Welfare Shouls not Be Abolished

I see a lot of common themes in Pro's arguments that I'd like to address in general. ----------- ----------- “Total Freedom=Total chaos” I'm not debating anarcho capitalism here. I do think that we would all be better off with no government. There's a lot to say on anarcho capitalism but I'm trying to keep this debate manageable for both of us. I just want to show that modern society without welfare > modern society with welfare. However, freedom allows people to create their own order. Under capitalism, people are freeling trading things they own for other things. Everythingis based on mutual consent. People can make their own choices. Capitalism is more than just a every-man for himself rat race: it works because it's in their best interest to cooperate. They can agree on any solution that works. In a capitalist economy, there may be public/for profit transportation, instead of having loads of cars on highways. There may an electronic toll road system with private road owners setting their own speed limits. There may be prices offered by hospitals to buy organs from people. There may be ore drug testing and faster medical advancments, because IP laws would be hader to enforce and companies wouldn't keep patents or at leanot so many of them. There would be no health standards for employment, but if a concerned boss who wants to keep his workers can't find a health risk in his own workplace, chances are a government agency can't find it either. Life is uncertain. Under capitalism everyone is encouraged to solve problems directly, and whoever does is rewarded. Everyone can trade any way they want that will make them better off. They will have more options, and it just makes sense that generally the more capitalism you have, the more money people will have. --------------- “Society=The State” The state doesn't need to do it for it to be done. Pro often makes arguments that imply that society is the same as the state, or that the state needs to act on behalf of society. He is arguing that because it is fair for society to share resources with the poor so they can work, the state needs to do it for us. This is not true, because society is not the state. We do need to share resources with the poor or I agree we will have a brutal and hegemonic society and I don't want that. But society is not the state. Society is individuals making decisions on their own behalf and those they care for, waking up, meeting together, working, playing, all of these things are individual decisions. People (adults) chose their own actions, economic and uneconomic, on their own accord, and the free choice creates all the social and economic structures in society. Everything in a society is voluntary, except for government action. This is why the state enables society to do things the majority doesn't like. --------------- “The UN establishes Human Rights to food, shelter, education and health care” Rights do not come from the UN. Where do human rights come from? I don't want to turn this into an argument over human rights, but I disagree with your notion that rights come from the UN. If rights came from the UN, then did people who lived before the UN existed have no rights? Did the Jews in the holocaust or any other genocide victim in history deserve to die because their government didn't give them rights? No, I think human rights come from being human, not from the UN, and therefore, the UN can be wrong about human rights and we still have them. Human rights are not simply free stuff. There is no human right to water or any other necessity any more than there is any human right to luxury cars. Human rights are the rights of the people to run their own lives, to choose what to do and how to live, as long as they're not infringing on the rights of others, and to be treated equally under the law. The rights to free speech (minus yelling fire in a crowded theatre) and protection from quartering troops and so on all follow from this. ------------ “The market cannot lift the impoverished because they are in poverty for valid reasons that are not their fault.” We do not have a free market. I agree that many impoverished people have valid reasons for such that are not their fault. The fact that it is not their fault does not mean that the market cannot solve the problem. This conclusion would only be valid if we had a truly and totally free market and we still had a problematic level of poverty. We do not have a free market. We have wage controls, price controls and other interventions restrict trade. For example, licensing requriements keep people from strarting a buisness unless they are willing to fork over the fee for a business lisence, and often, a special lisence as well. Regulatory agencies such as the FDA and EPA prohibit some activities, such as selling food determined to be unsafe or doing something the EPA determines to be polluting. Taxes and subsudies outside of market prices signal for or against production and consumption of different things. These all cause people to decide to do things they would otherwise not do, and their actions will be expressed in the marketplace, even though the market was not the source of those new behaviors. Again I'm not arguing about regulation, I'm just poiting out that it exists, it is a big part of the economy, and that it is antithtical to capitalism. If they exist and govern our behavior, for better or for worse, you cannot blame every act of the market on laissez-faire economics. I'm not going to make a positive/offensive argument for capitalism because we're discussing welfare, but just know that even though people can't find work, you can't just blame capitalism. Something else has to be at play here. ---------- “The satisfaction of basic needs is of greater moral importance than an individual's right to spend earnings as he or she freely chooses.” Morality is not determined by consequences. You are talking about two different things: your opinion of what's important/unimportant and what is right/wrong. They are drastically different things. Value, valuation and importance is in the eye of the beholder. If you prefer one thing over another, be they democrats over republicans, chocolate over vanilla, or one friend over another, there is no moral component. Actions are not consequences of moral law, they are consequences of value, in the eye of the human actor. Even if you value a particular social system, you are not talking about morality unless you have an ethical philosophy. It must apply equally to everyone, no matter what any individual's opinion of what is more valuable is. Even if there is a clear measurable difference in money terms, there is no proof that the people with the money value it most. The same goes for any other good, service or resource. If moral law were the PRODUCT of human desires, then there would be no fixed concept of right or wrong. No matter what those moral laws are, we know they exist, some things are always right or always wrong. This would not be if opinions of what is important determined morality itself, morality is above human decisions, unaffected by it. Therefore, the fact that some people benefit from something can not ever make it moral, no matter what it is, no matter how good the people are who are benefiting. ----------- “Firstly, innovation tends to create unemployment, which contributes to poverty.” I will let the voters make of this what they will. ----------- ----------- Those are my arguments, hopefully I've done a good job communicating them. I'll let Pro finish his points and give some final remarks.