please stop cherry picking my posts.
Or what?
What have you added in the remaining paragraph of this quote? Ive read it, and a quick click to the link above will take anyone including yourself to read it to get the context. Theres nothing substantive here, so I cut it out.
I dont like wading through massive walls of quotes just so that I can read something, and I expect others might feel the same.
Ive asked you why there was no explosion in charitable contributions when the Bush tax cuts freed up $6.6 trillion. You said its difficult to make a prediction because its a temporary tax credit and people cant make decisions about charitable donations based on the whims of politicians that change from year to year. Really? Thirteen years on?
Do I have a crystal ball? You will find examples that match and mismatch throughout all of history given any kind of ideology. What does that prove exactly? Nothing much. Just that societies are very complicated.
I know you dont like this answer, but again, thats just reality.
Of course you wont admit it - even after presented with your own words
and are absolutely reveling in my use of the word altruism and altruistic, completely oblivious to the fact that I am using the catchword of self-professed paleolibertarians.
This is how you defined altruism, not me;
Altruism should mean that all of the 400,000 orphans that society as a whole do not want would be adopted by families annually - now.
I certainly dont revel in that usage of the word.
Ive asked you why you think corporations that consistently exploit communities will suddenly develop a social conscience? You ignored that
I didnt respond to this because I didnt think you meant it, honestly.
Businesses that arent running as political entrepreneurs benefit the poor through their own operation.
Strip away all the money, strip away all the classes, strip away all of the relationships and pretend for a second that the world is running as it is without money.
Take a look around, and then tell me whats doing the greatest good for humanity?
You would see McDonalds, with a massive industry working day in and day out to feed people. You would see Wal-Mart stocking its shelves and making everything clean and presentable. You would see a massive network of fuel stations, trucks, and operators insuring that people that can get to where they need to go. So on and so on and so on.
What do you see with the government? An entire group of people doing almost nothing for anyone. The roads they manage are in disrepair, their mailing system is no better than any other business, they have tanks, bombs, and airplanes that are awe-inspiring wastes of time and effort. When they are used, you would see the deaths of villains, as well as helpless innocents.
Businesses are the lifeblood of society, and government is the leech.
To say that corporations arent charitable is just totally missing what corporations do every single day. They help everyone; Regardless of race, class, gender, or age. All they ask in return is about the same effort in return in the form of currency.
And again, I have no overlords. You seem very convinced that you do I am beginning to sense that is the root of your problem.
In what way are they not overlords? They are class of people that follow different rules than we do, they decide how we should run our lives however they see fit, theyre paid more than most, they dont do any kind of industrial work, they dont provide any service themselves that benefits anyone, they have titles and demand respect in their presence, um.. Ya, theyre our supreme overlords alright.
Would you prefer if I called them semi-temporary overlords that get into power based on how well they promised what they couldn't deliver to as many people as possible?
Im sure youve heard of Stockholm syndrome.
Why arent you concerned about its effectiveness and reach?
Doesnt the entire point of your argument rest on the fact that voluntary contributions in a tax free society trumps government welfare?
I did not say that I am not concerned about its effectiveness and reach, I said I am not concerned with the effectiveness of charities in terms of reach.
Voluntary contributions are better than State welfare, but I was appealing to the logic of it rather than go through empirical data all day and still never come to any better understanding about the world.
Economists use a term called Ceteris Paribus because economists understand that societies are complex structures that are immune to traditional experimentation. There is no way to control the variables and rerun an experiment.
For example; I can say, Look at the United States in the 1800s, it had tremendous growth and innovation under little taxation and essentially no public welfare system.
You could say, Well that was another generation at another time, that wont work with the culture of today. (I know this isnt an argument of yours.)
Strictly speaking, this isnt wrong. I couldnt disprove that by taking our culture back in time and giving it to the people of the 1800s and see what happens.
So were always struggling with hypothesis without experimentation or accurate conclusions.
Austrian economics gets around this problem by looking at society from a logical perspective starting with the concept of Human Action. This is called Praxeology.
https://mises.org/rothbard/praxeology.pdf So can you or can you not demonstrate this empirically?
No one can demonstrate it empirically in either direction with any certainty.
