Saturday, August 24, 2019

A Reply to a QUORA Comment About a Private Safety Net


A Reply to a QUORA Comment About a Private Safety Net 

In response to my answer on the QUORA question ‘If we cut out welfare and allowed capitalism to take its course, would people's basic needs eventually be fully met by the free market?’, correspondent Miguel Valdespino commented: “Why do you think a private safety net will work now when it didn’t work in the past? How do you keep people from falling through the cracks?”

My reply to Miguel:

“Didn’t work”? By what standard? To some, what works is getting as many people hooked on dependence as possible. To others, what works is getting as many people off of dependence and back on their own feet as quickly as possible. To still others, what works is based on the individual giver’s judgement as to the worthiness of the receiver. To still others, what works is what one can afford to give. The term “work” in this context is too highly indeterminate to be of any use. No one can have the knowledge of the millions upon millions of individual welfare cases to know what’s working in each case. If you can’t do that, you can’t possibly make overall judgements. That’s why, as a practical matter, charity should be private, local, individual, and voluntary.

What’s true is that, though life was hard by today’s standards, no one ever “starved in the streets” in America. Private anti-poverty efforts grew steadily as prosperity spread and the general standard of living surged under free market capitalism. The creation of the welfare state was driven by ideology, not practicality. Before the welfare state, free Americans found many inventive ways to help people out. For example, before Government intervened in health care, doctors regularly charged wealthy patients more to subsidize lower prices for workers and free care for the indigent. Historian Walter I. Trattner, himself heavily biased toward welfare statism, nonetheless documents how private charity and mutual aid or fraternal societies dominated anti-poverty efforts and were widely available before the welfare state. "In fact,” Trattner reports, "so rapidly did private agencies multiply [after the Civil War] that before long America's larger cities had what to many people was an embarrassing number of them. Charity directories took as many as 100 pages to list and describe the numerous voluntary agencies that sought to alleviate misery, and combat every imaginable emergency." The state had a small role. But “the vast majority looked first” to private help--and generally found it. In fact, “many charity workers . . . were horrified by this ‘excess’ of relief,” leading to the rise of private agencies specifically designed to promote cooperation and efficiency among the private charities. (page 90-93)

As far as people “falling through the cracks,” no “safety net” will “catch” everyone in need. Such people exist today, despite the gargantuan government welfare state--e.g., California’s “homeless crises”. It’s up to each of us to decide what, if anything, to do for people needing help, if and when we encounter them. 

Regardless of how you feel about our current government-enforced system, Miguel, I believe it is simply wrong to say that a private safety net didn’t “work” in the past. Whatever is meant by “work”--a highly subjective and debatable concept--a private safety net did exist, was substantial and widely available, and can be again. By the judgement of the people directly involved, it did work. Otherwise, why participate? Fundamentally, however, the issue is moral. Should politicians be forcing private citizens to fund and/or perform charity and welfare, according to the politicians’ standards? No. Government and law should never be an instrument for anyone to force their values and agenda on unwilling others. Every individual has a moral right to act on their own judgement, including to judge for themselves when, how, whom, and in what capacity to help others out. Need doesn’t give anyone an automatic moral or legitimate legal claim on the lives, liberties, or property of others. Society needs a safety net, but only one that is private and voluntary can legitimately be said to work. 

Thanks.

For the record, Miguel reacted to my reply. Note that Miguel fails to address the moral aspect, which I highlighted as the main point. If private charity has the problems he claims, why are the solutions not to be addressed by private rights-respecting means? What right does he have to use the government’s legal coercion to force his solutions on everyone else? Miguel doesn’t answer. He also falls back on the classic statist line that freedom is “inefficient” so the efforts of private individuals must be consolidated or streamlined by government force. I gave him the last word, as my reply would be mainly repeating myself.

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