Bitcoin Forum

Hey everyone,

I was pondering. What do you think a Bitcoin welfare system would look like? Bitcoiners are pigeonholed as anarchists and libertarians and thus against welfare, but I don't think "welfare" and the "state" necessarily must be conjoined. In other words, what is p2p welfare?

I pondered this here: https://www.goldsilverbitcoin.com/?p=1851


But thought a discussion would be great.

I had heard by Hearn that one day there will a little plugin where we can donate to websites we like (towards translating them, etc.). I wonder if this can be directed at individuals...

In fractal form, individuals who know others who need help could directly provide aid to that individual to get back on their feet. These fractals would usually start between family members and close friends, and represents a more efficient way of spreading capital to those "in need" than the current third party arbitrage system of welfare in which monumental resources are taken off the top.

It should be called basic income, not welfare.

Hold on there,

I'm libertarian but I'm not against welfare. I think the current system in my country is broken but I'm not against a system where the state helps those who genuinely need assistance. That assistance though needs to come with a plan for those who are able to work to actually get what they need (education, job training, whatever) to start working.

I believe it's much to early in the development of bitcoin to think about such a system, but, well, I'm totally against it. Bitcoin has not been created for this. Better ask the social security (if it can survive, which I doubt) to pay benefits in bitcoins.

What you're talking about is philanthropy, not welfare. The distinction being the ability of the giver to *willingly* give to the cause of his/her choice.

I think bitcoin charities are a great idea, and I'd love to see bitcoiners use their money to help people. But let's not call it "welfare".

and every greedy bugger will proclaim they are dirt poor. welfare scammers are already rampant in most countries, imagine the extent in the pseudonymous crowd.

i think those that have the internet have some form of income coming in, thus a welfare campaign is not actually required for the bitcoin crowd. because bitcoin will never overtake a government, it will only work along side it.

the only possible time a welfare system for bitcoin would be required is if a GENUINE non governed island was created.

that said i am all for philanthropy and charity. but welfare is not something the community should concentrate on

This +1. Any "welfare" should be freely and voluntarily given, not taken and distributed by force.

^this

Sorry there is nothing libertarian about the confiscation and redistribution of private property by the state under the threat of violence.

Don't take it the wrong way but if you can't realize the obvious logical fallacy then you are merely "libretarian" in name only.  Because  it is the "cool, edgy, nonconformist" shade of Republican.

You are assuming welfare funding has to be by force. If churches collect and spend voluntarily, I would still call this welfare. And as a libertarian, this is OK. Same can be said about "Foreign Aid", we all assume this is the government spending the people's money against their wishes. People from one country helping those of another voluntarily is still foreign aid.

I am not assuming anything he used the word "STATE".  Giving donation to a church who uses that funds to give meals to the homeless for example doesn't involve the state.  I wouldn't call it welfare I would call it charity but that wasn't the point, read the post I responded to again and try to fit your tortured definition to it.

Yea, that's the problem with libertarians.

They can't except any kind of walfare which lies beyond working or begging ... a little share of the wealth of the society should be everyones right, no matter, how usefull he or she is in senses of economy. But libertarias just see "violence" and "force" and so on, they don't see the miserable and factual deeply unfree state of someone having to beg for his own survival living inside an absurd wealth economy. So, this is it. I hate controll and I hate it to go to any institution of the state, but I am not with liberatarian. ++

Sorry, I will maybe tomorrow post a suggestion about bitcoin welfare economy ... maybe :)

a better way to correct the problems that welfare is supposedly intended to correct is for society at large to recognize that a person who is literally about to die of starvation through no fault of his own has a better claim on the food in is proximity than the person who grew it assuming the person who grew it is not in a similar predicament.

this would force grocery stores and restaurants to provide some form of local starvation safety net, probably in the form of a soup kitchen, inorder for them to be able to apprehend shop lifters with out fear of litigation. the cost of these soup kitchens would then be built into the prices at the grocery store. all without invoking the violence of the state.

replace a few words to apply the same argument to shelter, water and MAYBE some cheaper forms of antibiotics

If you are asking about voluntary welfare (vs. forced welfare), it is called insurance and/or charity. There is nothing new. You setup your own rules on how you distribute income and those who like them and like how you do your job, will give you money.

"Welfare" without violence is nothing different from any social activity. It has special name only because there is coercion which must be hidden under promise of "well being for human beings".

In voluntary community (e.g. in anonymous networks where kicking ass is impossible), such words as "welfare", "social security", "government", "law" lose any original meaning and purpose. You just have agreements (contracts), reputation, risks, demand and supply of services. Even "for-profit" and "non-profit" distinction is meaningless if you don't have taxes to pay.

In an anarchic society, chances are very good that the security/insurance companies that shopkeepers pay to keep criminals out would provide this safety net because stopping people from going hungry and turning to crime would be in the interests of the clients they service as well as their bottom line. Less claims mean less paperwork and staffing expenses for them, less broken into properties, less forensics, less repairs... the list just keeps going on, as well as the ability to advertise the fact they do give something back to the community on top of the services people are happy to pay for.

Some asshole by where I live just sits on a ledge by the sidewalk asking for change all day. I finally told him that for all I have to go through, I should be asking him for change.

Most people on welfare are just lazy and don't want to work, but if you really were legitimately down on your luck, I know I would help you out, and I know others would too.

very well said. i couldn't agree more.

I agree, everyone should have the ability to share in the wealth.  However, unless you can describe a system in which the wealth can be redistributed more evenly among the people without resorting to simply taking the money out of one man's account and putting it into another, I want no part in it.  Problem with libertarians, they consider all people to be people, equally, no matter their wealth or occupation.  The system you desire is completely against freedom; the successful should not be punished by being forced to help the poor.  If the successful choose not to help the poor, then blame the successful for being stingy, but to seek help from a bully to force the successful in giving you cash, for whatever reason that may be, is just completely undesirable.  Why do anything, knowing those who do at least something can pay for me to live?

Imagine: you live with three other people.  You and two people work.  The fourth guy doesn't, for whatever reason.  While you and the other two toil away, the fourth guy lounges, knowing you three have everything covered, and knowing that the fifth guy, who owns the home you live in, has his back.

...the end.  That's the welfare state.  What, exactly, is the appeal to forcing someone to be charitable (oxymoron, but bear with me), than simply allowing someone to be charitable?  The answer is simple: you must be the fourth guy.

I understand that you must sometimes be the fourth guy--perhaps you were seriously injured and cannot make a normal living.  But that's tough luck.  If family and friends cannot, or will not, support you, what makes you think I can?  Or even want to?  If I wanted to, I would--if you really needed the help and I just flat out liked your character, I would do what I could to help you.  If I don't, then I really don't--why force me?  There is no sympathy for the fourth guy, in this scenario, who wants people who don't want to take care of him to take care of him, and I'd rather not live with a person who takes without asking.  You live in my home for free and eat my food and watch my TV and expect it all without remittance--does this sound swell to you?  We can always practice the welfare state, if you're so inclined; give me your address and I'll move right on in, and I expect dinner on the table the moment I get there.

That's the problem. If you want, and if you like my charakter. I think the constitution gives anyone the right to participate in the society, for least to some degree, without to need someone to like his charakter. That would be begging, and I think - I hope - we managed to get over this kind of welfare-society.

To disclose this: I never used the welfare-state and I think I never will. Even if I live worse than people using welfare-state and scamming the state, i. E. by using two flats as a couple (yea, german welfare state pays unemployed couples for having each an own flat - absurd) - and I am not happy with this. I also hate it to pay every month taxes and health insurance, and when I go to the dentis, I have to pay again for it.

But I don't prefer to live in a society where someone who needs help needs other people to like his charakter.


It's no you, especially, it's the society. In the same way you could ask: If family and friends can't teach you - can't build you a road - can't protect you against criminals - why should I can? I pay taxes, and a little share of it goes to unemployed / injured / old / lazy / stupid (too stupid too earn money) ... I am more concerned about the thousands of beaurocrats which are between me and them ...


Why? Cause you want to be free for real, you don't want to make your living be going to the "Amt", by waiting in a people-snake, sitting, till the display shows your number, being spyed out from the "Amt", have to disclose your complete financial circumstances - just for sitting at home, beeing still poor, be not usefull, have no occupation, which makes you proud for your talents and brings you in contact to other people ... I for myself want to make my living by myself, as I said, before going to the "Amt" I would take every job I could get or ask my family to help ...

I think we have a different glance on judging the success of a society: You want a society to be good to the successfull, I want a society to be good for the miserables ...

Granted this is shitty but you would seek to remedy this problem of people needing to be liked inorder to receive aid by having peaceful people threatened with violence? You are just replacing one problem with a new and greater problem. You are replacing the problem of people needing to be liked in order to receive help with the problem of people waving guns all over the place and threatening to murder each other.

FAIL. It's that kind of stupidity that has created the police state we have today.

be gentle. hes trying and he doesnt strike me as intellectually dishonest or dumb. he just needs to work through it all. we all had to work through years and years of programming.

This.  The concept of a state is a great "abstraction".  If your neighbor needed money (legitimately needed money say his wife had cancer) almost all people would not find it ok to use violence to convince other people in the neighborhood that they "should" help the neighbor with a sick wife.  Now if the neighbor held a meeting a voted 12 to 7 that everyone should give $10,000 to the neighbor with a sick wife under the threat of violence most people probably still not find this "ok".  The number is likely higher than the first example but still low.

However somehow when the neighborhood is expanded to be 300 million people and millions of votes the idea that violence can be used to force people to do "the right thing" is suddenly "ok" for a whole lot of people.  It is an obvious logical fallacy.  Someone who is not ok with personally using violence to force people to "do the right thing" and not comfortable with the majority of a small group deciding the same thing shouldn't be ok with the state doing it either.

However that is the power of the state.  The violence is indirect.  Most people never see the violence because most people comply with the will of the state.  This indirect threat of violence is easier to justify.

I like this argument :)

And I don't like this argument, because it's none:


You say: taxes are the same as: someone comes to your house with a weapon and says: Give me 46 percent of your monthly income. Like the mafia. Right? I accept this point of view, I had long discussions with a friend who is obsessed with austrian economics and at the end I proofed myself learnable. But lets walk on.


I like this, too, and I promise to think about it. Very good explanation of the state.

There's so much I hate about the state. But there are also some things I like about the state. One of it is the welfare.

And, as I said: its against the law of humanity when people have to beg or to enslave themselves or to run a rat-race to get what they need to survive. (as long as society is wealthy enough to prevent this).

You claim the state acts like any criminal organizations. But you didn't claim how this could be prevented without the welfare state.

I am open for ideas. But I never met one which convinced me, and as a historian I did look at many societies in the past which had no welfare-state. And the result has always been the same. (except of tribal societies, but this door has been closed a long time ago)

What "law of humanity"?  If my neighbor is suffering and needs money for food, and I have compassion for my neighbor and want to help him, do I have the authority under the "law of humanity" to force you to give him money and/or food? 

good question. Things are more brutal when you see things personal without the abstraction of the state, that's true.

But I would say: if our neighbour is out of food and money and I don't give him something, I violate against the law of humanity. If I am the only one able to spend something for him and he comes to me and asks for food and I say: Go to your knees and beg, beg beg beg - or: I don't like your face, you are too ugly to deserve food - than the law of humanity would enforce you help, even if you would have to violate my freedom.

I also would say: if my neighbour is starving and I don't help him without conditions, but let him beg or clean my shoes or make him to underthrow himself under my normative preference - I act against his freedom. And I would also say: This is a deeper violation of freedom than if you would force me to help. But I know, this is not the libertarian conception of freedom ... 

You have to accept that there are differences between you yourself as an individual helping the less fortunate, and compelling someone else under threat of law to help the less fortunate.  Whatever moral obligations you have to help the poor, those obligations do not grant you the right to take and distribute other peoples' property as you see fit.


So can I conclude from your thoughts here that the poor have the freedom to obtain help by relieving you of your property?  If they have a claim to your property because they need help, I have to ask, who has the higher claim?  Do you have the ultimate claim to your own property, or do the poor have a higher claim to your property, because if you don't allow them to have it, by your own admission you're violating their freedom?

I agree with everyone who feels it should be down to the individual where the money they earn goes, in my opinion welfare is just a way for government to exert control over the populace.

check out post number 13. I think it is a blue print for solving every one of the problems you outlined in this comment with out any need for the violence of the state. tell me what you think.

not all libertarians are hard line denotological rights advocates. some of us recognize the need for trade offs between conflicting freedoms (the freedom to own the products of your labor and the freedom to not starve to death as a result of unfortunate circumstances, as an example) but do not see it as a good argument in favor of the state.

I think this sums it up nicely, the same principles of charity can be applied to general welfare as i think healthcare and welfare should go hand in hand, its from the book Practical Anarchy by Stefan Molyneux.

