Kneejerk Objection No. 3:
"But isn't that being totally uncaring about...(choose) the children, the elderly, the poor, the destitute, the sick, the homeless, the hapless, the hopeless, etc. etc. etc. ... ?"
Answer to No. 3: 
Not at all. You would have to accept the false choice: "Either GOVERNMENT does it OR it doesn't get done."

We don't accept that at all, and you shouldn't either. 
The history of America shows that even when this was a much poorer country, everyone in need was taken care of through non-governmental efforts, thousands upon thousands of charities, and NO RESTRICTIONS ON LIVE-IN SERVANTS (Do you really think George Washington Carver would have turned out to be the scientist he did if he'd grown up in the projects instead of in the home of the middle-class family his mother worked for? Hmmmmmm? Do you REALLY think our modern welfare state is REALLY humane? Hmmmmm?)

In fact, we point out WHEN government does it, it does it with a lot of theft and coercion, it does it badly, it has innumerable unintended consequences not the least of which is slowing down all aspects of economic growth (including  job creation for criminey sake!), it sets up huge new pressure groups with a vested interest in continuing forever whatever it is that is being done badly, and it throws a huge wet blanket of discouragement on thousands of efforts to take care of these challenges and concerns in the private sector. 

Besides, we could ascribe malevolent motives to your advocating the welfare state, saying you don't care about all the millions of families which you've thereby forced into relying on two incomes where one used to do, if not into total financial ruin and family breakup as a result. And to all the owners of marginal small businesses who can't make it any more. But we won't.

If you really cared about a certain issue or charity, you'd pick up the phone and get it organized or start dialling for dollars as the policemen's charities do. If you're too damn lazy to do that, then stop posing as a do-gooder, because YOU'RE NOT ONE, and voting for thieves does NOT make you one; it just makes you to an accessory to a crime*.

"Politicians, Like Bombers, Seldom See Their Victims..." -- Donald Boudreaux

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master." -- George Washington 
.
Private Means, 
Public Ends

Spotlight on Charity & Welfare
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

DON'T forget, "It is FORCE"
"While it would be silly and ungracious to insist that intelligent deliberation on public issues is nowhere found in modern communities, it would be naive to imagine that wise deliberation can survive the constant pounding from self-interested political behavior. Benevolence in public institutions has a short half-life no matter how noble its original intentions." and "Once [a] program is in place, its day-to-day administration falls into the hands of a professional cadre besieged by powerful interest groups whose influence grows as public interest wanes. . . . A slow process of disintegration and reconfiguration sets in, transforming and expanding a program from within." -- Richard A. Epstein, Principles for a Free Society
 
THE  "GOVERNMENT=SOCIETY"  FALLACY
"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." 
                             -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all."                  -- Frederic Bastiat, ca. 1837 
"Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help."
                       -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
 "People constantly speak of  'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men." 
                     -- H.L. Mencken
"Public Choice theory, if nothing else, has taught economists to consider the state as it is, not as it should be in a dream world: the state is a potential tyrant, not a benevolent God."    -- Pierre Lemieux
"The people = government doctrine is equivalent to political infantilism — an agreement to pretend that the citizen's wishes animate each restriction or exaction inflicted upon him."    -- James Bovard
"We must, therefore, emphasize that 'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us.' The government does not in any accurate sense 'represent' the majority of the people.  But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.  No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that 'we  are all part of one another,' must be permitted to obscure this basic fact." 
-- Murray N. Rothbard in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays (Auburn: Mises Institute, 2000 [1974]), pp. 55-88. extensively quoted HERE
Now, about Generosity...


 
the Vast Scholarship 
of Liberty
 
 
 

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