>>First, that it does insofar as capitalism is based, structurally and psychologically, on the transformation of humans into commodified labour to be sold on the market. Second, that the welfare state is an attempt to try and offset the human cost - deprivation, precarity, unemployment, exploitation - of the marketisation of social relations.

I'm saying that people are always going to be mired in materialist competition with those on the losing end seeing relative deprivation.

That is a property of the world, not of capitalism. I didn't even mention the inflammatory slavery-associated characterization of people choosing to sell services as "the transformation of humans into commodified labour to be sold on the market."

Welfare doesn't eliminate deprivation, it just changes the avenues through which deprivation emerges.

>>(1) 'Competitive impulses are not capitalist'. I never mentioned a 'competitive impulse'.

Yes you did, here:

>>That statement would only hold if capitalist market relations were a universal feature of every facet of human life, and if humans were driven only and voraciously by self-interest.

The self-interest drive is what I'm referring to by "competitive impulse". It contrasts with the communal impulse of working for the common good.

That will not go away by virtue of eliminating laws that provide people with security of property and contract liberty (aka "capitalist" laws).

>>(2) 'There is no evidence or indication that competitive impulses change as a result of changing or eliminating laws that provide people security of property and contract liberty'. You are reifying human psychology. Humans do not possess fixed and determinate 'impulses', apart from for simple objects like food, shelter, water, and sex. Humans are distinguished from other animals by their capacity for non-genetic learning

Humans absolutely do possess innate impulses. Humans share 96% of their DNA of chimpanzees, 90% of cats, and 85% of mice. We are not fundamentally that different from other animals, and numerous studies demonstrate the massive influence that innate traits play on our behaviour.

For example, numerous studies have shown that the Big Five personality traits have an approximately 50% hereditary factor. And the other 50% are cultural traits that are not going to be wiped away by some radical social engineering project , since they are passed on through micro-interactions and social dynamics far beyond the reach of the state.

You are far more likely to cause havoc in any attempt to socially re-engineer mankind than you are to do any good. Social interventions are generally much more likely to have negative unintended consequences than produce desirable results, because existent social dynamics often exist for good reasons that are not obvious to a superficial analysis like the kind produced by simplistic ideologies. Cultural traits and dynamics emerged over long periods of time through a process of iteration, and it is folly to recklessly try to re-engineer them based on a crude ideological assumption about the world.

>>This is very vague. 'To the extent to which they do try to maximize their own material interests' leaves unstated how and to what extent humans maximise their material interests.

That's not relevant to my point, and it's not something I can answer anyway, because I, like you, have no way of knowing. My point is that there's no indication that human impulses would be changed by changing economic laws. They are far more deeply ingrained than you give them credit for.

To assume otherwise is a reckless form of optimism about any coherent plan to re-engineer a large population's impulses, in order to rationalise very radical social engineering project that could and likely would cause terrible suffering.

>>I take it to be patently obvious that X in scenario 1 is moved by material self-interest to a greater extent that is X in scenario 2. For in the first scenario it is a question of survival, whereas in the second case she has the time, ability and security to significantly give herself to extra-economic activities - culture, politics, morality and religion, society and family.

That's overly simplistic. You don't raise wages by increasing the minimum wage. If it were that simple, we could make everyone wealthy with absurdly high price floors on labour.

Price floors harm the economy for reasons economists have exhaustively detailed.

You will also pay a price in per capita GDP from taxing and redistributing income. If reducing income inequality were as simple as redistributing income, reducing poverty would be trivial: just tax and redistribute 100% of income.

A higher income country with less redistribution can provide a higher quality of life to the very poor than a lower income country with high levels of redistribution. That's why reducing poverty over longer time frames is not as simple as redistributing income. The effect of redistribution on income growth has to be factored in.

The empirical data suggests that the best way to raise per capita GDP is with free markets not interfered with by disruptive government interventions like price floors (minimum wage) and income redistribution programs.

And how long do you think your welfare programs are going to work for the poor? Highly productive people will find ways to escape the clutches of your redistribution program. A social system in which the producers are coerced to giving up a massive share of what they produce is not sustainable.

You run the real risk of training your hypothetical woman to become dependent on the government, have children as a simple mother on the assumption that she will receive child benefits, and then see the economy implode, the government cut back services, and she and her children be left without the means to take care of themselves.

As for contract liberty being a euphemism, you wouldn't be saying that if the state imprisoned you for entering into a contract with another consenting adult.