Welfare delivered as revocable charity rather than right subjects recipients to domination

Evidence

Whatever level of income support is given to the needy, for example, it must be given so far as possible in the fashion of a right (see Ingram 1994). It must not have the aspect of a gift that may be withdrawn at anyone’s whim: not at the whim of a subsidized employer, not at the whim of a street-level bureaucrat, not even at the whim of an electoral or parliamentary majority. … Withdrawing the gift is going to constitute interference by the benchmark of what is normal, and the unchecked power to withdraw it will amount to a power of arbitrary interference. And even if withdrawing the gift is not itself to count as interference, the claimant’s fear that the gift will be withdrawn may lead them, and lead them as a matter of common knowledge, to be willing not to resist or complain about a variety of other acts of interference that the powerful may perpetrate. Unless the income support comes under conditions that guard against such whim, then the claimant is denied freedom as non-domination in the very act whereby that freedom was meant to be promoted. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 736

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: A vivid setting engine: an employer, case worker, or even a democratically-elected body holds discretionary power over someone’s subsistence — fear of losing the gift silences legitimate grievance. Strong scene fuel for a novel about institutional dependency.
• XREF: connects to: Economic dependence on employers or charity can itself constitute a form of domination — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 54; Republican freedom from domination requires redistributive social policy including basic income and wealth constraints. — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 12; Instrumentalizing charity alienates individuals more radically than explicit communal sacrifice does — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 413 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Institutions constitute citizens’ freedom from domination rather than causally producing it #expands (0.85) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 518
• Instrumentalizing charity alienates individuals more radically than explicit communal sacrifice does #expands (0.82) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 413