Thinking about Government
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These questions presume that ending laws that force altruism (ie, ending welfare) would equate to laws against helping people.
I think the results would be quite different. People who currently help the downtrodden would continue to help the downtrodden. In addition, some wealthy people, relieved of the obligation to pay taxes, would take charity a little more seriously because they could create their own innovative, entrepreneurial foundations.
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Good luck convincing people that rich folks are dying to give their money away. It just doesn’t ring true for me. See the original post for the rest of Jake’s argument.
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ME TIME:
I agree with Dalas with regards to Jake’s post on government and privatized charity. I don’t believe that people would be as giving if it weren’t mandated by the government and I don’t know of a society where this has actually worked succesfully.
Government is useful for enacting policies that virtually everybody wants but wouldn’t become a reality if everyone had the option of individually contributing to, knowing that their neighbors might not.
For example, right now I give 45% of my income to the government (I’d like it to be lower, of course). Do you think I’d give even half that if the choice was left up to me? Nope.
When all is said and done, I feel an efficiently run government is more useful than a bunch of privatized organizations because of the above reason. Though right now we have neither.
