richardhutnik said:
Care to come out and speak of your level of tolerance of the number of people you find acceptable dying because you believe those in need shouldn't be helped. Considering I believe a rights-based ethics system a pile of BS, I won't argue people have a right to anything. However, I do believe that if people want to have a semblance of a social contract they there are obligations people have to make sure society functions a certain way. You are free to disagree. But there is fallout from whatever you do. In your case, what is your level of acceptance of infant mortality, children and elderly dying, and able bodied people ending up living under bridges because no one pays for shelter and then dying from a shive in their side because no hospitals will take them in? If individuals aren't entitled to any help, then why should hospitals, by mandate of law, be forced to not be able to turn anyone away? Reality is that the welfare state exists because people don't like to have people go neglected. It has something to do with collective guilt over problem situations. Kudos to you for lacking this compassion, but you do need to address the level of death you find acceptable, for lacking this compassion. And no, you can speak of some sort of magic free market answer that makes poverty disappear. Humans have always had poverty. |
I just explained myself very clearly. You say you don't believe that people have a right to other's money, yet you clearly do if you accept the welfare state. That is hypocritical.
There is no acceptable number of deaths. People will always fall through the cracks, and if your approach of doing more centralized welfare to curb poverty actually worked, then there would be less of it right now. The opposite is true, though. There are over 70 federal welfare programs, and there are more people in poverty than ever before. If you wanted to be truly compassionate to the elderly and the poor, you would be more concerned with how the value of our currency is continually declining, which affects the poor more than any other group because they're the ones on fixed incomes who get hit hardest by the inflation that raises the price of everything we buy.
If you subsidize something, you get more of it. So the more federal or state welfare is given out, the more people will use it and either stay poor or become poor just to qualify. The only answer that is moral is to allow churches and other private charities to help those TRULY in need. Before the government got involved in taxpayer-funded welfare in middle of the last century, that used to be how charity was handled. Politicians came in and messed it all up.