We certainly want to help the unfortunate, but we do not wish to enable and subsidize bad
decisions – this is only part of the complexity involved in helping others – which a statist society
cannot distinguish or deal with at all.
If society gave everything that a poor person could possibly require in order to live comfortably,
that would scarcely reduce the numbers of poor people, but would rather increase them
considerably. On the other hand, the children of poor people are scarcely responsible for any bad
decisions their parents may have made – however, if charities give a lot of money to poor people
with children, more poor people will tend to have more children, which will only increase poverty.
This balancing act is one of the enormous and complex challenges of true charity – and yet another
reason why a violent monopoly will never end up helping the poor in any substantive or permanent
manner.
When it comes to health care, there is no doubt whatsoever that the majority of people care about
the provision of health care for those who cannot afford it. At a hospital I visited recently, I saw a
placard on the wall thanking the five thousand volunteers who helped run the place.
Doctors as a whole will always treat someone who comes with an immediate injury, whether they
can pay or not. If we assume that medical treatments for the genuinely deserving and needy poor
would consume about ten percent of general health care spending, then we can be completely
certain that this amount of money would be donated by concerned individuals, either in time or
money. We can be certain of this because we know of a large number of religious organizations that
require ten percent of people’s total income – twenty percent in fact, since this is pretax income –
and people are quite happy to pay that.
Thus the medical needs of the poor would be entirely taken care of in a free society through charity
and pro bono work. Charities would also compete to provide the most effective care for the poor, in
order to gain the most donations. I would certainly prefer to give my money to an organization that
was best able to create and provide sustainable health practices and medical treatments for the
poor.
In this way, not only would the self-interest of doctors, insurance companies and customers be
aligned – but also the self-interest of donators, charities and the poor they serve.
In a stateless society, the poor will be genuinely served by a far better system, composed of those
whose self-interest is directly aligned with the health of the poor.
As has been shown over and over again, throughout history and across the world, benevolent
selfinterest, enhanced by free association and voluntary competition, is the only way to create
sustainable compassion within society.
I am aware that I have not answered all possible objections to the question of how health care is
provided in a free society. I am also aware that the possibility always exists that people can “fall
through the cracks,” or that charities could conceivably make mistakes, and either fund the wrong
people, or fail to fund the right people.
Once more, this possibility of corruption and/or error is often considered to be an airtight
argument against anarchy, when in fact it is an airtight argument for anarchy, and against statism.

Competition and voluntarism are the only known methodologies for repairing and opposing the
inevitable errors and corruptions that constantly creep into human relations. The fact that human
beings can make mistakes – and are always susceptible to corruption – is exactly why they should
never be given a monopoly power of violence over others.
When an entrepreneur – whether charitable or for-profit – makes a mistake by failing to provide
value – others will immediately rush in to provide the missing benefit. It is this constant process of
challenge and competition that allows the best solutions to be consistently discovered and
reinvented in an ever-changing world.

I don't want to promote the state. Really. I don't feel good to defense it against your arguments. Also I have to repeat, that these are very good and that you make me hating it a bit more to spend about 25 percent of my income to the state (I am lucky, artistic freelance, good conditions, my parents spend about 50 percent)

But the welfare is one of the reasons reconsiling me with it and I did never understand why the libertarians with their wise perspective to freedom and the state always argument against it. When I see a problem with it it is bureaucracy (I want to spend for the poor, not for the clerks in the office) and controll (financial controll and also the controll of the poor when receiving the welfare).

In the past we had strong family ties. Welfare was mostly a family thing. Most people help their family when they have problems, but not a stranger. While the family option was the only option to receive welfare, anybody had to subdue under the authority of the family. I for myself welcome it that we did free ourselves from tight family boundaries. But with this freedom come problems. I think a anonymous and unconditional right to receive some basic welfare is a good solution. This is what the welfare state does. It frees people from dependencies.

If there would be, as the OP proposed, an idea, how bitcoin could help to this welfare in a better and freeer way, it would give me one more reason to love Bitcoin. If the internet is information and Bitcoin is transaction, we really would have great possibilities to overcome this rotten system of sharing.

but let me continue my role as the welfare-states-supporter:


I like the approach. But I want to consider some possible problems: economical: food prizes will rise in poor town, stimulating poeple to use the soup-kittchen, even if they are not poor. Volume of spended food increases - prizes rise again - more people use it ... controll: how to proof someone's starving? When he's meagered to the bones? That's a high price to pay.

Another fundamental argument about soup-kittchen: in one of my favorite german magazines, telepolis (one of very less not mainstream-polluted media) there was a discussion about soup-kittchens. A social scientist complaint about their increasing number. My first thought was: Why does he complain? Soup-Kittchens do good, they help. But then, after some discussion, I had to accept this principle argument: The poor have the right by constitution to eat. They should not need eleemosynary. They should not need to beg. Not in societies as wealthy as germany or the USA.

btw: if someone forces the shop-owners by violence to spend some account of his food to the poor and by this he forces indirectly the consumer to pay a higher price for the food - where the difference to the tax-based-welfare-state?


I don't think. This peace has some lacks in logic.


Never confuse an overstatement with an argument. Nobody talks about "giving them everything the require to live comfortably.


Huuuu ... The "Sarrazin"-Thesis. The Zombie-Invasion of the poor. Even if there's a clue - for me it is too close to eugenetics. Nobody has the right to dictate what's liveworth. Maybe cause I am german and in the past my glorious nation made the attempt to eradicate groups of people considered as harmfull or useless. Everyone has the right to life. In the same account.


Thus we have the welfare state. No majority of the people think we need PRISM, no majority think we have to prohibit smoking in bars, no majority thinks politicans need a very high pension, no majority thinks we need war, no majority thinks we need a "Meldepflicht", no majority thinks we need the "Öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk", no majority thinks we need - and so on. Even no majority thinks we need historians or the CERN. Welfare is one of very less institutions of the state with has a majority in his back.


As a historian it makes me always weary when someone says: history shows. It never happend that no counter-example instantly popped up in my mind. Who says so wants mostly take one little part of history to promote his ideology. This author even don't needs to make an example. He just says: history proofs ...

Now ... I could go on and go on. But it's morning and I have to work ...







 

Yes this is exactly the problem we have with welfare. the state offers free money to people for being poor so they either are less likely to take steps that would prevent them from becoming poor or less likely to take steps that would elevate them out of poverty. this is why welfare actually creates poverty rather than solving it.

with the soup kitchens its different though because you can make food that is healthy and nutritionally well balanced but tastes like shit ;D. infact the providers of these soup kitchens would have incentive to make sure that it tasted bad enough to prevent this influx of people but not so bad as to reflect poorly on their business. they would wrestle with the correct trade off.


if we idealize both situations the effect is the same. the difference is the means. with the situation i described it would be difficult for the transfer mechanism to be used as a justification to collect revenue that will actually be used to build bombs to drop on brown people. ;D This is what the state does: it says look we need you to chip in and help pay for this welfare. then when they get your money they say oops we mant to spend it on welfare but we accidentally spent it on bombs.... next time well get it right! then guess what happens next time.

in a couple of word the difference is one of a centralized redistribution mechanism vs a de-centralized redistribution mechanism.

Anyone who can afford the Internet (and thus bitcoins) does not need charity. Anyone who supports a bitcoin "charity" system clearly just wants some extra money for themselves. I wouldn't complain about a "welfare" system existing, but I won't pretend that I want one because of some noble purpose. Not to mention, who's to say that people who receive these donations aren't going to go straight to the Silk Road or somewhere similar? There aren't very many legitimate uses for bitcoins right now.

Logic is precisely what its not lacking... its a very small excerpt from the book, the book itself is all about pointing out the logical fallacies in our feelings toward government and the ambivalence toward anarchy in general. - ie: its the most highly cherished thing in your personal life but the biggest evil and most feared of things by most people when applied on a grander scale...


comfort is a subjective thing, and if you have even payed attention to whats happening around the world, you'd find that this is precisely what is happening... so what you're saying is that even if welfare is barely giving people the barest of essentials required to live, under a welfare state the numbers of people on welfare will increase considerably... well, i must say i wholeheartedly agree with you on that one.



I think all but the most bigoted of people will agree everyone definitely has the right to life. Everyone will also agree that people do NOT have the right to steal from the next guy with impunity...  The Sarrazin thesis is happening all over the world at the moment mate, the next line is "This balancing act is one of the enormous and complex challenges of true charity – and yet another reason why a violent  monopoly will never end up helping the poor in any substantive or permanent manner." the guy is not opposed to people having a right to life...




So, because most people are in favour of this and would voluntarily give some money to charity to help unfortunate people if there was no state to do it... why do you need the state to forcefully take it from people again? talk about illogical reasoning! ;)



I also have to work so i'll leave you with this homework Mr Historian, look up the swiss conferacy... and icelandic history... 2 of the most prominent examples of anarchistic societies working... interesting tidbit for you to look forward to, the swiss had a stable society for a good 800 years right through the middle ages... if you're a historian then you'll know what the rest of europe was like...

I'll leave you with another quote from that book...

Another point that I would like to make up front is that there always seems to be a strange disconnect or isolation in people’s concerns about the helpless and dependent in society. For instance, whenever I talk about getting rid of public schools, the response inevitably comes
back – automatically, it would seem, just like any other good propaganda – that it would be terrible, because poor children would not be educated.

There is a strange kind of unthinking narcissism in this response, which always irritates me, much though I understand it. First of all, it is rather insulting to be told that you are trying to design a system which would deny education to poor children. To be placed into the general category of “yuppie capitalist scum” is never particularly ennobling. A person will raise this objection with an absolutely straight face, as if he is the only person in the world who cares about the education of poor children. I know that this is the result of pure indoctrination, because it is so illogical.

If we accept the premise that very few people care about the education of the poor, then we should be utterly opposed to majority-rule democracy, for the obvious reason that if only a tiny minority of people care about the education of the poor, then there will never be enough of them to influence a democracy, and thus the poor will never be educated.

However, those who approve of democracy and accept that democracy will provide the poor with education inevitably accept that a significant majority of people care enough about the poor to agitate for a political solution, and pay the taxes that fund public education.

Thus, any democrat who cares about the poor automatically accepts the reality that a significant majority of people are both willing and able to help and fund the education of the poor.

If people are willing to agitate for and pay the taxes to support a State-run solution to the problem of education, then the State solution is a mere reflection of their desires and willingness to sacrifice their own self-interest for the sake of educating the poor.

If I pay for a cure for an ailment that I have, and I find out that that cure actually makes me worse, do I give up on trying to find a cure? Of course not. It was my desire to find a cure that drove me to the false solution in the first place – when I accept that that solution is false, I am then free to pursue another solution. (In fact, until I accept that my first “cure” actually makes me worse, I will continue to waste my time and resources.)

The democratic “solution” to the problem of educating the poor is the existence of public schools – if we get rid of that solution, then the majority’s desire to help educate the poor will simply take on another form – and a far more effective form, that much is guaranteed.

“Ah,” say the democrats, “but without being forced to pay for public schools, no one will surrender the money to voluntarily fund the education of poor children.”

Well, this is only an admission that democracy is a complete and total lie – that public schools do not represent the will of the majority, but rather the whims of a violent minority. Thus votes do not matter at all, and are not counted, and do not influence public policy in the least, and thus we should get rid of this ridiculous overhead of democracy and get right back to a good old Platonic system of minority dictatorship.

This proposal, of course, is greeted with outright horror, and protestations that democracy must be kept because it is the best system, because public policy does reflect the will of the majority. In which case we need have no fear that the poor will not be educated in a free society, since the majority of people very much want that to happen anyway.

Exactly the same argument applies to a large number of other statist “solutions” to existing problems, such as:
• Old-age pensions;
• Unemployment insurance;
• Health care for the impoverished;
• Welfare, etc.
If these State programs represent the desires and will of the majority, then removing the government will not remove the reality of this kind of charity, since government policies reflect the majority’s existing desire to help these people.

If these programs do not represent the desires and will of the majority, then democracy is a complete lie, and we should stop interfering with our leader’s universal benevolence with our distracting and wasteful “voting.”

We will get into this in more detail as we go forward, but I wanted to put the argument out up front, just to address the ridiculous objection that removing a democratic State also removes the benevolence that drives its policies.

A fundamental anarchic argument is that a democratic State uses the genuine benevolence of the majority to expand its own power, and exacerbates poverty, ignorance and sickness in order to justify and continue the expansion of that power.

This is not the first time that the benevolence of good people has been used to control them. We only need to think of the example of organized religion to understand that…

To the OP, That sounds like you're talking about charity, and not welfare.  There is a key distinction.  One is funded voluntarily, the other through taxation.

Sorry for the last answer, hope, your are still on, Anon and Cameltoemcgee - I run out of time, and I need time, to answer, issue is interesting but complicated.

Short ... As I see, you're ok with welfare, but not with the state resp. the unfree way it's done. I think soon I will tell some arguments for this kind of organization of welfare, which imo are right at this time ... One question: do you comply the same way when taxes are used for building sreets, searching dark matter or educating people?

And I would like to continue op's issue: Bitcoin welfare system. Though I am not only a historian but also are holding a M.A. in sociology, I am qualified for it  ::)

Bitcoin is a good way for charity. I take part of the offline welfare system, and I have no problem with it, but I don't want a welfare / tax system to rise in Bitcoin-World. But charity - great ... reason will come!


uuh, can't resist:

I don't understand. What is happening? That we give them everything for a comfortable life? Depends on definition. We here in germany as a highly competitive export nation have the problem, that actually many low-educated job are payed worse than the minimum welfare. But the problem are the deep loan, not the high welfare. I have friends (ye, everybody know someone who ...) which work - and want to work - but can't pay their rooms; other, well-educated and in Jobs, have problems to feed their cat. And so on. So - what was the reason the welfare increases the number of poor people?


Again, logic: you didn't made a claim, why the Sarrazin-Thesis is not opposed to the righ of some people to live. You just claimed that people do not have the right to steal. One failure legitimate another? And, let me assure you: Sarrazin is a hate-spreading, short-minded Racist. He has experienced  a part of the reality of the arabian immigrants in the most fucked up quarter of berlin - say: a very little part of arabian-immigration-reality in germany - and he uses this tiny peace of reality to cover the whole szene with a large prejudice against everything what is "muslim" ... also he propagates a concept of men which is bound to nothing than people's economical use, which is imo short-minded again. He discredits a whole ethnicity cause he thinks they don't participate enough in powering up our Champion-Economy ...

Ok, sorry, have to go, cu

Funny idea to make food-kitchens food less tasty ... as it is healthy I imagine the poor in the US would have better health than the less-poor :)

But to consider your first block: We are again in the conception of mankind. You think the poor wouldn't try to make their own income, if there's a welfare state. I dont think so. As I maybe said: The most unemployed want to work (exzept of the famous "Florida-Rolf" who caused an strom of outcry under german low-loan-worker), but, as official statistics tell, we have more applications than jobs and most companys have no use for longterm-unemployed. You can't tell the youth of spain, which suffers under an unemployment-rate from nearly 40 percent (it's not as easy to meassure than newspapers say), they don't try to earn their own money. They try. Go to some fish-market in Norway - most marketenders are from spain. They want to work. And work doesn't popp up cause the spain government cuts down welfare.

Also, back to my good old "Right of humanity" (which, as I know, has to been trafficked against other concepts of freedom, no way to avoid it): We are living in the 21th century, looking back on a long and successfull road to enhancen our livestyle. I don't think we need to make people to do everything they could do to make their living on their own feeds. I think this goes against freedom. Did I mention I am historian? As one, I consider it as a step backward if we recreate jobs we know from 19th century - very uncomfortable, maybe humiliating, very bad paid ... 


if we idealize both situations the effect is the same. the difference is the means. with the situation i described it would be difficult for the transfer mechanism to be used as a justification to collect revenue that will actually be used to build bombs to drop on brown people. ;D This is what the state does: it says look we need you to chip in and help pay for this welfare. then when they get your money they say oops we mant to spend it on welfare but we accidentally spent it on bombs.... next time well get it right! then guess what happens next time.

in a couple of word the difference is one of a centralized redistribution mechanism vs a de-centralized redistribution mechanism.
[/quote]

 ;D "Sorry, it happened we bought bombs and the fall down to some innocent afghans. But next time we'll use it to help some poor people." Hehe. Yep, point for you.

But the economical problem I rised would be harder to avoid if the welfare is decentraliced. For example in our rich cities (say: Eichstätt) there will be no need to install a soup-kittchen. So food-prices stay low. In our poor cities (say: Oberhausen) there will be a high interest in soup kitchens. So: food-prices rise. Welcome in a world, where the poor people have to pay more for tasty food than the rich people. I for myself have no interest that my food-prices will rise cause the unemployment in my city is too high.

is not at all the same thing as


I'm not claiming that it eliminates all employment for every person who has ever taken welfare, simply that it effects the decisions of people on the margin.


im all for creating some sort of system where those who are doing everything they can to make a living but are failing to make a living still have a way to eat and get shelter. i dont think someone should simply be left out in the cold to die because they were born with some form of mental retardation. BUT what you are saying here is radical even for a leftist. you are saying that its ok for someone who is not doing everything in their power to first help themselves to then entitle themselves to the fruits of other peoples labor. Ignore the morality of the situation just think about the consequences, think about the incentives that would create. it would be the aforementioned problem from the first quotation, except on crack.


but this is precisely the sort of problem that a market it tailor made to address. typically we talk about markets moving resources around to their highest value utility but it also moves people around (rather causes people to chose to move based on rational calculation). At first the prices would be higher in Eichstätt than in Oberhausen but people would see this as a signal, it would cause the poor to move there. not only the people who are using the soup kitchen but the poor who buy their own food. the people using the soup kitchens would move there because its simply a nicer environment. the poor who are not so poor as to need soup kitchens would move there for lower food prices. this migration would continue untill there was no longer any significant advantage to be gained from moving there, which would mean until food prices were no longer cheaper, and until Eichstätt was no longer a nicer place to live than Oberhausen. it would pull Oberhausen up and Eichstätt down. i for one say good, its about time the wealthy came face to face with the effects of the sorts of policies that granted them their wealth. its time for the king to come down from his castle and come face to face with the sort of shit and squalor he has wrought.  ;D

here we meet


Here we don't.  If I were a leftist I would prefere to collectivate all Industrie, transform them to non-innovative, non-profitable stateown industrie and force everyone, regardless what he did before, to work in it, even if his workforce isn't needed. But I don't mind sharing some ideas with leftists, e. g. that a society has to be measured what she does for her weekest members, or, that if we have the ability we should offer the highest possible number of people the best possible living


Yea! I do! We talked about trafficking: Some of our first real liberal party in germany, the "Alternative", asked some time ago: Why don't they sell a kidney, if they have no money? I heard about some russian homeless, which where casted for porno-movies, in which girls hit them bloody. Just for example. Would you say to a girl: go, prostitute yourself, if you are out of money, or play in hardcore-pornogafy?


Incentives depend on the degree. Surely you can't just say: If you think this job is against your dignity, you don't have to do it. But I think there are a lot of incentives to work instead of receiving the minimal living fee: more money, the chance, to get even more money, social contacts, the self-conficence to earn your own money and so on.

