Good God...My friend is a libertarian.

[Junghalli]

Of course, if you're dead you can't enjoy the benefits of the money. A better example would be asking whether he would kill a random person for that amount of money. If he says no then it calls into question the consistency of his ethics, if he says yes he reveals himself as utterly evil.

I don't think that's the argument a lolbertarian would probably make though. From my experience, a lolbertarian is more likely to respond to the Famine Dillemma by claiming people would refuse to buy from someone who acts so unethically (never mind this requires they be informed of where their food even comes from - how many people are going to realistically make that effort?), or would try to weasel his way out of it somehow (probably by vaguely claiming it wouldn't happen and then going all No True Scotsman on any examples you bring up, saying that somehow that wasn't real libertarianism).

[Surlethe]

I'm not sure a libertarian would agree that widespread loss of human life is always worse than widespread destruction of capital [...] That's because he'll try to put a monetary value on human life

This position is morally repugnant. For a side observer, it would signify that this person is commited to a deeply flawed ethical system. For himself... I doubt it's even possible to convince someone who thinks you can put a "monetary value" on human life. Alternatively, if the worth of human life per person is small enough in his view - he can be pressed for a concrete estimate - you can ask if he would end his life if offered such an amount of money. This would immediately show that he values life much more in practice than he does in theory.

I don't know that the position that it's possible to quantify the value of life is as morally repugnant as it sounds at first. For one, we as a society do it explicitly (see the link that I referred to before) and implicitly (see Turin's argument in this thread). Your way to rebut the argument - ask him to quantify how much his own life is worth - is appealing, but if he's clever he'll point out that you're talking about how much society values life, not how much he himself values his own life.

I still think that it works better to deny the assumption that maximization of wealth is the best way to go.

I don't think that's the argument a lolbertarian would probably make though. From my experience, a lolbertarian is more likely to respond to the Famine Dillemma by claiming people would refuse to buy from someone who acts so unethically (never mind this requires they be informed of where their food even comes from - how many people are going to realistically make that effort?), or would try to weasel his way out of it somehow (probably by vaguely claiming it wouldn't happen and then going all No True Scotsman on any examples you bring up, saying that somehow that wasn't real libertarianism).

That depends on the libertarian. I like to flatter myself into thinking that an intelligent, academic libertarian would take the route I am outlining (and I say this based on some experience with Austrian school professors). On the other hand, you're correct, I think, that your typical internet lolbertarian anarchist would go ahead and assume that the market is always automatically self-correcting. The difference between the two is an understanding of basic economic principles.

[K. A. Pital]

It can be easily shown that the logic is faulty. If life of a starving person is worth a certain sum, taking small parts of this sum from other people to save his life would not cause their death or even malnourishment. The suffering is not equivalent, regardless of the monetary value.

This is where the moral repugnancy is revealed: taking a small part of the "cost" of human life from a person not under threat of death to save the dying is not something you can seriously reject and have constitent morals which are not ultimately evil.

[Junghalli]

It can be easily shown that the logic is faulty. If life of a starving person is worth a certain sum, taking small parts of this sum from other people to save his life would not cause their death or even malnourishment. The suffering is not equivalent, regardless of the monetary value.

But that would be robbery! What about my freedom to refuse to give them anything if I don't feel like?!? Help, I'm being opressed!

[Count Chocula]

It can be easily shown that the logic is faulty. If life of a starving person is worth a certain sum, taking small parts of this sum from other people to save his life would not cause their death or even malnourishment.

Stas, are you forgetting charity? There are other ways to take care of people in need aside from having a government (i.e. people you don't know) take x amount from you and give it to y and z. A lot of charitable organizations in the States are composed of individuals and, yes, churches who voluntarily donate their time and money to feed strangers. There are also non-religious groups, like the YMCA and YWCA (which aren't religious groups these days), who provide food and shelter to people. One point in favor of private charities is that they are much more efficient at using the money they have for charity - IIRC, about 80% of donations received by the Salvation Army, as an example, go directly to the needy. Government "charity" programs tend to have at least 40%, sometimes more, of their funds consumed in overhead costs.

Either it's wrong in my head, or a lot of you have "libertarian" confused with "lolbertarian." "Lolbertarian" attitudes, at least those that have been mocked on this board, sound a lot more like "anarchism" than any sort of efficient, limited-government, free market beliefs.

