They Loved Problems And Hated Solutions

G.K. Chesterton again. Amazingly, what is happening now was happening a hundred years ago.

'It may be said of Socialism, therefore, very briefly, that its friends recommend it as increasing equality, while its foes resist it as decreasing liberty. On the one hand it was said that the State could provide homes and meals for all, on the other it was answered that this could only be done by State Officials who would inspect homes and regulate meals. The compromise eventually made was one of the most interesting and even curious cases in history .
It was decided to do everything that had ever been denounced in Socialism, and nothing that had ever been desired in it.
Since it was supported to gain equality at the sacrifice of liberty , we proceeded to prove that it was possible to sacrifice liberty without gaining equality. Indeed there was not the faintest attempt to gain equality, least of all economic equality. But there was a very spirited and vigorous effort to eliminate liberty by means of an entirely new group of crude regulations and interferences.
But it was not the Socialist State regulating those whom it fed, like children, or even like convicts. It was the Capitalist State raiding those whom it had trampled on and deserted in every sort of den, like outlaws or broken men. It occurred to the wiser sociologists that, after all, it would be easier to proceed more promptly to the main business of bullying men, without having gone through the laborious preliminary business of supporting them. After all, it was easy to inspect the house without having helped build it; it was even possible, with luck, to prevent it being built.
.........the people of this age loved problems and hated solutions. It was easy to restrict the diet without providing the dinner.