Also, as today, I read a discussion about Hartz IV, and someone complaint, that the tipp, to trink water from the main instead of water from bottles violates his dignity. That's absurd (Our main water is better than most bottle-water).



you confused eichstätt and oberhausen in your second sentence. Eichstätt is rich, Oberhausen poor :)  But your thesis sounds logical. I would welcome it if the poor would settle down in the perfect world of Eichstätt. But the Eichstätter are not stupid - the homelords would never ever give some poor unemployed from Oberhausen a flat ...

you make some very good points. admittedly i mistook your meaning. i agree that there is no black and white line where a person is doing everything in his power or is not. there are 1000 shades of grey between. the idea has to be to determine the trade off.

in order to abstract out the principal its best not to think of these things on the scale of societies, think about when its ok for you personally to take your neighbors vegetables out of his garden with out his permission, in order to remove pesky variables assume he did 100% of the work himself. i think we can agree that if you just wandered out of a desert where you have been lost for a month that its ok. i think we can agree that if you spend 8 hours a day watching tv and then suddenly realize that you have no money for food than it isn't. the trick is drawing that line in the right place. we would likely disagree on exactly where that line should be drawn but on the basic principal we are in agreement.

so then the question becomes how do we draw it efficiently? neither your opinion nor mine would be more valid than each others, they would just be our opinions. this is where the an-cap idea of a market in law comes in. basically judges would be tasked with determining the right trade off, every ruling that a judge made would offend someone but his job is to come up with rulings that cause the least offense on net. judges who did this poorly would soon find themselves out of work, and those who did it well would find themselves wealthier for it. thus we can apply the basic principal of market discovery, that works so at improving the speed of computers every year, to the discovery of the best trade offs in rights. markets dont reveal the right answer as soon as you implement them. in fact they can give rather bad and arbitrary solutions early on, but they discover better and better solutions as time progresses. compare this with the state which becomes less and less efficient as time progresses.


than i say fuck them ;D sure you would still have that problem we previously discussed, food would be cheaper in Eichstätter, but lets see how much the people of Eichstätter like life with out cheap labor.

Fine, looks like we have found a point. But I am sure, we would find details to argue, for sure.

But let's not talk to much of the state, let's talk more about Bitcoin ... How do you think Satoshi Dice would serve as a welfare system? In abstract it does the same, as a welfare sate: It takes money from the one and gives it to some other. Redistribution by random.

The Satoshi Dice Tax' for income - the onliest tax you have the chance to get rich by paying it  ;D ;D ;D

Heh, it's rather ironic, sometimes, hearing these politics and economics discussion on this particular forum, where it's as if people forget where exactly it is they are arguing their positions. That sentence above really reminded me of how Bitcoin was about 20 years ago. In short, compared to today, it was godawful in every respect. Like the quote by a certain person who's name escapes me, "Bitcoin is an idea that doesn't work in theory, only in practice." That probably applies to all these other ancap ideas we keep tossing around, too  :)

Yea i can only assume that I'm probably not right about the specifics, though its fun to try to figure it out. I really dont know how insurance companies would reconcile their differences, i only know that fighting is REALLY expensive so they would almost certainly find a way, and that if the basic principal of market discovery holds true in this market just like it does every other, than what ever their solutions are, they would probably become more efficient with time.

Many bitcoiners are generous.  Welfare and other institutional pay-people-to-not-work programs tend to be less effective than local efforts, or direct aid workers that can operate globally.

Bitcoin100 actively seeks charities to accept bitcoin payments:
http://bitcoin100.org/charities/

Bitpay charges no fees to charities
https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-for-charities

You can mine directly for charity
http://bitcoinsforcharity.org/

There is a list of charitable organizations for bitcoiners maintained on the wiki:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Donation-accepting_organizations_and_projects

As well as many other projects that go unsung due to random acts of anonymous kindness.

They see it, they just won't take your money to fix it using threat of force and violence.

I am intrigued. Please explain.

That's the thing, I think proper charities etc. are fantastic ( when they aren't corrupt ), but even speaking from a fairly empathetic point of view I still think that saying threatening someone with jail if they don't give their money to someone else is a good thing makes you a self-righteous cunt, particularly when you don't consider that the person being forced into giving money has their own situations to deal with. They might be able to afford something like that for the first year or month but what if their business goes down the drain or they end up with less profits the next year? In the end you're going to be responsible for making them worse off than the person you forced them to help.

It's not generosity if a person is being forced, threatened or pressured into doing something on any side of the situation, in fact, I'd go so far as to say it's a form of blackmail and extortion though it's a very sophisticated form of it, the difference between a criminal and a politician is the politicians believe they are right to do what they do.

If a grocery store used its security guards to physically remove someone from their store for attempting to eat an apple that he had no money to pay for, and that person subsequently died of starvation than his living heirs would be entitled to restitution for something very similar to murder if not murder explicitly. that's just my opinion of course but if society in general shared my opinion than it would be enshrined in common-law.

we have some precedent for this, i dont know if this is the case still today, but in japan it has been legal for very hungry people to take enough produce to feed themselves for 1 meal from a farmers crop with out compensating the farmer, assuming he had no means by which to compensate the farmer. there is some japanese word for this custom, i dont remember what it is, if someone else does i would be grateful to know.

so basically in effect this means that, inorder for a grocery store owner or farmer or restaurant owner ect... to be able to safely apprehend shoplifters free from fears of litigation, he would need to be able to claim that the shoplifter had some other means of avoiding imminent starvation. if no soup kitchen existed near by, than it would fall on him to provide one, else be at constant risk of litigation. of course there would be many food service businesses in any town and they could all share the burden of providing that soup kitchen.

ok so if you are wondering how we get from, "a bunch of judges are of the opinion that someone is due restitution" to actually enforcing that opinion with out involving a state, here is a video about historical precedent for non-state enforcement of common law https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R8oJsoliw0

Bitcoin does this by the simple virtue of what it is, a non-inflating currency and frictionless payment system open to everyone equally.

Inflation is the most regressive type of tax there is.  Government money when inflated hurts the poor and disenfranchised the most of all.  Newly printed money starts within the government, so the government receives the benefit of the money before the inflation takes effect, because the first time it is spent, the inflation has not yet taken effect.
The second time it is spent, the effect of the new money on inflation has only had its effect on the first recipients, to everyone else it is the first exposure.  In this way inflation ripples out into an economic system from the central bank out to the edges.  
Those that have high wealth, and high credit can get giant loans, the money to pay those loans are inflated, which makes them easier to repay.  The hard assets that were bought with those loans go up in value.  The richest are not affected by the inflation and many of them benefit from it.

The poorest, the rent-payers, and the last to get the money spent into their pocket only see it after the effect of inflation has taken its full effect.

Bitcoin avoids this, and has the opposite effect.  The banks and the central bank and the government are outside the circle of new money creation.  Bitcoin is already doing a good job of helping the poor, just by virtue of what it is and how it works and what it does.

http://bitcoin100.org/

When you add on top of this the massive charitable giving that is occurring from the bitcoin community, the notion of intercepting that charity and philanthropy with an institutional welfare taxation that pays people to not work or pays them to be sick seems worse than redundant.  It seems like it breaks a good thing by removing the joy of the giving from the giver and replaces it with the resentment and broken institutions that it can otherwise replace.

Would it be possible to keep one's savings in a brain wallet, while walking around eating free food every day?

absolutely. fortunately there is a rather simple and elegant solution to this problem. the soup kitchens could provide nutritionally well balanced and healthy food that tastes like shit. think of the white gruel that the crew of the nebakanezer eats every day for breakfast lunch and dinner in the matrix reloaded. ;D

this way people have a social safety net that they can use to get back on their feet if they fall on hard times through not fault of their own while still having good incentive to actually work to rebuild their lives.

Could I load up my gruel with Denatonium and preservatives so my grocery store would save a lot of money? I'll assume that I can't add Chantix to help them quit smoking.

Homeless people are stinky, and people don't like to see them. So, could people from around the country just donate to a single place like SeansOutpost, so that there will be free food in that area, and all homeless will just move there? It will keep the homeless out of areas where people don't want to see them, and the homeless will get food. Kind of like a homeless preserve (like for nature and endangered species). Win-win, right?

(I'm kidding. Mostly.)

the whole point of the soup kitchen is to limit legal liability, if "Denatonium" causes cancer or something you would almost certainly find yourself facing some sort of class action lawsuit which would sort of defeat the purpose.

what do you think of my idea rassah? stefan moleneaux and other denotological libertarians would no doubt find it abhorrent. as far as free market anarchists are concerned im something of a left wing apologist :P I agree with lefitists when they say that sometimes rights ought to be violated for the greater good, i just dont think thats at all a good argument in favor of the state or against markets in general.

There are too many ways to game your setup. I mean, does every vendor who sells groceries have to have gruel available? Who is responsible if the homeless person eats the gruel and gets sick? What if homeless people find some other use for your gruel and resell it on the street, as, say fertilizer? What if they get together, along with non-homeless supporters, start protesting gruel as inhumane, and try to force laws that make the shop owner have to give up actual valuable groceries?

Laws in my ideal society would be made by judges operating on the free market. They would understand economics and incentives problems. Societies are FULL of thousands upon thousands of subtle and complex problems that judges have been wrestling with for centuries, thats why we have an entire academic field of law that is every bit as intricate and complex as electronics or neuro-science. im talking about commonlaw here, judge made law aimed at dispute resolution, not statutory law which i would see done away with entirely. we already have legal precedent for how to handle situations where soup kitchens make people sick and that doesn't stop soup kitchens from existing in a legal framework where there isnt even any legal pressure for them to be provided.
thats simple enough, the kitchen gives one serving per person
than they will meet in court and the judges will attempt to resolve the dispute in the most economically efficient way. in this case the judges would recognize the incentive problem this would create and would almost certainly rule in favor of the grocers.

http://splicer.com/2011/07/18/wino (http://splicer.com/2011/07/18/wino)

Come on, back off a bit. It is, I believe, possible to agree in general principle and disagree on specific issues. I used to go to county fairs and other public gatherings in the hot sun to hand out Nolan charts for my local Libertarian Party and talk to people about the talking points. And what we always said was, if you're on the left half, you're liberal. If you're on the right half, you're conservative. If you're on the top half, congratulations, you're a libertarian. And of course, the bottom half of the diamond is authoritarian.

I still describe myself as libertarian from time to time. I've voted in seven presidential elections, and voted for the LP candidate four of those times. I read Reason magazine and I'm in favor of scrapping the vast majority of the IRS in favor of the FairTax. To the vast majority of America (perhaps the world) I am an extremist wingnut. Yet I get called Libertarian In Name Only most times I have conversations with other libertarians because I support taxpayer-funded education like Thomas Jefferson did. And I believe in federalism; I'm much more liberal (in the modern sense) when it comes to local decisions than I am regarding the State and much more willing to consider spending at the state level than I am the Federal Government. So that argument about pointing a gun at my neighbor to pay for the local library always comes up and I'm judged a very unlibertarian libertarian.

First, I don't buy it. Reasonable people can disagree about what parts of the multiple governments we live under ought to be dismantled, and believing in keeping one of them ought not be cause for alienating someone who is fundamentally an ally.

Second, it's the wrong conversation to have. Should we do away with welfare programs? Well, maybe. I'll even say probably. Should we do away with them immediately and suddenly? I don't think so. Do we have threats to liberty that loom more menacingly? Oh yeah. Picking winners and losers and creating moral hazard on the individual level is damaging, but it does help some people, too. Picking winners and losers to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare could be done away with like tearing off a band-aid. No one would notice the difference except the people who are becoming billionaires on the public teat. Never mind the surveillance states we now live in with militarized police. There is a matter of priority here.

So while I saw the bit about "libertarian" and "welfare" in the same sentence and did a double-take too, I'd like to take that poster's word for it that she or he is a libertarian.

Just put two homeless people in a ring and throw in a can of soup and an opener.

(Just kidding too)

So it sounds like this is solution is actually a subset of the larger issue of removing state initiated violence from society. Whilst many people have issues with these schemes I personally have some sympathy for them. So we will let them stand for now.

So then it comes down to whether denying someone food which they haven't paid for is initiation of violence. Because if it is not, then any punishment worth mentioning becomes the initiation of violence which is against the non-aggression principle.

The only truly fair way this expectation could be enforced would be for people to refuse to shop at stores which would not participate in it. At which point, the question is, why aren't those people feeding the poor themselves.

A bigger question is how you limit the population when you remove limits on the population. Personally, I'm not in favor of artificially enforced limits on the population (against the non-aggression principle and I think people are generally an asset) but I also don't leave uneaten food and scraps pile up in my kitchen (if you see what I'm saying).

i dont think that it is the initiation of violence but i dont think that all violations of the nap are immoral and i dont think that all things that are immoral are violations of the nap. trying to categorize all actions into these neat little boxes can lead to some very weird conclusions.

check out this video by michael huemer for an explanation of the problems/limitations of uncompromising adherence to the non aggression principal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmCn2vP-DEo

the simple fact of the matter is that its just my opinion that the store owner would be doing something that ought to be unpermissable. if you have a different opinion than i welcome that. only if enough people have the same opinion as me will it be enshrined in law.

with that being said i dont think you need to initiate violence inorder incentivize someone to not commit an action that you feel is immoral but is not its self an initiation of violence.

social cooperation bestows upon us MANY MANY benefits while at the same time no one has any obligation to cooperate with us. redacting the offer to cooperate is not an act of aggression. this gives society tremendous leverage with which to curtail aberrant behavior with out initiating violence. the best way to apply this pressure with out needing everyone in the world to track and understand every injustice so they can personally boycott every bad actor is to outsource this job to the legal system. this is exactly how society was governed in ancient anarchic ireland. At that point it isnt up to us to decide every case on a case by case basis but just up to us to decide what we consider to be aberrant behavior and direct our resources devoted to rights enforcement towards organizations that reflect our sentiments. i think a grocer allowing a starving man to die in his parking lot counts as aberrant behavior, but again that's just my opinion.

