10 ms·

I understand the libertarian ideal of being free to choose how to give away your own money, but how do they reconcile that with the ignorance of the elite as to

I understand the libertarian ideal of being free to choose how to give away your own money, but how do they reconcile that with the ignorance of the elite as to the social problems they never encounter? Even given the inefficiencies of government, it's hard for me to imagine that the same amount of social spending could do more good from the hands of individuals than collective agencies.

compiler-guy 10y ago
There are plenty of governments that miserably fail to distribute very large amounts of aid in a way that actually helps the target groups [0] is one in the US, and internationally, things can be really, really sketchy. One advantage about doing it via charity is that if a charity is ineffective, or fraudulent, switching to a new one is easy. Fixing a government full of corruption or inefficiency is quite a bit harder. Government does have an important role, but it is no panacea. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-newark-schools-partially-squandered-a-great-prize/2015/10/20/ffff660c-7743-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html?utm_term=.eb85e0908ca4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-newark-schools-p...
- throawaybay 10y ago
  Umm.. you vote out the corruption?
  - nickff 10y ago
    This assumes that the elected officials are the problem, that better options are available, and that the system will allow change.
  - liopleurodon 10y ago
    hahahahahahaha
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    A choice and a vote are very different things.
- jwatte 10y ago
  When a millionaire gives a million dollars to a school in a wealthy neighborhood, all tax payers are on the hook for 400,000 or so in tax deductions. So, rich giving disproportionately channels where government opportunity costs are spent!
- boona 10y ago
  > Fixing a government full of corruption or inefficiency is quite a bit harder You wrote "practically impossible" wrong.
jerf 10y ago
First, when it comes to stories like this, libertarianism is basically irrelevant in the real world. To a first approximation, even in Silicon Valley, there aren't any. The Valley is far better known for its progressivism than its libertarianism now. Second, I am unaware of any tenant of libertarianism that says it is somehow bad for people to band together into charity organizations, potentially the very same ones mentioned in the article, and for other people to give money to those organizations. Nothing about libertarianism requires altruistically-minded individuals to literally go out into the streets and start handing out dollar bills to individuals or something. Libertarianism is about not being coerced to join organizations, not about organizations existing.
- mindslight 10y ago
  Libertarianism is also generally aligned against the Keynesian puppeteering that has created this gilded overinvestment bubble and regressive income-dissipating treadmill. Furthermore, non-transmuted [0] libertarianism is fundamentally against the concentration of communication/power that has caused these parasitic nouveau-middlemen companies to even be a thing! These principles are slow-acting general concepts, and so they do not address the immediate problem. Obviously if someone is hungry, you feed them first and then figure out how to avoid them getting into that situation in the future. [0] Every political group starts off with valid critiques and seeking sanity, but the commercially useful parts are then overemphasized to support the status quo power structure. A true libertarian is inherently against large corporations (as there is no difference between a totalitarian government from an all-owning all-contracting corporation), even though they're easily tricked into condoning them.
  - warkdarrior 10y ago
    > A true libertarian is inherently against large corporations Wouldn't that limit the freedom of the owners/shareholders to grow their corporation to whatever size they want? And who gets to decide how large is large? The government?
    - wav-part 10y ago
paulddraper 10y ago
> Even given the inefficiencies of government, it's hard for me to imagine that the same amount of social spending could do more good from the hands of individuals than collective agencies. (1) Imagine harder. Get personal experience or talk to someone with personal experience with WIC, food stamps, disability, medicare/medicaid, etc. and you'll find out how inefficient, wasteful, and abused these things are. And I don't just mean by a little bit. I mean by A LOT. (2) I agree that collective agencies can be more effective than individuals. But not the government kind that are (a) awfully inefficient and (b) exact their contributions by force. I donate a significant portion of my income voluntarily to organizations of my choice that do good in better ways than writing legally mandated entitlement checks.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jwatte 10y ago
  All of the welfare budget together (of which some fraction might be waste or fraud) is only a small fraction of the governments budget. Corporations the size of governments are equally inefficient. Finally, one major way we could make government more effective is to institute a public, national id number and allow data sharing between between agencies. But we don't trust our own government enough to do that. (Many civilized countries do, and it works great for them)
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    "great" is relative. Every other days some article rises to the top of HN about government surveillance.
  - areyousure 10y ago
    The person you responded to included "medicare/medicaid" in their list of government services. They each cost over half a trillion dollars per year.
hash-set 10y ago
You'll downvote me for saying this but...a lot of people can't manage money. You give someone $100 or pay off all their debts or whatever and they'll just be right back in a mess in no time. I'm not saying don't help them, I'm just saying it is a difficult problem. They need behavioral reconditioning, not an easy task.
- mars4rp 10y ago
  do a little bit of more research on this, there have been handful of real studies on this, and they all showed people are more well off when they are get paid cash. no one better than you know your needs. and also you are not going to have the overhead and administration cost of providing services. one of the best government programs is tax credits, it gives cash to the poor and it is the only thing that left and right can agree on !!
  - brown 10y ago
    Could you provide sources? Search results are not so clear. Should You Give Money to Homeless People? http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/should-you-give-money-to-homeless-people/72820/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/should-y... "The short answer is no. The long answer is yes, but only if you work for an organization that can ensure the money is spent wisely." Reversal of Fortune is a 2005 Showtime documentary that asks the question "What would a homeless person do if they were given $100,000?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_of_Fortune_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_of_Fortune_(2005_film... "When asked by Oprah how much of the $100,000 he still had, Ted replied "none." Ted also mentioned that he is homeless again, and content with his current circumstances."
    - jwatte 10y ago
      A sample of one!
    - mars4rp 10y ago
      http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-happens-when-you-just-give-money-to-poor-people http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-... one thing that I remember, we are not talking about $100,000. I can see your point that giving that much money to a homeless people is a bad idea, but giving them $300 a month is better than food stamp. giving them $2000 a month is better than a shelter! and so on

compiler-guy 10y ago

There are plenty of governments that miserably fail to distribute very large amounts of aid in a way that actually helps the target groups [0] is one in the US, and internationally, things can be really, really sketchy. One advantage about doing it via charity is that if a charity is ineffective, or fraudulent, switching to a new one is easy. Fixing a government full of corruption or inefficiency is quite a bit harder. Government does have an important role, but it is no panacea. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-newark-schools-partially-squandered-a-great-prize/2015/10/20/ffff660c-7743-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html?utm_term=.eb85e0908ca4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-newark-schools-p...

