Even if someone wishes society to help people, that doesn't necessary mean they wish the government to do so, as Frederic Bastiat wrote in "The Law":
"A Confusion of Terms
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs,
confuses the distinction between government and society. As a
result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by
government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being
done at all.
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."
Anyone who implies that those who are opposed to using the government to fund a particular social program must be "selfish" is using a misleading emotional propaganda attack rather than a logical argument to justify their position.
The government is simply an organization of people. In most ways it is not magically different or better than any private group such as the United Way. Having the government perform some charitable activity does not guarantee that it will do a good job. Simply assigning the government a task and instructing it to do the best job possible is engaging in wishful thinking and not dealing with the practical reality of bureaucracies and large organizations. Every private company attempts to do the best job possible. Yet the quality of the results achieved varies greatly, despite the best intentions. Government organizations are no different.
The problem with this is the government operates as a monopoly. Even if you don't like the job its doing you can't choose to give your money to another organization that is doing a better job. Whereas if you hear of problems with a private charity you can give your money to another cause. (For example this happened in a well publicized way when the national United Way had problems). Its the nature of a monopoly, regardless of whether it is "public" or "private", to not need to be efficient or to provide the best solution. This is simply because no one has a choice to go elsewhere. We are stuck with whatever the monopoly hands us.
If a government appears to be producing *any* product (i.e., in this case making any effort at all to help a social problem), people are sometimes able to be persuaded its the best that can be done since they have no alternative to compare it to. Unfortunately it is not always possible to predict, or guarantee what would have happened if the government hadn't been given a monopoly on something. One useful thing to do is simply compare the results of free market production of goods in our country vs. the former Soviet Union.
Consider what might have happened if the government had been given a monopoly on building computers, and this year it came out with an Apple II-equivalent. People would be impressed since the Macintosh and Pentium-based PCs wouldn't exist to compare it to. Suppose the fellow who decades ago felt the entire world would only need a handful of computers had been in charge of a government monopoly computer department, where might computers be today? Are we settling for the equivalent of Russian computer technology in our social programs, when we could have the equivalent of American technology if we let the free market work?
We feel its most appropriate to create voluntary organizations (which are not monopolies) if you wish to help people. Bastiat wrote elsewhere in "The Law":
"Because we ask so little from the law - only justice - the socialists thereby assume that we reject fraternity, unity, organization, and association. The socialists brand us with the name individualist.
But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind ...."
The *only* reason for using the government to perform some task rather than a private organization is because some group desires to force everyone else to support their personal cause and pay for it. We would rather allow people to fund whatever causes they personally support rather than imposing our choices on them.
Most government employees are not elected, so in practical terms handing a task to govt. Dept. X. is no different than handing it to private Dept. X. Both types of departments are simply groups of people asked to do a particular task as well as possible, the only difference is having different employers. However, private organizations, including charitable non-profits, need to do a good job to stay in existence in the competitive free market.
" Law is justice. And it would indeed be strange if law could properly be anything else! Is not justice right? Are not rights equal? By what right does the law force me to conform to the social plans of Mr. Mimerel, Mr. de Melun, Mr. Thiers, or Mr. Louis Blanc? If the law has a moral right to do this, why does it not, then, force these gentlemen to submit to my plans? Is it logical to suppose that nature has not given me sufficient imagination to dream up a utopia also? Should the law choose one fantasy among many, and put the organized force of government at its service only?"
...
... "They need only to give up the idea of forcing us to acquiesce to their groups and series, their socialized projects, their free-credit banks, their Graeco-Roman concept of morality, and their commercial regulations. I ask only that we be permitted to decide upon these plans for ourselves; that we not be forced to accept them, directly or indirectly, if we find them to be contrary to our best interests or repugnant to our consciences."
It seems that those who wish the government to fund *their* particular programs are the ones who are selfish. They wish to impose their choices and priorities on the rest of us. They wish to control what we do with our own money, they wish it to be spent on their projects rather than ours.
Even if the goals of those projects themselves are noble, the methods being used are at their root selfish. I don't have the option of giving my money to a homeless shelter I think is doing a good job versus handing it over to the government to support causes I may not value as much or agree with. The government can prevent me from saving lives by taking my money and wasting it rather than letter me contribute to a medical charity I know is saving lives. The presumption is made that the Government knows best and has better uses for the money than the charities I would like to help.
