[woozle] If the government doesn't provide it, just who is going to?

[mattnewport] Charities, family, friends, well meaning strangers...

So, why aren't they? How can we make this happen -- what process are you proposing by which we can achieve universal welfare supported entirely by such means?

You appear to be shifting the goalposts. You started out arguing that your main concern is to minimize suffering...

I didn't state the scope; you just assumed it was global. My goal remains as stated -- minimizing suffering -- but I am not arguing for any global changes (yet).

Now you are saying that because that is an unrealistic goal you instead think it is important to make people who are already relatively well off by global standards (poor Americans) better off than it is to minimize suffering of the global poor.

Umm... no, I said no such thing. My suggestion does not have any clear effects on the rest of the world. If anything, it would allow Americans to be more charitable to the world at large, as we would not have to be worrying about taking care of our own first.

I am not proposing taking away any existing American aid to other countries. I'm arguing we are wealthy enough to provide for ourselves solely through reallocation of resources internally, not by diverting them away from external causes (or worse, by stealing resources from other countries as we have a long history of doing; indeed, if it turns out that we cannot achieve universal welfare without robbing others, then I would say that we need to stop robbing others first, then re-assess the situation).

It is true that many wealthy countries also have relatively generous welfare systems (particularly in Europe) but they have been able to afford these systems because they were already relatively wealthy. Studies that find negative effects are generally looking at relative growth rates but the difficulty of properly controlling such studies makes them somewhat inconclusive.

Then I would say that your claim that welfare hurts a country's overall wealth is based on weak data. What is the basis for your belief in this theory, since the studies which might resolve that question have returned inconclusive results?

I've been down this road before in discussions of this nature and they usually degenerate into people throwing links to studies back and forth that neither side really has taken the time to read in detail.

If nobody has time to at least compile the results, then there's really no point in even having the discussion -- since looking at existing data is really the only rational way to attempt to resolve the question.

If you actually have some links, I will at least file them on Issuepedia and give you a link to the page where they -- and any other related information which may have been gathered (or may be gathered in the future) -- can be found.

I will also try to summarize any further debating we do on the subject, so that neither of us will need to rehash the same ground in future debates (with each other or with other people).

I hope that this addresses your apparent concern (i.e. that exchanging actual data on this topic would be a waste of time).

The two main points to note are that governments in reality are not in the business of implementing 'enlightened' policies that address imbalances of power but rather are in the business of creating imbalances of power for the benefit of special interests and the politicians they own and that many government regulations sold as protecting the interests of the general electorate are in actual fact designed to protect particular special interest groups.

That is the reason I think we need to re-invent government. I don't think government is automatically evil, though it is certainly vulnerable to just the sorts of mechanisms you identify.

This is certainly not the purpose for which government was invented, and saying that government is the problem just because it becomes a problem is like saying guns are always evil because they kill people -- or dynamite is always evil because it is used in warfare. Any tool can be misused.

I propose that government is necessary, and that rather than declaring it evil and trying to render it as small and weak as possible, we should be learning how to build it better -- and how to regain control of it when it goes astray.

Genuine deregulation has a good track record. It should not be confused with false deregulation...

Can you give me some examples (mainly of genuine deregulation -- I got the financial industry non-deregulation; will have to ponder that example)?