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You could say charities are better in the sense that: - You at least have more than one choice. If the charity you give to performs poorly by whatever metrics

You could say charities are better in the sense that: - You at least have more than one choice. If the charity you give to performs poorly by whatever metrics you value, you can give to another one next time. - It is voluntary. Nobody with guns will put you in a cage if you don't donate to a charity, as is the case if you don't pay your taxes.

ryanhuff 10y ago
Couldn't you say that about whatever city that you live in? Many people voluntarily live in their choice of city or state (in the U.S.). If you don't like that government's priorities, you could move elsewhere.
- mi_noi_noi 10y ago
  What if you don't like any cities or states? With charities you can always make your own. Don't have that option in your system. I'm not American, but aren't some taxes that go to education/welfare/healthcare on a federal level? If so, are you going to tell people to leave the country? It's very expensive and for many practically impossible. Besides, is the goal not here to spend the money as efficiently as possible? In that case we need as much competition and experimentation as possible. Something I think is achieved to a much higher degree with my system than yours. Also, your suggestion still doesn't make it voluntary. In my system someone can not donate to charity, but use their money for something else. Charities are not the only way to help the worse off.
  - vacri 10y ago
    The idea that people would spend as much on charity as they do on taxes is one of the most clearly bunkum libertarian fantasies out there. Private charities come nowhere near modern government levels of welfare, and never have (that's why we have modern levels of welfare).
    - dmichulke 10y ago
      You do realize that government actually doesn't earn the money but takes it away from others that earn it. It's not as if with government we have more money. So all that matters is efficiency and if a charity is more efficient than a government, why is there no state where you can choose whom to give (at least part of) your taxes?
      - ska 10y ago
        This is a common fallacy, which hurts the ability to reason usefully about problems like those in this thread (regardless of where you fall on the "size of government" issue). The fallacy is in imagining it is meaningful to separate money (earned or otherwise) from the system of government it was generated in. Your ability to "earn the money" is fundamentally tied to this system, and if you change one, you change the other necessarily (not a comment on the direction of the delta). Thinking about the economy as a thing that exists on its own, and the government as an institution that just "takes away" from this is just nonsensical. The statement "It's not as if with government we have more money" is quite likely a category error. After all the ideas of money and the ideas of government are so deeply intertwined in their evolution that people haven't managed to separate them, ahistorical thought experiments in common introductory economics notwithstanding. For what it's worth, I am sympathetic to some of the arguments you are heading towards, I just object to the sloppy thinking variants of them - which are the most common, unfortunately.
        mi_noi_noi 10y ago
        I think you are the one who is ahistorical. Even in the most failed of government systems, anarchist societies and black markets: people engange in economic activity ("earn money"). You don't even have to look at history, you can look around the world today with failed states and black markets. Wherever there are people there is economic activity ("earn money"). If there is no state, groups and individuals take upon themselves those roles which the state has monopoly in most places: protection of private property and dispute resolution. These two things are the most vital ingredients for economic activity. > After all the ideas of money and the ideas of government are so deeply intertwined in their evolution that people haven't managed to separate them You're just making an unfounded assertion. Many people separate economy and state, for good reason. Money have existed and exist today (cryptocurrencies for one example) irrespective of government.
  - shadowfiend 10y ago
