https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117344931893000589
the other day a tanky said a sentence constructed like that to me too, while literally arguing for me to join his authoritarian group
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2026
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Yeah I've had this kind of discussions with right wing folk. We were discussing socialist policies, which I was in favor of and they were against. They were pointing out there were people abusing current socialist policies and getting a free handout, so all of those policies should be cut to prevent the freeloaders from freeloading. I argued that any kind of policy, no matter what the policy is, is going to be abused by a small fraction of the population. It's not possible to create something without loopholes and people exploiting them. We should try to prevent it in the design, but in the end we should accept that's going to happen and instead focus on if the policy is also actually helping the people it was designed for.
Nothing is perfect, problems won't be fully solved and / or new problems will be created. That isn't failure, it's life.
Also systems designed to prevent exploits require resources. For example checking that people getting unemployment benefits are actually unemployed is actually work. It is often cheaper to be imperfect, just because those checks are so expensive.
Often there's a break even point at greater than zero auditing where the audits start costing more than the amount of fraud, but it's surprisingly common that zero or very nearly zero auditing is actually the most efficient setup, because regular people just don't commit fraud all that often. When dealing with corporations, on the other hand....
...add a few more special investigators for high tax evasion crimes to the IRS (or whatever your gov org is called) and you'll reap more for the state than you'll ever could with welfare fraud.
The head of the German tax union (DSTG) with 75000 members who advise German IRS employees, intervene for tax equality, fight tax evasion into tax havens and offshore companies says the yearly sum of high tax evasion fraud amounts to 200 billion, while welfare fraud amounts to 275 million. He advised the new government under the ex-Blackrock chancellor Merz at the start of their legislation to make this his priority.
What did the government do of course (in corporation with the so called workers party SPD) recently in a whimsy attempt to bring down state debt? Create a barrage of reforms all targeting the poor, especially those receiving welfare, but also working families, the health system and workers rights. Then he openly states at podium discussions the German workers are to lazy compared to Chinese workers. He actively pushed the far right AfD to record election results and his own parties to record negative results.
The corrupt finance minister Katharina Reiche (greedy POS ex fossil fuel manager) of the same party is actively working to eradicate the last chances of the country to get a foothold in green tech like wind power generation, heatpumps and green hydrogen for steel production (like she did 2012 in another gov for the solar industry) and pro fossil fuel industries.
This all lead to record level negative popularity for the conservative party, record level rates German Angst regarding economic downfall of citizens in recent public polls and record level popularity of the right wing AfD (whose level of economic profession and that of those electing them shows in a proposal to tax all income classes the same with a flat tax of 25%).
The only ray of hope is the left party who recently won the Berlin elections whose first priority there is to transfer flats in the hands of greedy flat corporations, working only for the share holder value, to state property.
The easiest way to avoid freeloaders and abusers is to make services available to anyone who wants them. Then the only abuse is trying to count one person as multiple people to get an unfair amount of benefits which isn't even possible for things like universal healthcare.
current capitalist approaches are being exploited RIGHT NOW to consolidate wealth and power (see: kushner buying the lakers, ellison buying warner bros and thats just los angeles alone). i'd much rather have a handful of everyman freeloaders than concentrated greed.
But the rich abusing policies so they get pure bail out socialism is fine. Just dont want a poor brown person to have it heavens no.