That a welfare state does more harm than good

I thank Andromeda for answering my contentions. My structure will be the same as before. Lower prices means better welfare First my opponent restates that low prices are needed to remain competitive. This is an obvious dodge of my analysis that regardless of the level of competition, states are always cheaper as they don't need to make any profit. A doctor who attempted the same tactic would go out of business just as quickly as one who overcharged. Second, my opponent states that consumers offered high prices by a social security company would simply change providers. This is an obvious dodge of my analysis that social security is a natural monopoly. Unless the vast majority of a large population buys into a single provider, the whole system necessarily collapses. Third, my opponent states that privatization in practice is beyond the scope of the debate. Need I say that this is an obvious dodge of my analysis that privatization has never worked. As we are debating the effects of a welfare state, and your stated alternative to a welfare state is privatization, the effects of privatization are completely relevant. Fourth, that not all blame can be placed on welfare in the New Zealand example. On what then? If the New Zealand example was unique perhaps I'd be willing to grant it as an exception. However, studies show[1&2] that, in welfare states, poverty decreases after countries adopt welfare programs, and vice versa. Fifth, that I appealed to an unidentified authority. If my opponent had simply scrolled down to the section entitled "sources" he would notice that I did, in fact, identify my authority. Finally, that there is no problem with money moving from the poor to the rich if the rich are providing a service in return. Insurance against losing your job, however, is not providing anything in return unless you actually lose your job. Meanwhile, the rich get to stuff their pockets with the hard-earned cash of the poor without having to do anything for them until they get fired. Since the wealthy are also generally those doing the firing, a caste-based system can emerge very quickly. This is known as inequality, and one of the fastest ways to get it is agreeing with my opponent. State welfare drives out businesses First, Andromeda supposes that the government can do all manner of ridiculous things with welfare. This is false, because the government's actions are restricted by voters and the wide range of political viewpoints that need to negotiate to get welfare. As a result governments tend to act in an incremental fashion rather than suddenly doing ridiculous things nobody expected. However, if they were doing ridiculous things, there is a simple mechanism available to fix things. It's called "vote for somebody else." It works every time - we did it in New Zealand and now we've recovered a little bit. Second, my opponent says there is a harm in not being able to pay both your own provider and the government provider. Who would be stupid enough to pay a free market provider INSTEAD of a government provider though? The government provider would be cheaper and pay out more. Why? Cheaper because the free market provider needs to generate a profit. Pay out more because more people buy in to the government provider, meaning the government has a bigger pool of income from which to pay you out. So with lower cost and higher payout, the only way you'd ever pay anybody else is if you wanted additional cover and/or additional service beyond the government minimum, not as an alternative. If you can't afford that because you're poor, at least you have the government cover. If you can because you're rich, then great for you. Nobody loses. Alternatively, if you take away the If you admit state welfare needs the buy-in of as many people as possible in order to operate, then so does a private firm. That's the contradiction. For clarification, when I said "cheaper" in the last round, I meant cheaper for the firm, not cheaper for a consumer. Sorry about the lack of clarity. Duty of state Why the state, rather than charities? Because everybody has a stake in the state - the state has an established social contract with everybody. There is no such stake in a charity. This point is not to suggest welfare should be a popularity contest, but rather to question the role of the free market in providing welfare when there is no established contract between the free market and any random person. To prevent unequal treatment, there is a system called democracy, and several international treaties (such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which restricts a government's ability to discriminate). No firm is a democracy, as you cannot rock up to the board of directors and attempt to vote them out unless you're a shareholder. There is no obligation on firms to serve any particular customer so they can discriminate as much as they want. Firms thus have fewer safeguards than governments. Third, can the defense of liberties and rights occur without a state? This is a supermassive assertion. Show me one stateless society with rights and liberties absolutely protected. There are none. Here's why. You cannot have the protection of liberties without punishment if somebody breaks those liberties. For that, you need to know what your liberties and rights are and are not. This necessitates a legislature to document what rights/obligations you have. You also need somebody to actually carry out the punishing, protecting and so on. This necessitates an executive. Finally you need somebody to handle all the allegations that somebody has stepped outside the bounds. This necessitates a judiciary. As you can see, the defense of liberties and rights necessitates all three branches of government. That's why you need a state. "If the responsibility of the state is to protect liberties as you stated, then it would be a contradiction for them to decide how your money is spent." That would only be logically true if one is absolutely at liberty to spend money however one wishes. There are, however, some reasonable restrictions we impose. You cannot, for example, spend money on buying slaves or child prostitutes. The reason for this is that the only owners of money, legally speaking, are states. People may control money, but ultimate ownership rests with the government that issued the money. That is why it is illegal (most of the time) to destroy a banknote or coin - it isn't yours. You are at liberty to do with your stuff as you please (unless you'd be seriously injuring another person's liberty in doing so), but not with other people's stuff. Money isn't yours. Poor quality The problem is that firms in a free market can't compete on quality. Right now firms aren't supplying the whole market - only those wealthy enough to afford welfare beyond the state welfare. Their ability to compete on quality is premised on their exclusivity. The same is true of private schools - if just anybody could go to them, lots of kids would, and as a result class sizes would go up as teaching quality and school standards declined. Private healthcare providers are only better than the government because the treatment they offer is to a smaller number of clients, and thus they are able to attract better doctors who give more attention to each. The same is true of all forms of welfare. When the market increases to the size that the government supplies (ie the whole country) then you lose your ability to be exclusive. If you do continue to be exclusive you won't be charging a "fair price," and if you do, you lose your quality advantage. Either way this argument is true. So I hope that has dealt with all of my opponent's objections. I'm really looking forward to the final round. Sources 1 - http://www.lisproject.org... 2 - http://www.jstor.org...