    You are correct---in your system, someone can be surrounded by a society that is fundamentally positive because no one is wanting for basic needs, and leverage that fact to be wealthy because they don't have to worry about a certain class of problems, yet not contribute back into the system that has allowed their wealth to accumulate. This is as much a choice as a welfare recipient who could work, but is choosing not to. Arguably, that society isn't really possible, though, since given the option of not contributing back into the system, there is a high probability that those who accumulate wealth would choose not to do so, especially if it's inherited, and so even if you could trip into a society that met basic needs for everyone through the wealthy choosing to contribute, it would likely vanish in the span of a generation or two. Evidence for this being that we've had societies where the wealthy could choose not to contribute to their society for millenia, and meeting basic needs is something we've only started brushing at in the last century. By the way, no, the goal here is not to spend the money as efficiently as possible. The primary goal is to succeed at something that is known to improve society as a whole and, perhaps, will allow that society to produce goods better and more effectively. The secondary goal is to do so as efficiently as possible. This is why you don't find much support in countries with nationalized healthcare for abolishing nationalized healthcare; instead, the support is for reforming it or making it more efficient or less corrupt or what have you. The primary goal met, it's on to the secondary goal. Before government was used as a vehicle for achieving many of these things, they simply weren't an option for most. Government is where we come together as a people and say "yes, this is the cost that we have decided is worth paying in order to have the society that we want". That encompasses both sides---taxes ("what is worth paying") and policy ("how we achieve the society that we want"). Let's grant that there might be less competition and less efficiency (arguable), but there is greater universality, and I would say there are goals where that universality is far more important than the tradeoffs.
    - marknutter 10y ago
      The problem is that inneficient systems can only work in best case scenarios. The minute a country with an inefficient universal health care system gets inundated by immigrants or has to ramp up its defense spending or loses one of its primary sources of revenue, the whole thing comes collapsing down (see Venezuela).
- hueving 10y ago
  Nope. If you have a problem with the federal government (e.g. US military spending) of the country you are a citizen of, then you actually have a lot of difficulty moving to another country (unless you are rich).
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  Well, you know, unless you are too poor to afford the move.
richmarr 10y ago
> ...performs poorly by whatever metrics you value... And there's the rub. You don't, and won't, have that information. To my knowledge there's one single solitary charity that provides adequate metrics to donors to support this kind of decision and for them it's on principle rather than to open up the market. Charities as a whole are simply not incentivised to share this kind of information because they compete for funds based on marketing, not efficiency, and there is currently no mechanism to change that. Yes, there are organisations that audit charities in small numbers and put them on approved lists, but you're still only getting a fading rubber stamp. > It is voluntary... He said, casually cutting the funds available for public infrastructure, welfare, health, education and the military by a couple of orders of magnitude.
lmm 10y ago
> - You at least have more than one choice. If the charity you give to performs poorly by whatever metrics you value, you can give to another one next time. You can vote out your government. Charities seem more PR-focused, and the press seems less interested in holding them to account. I have a lot more faith in government to spend money effectively than I do in private charity.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  > You can vote out your government. It's exceedingly hard to end an entitlement even if it's clear it doesn't work.
  - eric_the_read 10y ago
    It's not an entitlement per se, but Head Start is a classic example of the government program that doesn't work, but can/t be cancelled. Even DHHS admits it doesn't work[0], but it's impossible to cancel politically. [0] https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/executive_summary_final.pdf https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/executive_s...

