Pentti Linkola makes an interesting observation about welfare:

Every example throughout the history of humanity shows that only deprivation and struggle create a human life worthy of the name and that material welfare leads only to despair.

Obviously he's got a larger point to make; people don't necessarily feel happy with life just because they own a lot of things or live a safe life. Struggle, competition, and non-material goals seem essential to human existence. Yet, what happens if we take this point too seriously and blame capitalism and material prosperity for making our lives less worth living?

Lefties often say - and seem genuinely to believe - that free-marketeers are obsessed with economic data to the exclusion of all else. But I have yet to meet a conservative who thinks that you get more happiness from a bank account than from, say, listening to Beethoven, or walking in the English countryside, or watching your child take his first steps. The argument isn’t about what makes people happy; it’s about what governments can do about it.

Governments can’t legislate to make us listen to Beethoven, or enjoy the landscape, or spend more time with our children. What governments can do is to provide a framework in which happiness can be pursued. Indeed, one way to think of economic progress is as a series of labour-saving developments. Because we can afford a car, and no longer have to queue for the tram, we have more time to listen to Beethoven. Because we have a dishwasher, we can switch it on and go for a walk instead of spending the afternoon in the kitchen. Because we no longer have to work on Saturdays to feed our children, we can spend more time playing with them.

Again, here we find both a larger important point to be made, and a catch. Of course we'll become obsessed with money and material welfare if we feel we're lacking in these departments. Poor people dream of a better life. This is why riding a bike to work in ex-Soviet republics like Belarus is still a sign of poverty today: when you know what it means to be poor, you'll do everything to escape it.

The catch: when we acquire a certain level of basic material welfare, we're often left wanting more. Welfare-ism becomes a drug. So we end up like most people in Western society today, constantly chasing material status. This is what Pentti Linkola warns us about, although he misses the bigger point, which is that the removal of welfare itself won't solve the problem. Similarly, all forms of labor don't necessarily make us less happy; some, like cooking, I argue, help to make life richer.

We need to establish and maintain a good level of welfare, but minimize government interference and push social responsibility over to the community. Culture and social values need to become more important than the consumption-hysteria sponsored by societies, rich but hollow inside. Living a poor life in starvation isn't an ideal, neither is a life too fat on money and gadgets. That is why we defend free markets and free minds in the context of a new Conservative era.