throawaybay 10y ago
Umm.. you vote out the corruption?
- nickff 10y ago
  This assumes that the elected officials are the problem, that better options are available, and that the system will allow change.
- liopleurodon 10y ago
  hahahahahahaha
- WalterBright 10y ago
  A choice and a vote are very different things.
jwatte 10y ago
When a millionaire gives a million dollars to a school in a wealthy neighborhood, all tax payers are on the hook for 400,000 or so in tax deductions. So, rich giving disproportionately channels where government opportunity costs are spent!
boona 10y ago
> Fixing a government full of corruption or inefficiency is quite a bit harder You wrote "practically impossible" wrong.

jerf 10y ago

First, when it comes to stories like this, libertarianism is basically irrelevant in the real world. To a first approximation, even in Silicon Valley, there aren't any. The Valley is far better known for its progressivism than its libertarianism now. Second, I am unaware of any tenant of libertarianism that says it is somehow bad for people to band together into charity organizations, potentially the very same ones mentioned in the article, and for other people to give money to those organizations. Nothing about libertarianism requires altruistically-minded individuals to literally go out into the streets and start handing out dollar bills to individuals or something. Libertarianism is about not being coerced to join organizations, not about organizations existing.

mindslight 10y ago
Libertarianism is also generally aligned against the Keynesian puppeteering that has created this gilded overinvestment bubble and regressive income-dissipating treadmill. Furthermore, non-transmuted [0] libertarianism is fundamentally against the concentration of communication/power that has caused these parasitic nouveau-middlemen companies to even be a thing! These principles are slow-acting general concepts, and so they do not address the immediate problem. Obviously if someone is hungry, you feed them first and then figure out how to avoid them getting into that situation in the future. [0] Every political group starts off with valid critiques and seeking sanity, but the commercially useful parts are then overemphasized to support the status quo power structure. A true libertarian is inherently against large corporations (as there is no difference between a totalitarian government from an all-owning all-contracting corporation), even though they're easily tricked into condoning them.
- warkdarrior 10y ago
  > A true libertarian is inherently against large corporations Wouldn't that limit the freedom of the owners/shareholders to grow their corporation to whatever size they want? And who gets to decide how large is large? The government?
  - wav-part 10y ago

paulddraper 10y ago

> Even given the inefficiencies of government, it's hard for me to imagine that the same amount of social spending could do more good from the hands of individuals than collective agencies. (1) Imagine harder. Get personal experience or talk to someone with personal experience with WIC, food stamps, disability, medicare/medicaid, etc. and you'll find out how inefficient, wasteful, and abused these things are. And I don't just mean by a little bit. I mean by A LOT. (2) I agree that collective agencies can be more effective than individuals. But not the government kind that are (a) awfully inefficient and (b) exact their contributions by force. I donate a significant portion of my income voluntarily to organizations of my choice that do good in better ways than writing legally mandated entitlement checks.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jwatte 10y ago
All of the welfare budget together (of which some fraction might be waste or fraud) is only a small fraction of the governments budget. Corporations the size of governments are equally inefficient. Finally, one major way we could make government more effective is to institute a public, national id number and allow data sharing between between agencies. But we don't trust our own government enough to do that. (Many civilized countries do, and it works great for them)
- paulddraper 10y ago
  "great" is relative. Every other days some article rises to the top of HN about government surveillance.
- areyousure 10y ago
  The person you responded to included "medicare/medicaid" in their list of government services. They each cost over half a trillion dollars per year.

hash-set 10y ago

You'll downvote me for saying this but...a lot of people can't manage money. You give someone $100 or pay off all their debts or whatever and they'll just be right back in a mess in no time. I'm not saying don't help them, I'm just saying it is a difficult problem. They need behavioral reconditioning, not an easy task.

mars4rp 10y ago
do a little bit of more research on this, there have been handful of real studies on this, and they all showed people are more well off when they are get paid cash. no one better than you know your needs. and also you are not going to have the overhead and administration cost of providing services. one of the best government programs is tax credits, it gives cash to the poor and it is the only thing that left and right can agree on !!
- brown 10y ago
  Could you provide sources? Search results are not so clear. Should You Give Money to Homeless People? http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/should-you-give-money-to-homeless-people/72820/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/should-y... "The short answer is no. The long answer is yes, but only if you work for an organization that can ensure the money is spent wisely." Reversal of Fortune is a 2005 Showtime documentary that asks the question "What would a homeless person do if they were given $100,000?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_of_Fortune_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_of_Fortune_(2005_film... "When asked by Oprah how much of the $100,000 he still had, Ted replied "none." Ted also mentioned that he is homeless again, and content with his current circumstances."
  - jwatte 10y ago
    A sample of one!
  - mars4rp 10y ago
    http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-happens-when-you-just-give-money-to-poor-people http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-... one thing that I remember, we are not talking about $100,000. I can see your point that giving that much money to a homeless people is a bad idea, but giving them $300 a month is better than food stamp. giving them $2000 a month is better than a shelter! and so on