[FellowTraveler]

Just because society is supposed to do something, does not mean that government is supposed to do that thing.

Likely the problem you are so quick to put government in charge of, wouldn't be a problem in the first place if we had a free economy.

[coldtea]

>Just because society is supposed to do something, does not mean that government is supposed to do that thing.

Why not? Government is the set of people we, society, put in place to do some work for us in an organized fashion.

So if there's something society at large has to do and that is not about individual action, then the government better see to it pronto. That's what people pay taxes for -- so we can have things like roads, bridges, clean water, schools, armies and action to aid the more unfortunate.

>Likely the problem you are so quick to put government in charge of, wouldn't be a problem in the first place if we had a free economy.

Yes, but also if we had free ponies. I don't deal in "what if" scenarios alluding to some perfect state of being that nobody has seen. This is the kind of economy we have, it might get more or less free, but nobody has seen a "free economy" anywhere, and I don't see such a thing coming in any conceivable time frame.

[FellowTraveler]

I think you misunderstand what government actually is. Government is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

I have a right to use force in self-defense.

Therefore I have the right to hire a bodyguard to use force in my defense. (In fact it is the same right - delegated.)

Therefore we have the right to elect a sheriff to use force in our defense.

...But I do NOT have the right to beat and rob people.

Therefore, neither do I have any right to hire a bodyguard to beat and rob people.

Therefore, neither does our sheriff have any right to beat and rob people -- even if we voted for him to do so! Because you cannot delegate powers you never had.

Therefore the question isn't whether society should provide social welfare for the needy. Rather, the question is whether we have a moral right to use VIOLENCE to FORCE people to provide social welfare for the needy. (We don't.)

The only time we have a right to use violence is in defense against murderers and thieves. Once we start trying to use it to solve social problems, we end up making those problems worse, not better.

The reason you see poverty in various nations is because they do not have economic freedom and secure property rights. The nations with the worst poverty are the ones with the worst protections of rights. The nations with the lowest poverty are the nations with the best protections of rights. And note: those are also the nations who donate the most money to charity.

Government can never fix poverty by using violence to forcefully redistribute wealth. All that will do is cause worse poverty.

The best a government can do is strongly protect rights and economic freedoms -- then you will have a rich nation, which will not have poverty problems in the first place, and which will easily be able to cover the rest through private charity.

Unfortunately we do not see any governments today that respect rights and freedoms in this way, although some are better than others. But proposed solutions based on "social welfare" will only make those problems worse, not better.

You say that you do not deal in "what if" scenarios -- you say that there is no "perfect state." I agree with this. But behaving more and more like North Korea is not some magical solution either. It just makes things worse.