[jpiasetz]

Two things comes to mind; the author embodies "I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have."

And second I wish the author wouldn't try to ram his point about tax down. He's looking back at his life and saying taxes gave me a leg up and ignoring the places where low taxes and regulation did the same (the private school, AOL).

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.

He's looking down the one path that happened to him but what if instead of having a military when he was young there was just lower taxes and better support for mothers would society be better off? What if instead of Pell grants there was better primary schools? What if we gave Bill Gates more money to try and make the world a better place? What if lower taxes made food cheaper so that he wouldn't have to be fed through the schools lunch program?

[potatolicious]

> "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.

[stretchwithme]

Why allow anyone to handle any of their responsibilities? There's a chance they may not, so government should be doing it.

[clarky07]

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.

[mkr-hn]

> 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.

Just going to leave this here

[clarky07]

Which would you like citations for? That liberals want higher taxes or that conservatives give more to charity?

[mkr-hn]

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.

[clarky07]

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.

[chrisringrose]

Romney was running for president then. His whole life really, excluding his gay-bashing days in high school.

[smokeyj]

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.

[potatolicious]

> "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.

Good night.

[smokeyj]

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..

[corwinstephen]

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.

[smokeyj]

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.

[philwelch]

In the immoral words of Paul Graham, "will you two please stop?" It's Christmas.

[j45]

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.

[TeMPOraL]

immortal*?

[three14]

So there's no middle ground? Extreme libertarianism / survival of the fittest or you must try to help all 1.29 billion people in poverty?

[smokeyj]

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.

[three14]

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.

[smokeyj]

> 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.

[chill1]

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.

[ifyoubuildit]

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?

[stretchwithme]

I agree. One cannot just look back at all the things that have happened and conclude they are right because you have prospered. We have, or some do, the capacity to think in principles and what things actually provide real benefit.

I happen to think people are more generous when they are free to be successful and they aren't bled to death.

Even with the high taxes in the US, I read that charitable contributions are up around $300 billion.

And private charity has some incentives that are absent in government charity. People are actually more careful with their own money. And when the results are obviously bad, they change what they are doing.

The federal government has let many bad things happen for decades before addressing them. The disastrous public housing projects. Welfare that destroys the work ethic. It eventually changed course on these things, but not without much political wrangling. A private donor would move to change it after seeing the evidence.

Worse still is the total lack of gratitude and sense of entitlement that many recipients of public money seem to have. I feel most people when receiving a gift from a private donor would say please and thank you. And if the private donor could not continue to give for some reason, they'd say thank you just the same, not harass them.

[potatolicious]

Your comment bothers me in very fundamental ways, though this is far from the first time I have seen this sentiment.

At the core of it is that your entire position is based around supposition - notice the generous use of "I feel that... would...", "I happen to think", and pointing out a lot of theories - that people would spend private charity differently than government charity, that welfare destroys the work ethic, that public housing would not have been implemented if the money was in private charitable hands, that people who receive public money are ingrates, etc.

Where is the empiricism that we hackers pride ourselves in? Your entire position is based on your personal behavioral model of how people think, that isn't verified against copious observations from around the world. This is, I think, a long-winded way of saying "citation desperately needed" and drawing big bold underlines beneath it.

Have you actually talked to a substantial number of welfare recipients to know that they generally do feel a "total lack of gratitude and sense of entitlement"? Or, pardon the bluntness, is that entirely a personal assumption?

[tolmasky]

I think you're right without realizing it: the actual criticism is that the onus of proof is on the one proposing the program in question. If there is a random government program X (and I'm not referring to welfare, it can be any program), it should not be allowed to continue without sufficient proof that it is making a positive difference. The reality is that most programs are not backed by much evidence since such evidence is really hard to get or even impossible. We can't really scientifically test how things would happen without program X (and all other things being equal) in either direction. I completely agree that I do not know how much program x actually subtly hurts the economy/society/whatever in the same way you cannot know how much it really helps. Everyone's personal intuition guides them to feel that certain perceived positive consequences outweigh certain unperceived negative consequences, and thus justifies their belief that in that case correlation is causation, but there is no proof. As such, the position presented often is that "if you're going to use my money, it is up to you to prove that it will actually be used well, not up to me to prove that it won't be used well," in the same way that if you present a new theory of physics it is up to you to prove it, not the rest of the community to disprove it.

