> "Nobody who is libertarian argues that there should be charity or we shouldn't care for our fellow person (well nearly nobody, I'm sure their are some mean spirited people out there). The point is how efficient we do it."
I disagree. More often than not when libertarians come around on HN the "it isn't efficient" argument seems more like a proxy for "we shouldn't do this" without sounding heartless.
It's also based on a bit of blind faith that, failing any requirement to help their fellow person, people will do it on their own, at rates high enough that the people who need help will be helped. This bit of blind faith simply doesn't jive with observable reality around the world.
Most of the time I see the argument made "government is inefficient, we should leave social assistance to charities" is made knowing full well that such a scheme will never work, and that the unfortunate/needy will simply be left in the cold. It's intellectually dishonest and a cheap ploy to avoid saying "well, let them die".
The entire stance - or at least, the stance in the way it seems to be most commonly expressed - is fundamentally mean-spirited, made all the more galling by the disingenuous reframing.
You are making an awful lot of assumptions of the way we think and what we believe with absolutely no evidence to back it up other than this is what you think we think.
Maybe you should look at the stats on charitable giving and come back to this discussion. For a prominent example, Romney gave 4 million to charity last year. Meanwhile, Joe Biden gave less than half of what I did, while making 1/8 of what he did. < 4k if I remember correctly. If you insist I'll look it up but I'm just on mobile.
I know this is anecdotal, but the stats across the board show huge discrepancies. Liberals want to force everyone to be taxed more, conservatives actually give their money to help people.
> You are making an awful lot of assumptions of the way we think and what we believe with absolutely no evidence to back it up other than this is what you think we think.
> Liberals want to force everyone to be taxed more, conservatives actually give their money to help people.
I could show you contrary citations and easily disprove your generalizations, but that's not the point. The point is that your statement was stupid and hypocritical.
How is it hypocritical? He suggested he knows what we think that is completely contrary to what we say, while I gave statements that can be backed up by data which I included anecdotal evidence of, and can give you significant evidence to back it up. His statement can't possibly be backed up with anything.
I'd love to see your evidence of liberals giving more to charity. And if you have evidence of them not wanting higher taxes that'd be great news.
You told two ill-defined groups what they believe while lamenting people telling you what your group believes. I don't know what to say if you don't see the hypocrisy in that.
That would be hypocritical but that's not what I did. Liberals and conservatives aren't ill defined at all, and its hardly a secret to say liberals are in favor of higher taxes. It's not even an insult. It's just a fact. It's a plank in the platform. It's just the way it is.
It's not "just a fact." It's an (as of yet) unsupported assertion. Liberal is an inclination, not a party. There is no platform. Unless you're talking about a party that calls itself Liberal, which would mean you need to be clearer when making sweeping generalizations.
I am a liberal-minded person. I don't want taxes any more than I want gas in my car's tank, but neither can be avoided under the present system. I would consider supporting a way to maintain civilization in a fair and equitable way (rough definition of liberal) that doesn't need taxes, should someone propose such a thing.
You're being awfully pedantic. Liberals in the United States generally identify with the Democratic party, and they generally favor more taxes and more government. Conservatives in this country generally identify with the Republican party, they generally favor less taxes and less government.
If you want to use a different definition of liberal and call yourself liberal but actually favor less taxes and less government I guess you can do that, but you would be the one using an ill-defined term.
We shouldn't have to rely on the kindness of a few strangers, and be beholden to them. Making the poor rely on charity, and not government, does just that.
Government programs like welfare and public schools are much more effective at helping the poor than "charity." If you think they're run badly, you must know a lot about the inner workings of these programs, and I suggest applying for a job with the government and fix them up.
People are starving this very second. Instead of helping them you're sitting on your first world ass commenting on a forum. Does it not bother you they're dying and you can do something about it? Why are you so mean spirited and cold? I'd like to steal half of your property and donate it to the needy and less fortunate. So what if I steal your means of production? Sure, you'll also become poor and require my generous assistance - but that's welfare. Rinse and repeat.
> "So what if I steal your means of production? Sure, you'll also become poor"
This is such a huge straw man it may in fact spontaneously combust.
Your post is so full of mindless rhetoric, blatant exaggeration, and outright falsehood that I feel stupid for having responded to it.
