Help responding to someone who likes social programs

Political Philosophy
1

I recently started a group on facebook, mostly just for fun but with a serious political flavor to it as well, and already I have wall posts that disagree with the group’s premise that I’m not sure how to respond to. I’m not as well-read on the political/economic side of Objectivism as I am on the ethics portion, and I’d like to get a response posted quickly, so if any of you would like to help me out I’d really appreciate it.

Group name & description:

Group Name:

I’m glad I’m alive, and therefore I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal

Type:

Just for Fun - Outlandish Statements

Description:

Because people with bleeding hearts die quickly. Of blood loss. But I like living.

This is a group for those who recognize that supporting others who don’t deserve it requires personal sacrifice akin to a form of suicide. Let’s laugh at those who are killing themselves for the sake of their worthless and/or thankless neighbors. Luckily for us, Darwin will eventually take care of them. Unluckily for us, until Darwin does his thing, they’re probably going to try to make us bleed alongside them.

Recent news: The governor of Massachusetts is trying to put a program in place that will allow all high school graduates to go to community college for ‘free.’ Of course, by ‘free’ he means that the taxpayers will pay to send them there. What he doesn’t realize is that putting such a program in place will drive out even more of the intelligent people in his state - the people who don’t want to be bled for the sake of people who can’t even work hard enough to put themselves through a cheap two-year school. Well, I’m out of this state as soon as I can leave, and good riddance.

This is the wall post that I’m having trouble with. I don’t entirely understand how a complete capitalist economy would take care of these problems, so I’m not sure how to respond.

If poor people aren’t paid enough or can’t afford essentials, then not allowing them to achieve their basic human needs using their talents hurts you. This hurts your economy. This hurts our country. Maybe they’re on their lazy asses hoping it’ll come to them on a silver platter or maybe they’re only talented enough to work a register at McDonalds with three kids at home. Historically, the larger the middle class, the more stable the nation. As the world’s only super power, we can afford to take care of our poor. However, it’s less likely that you should be the ones to do so, since chances are good you won’t be in the top 5% of the nation’s earners. I just urge anyone who thinks social programs are useless to do research about the stratification of wealth in the U.S.

Social programs funded by tax dollars, though they can be abused, often help to balance injustice done through the inequality of pay scales. If the poor don’t have their basic needs met, unrest grows, crime grows and the economy of the entire nation does worse. Inflation is rising faster than minimum wage and the stratification of wealth at the high end is so much greater than at the poor end. It’s shaped like an “L.” Some call it the L curve.

Thanks!

2

At the heart of any government-based social program is the issue of involuntary taxation. It does not help you to have your money forcible taken from you and spent on things that do not support your values. Social programs, in and of themselves, are not necessarily bad, it’s the funding of these programs that is at issue. Some social programs may well be helpful, but they are only proper (in a moral sense) if they come from voluntary funding.

Also, there is no “injustice” done by “pay scales”. The pay a person receives for their job is something they either accept, reject, or negotiate with their employer. It is neither to your benefit nor your responsibility to make equitable some ill-perceived inequity in pay for other people.

Additionally notice that the argument rests on the notion that we should give free stuff to people so that they won’t commit crime. This is otherwise called blackmail. I don’t care if crime would (theoretically) go up, it’s still not right to steal from me to give to someone else just so they won’t commit crime.

3

Social programs, in and of themselves, are not necessarily bad, it’s the funding of these programs that are at issue.

That, and the fact that most government programs are wasteful to a larger degree than private programs.

4

That, and the fact that most government programs are wasteful to a larger degree than private programs.

Apparently you were not privy to the workings of General Motors back during the 60s and 70s. The kind of crap that happened in middle and upper management matches any stupidity done by the government.

GM’s decline and fall is a consequence of its burocratic extremities.

Bob Kolker

5

MiseLeigh, The fundamental approach the poster takes is this: support it because it is good for you. He’s trying to appeal to your self-interest. So, this creates two ways to respond:

  1. explain why it is not in your self-interest
  2. ask how he presumes to force you to use his government to force you to act in what he deems to be in your self-interest
6

Apparently you were not privy to the workings of General Motors back during the 60s and 70s.

He said most, not all. One company as an example doesn’t counter that.

7

QUOTE(D @ Jun 15 2007, 02:39 PM) That, and the fact that most government programs are wasteful to a larger degree than private programs.

Apparently you were not privy to the workings of General Motors back during the 60s and 70s. The kind of crap that happened in middle and upper management matches any stupidity done by the government.

GM’s decline and fall is a consequence of its burocratic extremities.

Bob Kolker

I am sure you can find instances of badly run private companies but such cases do not negate the rule stated by D’kian. Private sector does things more efficiently than public sector. Socialism, if fully implemented, leads to nothing but starvation.

What is your purpose on this forum?

8

Was GM bailed out by tax money? If not, then it paid for its own mistakes. When a government program goes bad, the usual solution is to give it more money.

And, yes, bureaucracy is not limited to government. Ask anyone who’s ever attended private school or tried to collect on any insurance policy. But private companies cannot afford to become jobs programs for unemployable bureaucrats the way government agencies can.