ryanhuff 10y ago

Couldn't you say that about whatever city that you live in? Many people voluntarily live in their choice of city or state (in the U.S.). If you don't like that government's priorities, you could move elsewhere.

mi_noi_noi 10y ago
What if you don't like any cities or states? With charities you can always make your own. Don't have that option in your system. I'm not American, but aren't some taxes that go to education/welfare/healthcare on a federal level? If so, are you going to tell people to leave the country? It's very expensive and for many practically impossible. Besides, is the goal not here to spend the money as efficiently as possible? In that case we need as much competition and experimentation as possible. Something I think is achieved to a much higher degree with my system than yours. Also, your suggestion still doesn't make it voluntary. In my system someone can not donate to charity, but use their money for something else. Charities are not the only way to help the worse off.
- vacri 10y ago
  The idea that people would spend as much on charity as they do on taxes is one of the most clearly bunkum libertarian fantasies out there. Private charities come nowhere near modern government levels of welfare, and never have (that's why we have modern levels of welfare).
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    You do realize that government actually doesn't earn the money but takes it away from others that earn it. It's not as if with government we have more money. So all that matters is efficiency and if a charity is more efficient than a government, why is there no state where you can choose whom to give (at least part of) your taxes?
    - ska 10y ago
      This is a common fallacy, which hurts the ability to reason usefully about problems like those in this thread (regardless of where you fall on the "size of government" issue). The fallacy is in imagining it is meaningful to separate money (earned or otherwise) from the system of government it was generated in. Your ability to "earn the money" is fundamentally tied to this system, and if you change one, you change the other necessarily (not a comment on the direction of the delta). Thinking about the economy as a thing that exists on its own, and the government as an institution that just "takes away" from this is just nonsensical. The statement "It's not as if with government we have more money" is quite likely a category error. After all the ideas of money and the ideas of government are so deeply intertwined in their evolution that people haven't managed to separate them, ahistorical thought experiments in common introductory economics notwithstanding. For what it's worth, I am sympathetic to some of the arguments you are heading towards, I just object to the sloppy thinking variants of them - which are the most common, unfortunately.
      - mi_noi_noi 10y ago
        I think you are the one who is ahistorical. Even in the most failed of government systems, anarchist societies and black markets: people engange in economic activity ("earn money"). You don't even have to look at history, you can look around the world today with failed states and black markets. Wherever there are people there is economic activity ("earn money"). If there is no state, groups and individuals take upon themselves those roles which the state has monopoly in most places: protection of private property and dispute resolution. These two things are the most vital ingredients for economic activity. > After all the ideas of money and the ideas of government are so deeply intertwined in their evolution that people haven't managed to separate them You're just making an unfounded assertion. Many people separate economy and state, for good reason. Money have existed and exist today (cryptocurrencies for one example) irrespective of government.
- shadowfiend 10y ago
  You are correct---in your system, someone can be surrounded by a society that is fundamentally positive because no one is wanting for basic needs, and leverage that fact to be wealthy because they don't have to worry about a certain class of problems, yet not contribute back into the system that has allowed their wealth to accumulate. This is as much a choice as a welfare recipient who could work, but is choosing not to. Arguably, that society isn't really possible, though, since given the option of not contributing back into the system, there is a high probability that those who accumulate wealth would choose not to do so, especially if it's inherited, and so even if you could trip into a society that met basic needs for everyone through the wealthy choosing to contribute, it would likely vanish in the span of a generation or two. Evidence for this being that we've had societies where the wealthy could choose not to contribute to their society for millenia, and meeting basic needs is something we've only started brushing at in the last century. By the way, no, the goal here is not to spend the money as efficiently as possible. The primary goal is to succeed at something that is known to improve society as a whole and, perhaps, will allow that society to produce goods better and more effectively. The secondary goal is to do so as efficiently as possible. This is why you don't find much support in countries with nationalized healthcare for abolishing nationalized healthcare; instead, the support is for reforming it or making it more efficient or less corrupt or what have you. The primary goal met, it's on to the secondary goal. Before government was used as a vehicle for achieving many of these things, they simply weren't an option for most. Government is where we come together as a people and say "yes, this is the cost that we have decided is worth paying in order to have the society that we want". That encompasses both sides---taxes ("what is worth paying") and policy ("how we achieve the society that we want"). Let's grant that there might be less competition and less efficiency (arguable), but there is greater universality, and I would say there are goals where that universality is far more important than the tradeoffs.
  - marknutter 10y ago
    The problem is that inneficient systems can only work in best case scenarios. The minute a country with an inefficient universal health care system gets inundated by immigrants or has to ramp up its defense spending or loses one of its primary sources of revenue, the whole thing comes collapsing down (see Venezuela).
hueving 10y ago
Nope. If you have a problem with the federal government (e.g. US military spending) of the country you are a citizen of, then you actually have a lot of difficulty moving to another country (unless you are rich).
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
Well, you know, unless you are too poor to afford the move.

richmarr 10y ago

> ...performs poorly by whatever metrics you value... And there's the rub. You don't, and won't, have that information. To my knowledge there's one single solitary charity that provides adequate metrics to donors to support this kind of decision and for them it's on principle rather than to open up the market. Charities as a whole are simply not incentivised to share this kind of information because they compete for funds based on marketing, not efficiency, and there is currently no mechanism to change that. Yes, there are organisations that audit charities in small numbers and put them on approved lists, but you're still only getting a fading rubber stamp. > It is voluntary... He said, casually cutting the funds available for public infrastructure, welfare, health, education and the military by a couple of orders of magnitude.

lmm 10y ago

> - You at least have more than one choice. If the charity you give to performs poorly by whatever metrics you value, you can give to another one next time. You can vote out your government. Charities seem more PR-focused, and the press seems less interested in holding them to account. I have a lot more faith in government to spend money effectively than I do in private charity.

humanrebar 10y ago
> You can vote out your government. It's exceedingly hard to end an entitlement even if it's clear it doesn't work.
- eric_the_read 10y ago
  It's not an entitlement per se, but Head Start is a classic example of the government program that doesn't work, but can/t be cancelled. Even DHHS admits it doesn't work[0], but it's impossible to cancel politically. [0] https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/executive_summary_final.pdf https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/executive_s...