The problem is thus precisely as you described it: this is an area endemically (and perhaps fundamentally) lacking empiricism, and arguably one where you can't practically have empiricism. I don't think it's a stretch to argue that most policy positions are supported on blind faith, emotion, and pseudo-science.

A good example of this, to hopefully gain some common ground with you and move away from an emotionally charged discussion on welfare, is patents. There is really absolutely no proof that patents "encourage innovation". It's not even clear how to measure that. There may be tons of studies done, but they are useless as we have no baseline to compare to. We don't know what's not being invented because of patents. Had patents come about naturally as common agreements between corporations, then it really wouldn't be my business to opine, but since instead it is a government policy, supported through my own tax dollars, courts, and "implict agreement" to not break said patents under penalty of law, it is very much justified that I should demand they go away without myself needing to prove much of anything -- on the contrary it is those wishing to continue the patent system that need to offer proofs.

[barrkel]

My gf is a healthcare economist working for LSE. She analyses and evaluates state (UK) interventions based on the data as reported. There is science being done, and often the data are fairly clear. But we live in a democracy, and there are chunks of the population who believe that state charity is a soft touch. Many times it is democracy and politics itself that forces inefficient outcomes.

[stretchwithme]

Theories about what would free people with their freedom don't have to proven. THEY are responsible for them. No one is forcing them to do anything at the point of a gun.

Those advocating the use of force to solve a problem, on the other hand, completely own the results. Just as I would if I decided to force my neighbor to do something if were given the authority to do as I saw fit.

I say "I feel" or "I think" to qualify what my guesses about what people will do because I don't arrogantly assume that I know better than they do how to run their own lives or allocate their scarce resources.

Most people do a fine job without me forcing my views upon them. And would do even better without massive funds being diverted to people that clearly mismanagement many, many things.

[rayiner]

Counterpoint: black people.

The federal government subsidizes Chicago's public schools to the tune of $1 billion. You think private charity would be so generous to a district that's 90% black or Hispanic? You're out of your mind if you do. Whites fought, violently, for 100 years, to keep blacks from integrating into society. When the courts desegregated the cities, whites fled to the suburbs to avoid having to integrate, leaving the urban decay that is a major target of welfare today.

The history of race in this country is an unavoidable prong of the welfare debate, and it really undermines high-minded notions of how great a system of charity could be.

[powertower]

You are making most of that up. There are more than 1 way to look at something, and you seem to be focusing at the smaller part.

There are also "white people" that have ended slavery (something done by every race since the beginning of time), fought for other races giving them full rights, helped integrate those races into their society, made programs that removed barriers to schools and jobs while discriminating against their own kind, and funded integration to the tune of 100s of billions dollars a year (and now a trillion dollars / year).

…Something that no other race has done in the history of the world.

> whites fled to the suburbs to avoid having to integrate

No, that's only part of it, the human part (that likes unity of race, culture and behavior). They also fled because they were scared that crime and violence would follow.

Your blame of the dysfunctions of the black community is seriously misplaced. White people are not responsible for the care of black people anymore than I'm responsible for you having a life. Until you figure this out and stop the blame game, that dysfunction will likely continue.

[rayiner]

The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional. We who live in the U.S. are the beneficiaries of tremendous investment into the country by Americans who came before us. We either inherited these benefits, having been born here, or bought into them, by choosing to immigrate here. We have inherited their sins as well. I was not born here, but every morning I ride to work on a train line that was built when Jim Crow still reigned in the U.S. and would still reign for another half a century before it was dismantled by the federal government. The obligations incurred by our predecessors are baked into the brick and concrete and steel of the civilization which they built.

The marginalization of blacks in the U.S. is not some academic issue that happened in the long-forgotten past and involved long-forgotten people. At the time my grandfather was starting his medical practice, which would sew the seeds for the prosperity of his family in my own time, blacks in the United States were systematically oppressed, prevented from participating in society or getting an education. This all happened in essentially modern times. George Wallace made his stand to resist integration 16 years after the transistor was invented at Bell Labs, and 5 years after the first integrated circuit was demonstrated at Texas Instruments. It was not that long ago even on the technological time scale, and a blink of an eye on the sociological time scale.

[powertower]

> The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional.

The idea that white people come from old money that gets passed down from generation to generation is not based in reality. Many whites came here from the peasant class, and stayed this way for centuries. And most still are in this class one way or another.

> We have inherited their sins as well.

Sure, if you ignore every single positive thing white people have done; and if you assume that white people have some type of an agenda to actively discriminate against non-whites (at a greater degree than non-whites do against whites).

But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America should feel ashamed and guilty for being white.

That's a personal choice you made for yourself. Don't make it for me.

[eropple]

But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America should feel ashamed and guilty for being white.

No, that's not what he's saying, at all. Nowhere has "old money" or "guilt" entered the equation and that you are feeling very defensive does not give you license to put words into his mouth. rayiner (who I often disagree with, but I have to applaud him for this) is saying that people with privilege have responsibilities as well as benefits. You have, and I'm going to use a technical term, a metric fuckton of privilege being born white and male in the United States.

He is saying that you have a responsibility to society to be better with it than to say "fuck you, I've got mine."

[rayiner]

I didn't say anything about coming from old money, or feeling guilty about being white. Don't put words in my mouth. What I said is that we (in the sense of We the People) have built a civilization, called the United States, and in that process we oppressed the black race for hundreds of years, an oppression that didn't even arguably end more than just several decades ago. We, those who continue this civilization, both benefit from the actions of our predecessors and are bound by their obligations. We don't need to feel personally guilty for those obligations, because we did not personally incur them, but we're no less bound to them then we are to the debt we back by the full faith and credit of the United States or the Constitution we uphold as the supreme law of the land. None of us personally had any hand in any of these things, but that fact does not free us to disregard them.

[eropple]

> The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional.

I can't upvote this enough, and this in particular reminds me of a Salon article from not that long ago[1]. The rhetoric is a bit much, but the core thrust of the article is sound.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/01/southern_values_revived/

[encoderer]

> There are also "white people" that have ended slavery

But of the roughly half of the country that wanted to end slavery, about 0.0001% of them actually thought both races were equal. The notion was considered absurd.

Even the "good" ones that thought that possibly, in theory, there could be equality, that was ruined by a century of forced ignorance and illiteracy.

His bigger point -- that there are things a Gov't must do because private charity never could/would, is pretty hard to refute I'd say.

> White people are not responsible for the care of black people anymore than I'm responsible for you having a life.

Read about most of the Black Laws in the northern states. In many states it was ILLEGAL for blacks to move into the state and take up residence -- born free, former slaves, doesn't matter.

A black man couldn't serve on a jury. Worse: A black man couldn't appear as a witness against a white man in open court. So white men could bring any crime they chose against a black man so long as there were no white witnesses.

White people were 100% responsible for the ghetto-fication of the black community because that was the only place black people felt safe.

All sorts of immigrant communities -- even catholics who were largely despised in the antebellum period (gradually getting better after) -- were able to fully integrate themselves into the American fabric and prosper. But not African immigrants. Why do you suppose that is?

You act like slavery was the injustice and, hey, white people freed the slaves. No way dude. It goes far, far past that.

Emancipation was only supported by a majority when the case was made that slaves were being used to build fortification and power the Rebel war machine. Among the majority of Unionists that supported emancipation, most considered it a tactic. Some a strategy. Very few an objective.

We -- caucasians -- built a layer cake of misfortune and discrimination. The fact that it's been 150 years since emancipation is meaningless. We absolutely have a responsibility to right this wrong and it is taking a long, long time.

And no, this doesn't apply to EVERY person of color. Many have achieved great upward mobility. Yes, we have a black President. To them, the idea that we need to provide charity to them is maybe insulting, perhaps indicating that we believe they've been prosperous only because of that charity.

But that doesn't change the burden to continue unwinding the twisted wrong of generations of discrimination.

[eropple]

> No, that's only part of it, the human part (that likes unity of race, culture and behavior). They also fled because they were scared that crime and violence would follow.

So you mean it's precisely that.

[rdl]

I can't really talk about black people, as the entire set of black people I know personally are maybe 10 engineers or other students at school, and a bunch of military people -- none of whom really need charity, are generally upstanding citizens (with flaws, but not much different from anyone else, etc.)

However, I can speak from first-hand knowledge about poor white people from Appalachia (unfortunately). There's substantial federal subsidy there as well, and a lot of it serves to "enable" dysfunction, rather than fix it.

I'd be fine with much smaller flows of money going in if they were tied to demands to actually fix the underlying issues. Building useful (physical or human) infrastructure, fine. Subsidizing loss-making operations temporarily, fine. Removing any pressures to improve, not fine. Which is essentially the same problem with government and NGO charity in places I've seen (Middle East/Central Asia/North Africa), vs. "private" (generally, faith-based, or returning diaspora, but hyper-focused issue based like Gates too) charity.

[late2part]

How's that subsidy working out?

[rayiner]

It at least maintains the pretense of equality of opportunity for those kids. The alternative, a spiral of urban decay tha would leave the great American cities pockets of third world poverty, is not one I could stomach. My family left Bangladesh for a reason, and I love my adopted country for the fact it has no equivalent to the favelas of Rio or the slums of Mumbai.

[deadairspace]

>One cannot just look back at all the things that have happened and conclude they are right because you have prospered.

Absolutely. This is the just world fallacy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

[scott_w]

If you think taxes are high in the US, perhaps you should come to the UK.

[lumberjack]

>What if we gave Bill Gates more money to try and make the world a better place?

Is this sarcasm or do you truly believe this? I hope not but if so, perhaps you should read this[1], where the particular criticism I'm concerned with is the irresponsibly zealous research funding on a malaria cure with the consequence of alienating other important fields of research that are just as important. Ironically enough this is exactly the sort of thing government funding is so notorious of, namely, ignorance or ulterior motives that lead to a less efficient budget that could have been employed is so much better ways.

However, that is only one wealthy man, not enough data for a solid argument, but even on a purely rational basis, I would very much, rather the money was in a place where the general population had, at least in theory, some say on where it is to be spent. To me it seems that by going from public to private funding one is exchanging inefficiencies. The inevitable economic inefficiencies of bureaucracy for new inefficiencies in the way the money is allocated from the perspective of what benefits the citizens of the nation.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat...

[jacoblyles]

I don't have faith in any one individual or group of individual to make good decisions for all of us. That is why I believe in radical decentralization, allowing for experimentation and innovation.

I completely disagree with you. I don't want the general population to have a say where Bill Gates' money goes. I want money to be in the hands of thousands of different-thinking individuals who can try to find an opportunity that the rest of us don't know about.

[jacquesm]

You're completely free to go out and earn a couple of billion and then to spend it in the way you propose. Bill Gates gets to spend his the same way.

[rayiner]

Here is the thing I never understand: where is all this libertarianism before people get rich on the back of our society? Bill Gates started a business in the U.S. with full notice of how our system works. It's not like we decided after the fact "hey, this guy is rich, let's take his money." Indeed, he's gotten an even better deal than he originally bargained for--taxes now are lower than they were in the 1970's and 1980's.

[ams6110]

And second I wish the author wouldn't try to ram his point about tax down. He's looking back at his life and saying taxes gave me a leg up and ignoring the places where low taxes and regulation did the same (the private school, AOL).

Furthermore, millions of others avail themselves of the same benefits without anything close to this result. He seems to imply that without the help of "the taxpayers" he would never have made it, but honestly both he and his mother sound like the sorts of people who would have "found a way"

[confluence]

> I am a great believer in hard work. The luckier I get, the more of it I seem to be able to do.

Correlation != causation.

People fundamentally underestimate the complexity of the world and due to a variety of psychological factors grossly over attribute successful outcomes to personal attributes.

Give some more of your hard work bullshit to people without legs.

Oh yeah, you don't, because your ability to see complexity only extends to the edge of your own ego.

[rhizome]

Not to mention a level of success that enables them to ascribe it to hard work.