Taking away rights is problematic for both parents and nations. Why? Because the result is the same.
It fosters dissent.
For parents, taking away a long-held right of a child is like a slap in the face to them. It breaks trust and fairness in one swoop. The defiance that results can, of course, come in many forms. General disobedience. Whining. Crying. Etc.
For nations, this can be much more difficult. Because taking away the “rights” of adults often leads to riots in the streets and politicians losing their jobs. History shows that politicians prefer to inflate the currency rather than take away established rights that are no longer fiscally possible.
Let’s also be careful calling economic goods “rights.” Ok? They can’t be.
Understand: Inconsistent parenting causes rebellion.
The lesson applies as well to the politics of family as country. The parent who grants privileges or enforces rules erratically invites rebelliousness by unwittingly establishing freedoms for the child. The parent who only sometimes prohibits between-meal sweets may create for the child the freedom to have such snacks. At that point, enforcing the rule becomes a much more difficult and explosive matter because the child is no longer merely lacking a never-possessed right but is losing an established one. As we have seen in the case of political freedoms and (especially pertinent to the present discussion) chocolate-chip cookies, people see a thing as more desirable when it has recently become less available than when it has been scarce all along. We should not be surprised, then, when research shows that parents who enforce discipline inconsistently produce generally rebellious children.
-Robert Cialdini, Influence