If you would like to have a conversation about very important issues re: taxation, the duty of the individual (or lack thereof), and other such issues that are pertinent in our time, I would be glad to do so as soon as you are willing to talk without sounding like a raging manifesto.
Why is my rhetoric so offensive, but not your own?
> It's intellectually dishonest and a cheap ploy to avoid saying "well, let them die".
Claiming libertarians are against welfare because they secretly enjoy watching poor people die is intellectually dishonest. If you can't see the irony in this..
His point was that leaving assistance to charities is a safe way out of saying, "I'm not sure how to fix this problem right now, so I'd rather just not do anything." Again, you're taking his valid points and turning them into unfounded and extreme assumptions disguised as counter points. There's no way you could logically get from, "well, let them die" to "I take pleasure
In watching poor people die" otherwise.
I don't agree with your interpretation. OP specifically mentioned that the libertarian position is fundamentally 'mean-spirited' and they disguise their mean-spirit with 'disingenuous reframing'. Does your interpretation fit that bill?
If your interpretation were correct, then it would still be wrong. Libertarians don't believe in 'not doing anything' -- which is clearly a disingenuous reframing of the libertarian position. Any one who knew the least bit about libertarianism would know that voluntary charity is absolutely ideal.
Seriously. Instead of feeding this kind of a monster, I don't know why people don't do anything better with their energy.
The world fights over personal interpretations far more than over politics or religions. It's so much insecurity wrapped in ego obsessed with worshiping doubt so blindly to convert everyone to feed their own self-doubts instead of what might be possible.
How does the edit feature work? It sometimes seems to time be out faster than other times. I can understand locking down a comment such that retrospectively completely changing it doesn't occur, but I get caught too often as the hacker news app I use (and like despite this) lets you hit post when trying to scroll (and doesn't allow editing!) and editing via mobile safari is a chore.
Middle ground on what? Libertarians love charity. You should give until it hurts. I just don't believe in forcing you to give, and I don't think you should force me to give. Maybe I'm stuck in "treat others the way you want to be treated" mode. Do you have a better principle? How much welfare is enough? What's the objective? How is it measured?
Edit: I don't mean to sound like I'm attacking you, just genuinely curious about your first principles.
I was only responding to your strawman. Still, if you want a specific example of welfare that everyone should be forced to pay even without an appeal to morality - emergency room treatment. Despite all the moral hazards, you want the service to be there, and you don't want to tell anyone, "well, you're bleeding to death, but you didn't think to pay for insurance and you have no money, so go die." It's no substitute to have it be a charity; then you'd have either no service or even more free riders. At least this way even those living paycheck to paycheck still contribute.
> Despite all the moral hazards, you want the service to be there, and you don't want to tell anyone, "well, you're bleeding to death, but you didn't think to pay for insurance and you have no money, so go die."
There's no doubt that this is an issue, but does it justify forcing people to donate? I like donating to entrepreneurs in poor countries to enable them to create a sustainable living. Why should anyone force me to give to a hospital rather than a cause that I see more fit? I just believe that finding voluntary solutions are better than coercive ones. That said, if I had a button to shutdown all welfare services to the poor - I wouldn't use it. That's not my idea of practical.
Do Libertarians believe that government is efficicient at providing anything? Why not voluntary contributions for other 'hazard of the commons' based goods, such defense, infrastructure , etc.
Libertarian is a broad term. You have anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, libertarian socialists, etc. The least authoritarian, an-caps, do wish that everything was voluntarily. Then there those in America who I'll call practical libertarians who simply want to follow the U.S. Constitution more closely than has been done while still adhering to libertarian principles.
In this case, they believe that the federal government should be involved in defense and aiding interstate commerce (without abusing the terminology as has been done by Congress), and leave everything else, as the 10th amendment states, up to the state.
Libertarian ideology isn't a philosophy about government, rather a philosophy about how humans should interact. Libertarians believe that using coercive measures against people and their property is not acceptable behavior, regardless of the alleged intent. This goes towards mafias, gangs, cartels, you name it.
So to answer your question, I don't think an ideologically consistent libertarian would support government for any goods or service.
With that said, I think social safety nets are absolutely critical - and that voluntary solutions exist to the problems we face. The threat of force is never a tool in creating sustainable value.
And like many philosophies, it sounds good until you get to the details. E.g:
A) Why is "threat of force" an axiom? What's wrong with force? You just don't like to be forced? I don't like having to work for a living. Maybe I can center a philosophy around that. Rather, balance the downsides of force against other values. Except then it's more complicated.