Mind you, companies that try to be mini welfare states to their employees also tend to wind up in trouble. Witness the mess most large company pension funds are finding themselves in these days, and the negative influence company health insurance has had on healthcare practices (though the latter is more a mixed bag that includes government actions and practices)

another problem with welfare is that it makes people dependent. This is just as true if the benefactor is public or private.

Finally, as RationalBiker and Sophia pointed out, I did say “most.” Not only do you find companies that engage in disastrous practices, but some government programs are splendid and efficient, at least from time to time. Just look at the Department of Defense, and Apollo was astonishing even if it cost a lot of money. Unfortunately the armed forces often find themselves constrained by politicians, and merely reaching the Moon was seen as an end in itself rather than as a first step in space exploration (in a way this was fortunate, but in every way it was shortsighted).

9

Miseleigh, you might want to explain how these programs actually hurt the poor more then they help. For example, rent control sets the prices of rent artificially low and this destroys the economic incentives to actually provide good apartments. Your investment won’t pay off if you spend 1,000,000 on an apartment building only to have it cost 2 million to maintain and only make a fourth of that due to the artificially low cost of buying the apartment. Also, if everyone pays the same price for the place, why would you spend extra money trying to make them nicer? Get better appliances, more room etc etc… you won’t get your money back. It will be like paying for a meal at McDonalds and getting handed snowcrab, bison and sharkfin soup. Eventually you’ll just run out of money.

10

As an Objectivist, you’re aware that proper the order of development is ethics, politics, economics? Go on that basis.

In ethics, stand up for rational self-interest. Point out that people’s lives are their own, that they are entitled to enjoy the full fruits of their own efforts irrespective of what others want or need. Then point out that as people’s lives are their own they are also their own responsibility, and that just as they are entitled to the fruits of their moral behaviour they are required to bear the consequences of their own immoral behaviour. Then point out that it is flat wrong to initiate force because it is counterproductive. So far you already know this well, da?

In politics, point out that the only just means of people to deal with each other is to trade values (both economic and not) if they can come to mutually beneficial agreement or to go separate ways in peace if no agreement can be reached. When we live in substantial organised societies this culminates in formal specification of our rights, which again stand independent of what others want or need. Then point out that the only way rights can be violated is through the initiation of force, which as was indicated in ethics is actually counterproductive even for the one doing the initiation.

Now it is time to apply it to economics. Point out that the conclusion of the above is that there is no such thing as a clash of interests between men. The foundation and justification of proper laissez-faire capitalism is that it is the consequence of respect for our individual rights, and philosophy proves that departure from it will be destructive. Irrespective of someone’s dire need, in an ordinary social context, any initiation of force makes all concerned worse off, including the initiator who superficially gets away with loot. What economics does - and you wont be able to show this on a simple forum - is concretise just how beneficial laissez-faire is, and how destructive are departures from it. What you can say is that capitalism IS practical and is so because it is moral as indicated above, and that as economies progress a good explanation of economics theories will concretise how practical a proper morality is in the social context and how impractical that immorality is.

Sum it up with the following: simultaneously - and stress that word - people are entirely justified in being totally self-interested irrespective of others’ plight, and if this is enshrined in the principles of human action then it actually makes everyone better off. The first takes moral priority, and as the moral is the practical the second follows as a necessary consequence of the first. Concretise this for the kinds of objections you reported by noting that any individual’s plight in our world will have some combination of two sources, both being types of immorality. In terms of private morality, tell them that it is not other people’s responsibility to bear the burden of someone else’s immorality. For example, people whose height of talents takes them only to the back of a fast food restaraunt are highly immoral for then having children they cannot afford to raise properly. In terms of public respect for rights, tell them that various departures from laissez-faire capitalism as exist today are making people’s lives difficult. For example, taxes raise the cost of living even when the taxes are supposedly not levied on the poor, regulations creates a loss of value that could have been used to pay people real incomes with, and so on.

All this is properly explained in hundreds of thousands of words. There’s no way on earth it will be convincing to anyone who is not already sympathetic towards it and has been thinking about it for aeons. But, on a simple forum, that’s as much as you can do unless you want to spend massive amounts of time writing up a skeleton text explaining it - which will totally detract from it being a ‘fun forum.’ What you can do is show the above, reworded and expanded as you like, and point out this paragraph while suggesting a reading and listening list of Objectivist philosophy and Objectivist economists (eg Dr Ridpath, Mr Salsman). Do not expect to have anyone ‘see the light,’ but you can expect to find people who honestly want to find the light and you can help point out what direction it is in.

Btw, that curve is the Lorenz Curve.

JJM

11

Apparently you were not privy to the workings of General Motors back during the 60s and 70s. The kind of crap that happened in middle and upper management matches any stupidity done by the government.

GM’s decline and fall is a consequence of its burocratic extremities.

Bob Kolker

GM’s decline is also the result of government intervention and regulation of the auto industry. For the failing domestic auto companies, there is plenty of blame to go around. Management, labor and government all had a hand in the current disaster that is looming over Detroit.

12

Thanks all, that was really helpful, both to clarify it in my own mind as well as enable me to put up something of a defense for economic individual rights. Hopefully I can explain it well, too… :stuck_out_tongue: