Government's looking after flood compensation around here these days.
Rewarding fecklessness
The Government's doing more than that. It's rewarding fecklessness equally with diligence. It's telling the prudent and the imprudent that prudence is prized equally with imprudence. And it's taxing twice over those responsible citizens who face their social and individual responsibilities. For they pay the formal tax to the Government, and they also pay the informal, private tax to insurance companies. Such people now find the tax they pay the Government is being used to assist those who were too mean or foolish to pay the second tax.
So why bother? If you live near a flood plain, why insure against flooding? Won't the State assist you when the waters come pouring over the banks and swamp your home? Why not spend the insurance premium on new carpets, which the State will replace if they're destroyed in the flood? And suddenly government largesse is no longer simple charity, but becomes an attack on the many invisible but absolutely vital links which bind people in the modern world: the insurance principle.
If you abandon the insurance principle for its sworn enemy, the one that says the state is there to protect you against all life's little misfortunes, what do you get? Why, you get politicians promising to indemnify shareholders who have invested in the privatisation of state-owned industry. You also get the same promise being made to owners of taxi plates if the value of the plate goes down. Soon, you'll get the state promising that we are all well paid, regardless of endeavour.
Basket case
We know what this is: Noonanomics, a loony reversion to the bilious and diseased financial principles of Haugheynomics which turned this country into a basket case in the 1980s. Both are Irish forms of a school of thought pioneered in Argentina, Peronomics, which turned the potentially richest country in the world into a dustbin. A particularly noxious African form of the theory, Mugabwenomics, is doing something similar to Zimbabwe.
Here. Let us reach for the Moore McDowell economic primer, which only the deeply stupid should find difficult to understand. The state builds sea-walls, bridges and roads - though, as it happens in this country, not very well. It also has a duty to ensure that the involuntarily poor neither starve nor sleep on the street. But it absolutely has no duty to feed or house the lazy, nor to protect property owners from the consequences of their own greed or fecklessness. Quite the reverse. Its obligation is not to subvert but to protect a system which rewards honesty and diligence. There now. It's not too complex, is it?