Effective public services are a cornerstone of comprehensive security
Have you ever wondered what everyday life would be like if public services stopped working, even for just one day? The morning begins as usual, but the day-care centre does not open. You must stay at home. Public transport is not running, so your partner cannot get to work either. Which is fortunate, because someone has to take care of the school-age children while the schools are closed. A neighbour falls and breaks their hip, but they cannot get through to the emergency services. Your grandmother phones you to ask for help because the home care visit has been cancelled. In the afternoon, a fire breaks out next door, but help is slow in coming. This is what a day without public services might be like.
Without public services, healthcare and social services would only be available to those who could afford them, and many people could not. Older people would be left to fend for themselves or rely on their loved ones. When they are in good health, many people may not realise just how expensive it is to treat a serious illness. For example, treatment for cancer can easily cost tens or hundreds of thousands of euros when it is provided in the private sector.
It is not a question of individual services, but of the system as a whole. When one part fails, the effects quickly spread to the others. Everyday life falls apart.
Despite this, public services are often described as a cost item that needs to be cut. In reality, they are a prerequisite for a functioning society in which everything is interconnected. When one part weakens, the effects quickly multiply. Without childcare, the availability of the workforce is reduced; without healthcare, people’s ability to work is at risk; and without social services, problems pile up and become even more difficult to deal with. At the same time, the cost of dealing with them rises. A quiet process of segregation also begins. Those who can afford them buy these services. Those who cannot afford them go without. A society in which one’s ability to get by depends increasingly on one’s own wealth is neither stable nor resilient in the face of crisis.
“Public sector cuts are short-sighted decisions that erode the very foundations of our society: without effective public services, nothing works as it should.”
– Harri Järvelin
It is contradictory that, while we talk about comprehensive security and crisis resilience, we are at the same time undermining the very structures on which security is built. A service system that is under-resourced and overburdened does not become stronger in a crisis; rather, it is the first to collapse. This is already evident in health and social services: staff shortages, high workloads and insufficient resources pose a direct risk to crisis resilience.
Public sector cuts are short-sighted decisions that erode the very foundations of our society: without effective public services, nothing works as it should. Undermining them undermines society’s security.
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