Those who wish to solve social problems, yet wish to force us to fund *their* programs, are also in a sense being elitist. They are making the assumption that they are "right", that their solution is better and more important than whatever we wish to see done with our own resources, and they are sure enough of it to force us to go along. It seems natural for people to have confidence in their own ideas. It seems elitist for people to feel they have a right to forcibly impose their view of society on others
" But these organizers desire access to the tax funds and to the power of the law in order to carry out their plans. In addition to being oppressive and unjust, this desire also implies the fatal supposition that the organizer is infallible and mankind is incompetent. "
" While society is struggling toward liberty, these famous men who put themselves at its head are filled with the spirit of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They think only of subjecting mankind to the philanthropic tyranny of their own social inventions. Like Rousseau, they desire to force mankind docilely to bear this yoke of the public welfare that they have dreamed up in their own imaginations. "
The government has a finite amount of resources (even if it took *all* our money it still would). Unfortunately there are an infinite number of worthy causes and approaches to helping people. There is always something more that can be done to improve the human condition, there is always another way to spend more medical research money. Deciding how to allocate resources to various causes becomes a moral choice because we don't have infinite resources available to hand out to all of them. It seems inappropriate to have the government legislating morality. Taxing people to pay for government social programs takes away value choices from individuals. Money I pay in tax isn't available to donate to a cause I agree with.
Once you allow the government to start doing charitable work, what then becomes the proper function of government? Where does it stop growing and is there any reason it would decide to stop itself?
" If you exceed this proper limit - if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic - you will then be lost in an uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it upon you. This is true because fraternity and philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where will you stop? And where will the law stop itself?"
In order to decide where to draw the line, you need to decide what the proper function of government is, what its reason for existing in the first place is. Then you can decide if any particular activity falls within that scope or not. Ideally the government should do no less, and no more than this.
One last quote from "The Law":
"Proper Legislative Functions
It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over
our persons and property. The existence of persons and property
preceded the existence of the legislator, and his function is
only to guarantee their safety.
It is not true that the function of law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our wills, our education, our opinions, our work, our trade, our talents, or our pleasures. The function of law is to protect the free exercise of these rights, and to prevent any person from interfering with the free exercise of these same rights by any other person.
Since law necessarily requires the support of force, its lawful domain is only in the areas where the use of force is necessary. This is justice.
Every individual has the right to use force for lawful self- defense. It is for this reason that the collective force - which is only the organized combination of the individual forces - may lawfully be used for the same purpose; and it cannot be used legitimately for any other purpose.
Law is solely the organization of the individual right of self-defense which existed before law was formalized. Law is justice."
If the government goes beyond the role of defending our rights, it is engaging in legislating morality. The government has finite resources. Which subset of problems to spend those resources on is a moral choice. Money being given to AIDS research is not available to help the homeless. People should be free to make their own moral choices, the government shouldn't impose those choices on us.
The reason many people do not recognize that the government is legislating morality is simply because it is doing so indirectly. It takes our money and then spends it for us rather than directly commanding us to spend the money contrary to our own moral choices. Even though the choices are hidden from us, the government is still essentially deciding that *you* must spend $X on AIDS research vs. $Y on the homeless vs. $Z on breast cancer research, etc.
The objection many people will have to our philosophy is "But if the government doesn't fund $X, it won't get done." Our interpretation of the underlying meaning of this would be: "*I* think X is important but I don't know if I can persuade enough people of this to voluntarily fund it. Therefore I need the government to force people to pay for what *I* think is more important than whatever they want to spend their money on. I don't want to give them the option to disagree with me, since otherwise *my* goals won't be met (I don't care if this causes people to fail to meet their own goals)."
One misleading thing about the argument for government programs is that if the government were actually listening to the people when making its decisions, presumably a *majority* of the people must also feel X is an important goal if the government were to fund it. If that many people favor something, why can't it be voluntarily non-government funded? Why can't the wishes of the minority be respected and they be allowed to fund their own projects?
Some related objections would be "But the reason the government needs to step in is because the private sector isn't doing anything. Isn't this what the Republicans were pushing for, didn't they try encouraging more private donations and their are still problems?". Often the reason the private sector isn't working on a particular problem is because the government is taking so much money from people they don't have much left over for charitable contributions. In addition many people are persuaded to accept the view that its "the government's problem to help people, let them worry about it, you don't need to bother contributing."
The views of libertarians are drastically different from the actions of the Republican Party over the last couple of decades regarding government spending. Unfortunately so much money is tied up in taxation that small token cuts don't make enough of a difference in the money available for charitable activities to have enough of an effect. In addition, most people still hold this view of the government as being responsible for helping people. Libertarians are talking about a federal government that is a tiny fraction of the size of the current one, freeing a huge amount of money up for private donations.
In practical terms this may not happen any time soon. One solution to this would be to institute a tax *credit* for donations rather than a tax *deduction*. Effectively this would mean that someone could choose to directly give for example $1000 to a homeless shelter rather than to the government. Presumably there would initially be a cap on the size of the tax credit while programs transition to the private sector. A less effective step (but still preferable to the current situation), would be to let people specify on their tax forms what percentage of their money should go to what part of government. (Including the debt).
It is natural to wish to make the world a better place to live, and to do so sometimes we need the cooperation of other people and their resources. Naturally we wish to get them to do what *we* want, rather than what *they* may wish to do. It seems there are only two ways to get people to do what you wish. Either you persuade them to voluntarily join with you, or you force them to go along. Libertarians believe persuasion is superior to force.
