From: dmeyers@mal-s2.gatech.edu (Dave Meyers)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: Bleeding-Heart Libertarianism (was Legalizing drugs)
Date: 14 Dec 92 23:18:28 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Organization: Georgia Tech Res. Inst./Modeling & Analysis Lab

In <92347.095544DGS4@psuvm.psu.edu> DGS4@psuvm.psu.edu writes:

>I am perfectly willing to be convicned.  It is just that I get tired of
>people claiming that private charity could do the job and offering
>no evidence to support that claim.  I've looked around and I've seen
>private charities doing wonderful work.  I've yet to see any evidence that
>they are more efficient than government in large scale operations, such as
>feeding the poor, insuring the sick, or other such social service
>operations.

Would you accept a teensy bit of anecdotal evidence?
In about an hour and a half, I need to get to an
organizational meeting of a volunteer group I work
with called the Mad Housers.  We build huts for
homeless people to live in, help them get food,
and are working on some other longer-term projects,
like permanent low-cost housing.

Let me tell you something.  If you give us $200, all
$200 of it will be used well.  It costs between $200
and $250 to construct a hut from mostly new parts.
I'd like to see what happens to $200 that you give
the federal government.  Or even what happens to it
after it is divvied up at the high levels and needs
to filter back down to the people for whom it was
earmarked.  Here with the Mad Housers, there are
no adminstrative hierarchives for that money to
climb up and back down before it gets to those who
will benefit from it.

Besides.  If you don't think we are using your money
well, and we'll be more than happy to show you what it
is used for (in fact, we encourage people to come out
and help us use it!), if you don't like our work, then
you are more than free to give your money to anyone
else you like.  It is called a free market.  You buy
from those whom you feel provide the best product
for your money.  If the product is charity, the same
market structure which encourages efficiency works,
and works very well.

The government has no such incentive to use the money
well.  If you feel that it is being used poorly (as 
many of us do - it sickens me to think that I have no
choice but to support some of the housing projects in
this city - and I'm familiar with them), it makes no
difference.  Your money still goes there.  And that
leaves us with that much less money to give to the people
who are really making a difference.  If I could have the
portion of my taxes which were going to state and federal
charity services instead be given directly to the
Mad Housers, I'd do it in a minute, and even as little money
as I make, that portion of my taxes would make an enormous 
difference to the group.

This crap about tax exempt charities is exactly that.  It
needs to be tax choice.  Then, I'd give whatever percentage
of my taxes which is being used for these social programs
instead to ones I know work.

(I'm not ready for a free market in national defense or
in police or courts, yet, though. )

>>       But hell, at this point I'm not even gung-ho to eliminate government
>>charities.  If they'd just stop adding more I'd be satisfied.

Anything to change the direction!  If growth is a trend, then
stopping the growth is in fact an elimination of what would
otherwise have been taken for granted.

Now, what do we do about Social Security...
(I want it stopped _before_ I put a life's savings worth
in!!!)

--David

-- 
-- David S. Meyers (dmeyers@math.gatech.edu)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc