DISQUS

Here are two major problems with a means-tested safety net, as opposed to something more like current social security:

1) History has shown that means-tested programs are extremely politically vulnerable. No doubt emphasizing this point is in line with your criticism of liberals as preferring a policy of deception, but I feel that there are limits to the extent to which one can ignore political reality when devising policies.

Perhaps more importantly,

2) Means-tested programs tend to generate perverse incentives. If people only get social security benefits when their savings are insufficient, then for people with a limited ability to save, means-testing gives them an incentive to save nothing at all (since what meager savings they could manage would be offset by reductions in their means-tested social security income). Being a liberal doesn't require being totally blind to the need to make certain people have incentives to be economically productive.

I'm with Gareth in questioning this real/illusory property distinction, and I'm not sure your answer helps. All a contract does is increase the likelyhood that the government will step in if I don't pay. So it sounds like real property is dependent on the goodwill of the government. But dependency on the goodwill of the government is precisely what you criticize about illusory property. Forgive me if I just see two different kinds of shadows; like all of Plato's real things, the form of property appears elusive.