If your case isn't strong enough to convince people to voluntarily help you, what right do you have to force them to help your cause vs. letting them pursue the causes they feel are important? Is there some reason to believe that your decisions are somehow apriori "right" and those of the minority are not?
One common non-libertarian argument against this is that "the ends justify the means". The question is, once you take that point of view, where do you draw the line? What means are not acceptable? Is it right to decide that because you can force people to go along with your viewpoint, and because *you* think the ends are important enough, you can do what you wish to other people? What prevents others from using the same argument against you to attempt to force their choices on you because they feel the ends justify their means? Libertarians are pro-choice on most everything. We feel that simply because you *can* force people to go along with your viewpoint through taxing them, even if *you* think the ends are important, that shouldn't lead you to forcibly impose your moral choices on others.
Does the majority have a moral right to force its views on the minority, simply because they are able to? Funding social causes through taxation is allowing the (Moral?) majority to decide how to spend my money. This is implying that because you (the majority) outnumber me things get done your way. You get to take my money and support the causes you wish rather than those I wish.
In exactly what way is this different from the street gang philosophy of "might makes right", i.e. the gang able to force its view on the other gangs is "right"? Simply because the threat of force is hidden, and voting boxes are used instead of street fights to determine which gang is larger, does that make the victor any more "right" than the winner of a gang fight? The underlying philosophy is still "we outnumber you", so things get done our way. The "right" moral choices are being determined by which side outnumbers the other. It is basically gang rule when the majority forces the minority to accept its moral choices because they are stronger in number.
A major reason for the Bill of Rights, and for attempting to structure government based on a consistent set of principles is to guard against the problem of "tyranny of the majority". Government's power should be limited in a way that it isn't possible for the majority to inappropriately impose their values on the minority. The role of government should be to protect people from each other, and not to use its force to allow one group to control the resources of another.
Libertarians think social programs can benefit from the same innovation and efficiency the free market has shown in producing other products. A program to "help the poor" may be considered a product just as much as a CD player can. The only difference this type of product has is that the person paying for the product is different from the person receiving it (but then that would be true if you bought a CD player as a gift for someone, you still wish the best product for the money you can find). People making charitable contributions do tend to receive something in return, mental satisfaction or some other feeling which motivated them to be charitable in the first place. The better the "charitable product", the greater the sense of satisfaction (how many people get a sense of satisfaction after paying taxes?).
We've seen how much better free market systems produced goods than the communist systems, what reason is there to think if given a chance it won't do a better job of producing "charitable goods"? Exactly how or why are they magically different? The same arguments about money wasted on marketing, duplication of effort between competing organizations that some people made against capitalist production of goods are being made against the free market of social programs. Those arguments are just as wrong in this case as they were proven to be in the other for the same reasons.
Some people label libertarian views as "simplistic" or "naive" since we expect society to work without the government needing to force it to work. It always seems odd to suggest that views held by someone like Milton Friedman, who received a Nobel Prize in Economics, could be "simplistic" views even if you don't agree with them. This viewpoint usually comes from a lack of true understanding of libertarian ideas, usually a "sound bite" model of libertarianism. We feel that on the contrary, most of those people are taking too simplistic a view of the complex, chaotic, free market "ecosystem". Just as it is difficult for man to successfully control all the complexity of a natural biological ecosystem, we think it is just as difficult for him to attempt to control a human "ecosystem". The same chaotic processes that produce the evolution of natural systems are also at play in human systems.
The general rules can be defined, just as they are in the computer "life" simulation program, but then complex behavior which is hard to predict and control comes into being. People too often ignore the unintended side effects which occur while tinkering with a complex system. They see only the results of what they *did* do, and aren't aware of what they then *prevented* from happening. Every resource expended on a government backed project is a resource that *wasn't* expended on some other, unknown project. (Perhaps the extra few dollars taken in tax money someplace prevented a research project from being funded that would have lead to a cure for cancer.)
Some people complain that the free market system doesn't "have a heart", that it is based around greed and selfishness. The real truth is that the free market basically reflects the values of those within it. People are free to pursue whatever goals they wish, whether they are monetary or non-monetary. Everyone acts in their own self interest, even when that "self interest" is the desire to fulfill their wish to help people. If people are spending their resources entirely on superficial materialistic concerns, that is representing the free choice of those people. The free market doesn't "require" them to do so. The free market is simply an efficient tool to let people co-exist and pursue their own dreams. It is a tool that can be used to pursue both noble and destructive goals, but like other tools it in itself is neither good nor evil. It is the use which is made of it and the values of those using it which should be questioned, not the tool itself.
People who desire to help others need the resources to do it, and see a system that doesn't give them those resources without effort as being bad. This contradicts the nature of a free society where people shouldn't be able to force their goals and values on to other people. Everyone is free to attempt to persuade other people to share their goal and has the same opportunity others do to try to direct resources towards their own cause (whether its AIDS research, or whatever).
For more discussion of the proper role of government (there were links here that were lost when the newest version of this was lost, more to come in the future):