Voluntarism, Coercion and the Poor

by Angelo Mike 

Exclusive to STR

December 4, 2006

People often complain that without state welfare, the poor and vulnerable would be “out on their own” because, for whatever reasons, markets don’t value poor people.  But the question really is, are they no less vulnerable (and is the rest of society now in danger) when put in the hands of the state?  

At any rate at which society is organized, whether a market order or state society, this allegedly helpless class of poor and handicapped will be at the mercy of others. That is, absent their own efforts to get jobs and make a living, other individuals will still need to act of their own volition to help then, and no less so under a state and its social services.

The real question for us is, do we want the poor at the mercy of the state, who everyone else is forced to aid and abet? That forcefully imposes its own sense of what an acceptable level of charity is over the objections of everyone else’s consciences? An organization which we may not refuse to continue aiding at the risk of imprisonment? Or do we want a market order to allow others to decide how best to help the poor?  

We are merely substituting a system of market entrepreneurship for political entrepreneurship in which instead of supporting the best charitable organizations voluntarily, increasingly only the politically patronized will be around to help the poor.  

This is a matter of whether, then, we can escape the laws of economics in satisfying people’s wants and improving the conditions of the masses, and reshape human action according to our own dictates.  

However, we almost never hear the debate over welfare (Isn’t it peculiar how we never have these big controversies over the very same issues in our private lives and with our neighbors until they become political issues? So much for a social contract.) framed in this way, except within some economic circles. The question usually becomes a matter of whether you want to help the poor or not, and whether people are too greedy.  

If only these people would just read Bastiat, who had to deal with the very same objections over 150 years ago!  

Forget the economic rationale behind opposing government aid and public works programs. Let’s look at the arguments on their own grounds and the way the debate is framed.  

On the matter of whether people are too greedy to be trusted to give to the poor (assuming that charitable aid is even the best way to help the poor), the problem is, why is a state program a solution to this? States are made of people who must act to carry out their laws. If charity becomes a matter of legislation, and the police power can be used to forcibly take your money and make the laws on where your money can go, won’t the greediest people want to work in government, which can take anyone’s money against their will? How can you possibly trust people with such a power as the state’s power, if they’re so greedy?  

Alternatively, if people are so greedy, won’t they merely find it easiest to exercise their greed by voting for whichever candidate who promises to plunder the rest of society to the benefit of whatever class of people someone happens to belong to, whether senior citizens, blacks, Nazis, CEOs, etc.?  

As Bastiat asks, “If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”  

Another argument advanced in favor of state poverty aid is a simple one on moral grounds: It is morally good to give to the poor. The law is a reflection of our values as a country, and as a country we are only as good as how we treat the least of us.  

While these statements may be true, it begs the question: Why a state? If generosity can be forced with the barrel of a gun and threat of imprisonment, then it is merely an empty word. Generosity has a virtuous character precisely because it comes gratuitously from a person who is free to choose not to help out someone in need.  

Furthermore, to say that government welfare and aid is generous is like saying that I’m a generous person if I steal $100 from you and give it to Asian tsunami victims. It’s a lot easier to be “generous” when I’m taking your money.  

Democracy just makes this process of stealing massive and organized, thus creating a dichotomy, in the public’s view, between what the well being of the “haves” and “have nots” are in relation to each other. Instead of taking up the risk yourself of stealing, knowing you might be hurt or killed by someone defending their property, and for a one time sum, you can just vote for the candidate who will put the laws, tax collectors, police, and civil servants at work to do the job for you.  

This gives the added benefit for the state of looking legitimate because it’s so organized, employs uniformed agents, is ceaseless, and done with the approval of their own consciences. Petty theft is plain to see in the eyes of everyone for what it really is.  

Bastiat makes another brilliant insight into this matter, adding in his essay, “Justice and Fraternity”:  

“Note that sacrifice, by its very nature, is not, like justice, something that has a limit. It can extend from the gift of a centime thrown into the bowl of a beggar to the gift of life itself…It [The Gospel] has done more than explain fraternity to us; it has given us the most perfect, the most touching, and the most sublime example at the summit at Golgotha [the site of Jesus’ crucifixion].

Will it, then, be said that legislation and administrative measures should push the realization of the principle of fraternity that far? Or will it, rather, stop somewhere along the way? But at what point will it stop, and according to what rule? This will depend today on one ballot, tomorrow on another.”  

But Bastiat goes on, understanding that self-interest is opposed to the well being of everyone else when directed through the coercive powers of the state.  

“There is the same uncertainty in regard to its form. It is a matter of imposing sacrifices on a few for the sake of all, or on all for the sake of a few. Who can tell me how the law will go about this? For it cannot be denied that there are an indefinite number of formulas for achieving fraternity. Not a day passes that five or six of them do not come to me in the mail, and all, please observe, completely different. Truly, is it not madness to believe that a nation can enjoy any peace of mind or any material prosperity when it is an accepted principle that, from one day to the next, the legislator can cast the whole country into whichever one of the hundred thousand fraternitarian molds he may momentarily prefer?”  

Put simply, if we want to compare the risks of leaving people free to refuse to give their money to aid the poor with the risks of leaving it up to the government to decide for us how to use our money, are not the risks too great that the government’s powers will become more and more invasive, inefficient, and abusive?  

And if a country ought, through a state, to put resources to aid the poor, what should define a nation’s boundaries? A continent? A city-state? A household? Should we leave it up to greedy voters and the military-industrial complex to determine these things when the law should not even trust them to decide whether to give a portion of their income to a poor person?  

To all these questions the proponents of government subsidies may argue that this is all idle theory. While it may “look good on paper,” it doesn’t work in reality. I will leave it up to the reader to determine why, if this is the case, they don’t continue to debunk it if they can better explain reality.  

And if we didn’t know better, we might say anyone claiming the doctrine of voluntarism as too idle or purist is part of a government conspiracy, since the government patently knows this is not the case. In each instance of a new class of interventions, governments have sought to teach the public, such as through public education, what civic values and duties are, such as paying taxes. It hires experts, historians, teachers, and economists to sway public opinion in its favor before major changes. The current dictatorship that much of the world faces is a democratic one.  

So this isn’t a question of whether such attempts to curb or abolish government subsidies to the poor is a view only held by a fringe minority or not; whether we want to help the poor at all; or whether the argument to end government intervention with the poor is a bunch of technical and economic gibberish. It is of whether there are laws of action and economics or not, and whether their consequences can be avoided, as the statists wish.