B) Who is the priesthood of deciding what's considered "force"? Who elected them? Extreme libertarians seem to agree that I can use force against a terrorist to get information to diffuse a bomb, because the terrorist used force first. But I really, really don't like it when someone doesn't have insurance and then they need emergency care. Why is choosing not to have insurance, and thereby, with some probability making me miserable not an initiation of force? It's not the same magnitude as a bomb, sure, but why do you get to draw the line between "force" and "not-force" instead of me?
This being the internet, I expect to have convinced no one, but at least you'll know libertarianism is arbitrary even if you won't admit it. And if I sound bitter, it's because libertarianism is specifically a "smart-person disease" and I wish that "smart-people diseases" wouldn't exist.
I feel that the goal of libertarianism is to promote a framework of interaction that is most compatible with the nature of individuals. In that sense libertarianism isn't arbitrary because there's a goal that can be reasonably observed. Whether it's is a worthy goal is up for debate.
a) To a libertarian, force is bad for the same reasons rape and slavery is bad. It violates the preference of individuals by means of agression.
With that said, what principle do you hold that says rape or slavery is bad? Do you believe those principles are idealistic or unreasonable? Would you be willing to compromise those principles for 'the greater good' or some other abstract notion?
b) Who decides what's considered force? Typically the individuals involved. How do you decide if you're being raped? Do you call your congressman and ask if forceful sex is legal? If rape were legal, would rape cease to exist? If rape were socially acceptable, would it still be rape? Most libertarians would say yes because the ethics of action is not relative to legality.
If someone chose not to have insurance, they don't have the right to force you to pay their bill. You can just let them die. Like we're letting people of other poor countries die this second.
Now, I won't pretend that I have a formula for deducing whether an action is agressive -- but that doesn't make it less real. So why do you see libertarianism as a disease? Do you have a more consistent philosophy? Is there a specific idea that libertarians hold that is offensive?
Marxism is also arguably a philosophy about humans should interact, and like libertarianism -- in the sense that you're using it -- it's a philosophy which seems to be rather at odds with what we've actually seen in human society throughout all of recorded history.
The problem is that even if all the stakeholders agree to a given sociopolitical system that agreement lasts for only one generation. The second and future generations consist of people who didn't explicitly sign up for your system, and there are only three options for them. If they have both somewhere to go to and the resources to get there, they can leave, but neither of those are necessarily under your group's control and thus that may not be a viable option. They can stay and submit to The Way You Do Things, which they may not fully agree with no matter how perfect you think that way happens to be. Or they can stay and try to change The Way You Do Things, which is not likely to be successful if The Way You Do Things works well enough for most people.
So the second option is by far the most likely -- and it's not an option those people ever explicitly agreed to. This is the situation most libertarians (and Marxists) face today, but this is not a situation that gets fixed by discarding the concept of the state. Either being born into a society that has rules you didn't explicitly agree to and that only gives you a "take it or leave it," non-negotiable implicit contract for citizenship is coercive, or it isn't.
Government is there to do the things that the individual citizens should not or will not do. The government is not there to "force" you to do things against your will; unless of course your will involves doing things directly at odds with the public good (murder, theft, etc.). If you equate taxes to "forcing" you to give, then you are clearly arguing from a staked out position that clearly misunderstands the things that the government does with your money.
I'm not sure if the quotes are meant to address this, but there isn't really a choice when it comes to taxes. Doesn't that mean you are being forced? It seems to me the government -is- there to force you to do things... isn't that the whole point?
I disagree. More often than not when libertarians come around on HN the "it isn't efficient" argument seems more like a proxy for "we shouldn't do this" without sounding heartless.
It's also based on a bit of blind faith that, failing any requirement to help their fellow person, people will do it on their own, at rates high enough that the people who need help will be helped. This bit of blind faith simply doesn't jive with observable reality around the world.
Most of the time I see the argument made "government is inefficient, we should leave social assistance to charities" is made knowing full well that such a scheme will never work, and that the unfortunate/needy will simply be left in the cold. It's intellectually dishonest and a cheap ploy to avoid saying "well, let them die".
The entire stance - or at least, the stance in the way it seems to be most commonly expressed - is fundamentally mean-spirited, made all the more galling by the disingenuous reframing.