The Absurd Report

It is no news to anyone that the world can often be unfair, that families lack the things they need and that people suffer and die unnecessarily in ways that could be avoided. The fundamental question is do we respond to such situations by working together on an individual and social level, giving donations to, participating in, and creating organizations that can help– or do we try to solve the problem with the white elephant government programs approach of socialism?

The government centralized approach cannot be defended on the grounds of efficiency, because government programs are notoriously inefficient. They cannot be defended on the grounds of fairness, as a single giant program is far more likely to marginalize recipients with no other recourse than a diverse variety of programs. They cannot be defended on financial
grounds, as government programs are more likely to run out of money, and less likely to have a real plan for dealing with resource shortfalls. And ultimately government programs draw their funding from the very same people who fund independent programs. Yet they cannot use that money better or more efficiently.

The only defense for government programs is that they are comprehensive and mandatory. People can choose whether to contribute to charity, but they cannot choose to pay their taxes. This brings the element of wealth redistribution to the table, transforming voluntary contributions into mandatory entitlements. (Which this might seem like a way to maintaining funding sources, this only works until the government itself runs out of money, which Federal social spending programs are set to do.) But the real appeal of socialism is its supposed comprehensiveness. Socialism for the public is supposed to be a Fire and Forget sort of charity. Pay more taxes and the social problems are gone… the only problem is that they are not actually gone.

Read more from Sultan Knish.Blogspot.com

1 Comment »

Trackback URI | Comments RSS