We remember the fanfare with which ACC was launched in New Zealand. The name says it all. The Accident Compensation Corporation was, from the outset, a ponzi scheme where the State compensated people for having accidents. For several decades everyone patted all and sundry on the back, congratulating ourselves at how world-leading, world-beating, sophisticated, beaudy, and fantabulous the ACC scheme really was.
OK, so let's understand the fundamentals. Accidents happen in a fallen world. Legs get broken. Teeth get knocked out. Noses bleed. That sort of thing. Accidents happen at work, on the road, on the sports field, and while climbing trees. Sometimes accidents happen due to negligence on the part of the "accidentee", or some other person. But the whole point about accidents is that they are not intentional.
But the stupid statists who set the scheme up in the first place (to the rapturous applause of the populace, we might add) thought that wisdom argued for negligence to be removed from the equation, because there was a great evil lurking in the wings: the evil of legal torts, where people sued in civil proceedings for damages. Better to cut that evil off at the pass by establishing a universal entitlement to compensation by the state to anyone who suffered an accident, regardless of the cause, blame, liability, or whatever. It was this grandeur--the all encompassing nature of the scheme--which aroused the breathless ardour of the idealistic statists.
The government was going compensate people universally for anything (or most things) bad which happened to people. The subtle implication, of course, was that the gummint was somehow to blame when bad things happened. That unspoken implication of the state (that is, the nation, or more accurately "others") owing compensation when an accident happened because presumably "others" had not done a better job of protecting one was something to which the statists and soft-despots were happy to subscribe. Unbelievers cannot blame a deity; so they had to sheet blame to "society".
Everything seemed hunky dory. Yet within ten years it was clear to any who cared to look that the ACC was going to become a dead weight upon the country. It was going to crush down upon society. For, like all government entitlement programmes, it grew and grew. Also, it had deep within its bowels hidden costs--which are all too real, now.
Over time the number of accidents grew exponentially. The category of incidents or conditions counted as accidents increased apace (so, more accidents, and more things counted as accidents to be compensated by the scheme) meant that costs began to balloon out. But, like all dishonest peddlars, the sly politicians decided that they would not increase the levies, just yet. Let people get used to their entitlements so that they come to view them as their "right" then increase the levies. By then no-one will have the political will to undo the damage.
What naive Unbelievers always forget is that sinful man tends toward the easiest, most indulgent route, like water finding the downhill path. (In the make-believe, Alice-in-the-looking-glass world of the Unbeliever such things never happen, of course. The looking glass of Unbelief screens out such things, so that they cannot be seen.) Yet, the moral hazards created by a universal state funded compensation scheme for accidents are toxic in the extreme.
MacDoctor, at the cutting edge of reality in the cancerous catastrophe that is ACC, describes the impact of this moral hazard.
No matter what you say about the merits, or lack of merits, of ACC, one thing is abundantly clear to me. The devolvement of accident liability onto the taxpayer has made New Zealanders absurdly casual about accidents and, at the same time, completely paranoid about the most trivial of problems.
I see it in the long line of minor accidents that come through my door; minor cuts, grazes and bruises that our mothers would have cleaned and dressed themselves.
I see it in the ludicrous sight of yet another sports injury in a middle aged man with dozens of previous injuries from the same sport. He is safe in the knowledge that the taxpayer will support his reckless behavior.
I see it in the carelessness of the electrician changing the strip lights in our rooms, without turning off the electricity, or bothering to use a step ladder. ACC might be a welcome break – literally.
I see it in the workman with his protective goggles and ear-mufflers draped around his neck. His eyes and ears are “protected” by ACC.
I see it in the behavior of the previously injured, who do not change their behavior, or their work.
I see it in those who are recovering from injuries who re-injure themselves in the most stupid and most obvious fashions.
I see it in the simple statistic that New Zealand has nearly double the work-injury rate of Australia.
When society has become absurdly casual about accidents and at the same time paranoid about the most minor scrapes, we are led inevitably to observe that such contradictory behaviour is found in children. That is what ACC has done. Perniciously, it has transformed New Zealand into a nation of perpetual children: adults who have never grown up, who have little knowledge or care about real dangers, but who cry over the smallest of hurts.
Our gummint loves it. "Come to Mummy, darling," it croons. "We will take care of you." Meanwhile the dead weight of government swells by the year, squeezing the life blood out of its perpetually puerile subjects. And subjects they truly are. Free responsible men they are not. That is where Unbelief in the West inevitably leads.
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