I think the limiting mechanism will depend a lot on the causes. Right now in my country there are several reasons to reproduce - you get paid for it if you're already poor, it's a status symbol if you're rich, and it might just be an accident.

* Privately-funded soup kitchens wouldn't create financial incentives like welfare-per-child does.
* Rich people reproducing isn't a huge problem because they can support these children.
* Accidental pregnancy can be reduced with easier contraception and abortion. For example, bitcoin drug markets could sell emergency contraception and abortion pills even within oppressive countries.

However, here in the USA we don't really have an overpopulation problem; if you don't count immigration the population is shrinking. It's reasonable to assume that developing countries will eventually reach this point too, and population growth will slow to the rate of economic growth (or less).

Michael Huemer is genius (and a close friend of my family for decades, shared many meals together).

Was the violence initiated by the theft of food?
Is law enforcement necessarily violence?

wow thats really cool.


i really am not sure. it may boil down to a semantic debate. obviously a mugging is an initiation of violence but with shoplifting it isnt so clear. either way trying to fit everything into neat little linguistic boxes i think only serves to obfuscate the point. a rose by any other name is still a rose. i think we should just focus on how we feel about the morality of the action its self within the relevant context and not what labels ought to be applied to it.


again its semantics. according to the definition that google gives for the word enforcement the answer is yes. but then we have this question of what word to use for situations where the redaction of benefits rather than the violation of rights are used to persuade someone to follow a rule. it seems to me the best way to describe this would be "non violent enforcement" but then according to googles definition non violent enforcement is a paradox. the important point to take away though i think is the idea that a person can be persuaded to comply with a rule with out threatening to commit violence against him should he fail to comply.

Well said!

ancient ireland empirical evidence that this system can work. its pretty clear that this would be ideal if we can assume that society would be charitable enough to provide basic needs (food, shelter, water, clothing, assurance and insurance) to the legitimately unfortunate. i dont think anyone who's being honest can really contest that fact.

so really we are only left with one question which leaves open the one potential legitimate criticism. Would people be charitable enough to meet those requirements? if people would not be charitable enough to meet those basic needs than perceptive critics would still have a really good point. it would be really sad to see mental retards starving in the street because they are legitimately unable to generate enough value on the market to support themselves and that would be a HUGE strike against the desirability of this system.

i think the solution to this conundrum might be to consider that, if placed in a situation where someone has to chose to commit aggression or starve to death than they will commit aggression every time. the fact that you can predict this with 100% certainty means that there would be an economic incentive to make sure that people arnt hungry, since protecting your food against such a determined thief would almost certainly cost more than feeding him some gruel. the way this transfer mechanism might work is that insurance companies who insured people against theft of food might find that it was cheaper to provide a network of soup kitchens than a physical security apparatus capable of effectively enforcing the property rights of food owners. copy and paste to apply this argument to basic needs other than food.

anyway tell me what you think of my assessment luke.

Yep, agreed that it would probably work just like that... I think also if the current "democratic" system is to be thought of as in any way shape or form valid, then we must assume that generally people are a charitable lot, if they are, then voluntary society works... if they aren't, only a small portion of people will be charitable... maybe not enough to solve the problems... But if people are inherently selfish then government is just a really good way for bad people to gain control over the minority of good charitable people and won't help much because, sociopaths by nature crave power over others and good people don't.

yes it certainly doesn't necessarily follow from "retards are starving and dieing in the streets of starvation" to "therefor we ought to initiate violence on their behalf." even if that does follow it further doesn't necessarily follow that if "we ought to initiate violence on their behalf" that "the state is the best means for using enabling this transfer".

These are two very big leaps that are so often glossed over and taken for granted. i personally feel that maybe the first leap is justifiable (think robin hood), but the second is almost certainly not.

also i agree that people would probably be charitable enough, and i agree that even if they wernt that doesn't necessarily justify the state. But i would really just like some hard data. i know americans donate ~300 billion to charity every year. i wonder if there is a way to calculate the ~ cost of these services.

Don't forget, companies and corporations, especially big ones (and even "evil" ones like WalMart) donate millions to charities every year, even if they are not required to, and even if it goes against their corporate requirement to maximize profit (where charitable giving lowers it instead). It's also a good way to get good publicity, "manage your brand,"and get "free" advertising in newspapers.

yes further evidence that is quite good at reinforcing my existing suspicion but not nearly as effective at changing the opinion of someone who suspects the opposite.

Sounds good to me, even though it doesn't take into effect the assurance social net or the huge abundance of resources we'd have if the govs of the world weren't stealing it from us so much already.

Most everyone already wants to be or is charitable in some way, even & especially the poor who can't afford it now. Almost all soup kitchens are run by people who were homeless themselves and now work a J.O.B. to help out their friends. Take away that societal structure that government imposes on us and there would be such an abundance of wealth aimed at solving charitable problems that people in that society would have a hearty laugh at us having this conversation.

Back to the topic though; yes, like you pointed out there are market reasons for solutions to pop up, but I think those would be 3rd down on the totem pole in practice. Assurance coverage will be extended charitably to anyone who (isn't a murder) & asks for it in such a prosperous society.
 

Absolutely, those are two huge blindspots for statists, and I would surmise that the propaganda machines we call 'schools' may have had something to do with their existence.



That's barely a drop in the bucket though! What's a few companies donating millions compared to the whole world having all of their tax money freed to donate as they please? In the US most people are paying 60%-70% of their wealth (not just income) annually in some form of tax. In France there are people paying 110%! Communist China doesn't steal that much wealth from its' people... It's just inconceivable how much wealth is taken from us as a whole.

If the average person on this planet pays $10,000 in taxes each year, (yes, number pulled out of my ass) then 7 billion ppl times 10k is clearly in the 10's of Quadrillions of dollars worth of freed-up cash that people can use for anything that they see fit... And historically people have paid quite a lot into charity, despite the government stealing all of that cash up front. 5%-10% per person certainly would not be unfathomable. I could see large segments of the population choosing to give up 50% of their income (that the government stole previously) to go directly to people who can't afford assurance.

That would be many billions, if not trillions of dollars worldwide. Surely if the government was gone, the wars were over, the schools could compete on the free market, and the welfare state was removed, along with its' creation of entitled people, then a few TRILLION dollars worth of non-bureaucratic charity could bridge the gap.

That's the problem. If you want, and if you like my character. I think the constitution gives anyone the right to participate in the society, for least to some degree