Developing social infrastructure proposals

eva — Thu, 15 May 2014 02:08:06 +0000

What are the components of social infrastructure that make up the foundations and scaffolding of a good society? What are the various roles of the market, state and community in making social systems work equitable and effectively to meet people’s needs?

These are questions we need to answer given some of the current posturing of politicians about entitlements and contributions. The current government is redefining its role as a mean corporate in search of a surplus rather than representing the collective will for good lives. If we want to re-create the debate about making a more civil, better society, we need to define the above roles more clearly and assert what we think is needed.

The government, and to some degree, the opposition, claim that the State is only there as a very limited safety net, as we need to be individually responsible for our own well being, This neoliberal approach has dominated policy for a long time and needs urgently to be challenged.

Re-creating the importance of social infrastructure is becoming vital as the residual damages of too much of a focus on market driven material exchanges undermines the various links and social structures that underpin who we are and what we do. The last few decades have seen massive changes to both the formal and informal relationships that make up societies, good bad or indifferent. It is time to reverse the official failure to recognise that governments can undermine the existing social links with bad policy decisions.

We have never set standards for our expected levels and quality of social infrastructure because there was an implicit consensus which underpinned what we saw as fair. Over time, expectations have changed but the core social contract of a fair go was there somewhere and prevailed. Now it appears to be disappearing, so we now need to define what we see as the basic foundation links our society needs to survive civilly.

So let’s start defining what are the relative roles of state, market, community, kin and place? How do these interact and what really matters?

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Developing social infrastructure proposals