[geomark]

Voting a tax increase is far different that donating your own money. You are voting to force others who may not agree with you to pay under threat of government violence. If you are asking me to provide resources then that is also a different story. And if you are persuasive I just might change my allocation of charitable donations. That is doing it right.

Added: I don't think the parent comment is wrong. It IS our duty to perform charity. But it should not be forced on us.

[task_queue]

If it can be done through charity, why hasn't it?

People have shown time and again that it does take action through central authority to enact societal change because people will not "change [their] allocation of charitable donations" accordingly or have an allocation of charitable donations at all.

Societal progress in the face of injustice takes action from society as a whole.

Fortunately, "no I don't want to give back to the society I take from" doesn't fly with the IRS.

[Kurtz79]

So you would base aids to the less fortunate on the willingness of those who have more to "donate" to those who have less ?

How would you go to make it happen, practically ?

Since people willing to donate have no real vision of people who are in need, you would need some sort of organization to collect the donations and distribute them.

This organization would need to run some sort of policies in order to make sure the people asking for donations are actually in real need of those.

You also would need to pay the people needed to run these organizations, perform the checks, mantaining a database of people in need and donators, and perform the actual donations.

For any country (remember, a country is responsible to the welfare of all its citizens, not only the ones well-off), working with possibly millions of willing donors and petitioners, pulling off something like this without a predictable budget and some defined policies and rules is quite hard.

Thus the modern welfare state, which might not be an ideal (or even efficient) solution, but a better one has not been invented yet.

[task_queue]

> Since people willing to donate have no real vision of people who are in need,

They usually do, it fits their vision of what a "worthy" recipient of benefits looks like. Relying on charity to provide social services would mean a significant portion of people would be cut out from receiving them, either due to policy or the lack of donations.

[venomsnake]

I really think that IDF drafting and military service should be implemented in the US, just so people can see what exactly is government forcing something upon you ...