My anti-blogger, Adam, had an interesting point to make in the comments of another post, but I thought it deserved front-page discussion:
Government is the worst tool to use to solve society’s problems. Have you ever wondered what private people could do if you actually let them keep more of their money so they could give more.
What makes you think that if after 40 years of big government socialism in social affairs, we still have all these problems, that more of the same will yield a better result. Does France or Sweden or Germany have no poverty with all of their government programs?
Christ himself said, “The poor you have with you always.” Doesn’t mean you don’t do anything, but you’re never going to eliminate it.
Yes, I have thought about what people would do if free from government taxation. A few good people who already give to charity would give a little more and the rest of the greedy bastards would keep the extra windfall for themselves, like they already do.
This is the problem I have with libertarianism. It assumes that free of government interference, people will act with Christian kindness and give freely to help the less fortunate. History proves otherwise. People are rational actors who always (on the whole) act with their own best interests in mind. As a mob, they are individually anonymous and rarely act to help others (c.f., Kitty Genovese).
The worker with some extra dough wants a plasma screen TV, the manager with some extra dough wants another Mercedes, the CEO with some extra dough wants a Lear Jet. Even as things are now, many corporations and wealthy individuals are giving to charity as a tax write-off, not from altruism.
Republicans and Libertarians always look at government as if it is some separate “them”, instead of “us”. “We the People”, remember? Government is The People banding together for mutual protection, to set the rule of law, and to help each other.
If you want to start comparing the social ills of France, Germany, or Sweden to the United States, I’ll be glad to dig up statistics on…
- infant mortality (we trail Communist Cuba and almost every “socialist” country in the world.)
- childhood poverty (pg 6) (once again, way behind most of the “socialist” countries, twice as bad as most of them),
- adult healthcare, (so many stats, but I figure the overall goal of healthcare is life expectancy, where we once again trail those “socialists” in France, Germany, and Sweden… but we tied Luxembourg!)
- homelessness (growing and growing in Bush’s America),
- drug use (US rates higher than all those European Socialists, except the UK, which emulates our policies. The Netherlands, with the most liberal drug policies, has some of the lowest rates of drug use.)
… certainly no society can ever be rid of these things, but why shouldn’t society (government) try to ameliorate these things? It looks like some of those “socialist” countries have had success where we have fallen short of our Christian ideals.
But, to be fair, a truly libertarian system has yet to exist, so how can I know for sure that it wouldn’t work? This is yet another reason a semi-seriously advocate for the secession of Jesusland. The Red States have already taken more than their fair share of Blue State tax money. Let’s let them be their own country and let them set up the no tax libertarian faith-based paradise. Meanwhile, we’ll set up our high tax socialist nanny-state paradise. Then after fifty years we can compare the results.
