The Case for Government Welfare
In the thread about "ELI the ICE man" cgervasi confessed this sin: "I am an unusual Rand supporter because I support gov't efforts to reduce poverty and improve education. I am open to gov't programs to encourage innovation, but I agree it's tricky. It's easy for programs to become boondoogles for those good at grant writing and/or politically connected to the agencies that disburse money."
Well... if the government were funded entirely by voluntary means, then it is up to the people to decide what its proper function might be.
For instance, we take it for granted in the Bill of Rights that in an civil suit you can have a jury trial, but Rand questioned that. In fact, private agencies have delivered commercial arbitration for nearly 1000 years. (Criminal cases are a different matter, entirely.) And following Rand, some have suggested government lotteries as a way to raise money non-coercively, though it would put the government in the gaming business. (Government whorehouses? Government -drug- stores? Where does it end?)
If the only purpose of government is to hold a monopoly on retaliatory force, then welfare and education are clearly beyond that limit.
The philosophy of Objectivism offers some cogent insights to the attendant problems here. No dichotomy exists between morality and practicality. (Rand did quip that "the definition of practical depends on what you intend to practice.") The moral -is- practical and vice versa. Many problems attend any government program, especially retaliatory force. Force negates free will. No compulsive alternative can be a moral choice. So, if the government were to engage in welfare and education, it would face the same problems as if it were engaged in steel-making and transportation. Absent market feedback, depending on force, bad decisions are guaranteed.
That is the problem with government welfare, even though both F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman endorsed the same "floor under the poor" as John Rawls.
That all being true, it is an interesting point that perhaps 20% of the goods and services in our society have no clear title. Ever go to a flea market? Many of the new-in-a-box items might have been stolen at a transportation way-point such as a truck stop or railroad junction. Who knows? Ultimately, even a Fortune 100 corporation has only indemnifications, not actual proof, when it buys from suppliers.
The point is that a truly laissez faire capitalist society will easily be able to afford the "floor under the poor" and the government (funded entirely voluntarily) could deliver that.
Consider this: It costs upwards of $60,000 per year to house a convict in prison. Would it not be cheaper to pay them $30,000 a year to stay home?
Well... if the government were funded entirely by voluntary means, then it is up to the people to decide what its proper function might be.
For instance, we take it for granted in the Bill of Rights that in an civil suit you can have a jury trial, but Rand questioned that. In fact, private agencies have delivered commercial arbitration for nearly 1000 years. (Criminal cases are a different matter, entirely.) And following Rand, some have suggested government lotteries as a way to raise money non-coercively, though it would put the government in the gaming business. (Government whorehouses? Government -drug- stores? Where does it end?)
If the only purpose of government is to hold a monopoly on retaliatory force, then welfare and education are clearly beyond that limit.
The philosophy of Objectivism offers some cogent insights to the attendant problems here. No dichotomy exists between morality and practicality. (Rand did quip that "the definition of practical depends on what you intend to practice.") The moral -is- practical and vice versa. Many problems attend any government program, especially retaliatory force. Force negates free will. No compulsive alternative can be a moral choice. So, if the government were to engage in welfare and education, it would face the same problems as if it were engaged in steel-making and transportation. Absent market feedback, depending on force, bad decisions are guaranteed.
That is the problem with government welfare, even though both F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman endorsed the same "floor under the poor" as John Rawls.
That all being true, it is an interesting point that perhaps 20% of the goods and services in our society have no clear title. Ever go to a flea market? Many of the new-in-a-box items might have been stolen at a transportation way-point such as a truck stop or railroad junction. Who knows? Ultimately, even a Fortune 100 corporation has only indemnifications, not actual proof, when it buys from suppliers.
The point is that a truly laissez faire capitalist society will easily be able to afford the "floor under the poor" and the government (funded entirely voluntarily) could deliver that.
Consider this: It costs upwards of $60,000 per year to house a convict in prison. Would it not be cheaper to pay them $30,000 a year to stay home?
All run by producers, and definitely without the government!
Free enterprise...at it's finest!
Not if he becomes MY neighbor!
What were you thinking! (Or, smoking?) ;-)
Consider the simplistic argument that society has a choice of spending money educating the poor or spending money dealing with these same people in the criminal justice system. (This is not to say that most crime is related to poverty or ignorance, but at least some crime is.) You're saying it's theft to take people's money by force to fund an education program. But it's not theft to do the same thing for a criminal justice program.
This doesn't make sense to me. People should be free to form gov't to take both approaches. Then we need to work to keep these approaches from getting out of hand, as they clearly often do.
'Government whorehouses and drug stores'
I like this kind of suggestion. Another case of heart saying one thing and head saying, wait a mo'. It works only if illegal for others.
The British lost India due to the monopoly on salt, well it was the straw that broke the camels back.
Gov should do only what cannot be done by the private sector, and not even much of that. Money still needs to be raised (or by volunteers?) Small gov -> small taxation.
