Topic: Bitcoin Welfare System - page 3. (Read 5300 times)

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...

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.

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 . 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. 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.

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 ...







 

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.

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 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.

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?

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 ... 

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? 

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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 ...

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.

very well said. i couldn't agree more.

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.

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.