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If anything is sacrificing the well-being of poor Americans who deserve better, it is the fact that helping them is punted to government bureaucracies instead o

by pdonis 5y ago

If anything is sacrificing the well-being of poor Americans who deserve better, it is the fact that helping them is punted to government bureaucracies instead of being done by private individuals and charitable organizations who are both able and motivated to exercise much better judgment about who needs help and what help is needed than any government bureaucrat can possibly do.

mschuster91 5y ago
> instead of being done by private individuals and charitable organizations Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves help and who does not is feudalism, not democracy. We already have this issue with religious/-associated organizations denying help to LGBT or nationalist organizations denying help to non-Whites. Government-ran operations may have their deficits, yes, but at least they are mandated to be available equally to all persons meeting the democratically decided criteria!
- pdonis 5y ago
  > Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves help and who does not is feudalism, not democracy No, it isn't, it's freedom. Your definition of "democracy" is basically that if a 50.1% majority feels like it, they can commandeer your resources as they see fit. That is tyranny, not democracy. > We already have this issue with religious/-associated organizations denying help to LGBT or nationalist organizations denying help to non-Whites. If you think there are people who deserve help and are not being helped by existing organizations, you start an organization to help them. If a democratic majority agrees with you that those people deserve help and aren't getting it, you'll have no trouble getting donations. > Government-ran operations may have their deficits, yes, but at least they are mandated to be available equally to all persons meeting the democratically decided criteria! And if you think government-run programs actually do what the "democratically decided criteria" say they are supposed to do, I have some oceanfront property in Nebraska I'd like to sell you. Anyone who has actually had to deal with these government-run programs (as my wife and I have for years, both on behalf of friends who are constantly getting the runaround from bureaucratic screw-ups and from my wife's experience as a social worker) will tell you that they are terrible at actually helping people.
  - op00to 5y ago
    > Your definition of "democracy" is basically that if a 50.1% majority feels like it, they can commandeer your resources as they see fit. That is tyranny, not democracy. You know neither tyranny or democracy.
jjoonathan 5y ago
Quite the opposite. Our instincts surrounding charity are to help when it won't directly hurt us -- but if everything is commoditized, all charity directly hurts us. A dollar we give to the poor today is a dollar we can't use to shelter our family on a future rainy day. Directly incentivizing against individual action and then insisting on individual action as the only path forward is a guaranteed recipe for continued failure -- which is exactly what we observe. This is a collective problem and collective action is the only viable path to solving it.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > A dollar we give to the poor today is a dollar we can't use to shelter our family on a future rainy day So is a dollar you pay in taxes, ostensibly to help the poor but in reality it won't (see my post elsewhere in this thread on government bureaucracies). At least if you spend the dollar directly on a poor person, you know it's going directly to that poor person. > Directly incentivizing against individual action The only thing doing that is the government--by taking away our money in taxes, whether we agree with how it's spent or not, the government is preventing us from spending it on things we believe are justified, such as charity. > continued failure -- which is exactly what we observe We observe continued failure because people think that they have already paid to help the poor, by paying taxes, but most of that money doesn't actually help the poor. If people understood that either they have to help the poor directly or the poor won't get helped, you'd see many more people actually helping instead of punting it to the government in the mistaken belief that the government will take care of it. > This is a collective problem This is the excuse every collectivist uses to commandeer other people's resources and then squander them. Basically, what you're saying is that you don't want to do the work yourself of helping the poor, so you'll outsource it to government bureaucrats. Who are even less motivated to actually help people than you are.
  - op00to 5y ago
    > government bureaucrats […] who are even less motivated to actually help people than you are Can you explain how those who work in government are less motivated to help others than those employed outside of government?

by pdonis 5y ago

mschuster91 5y ago

> instead of being done by private individuals and charitable organizations Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves help and who does not is feudalism, not democracy. We already have this issue with religious/-associated organizations denying help to LGBT or nationalist organizations denying help to non-Whites. Government-ran operations may have their deficits, yes, but at least they are mandated to be available equally to all persons meeting the democratically decided criteria!

pdonis 5y ago
> Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves help and who does not is feudalism, not democracy No, it isn't, it's freedom. Your definition of "democracy" is basically that if a 50.1% majority feels like it, they can commandeer your resources as they see fit. That is tyranny, not democracy. > We already have this issue with religious/-associated organizations denying help to LGBT or nationalist organizations denying help to non-Whites. If you think there are people who deserve help and are not being helped by existing organizations, you start an organization to help them. If a democratic majority agrees with you that those people deserve help and aren't getting it, you'll have no trouble getting donations. > Government-ran operations may have their deficits, yes, but at least they are mandated to be available equally to all persons meeting the democratically decided criteria! And if you think government-run programs actually do what the "democratically decided criteria" say they are supposed to do, I have some oceanfront property in Nebraska I'd like to sell you. Anyone who has actually had to deal with these government-run programs (as my wife and I have for years, both on behalf of friends who are constantly getting the runaround from bureaucratic screw-ups and from my wife's experience as a social worker) will tell you that they are terrible at actually helping people.
- op00to 5y ago
  > Your definition of "democracy" is basically that if a 50.1% majority feels like it, they can commandeer your resources as they see fit. That is tyranny, not democracy. You know neither tyranny or democracy.

jjoonathan 5y ago

Quite the opposite. Our instincts surrounding charity are to help when it won't directly hurt us -- but if everything is commoditized, all charity directly hurts us. A dollar we give to the poor today is a dollar we can't use to shelter our family on a future rainy day. Directly incentivizing against individual action and then insisting on individual action as the only path forward is a guaranteed recipe for continued failure -- which is exactly what we observe. This is a collective problem and collective action is the only viable path to solving it.

pdonis 5y ago
> A dollar we give to the poor today is a dollar we can't use to shelter our family on a future rainy day So is a dollar you pay in taxes, ostensibly to help the poor but in reality it won't (see my post elsewhere in this thread on government bureaucracies). At least if you spend the dollar directly on a poor person, you know it's going directly to that poor person. > Directly incentivizing against individual action The only thing doing that is the government--by taking away our money in taxes, whether we agree with how it's spent or not, the government is preventing us from spending it on things we believe are justified, such as charity. > continued failure -- which is exactly what we observe We observe continued failure because people think that they have already paid to help the poor, by paying taxes, but most of that money doesn't actually help the poor. If people understood that either they have to help the poor directly or the poor won't get helped, you'd see many more people actually helping instead of punting it to the government in the mistaken belief that the government will take care of it. > This is a collective problem This is the excuse every collectivist uses to commandeer other people's resources and then squander them. Basically, what you're saying is that you don't want to do the work yourself of helping the poor, so you'll outsource it to government bureaucrats. Who are even less motivated to actually help people than you are.
- op00to 5y ago
  > government bureaucrats […] who are even less motivated to actually help people than you are Can you explain how those who work in government are less motivated to help others than those employed outside of government?