As Ive noted before, U.S. welfare spending for families and children in 2014 ($264 billion) amounts to to
0.066% of the federal budget. And its decreasing annually relative to GDP.
Did you know that we spend $863.5 billion, three times as much, on defense?
Did you know that oil companies receive an average of $5.2 billion in subsidies annually, almost the same as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ($5.6 billion) designed to assist 14.5% Americans facing food insecurity?
Did you know that the tax rate of the 3 biggest US based oil and gas companies averages at 20%, which is lower than my rate, despite making $80 billion in profit?
Suppose that all of this is true, what have we proven? What if we just got lucky, and the spending is going down relative to GDP by pure coincidence?
I asked you to show me how welfare is superior. How can you guarantee that this isnt just a fluke? I pointed out to you that Public Welfare is essentially designed to fail. If it succeeds its by blind coincidence, or enormous spending that is simultaneously destructive elsewhere.
Is this not in principal true;
Because welfare is achieved through taxation, it can remain perpetually indebted, show poor results, and have high overhead. For the population to do anything about it, they need to have a majority vote hampered by the votes of the welfare employees themselves and the recipients.
If it is true, is this not superior;
the agency gets money by the consent of their customers, the benefactors. For them to stay in business they have to succeeded in several ways; Most of the money they receive needs to make it to the people theyre trying to help, they have to show positive results, and they must stay solvent. If at any time the benefactors dont like whats going on with this business they can withdraw their funding immediately, no questions asked, and no theft permitted.
Aaah. So you actually dont know if people will make charitable contributions in a tax free environment despite repeatedly proclaiming that people dont contribute to charity now because they expect the government to do it. Thank you for finally admitting that, even if it was done in accident.
Look, if I say if you jump out of a boat in the Atlantic, youre going to get wet, will that always be true? No, you could land on a raft, or by some shocking coincidence hit a whale.
I cant guarantee anything at all about the past or the future, Ive just written a lot about this.
However, if 51% of people are willing to vote to tax the charity out of them, why would that same 51% not act of their own accord to provide charity?
Markets will always seek to fill the demand of the society, if even a small minority of people want to provide charity, markets can provide for that. Only in the instance that 51% of people want public welfare, can this happen.
If it wouldnt happen in a free market then it certainly wouldnt happen in a democracy. Well, as certainly as you would get wet if you jump out of a boat in the Atlantic, if you want to get that pedantic.
when applied in this instance means that people certainly might not immediately put their money into charity as soon as discretionary spending comes up
To be honest, I dont think you really understand what diminishing marginal utility even means.
Do you know what might means? As in the difference between might not and always will not?
Predictably, you copied those stats verbatim from self-professed libertarian Peter Leesons book. You didnt even delete the question mark he placed on the huge drop in GDP it makes me wonder if you even read it.
You think it would have been more honest to edit out the question mark? Are you serious? I assure you, I intentionally left it in.
And is the empiricist suddenly against empirical data whenever it contradicts your narrative?
Do you understand now why I was laughing when you brought Somalia up?
No, could you please explain to me what looking at the country long after anarchy has ended has anything to do with the effect that anarchy had on the society?
How do you know the success in later years wasn't due to the bootstrapping of the anarchistic society before?
Thanks for the book recommendation, but to be honest, I dont take anything published by Young America's Foundation seriously. You can only read so much revisionist accounts and half-truths before you get sick of them.
Your loss.
Here, let me requote myself.
You are resorting to Godwin's law once again. Yes, Hitler was elected. But you are intentionally ignoring the years of unchecked abuse he inflicted on the government culminating with him holding the entire Reichstag hostage while forcing the passing of Ermächtigungsgesetz, which elevated his powers to near monarchy.
Again, Ermächtigungsgesetz happened after he was elected, so whats your point?
Elections cannot be easily gamed - gaming it requires resource, patience and most importantly, depends on the apathy of the citizens. Case in point, you - you refuse to do anything about Citizens United, but have no problem complaining endlessly about the government. You just want the whole thing abolished in favor of some half baked theories.
Its a good thing that no one has the resources, patience, or the citizens to do this sort of thing. Oh wait, according to you there are the citizens, most importantly, so we can scratch that one off.
Its a good thing theres no one with resources or patience to game the system.