|dev|null wrote on Oct 30
th, 2013 at 10:56am:
What if, instead of gambling with our livelihoods we co-operated and helped each, particularly those in need or less well-off than the majority? Why should some individuals be able to accumulate more wealth than they ever use or need at the expense of others who barely have enough to live on and must struggle all their lives?
What people forget is the whole point of voluntary trade for mutual benefit IS co-operation. The key points to make is that it is voluntary (free choice) and for mutually perceived benefit (win - win in eyes of the parties participating).
People also forget that wealth is accumulated a lot of times so someone can leave behind something for their children. An important thing that is overlooked is what comes in-between. During the process of the wealth accumulation, people invest to create wealth, they create the factories that give people products and jobs, not because they are exploiting workers but due to the division of labor, division of risk and time preference.
Charity was much more prevalent before the rise of the welfare state, who is going to be anywhere near as charitable now that the government taxes them to look after these people, why spend extra when it's being forcibly taken from to be forcibly charitable?
For arguments sake also, imagine 0 taxation, this would obviously mean things cost a lot less and people have more in the pocket from which to be charitable with. The failure the state makes with welfare is that they assess people with a general criteria, whereas charity, family, mutual aid and insurance etc all assess people depending in individual circumstance with individual information and the information of those around this person. Communities will always be able to provide aid more tailored to an individual than any central authority.
Welfare is just one more failure to "help the poor" by central authorities in their failed central planning of society. People don't seem to realize that the act of voluntary trade between individuals IE the market becomes multiplied by all the people participating, with close to 7 billion people all making decisions on both needs and wants that is a lot of information no central authority can have, when things are left to flow demand is able to be met. This is where people come up with the whole "the free market will fix it" because where there is demand there is opportunity, where there is free choice their is opportunity.
Humans need to be free to create opportunity and take advantage of opportunity. This is how you help people, by getting out of their way and the way of others so that people can interact with each other to satisfy their wants and need. The ONLY thing a government does at it's base is interfere with this process, it uses violent coercion to enforce restrictions, and funds itself through theft. Governments quite often do two things:
1. They release the blockage and allow the river of the market to flow and claim "we did that! we made that happen!" When all they did was release restriction
2. They steal from others forcibly and pay for something to get done, they claim the benefit of this for themselves, when A. It was the tax payers that paid for it, B. There are reasons why things don't get done C. They are now interfering with a spontaneous natural order, this disrupts the order and creates problems down the line.
There is this ridiculous assumption that because the government does it, ONLY the government can do it. I can't think of anything more naive than this thought....except maybe the whole "if we can just elect the right people to control the violent monopoly they will somehow know how to solve our complex social problems more than the people themselves".
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