ded_maxim | цитата дня

Dude, I can't even begin to describe what's so fundamentally wrong with this stance.

Then maybe you need to sit down and rethink your objections to it.

Let me put it another way-what right do I, as an individual, have to make demands on you, as another individual, to better my financial situation? I can ASK you politely to help me out, but how can I demand anything of you?

Or maybe you need to simply come out and say it (http://www.fredoneverything.net/SocializedMedicine.shtml): that which is falling should also be pushed, right? It's always easy to be an armchair social Darwinist as long as you're not the one that needs help.

You're willfully distorting my words. I'm not a social darwinist any more than you're a Stalinist. I had a higher opinion of you.

I'm all about helping people whom I know and who ask me for help. Aside from the morality of extorted charity, I have less time and money to help my family, friends and neighbors if I'm being taxed at forty percent of my paycheck to subsidize gang tattoo removal programs and the octomom. You should also keep in mind that if you make charity compulsory, institutions like extended families and church programs are going to be weakened, since their reason for existing is being made redundant.

I didn't really say that those were your words. I merely wanted to demonstrate that your position, if taken to extremes, can lead to social Darwinism. Let's not stoop to the "I had a higher opinion of you" shaming tricks. You know that I know full well that this is not your position. But, as I said, glibly dismissing all of the people who need help as " moochers, who claim your product by tears" (a quote from Atlas Shrugged), without regard to circumstances, is not what one could call virtue, under any ethical system. By the way, speaking of charity as a virtue, here's what Ayn Rand had to say about it:

My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.

This is a pretty sharp contrast to any religious conception of charity.

As it stands, your entire argument boils down to claims about moral hazards. Are you saying that "compulsory charity" would be such a powerful disincentive to individual (or communitarian) charity? Can you actually back up this claim with, you know, statistics and facts? Let's take a predominantly Catholic European country, such as Portugal or Italy. By Randian standards, "compulsory charity" is rampant there. Yet somehow it seems doubtful that this "compulsory charity" has brought about the demise of extended families and/or church programs in these countries. You can't simultaneously claim that individuals, if left to themselves, will help others out of charity and yet, if the appropriate incentives are gone, will be glad to tell those in need to fuck off 'cause the gubmint will take care of them anyway.

I don't know anything about what you know and don't know. I know you only as a bunch of words on the internet. Any position if taken to extremes can lead to bad things; however, what my position would lead to if taken to an extreme is not social darwinism but rather an Afghanistan-type tribal situation with a network fo social obligations. This doesn't seem to me to be the worst possible scenario. But since we're not talking extremes, let's stick to the meat of the argument.

I have said nothing about people who "need help." I do have lots of things to say about people who DEMAND help from "society," i.e., everybody who happens to live in the same country. I'm sure the distinction isn't lost on you.

As I've said before, what Ayn Rand has to say about anything is not much of a moral compass for me.

I can't back this claim up with statistics. However, it seems pretty obvious to me that the pathetic state that black people in America are in as far as illegitimacy rates and crime is a direct result of the Great Society. Common sense would also tell me that if you lose half your paycheck to taxes and also have to pay a mortgage, put food on the table and support your kids, there ain't going to be much left over for, say, your grandparents, let alone the poor people down the street. And of course, if a society is led to believe that the government will take care of you from the cradle to the grave if things go wrong, why would you duplicate that effort? I'm talking averages here, not any particular Mother Theresa.

Some of what you say is certainly true, especially in regard to mortgages. It has been widely acknowledged that the vast numbers of home owners in this country are to a large extent due to government policies that promoted home ownership above renting. But things are more complicated than the recent wingnut mantra "it was Teh Blacks" would suggest.

As for the distinction between people who need help and those who demand help: that distinction is certainly there. Unfortunately, it has been totally lost on the assholes (starting with Michelle Malkin) who decided to go after Graeme Frost and his parents (http://themoderatevoice.com/15509/the-war-against-graeme-frost-get-that-school-kid/). Those moochers, who tried to claim Michelle Malkin's product (whatever that is) by tears!

As for "duplicating the effort": how widespread, would you say, is the practice of not keeping a fire extinguisher in one's home, seeing as how the fire department is there?

Most of the people I knew who got homes they couldn't afford were white. Of course, this is observer bias, since I don't hang out with too many blacks or hispanics. Please don't imply that my argument is a racist one.

Graeme Frost's case reminds me of that National Lampoon cover, you know, "if you don't buy this magazine, we're gonna shoot this dog."

The fire extinguisher fills a niche that the fire department can't, that is, one of being immediately available. What niche can your personal charity fill that an all-providing government can't? Hell, they've got all kinds of people with Master's degrees employed full-time to determine how best to provide for any particular needy individual-they're called social workers. It's sort of hubris to think you can get a better insight into any particular case than they, right?

I never intended to imply that your argument was racist. I merely pointed out that the race issue was conveniently trotted out by the right as the whole Fannie and Freddie debacle was unfolding. In another comment below you say that blaming the suits and not the individuals is cheap populism, and I will agree with you there. However, blaming the individuals and claiming that the financial institutions were just doing what's in their nature (the whole frog and scorpion parable) is not something I would want to engage in either.

As for observer bias: almost everyone I knew in high school now owns a home in the 'burbs. I think I'm the only one who still rents. Then again, I'm the only one who decided to go into academia. Until college, I mostly hung out with other Russian immigrants, and there was definitely a well-defined set of social expectations out there: own a home, two cars, the usual blah-blah. It's interesting how quickly these social expectations were absorbed by the first-generation immigrants.

Finally, about the government and helping people. My own view is that the government should at least provide the absolute minimal safety net, but I don't advocate single-payer health care. If some rich guy wants to pay for access to the newest experimental treatments, there should be no barriers to that. I don't presume to make the case for an "all-providing government", by any means. But some minimal provisions must be there -- e.g., natural disaster relief.

The financial institutions bet on the individuals by and large covering their financial committments-continuing to pay their mortgage with the paycheck they claimed to earn. This was remarkable optimism, given the facts on the ground. Recent developments have shown that it was completely misplaced. However, in 2005 an analyst going "these poor beaners (for instance, since most of the foreclosures we're seeing are in CA, AZ, NV and NM) will never swing a $470K house as long as their major source of income is landscaping" would have been drummed out of his office. The people who created this culture are the slick Jon Stewarts of our society. Blaming the financial institutions for this is like blaming two guys in a three-legged race for having a poor time in the hundred-yard dash.

I avoided hanging out with Russian immigrants for this exact reason-most of the time, they became caricatures of the Americans they were trying to emulate. But if I had to guess, I'd say most of them are not having much trouble swinging their mortgages now.

What's an absolute minimum safety net? A GP medium tent shared by 15 people and pork and beans every day? Well, I'd be down for that, but it seems like private charity could provide the same thing for a fraction of the price, since they wouldn't have to pay for social workers. It's all theoretical, since the goods and services the government provides unproductive members of society go far beyond that.

I avoided hanging out with Russian immigrants for this exact reason-most of the time, they became caricatures of the Americans they were trying to emulate.

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second-order supply side multiplier effects of marginal increases in labor costs

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