I cannot see a way out of it. The problem is, how to stop it growing?
I agree. That's why when possible I'd like to see the gov't just offer tax credits or vouchers for people to buy these things themselves with few restrictions.
"(Government whorehouses? Government -drug- stores? Where does it end?) " --MM
I agree. Those things only make money because the gov't runs a cartel to maintain a monopoly. If companies like Holiday Inn and Wal-Mart began offering those services and products, they would be a lot less cool and worth a lot less. The only way gov't makes money on those is to use some of the money to buy guns and jails for people who buy them from other providers.
I am told this is why tobacco companies grudgingly agreed to fund anti-tabacco ads for kids and to make it illegal for kids to possess tobacco. This was the fastest way to making their product cool and getting lifelong customers.
I don't think we should approach it just from anti-trust; it should be a gradual decrease in things that are controlled by the gov't.
This will only happen incrementally. Listening libertarians talk to one another here makes you sounds completely nuts. We need a moderate libertarian movement. I think Obama is decent as modern politicians go and SS and PPACA are flawed but good programs. Most people here think that makes me stupid. The country's full of people like me, though, so libertarians have to be more moderate or find a secluded state-free micro-nation as in Atlas Shrugged.
I'm not calling for moderation because incremental change is easier. I'm saying I see most Ayn Rand fans as bordering on nuts. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most people feel like they live in that dystopian collectivist factory where that sanctimonious shrew dished out money to whoever had the best self-righteous sob story, but I don't see things as nearly that bad. It seems like you want to turn off things that are working okay.
If I'm right and my world view is more common, then your brand of libertarianism will never work, and we'll stay with Republicans firing up a bunch of morons with their dog whistle and Democrats holding themselves up as much more moral than those people.
Further, you state that there the stems are working and not being handed out to the best sob story. The specific justification for these benefits to be handed out to someone are that they claim an inability to work and those benefits increase relative to the number of children they have. That's LOG101. It is the very definition of the Socratic informal logical fallacy, The Appeal to Pity. As to the point that the programs are working, I refer you once again to the food stamps program. When first conceived it was a mechanism to get farm surpluses to hungry low income city dwellers. At its pilot inception it reached only a little less than 400k people and they actually bought the food stamps. They worked as vouchers for reduced prices on surplus foodstuffs. Now we have 47 million getting them for nothing, and that number is just a meager %4 of the total participation shy of double the levels under Bush, where the program also grew. This is largely because a "compassionate conservative" is just a liberal that is not quite a socialist yet.
As to the claim that my brand of libertarianism will never work. Allow me to refer you to Robert A. Heinlein and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" where he outlines the fantasy of the "Rational Anarchy," where in there is no need for government because every single person is intelligent, enlightened, and correctly self-interested. A situation in which no-one works toward a common goal, but toward an infinite number of selfish goals to which ends they trade to the betterment and profit of one another and cause the bar to raise ever higher on what can be done by man. In this story he is very clear in stating that the goal is strictly unachievable, precisely because of the existence of people of such low quality that they would tolerate the having of food stamps, or to be given a job based solely on the color of their skin (under the ultimate anti-negro government plan called "Affirmative Action").
I am amused by your use of the dog whistle metaphor. You are right in that, they really can't hear us. But I take issue with the assertion of the Democrat high ground. I know that this may not be your position that they have the high ground, but I would still like to address the delusion of its widespread axiomatic acceptance. Criminals in prisons and not yet convicted of a felony, and those who's names have not been stricken properly from the voting registration, vote overwhelmingly for the liberal agenda, and they believe rather deeply in it. Why? Simple. Before a man can put a gun in your face and demand you wallet, he has to be morally comfortable with the idea of having without earning. This first requires that he place so low a value on human life that he would sacrifice a life other than his to enrich himself some small degree. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons that the military votes so overwhelmingly conservative. We hold in our values that a sum total of individual lives have such value that the exchange of ours for theirs is reasonable and honorable.
I will concede how ever that yours may be the more common world view, but that is being said of a world that listens to canned pop music, recalls not its history, votes for free stuff and against freedom, and largely expects the word Gaelic to be a punch line in a homosexual joke. All this be true and I am the nut? I'll keep my job and feed my own kids, thanks.
thanks for the reading suggestion ;)
I was trying to say the typical libertarian is more extreme than most people. If a moderate libertarian movement does not appear, we'll keep arguing over things like gay marriage and banning guns with large magazines.
Have fun! If you like I can go a little nuts in to some reducto ad absurdum... just for chuckles.
Ten years ago I saw this when I applied for unemployment benefits. There were people in there who were running around town to jump through hoops to get benefits. People will jump through hoops for people offering money. These were almost kids. I kept thinking if they had a parent showing them how to get a job, learn to solve new problems for other people, etc, they'd do it. The unemployment system was okay, but in some cases it was directly training people to navigate red tape instead of just finding someone with a need.