>>Deprivation is the lack of material things. People without universal healthcare or benefits systems in unpropitious circumstances will have neither healthcare

>>Deprivation is the lack of material things. People without universal healthcare or benefits systems in unpropitious circumstances will have neither healthcare nor shelter and food. Ergo, welfare alleviates deprivation. That follows logically. That is far too simplistic. Like I said, a higher income country with less redistribution can provide a higher quality of life to the very poor than a lower income country with high levels of redistribution. That's why reducing poverty over longer time frames is not as simple as redistributing income. The effect of redistribution on income growth has to be factored in. >>It is also the incontrovertible historical picture. Every measure of deprivation was improving faster before the creation of large welfare programs than after their creation, so no, it not the historical picture at all. >>Once again, this is under-specified. I am arguing that one of the roles of the welfare state is to create the basis for humans to give themselves to non-economic activities: to culture, community, politics, ethics, and so on. Of course if you're looking to dismiss all of my points, you can demand an unrealistic level of specification and dismiss anything that doesn't meet it. I'm being more specific than you. I was addressing your argument that human nature is totally malleable. It absolutely is not. >> I am arguing that one of the roles of the welfare state is to create the basis for humans to give themselves to non-economic activities: to culture, community, politics, ethics, and so on. Non-economic activities are not non-competitive. You won't make mankind less competitive by creating a forcible income redistribution scheme. You will divert that competitive energy into avoiding having one's income redistributed to others, and trying to maximize how much income is redistributed to one's self. That is reality, and wishful ideologies do not change that. Ignoring that reality leads to disastrous social consequences. And social status competitions emerge in all sorts of situation not involving money. You don't reduce competitiveness by equalizing the distribution of reportable income and consumption of remunerated services. Competition just emerges in other areas, like developing social connections to get to know the right doctors to get better quality healthcare. >>But then you leap from these two platitudinous claims to the idea that human nature is both fixed and determinate. I see no reason whatsoever to believe that. I didn't say it was totally fixed. I said: "numerous studies have shown that the Big Five personality traits have an approximately 50% hereditary factor. And the other 50% are cultural traits that are not going to be wiped away by some radical social engineering project , since they are passed on through micro-interactions and social dynamics far beyond the reach of the state". >>We are talking about whether humans are always and at all times moved by self-interest in the same way and to the same degree. In my scenario they are clearly not. There is no evidence or reason to believe that redistributing reportable income changes the extent to which people are moved by self-interest. Perhaps people having more material resources will allow them to focus on things other than survival - which is not the same thing as not being moved by self-interest, or not being competitive - but redistribution of income does not lead to people having more material resources over any extended time frame. It will lead to people having less material resources. >>This is rhetoric. It is both possible to think that 'contract liberty' is a euphemism that conceals the fact that many contracting parties do so from structurally asymmetrical positions, and to think that arbitrary imprisonment is wrong. You're making blanket judgements about contractual interactions instead of letting each interaction be judged on its own merits by a court of law. Courts will invalidate contracts which are deemed to not be genuinely consensual. Your assertion that parties with unequal levels of wealth are not able to enter into consensual interactions is the kind of overly-simplistic generalization that is produced by crude ideologies like socialism, that cause so much pain and suffering in the world. "Contract liberty" merely means people are free to enter into contract with others that are deemed consensual by courts of law. Courts aren't perfect, but they are far more discerning than an ideologically-motivated cookie-cutter rule that generalizes entire classes of interactions as non-consensual.