I posted back in March on Minimum Wage, Living Wage, and the State as Vampire to the Poor, pointing out that one of the chief impediments between the working poor and making it is not the inadequacy of government programs, but the fact that even in the lower tax brackets the State collects 16-19% of their income before turning around and handing some of it back in benefits.
My thesis, of course, is that in a more Libertarian America, where people got to keep most or all of the money they earned, there would be far fewer poor.
But in a country of 300 million, far fewer is a term elastic enough to still encompass millions.
What about them, then, in a nation with such a small government that no longer provides cradle-to-grave welfare programs?
The traditional Libertarian answer is that private charity will replace public assistance.
Simon Clark, at From the Barrel of a Gun, provides one of the more honest and more original analyses of this issue than I have seen anywhere for some time. I don't suggest he has the last word, but I do think he contributes to moving the discussion forward:
I'm going to have to think about this analogy; I commend it to you as well.
My thesis, of course, is that in a more Libertarian America, where people got to keep most or all of the money they earned, there would be far fewer poor.
But in a country of 300 million, far fewer is a term elastic enough to still encompass millions.
What about them, then, in a nation with such a small government that no longer provides cradle-to-grave welfare programs?
The traditional Libertarian answer is that private charity will replace public assistance.
Simon Clark, at From the Barrel of a Gun, provides one of the more honest and more original analyses of this issue than I have seen anywhere for some time. I don't suggest he has the last word, but I do think he contributes to moving the discussion forward:
I mentioned this at the Libertarian Party meet-up in London the other day, and I thought I'd blog about it here.
Now, I'd first say that I don't think charity is the answer to socialism. Libertarian policies should negate the need for a 'voluntary welfare state' in any way approaching the scale of what we have today. But charity certainly does have a roll to play, and I suppose quite a big role. Detractors of libertarianism, when confronted with the notion that disabled people might be taken care of by charity rather than the state, decry this as ludicrous. People, they say, are not generous enough; too selfish.
Of course, people don't give a whole lot of money to such causes now, but then the state says it will take care of it. So what area of necessity, which cannot adequately be provided by private enterprise, does the state not provide? I would point to the internet. Not the network itself, but much of that which resides upon it. Take for example, file sharing networks such as Usenet and Bittorrent. Thousands of users spend a large portion of their time, at great effort and, often, expense, to upload copies of shows, movies, music, e-books, games, software etc on to these networks. And they do this for no financial reward. They do it purely for the benefit of others. It is, in effect, charity. And it is not just the uploaders themselves, most users of, say, Bittorrent, will 'seed' a file after downloading it, whereby they give over a portion of their bandwidth so that other users can carry on downloading the file from them, even after they have finished. People actually leave their computers on when they go to work or when they sleep just so people can keep downloading from them - and this obviously costs them electricity! Again, they do not get paid for this. Indeed, many of the file sharing websites out there, most notably The Pirate Bay, are loss-making enterprises. True, The Pirate bay does have adverts, but it is most definitely a charity because, despite never making a profit, the guys who run it keep it going out of their own pocket. Indeed, a lot of the costs are covered by voluntary donations, charity funding charity!
So what does this tell us about libertarianism? I suspect it is an indication that if the state gets out of the business of charity, people will indeed take over. The sad thing is that all of these hard working and generous people are declared to be criminals by the state...
I'm going to have to think about this analogy; I commend it to you as well.
Comments
I think if we returned to a charitable cultural pattern we would get a better response. It is part of a value system that is almost foreign to many people today. The Quakers of course pioneered the idea that the state protects rights, the person contributes what he can to protect other people. In the social systems of the Quakers there was no clear idea of class, or race, or even war, no one was coerced to do anything ever, but people were frequently encouraged to use their moral conscience and apply it to social problems. I think with the hardening of cultural attitudes that occurs this becomes more and more difficult, and it is in part due to the state taking the responsibility for your neighbors away from you as a person and laying it on the state. We used to have a very effective system of charitable homes, that served as non-profits. Now it is based on a system of profit, taxation and donative practies.... but in the past there was always a communal system of affection and mututal assistance in place. I think to get from where we are now to there we would need to revise the way we view one another, rebuild the trust we should have between ourselves and our neigbors and start to look at what community means.... once you have a strong community it can exist like a little municipal service group for the people in a local area, but without those necessary connections between peoples, I am not sure private charity would work if we just say stopped it. People's attitudes I think are much harder today, I am not sure how to soften their attitudes towards the poor or sick or weak and that is what would need to occur for mututally benefical philanthropy to work again.
The other day this lady knocked at our door. A friend of my father-in-law's had referred her to us, knowing that we might be able to fix her computer problem.
We had no idea who she was.
I didn't even think twice, and followed her to her trailer, which is in the same park as ours, and after two hours had her internet problem fixed.
I had forgotten to bring my cell phone, and after two hours my wife was 30 seconds short of calling the police thinking I was dead in a ditch somewhere.
The problem with charity is fear. No one wants community involvement when they aren't sure if the guy across the street is on the sex offender list, stalking to kill you, or is starting a meth lab.
People are overhyped with the notion that noone is safe, and everyone is sinister, when the reality is that 98% or more of society is just trying to plug along.
Do you know, I've lived here three years and don't know the name of my neighbors?
I'm pretty sure the lack of community involvement and the lack of charity goes hand in hand. I don't know how many doors I've knocked on while delivering pizzas where I'm asked who it is through the door, how many people peek through windows, or even worse... how many people tell me over the counter that they don't understand how they let a complete stranger in their house to deliver a pizza.
On the flip side, I get asked to step in quite a bit too. You won't be surprised to know that it is most often by the older, retired generation that does so.
This country needs a true leader. One who will inspire people to be better, both in their own lives and in their communities, and in doing so make this country better. You inspire community unity, and the charity will follow.