[Vehrec]

It can be easily shown that the logic is faulty. If life of a starving person is worth a certain sum, taking small parts of this sum from other people to save his life would not cause their death or even malnourishment.

Stas, are you forgetting charity? There are other ways to take care of people in need aside from having a government (i.e. people you don't know) take x amount from you and give it to y and z. A lot of charitable organizations in the States are composed of individuals and, yes, churches who voluntarily donate their time and money to feed strangers. There are also non-religious groups, like the YMCA and YWCA (which aren't religious groups these days), who provide food and shelter to people. One point in favor of private charities is that they are much more efficient at using the money they have for charity - IIRC, about 80% of donations received by the Salvation Army, as an example, go directly to the needy. Government "charity" programs tend to have at least 40%, sometimes more, of their funds consumed in overhead costs.

Either it's wrong in my head, or a lot of you have "libertarian" confused with "lolbertarian." "Lolbertarian" attitudes, at least those that have been mocked on this board, sound a lot more like "anarchism" than any sort of efficient, limited-government, free market beliefs.

I know some 'government' charities get very high efficiencies-UNICEF for one has about 88% of donations going to those in need, with the rest going to fundraising. Please provide some examples of these low efficiency programs and just who is assessing them and to what standards.

[Samuel]

It can be easily shown that the logic is faulty. If life of a starving person is worth a certain sum, taking small parts of this sum from other people to save his life would not cause their death or even malnourishment.

Stas, are you forgetting charity? There are other ways to take care of people in need aside from having a government (i.e. people you don't know) take x amount from you and give it to y and z. A lot of charitable organizations in the States are composed of individuals and, yes, churches who voluntarily donate their time and money to feed strangers. There are also non-religious groups, like the YMCA and YWCA (which aren't religious groups these days), who provide food and shelter to people. One point in favor of private charities is that they are much more efficient at using the money they have for charity - IIRC, about 80% of donations received by the Salvation Army, as an example, go directly to the needy. Government "charity" programs tend to have at least 40%, sometimes more, of their funds consumed in overhead costs.

Either it's wrong in my head, or a lot of you have "libertarian" confused with "lolbertarian." "Lolbertarian" attitudes, at least those that have been mocked on this board, sound a lot more like "anarchism" than any sort of efficient, limited-government, free market beliefs.

The problem with charities is that donations go down when they are needed the most. Additionally, charities have the free rider problem.

Many members of this board don't distinguish between libertarianism and anarcho-libertarianism because there isn't a clear line that says when to stop between them. If you follow the logic all the way you get to the latter.

efficient, limited-government, free market beliefs.

Efficiency isn't the goal of government.

[K. A. Pital]

Why am I "forgetting" charities? Charities naturally rise; so if there are none to prevent people dying from famine, what is there to prove charities will save people in famine? When, in fact, they constitently failed to do so?

[Count Chocula]

To Vehrec's challenge, I did some research into private and public charity/welfare programs.
There's a lot of info out there, so don't take this as a hard conclusion, but tentative based on the information at hand.

From a USDA report, focused on California, but with a summary of the food stamp program. In FY2000, the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) managed over $17 billion of food stamp funds, $2.1 billion for administrative costs, for an overhead ratio of ($2.1B/$14.9B) 14%.

Here's a table from Health and Human Services, looking at food stamp trends through 1999. I pulled 1998's numbers:

Benefits $20.097 bln
Admin Costs: Fed $2.042 bln
Admin Costs: State/Local $1.989 bln
Total Costs $22.086 bln

$4.031bln/$22.086bln gives an overhead ratio for the food stamp program, in 1998, of 18.3%.

Now let's compare that to local, non-federal government supported, food banks. These are all available, with more, at http://www.charitynavigator.org:
* Food for the Poor, based in Florida, about $1 billion/year: 3.1% for overhead AND fund raising (admin expense is 0.7%);
* Feeding America, about $700 million/year to provide food to ~25 million people: 2.1% overhead and fund raising;
* Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank (Ohio): $15-$20 million, 7.5% overhead and fund raising;
* Atlanta Community Food Bank (Georgia): $45-$50 million, 5.4% overhead and fund raising;

Note that as the food banks get larger, their overhead as a % of operations tends to go down. When compared to the federal food stamps program, the largest private charity in the above list has only about 1/7 the overhead cost of the federal aid program. The larger disbursement pool of the federal program should make its overhead lower, but it obviously is not.

Hokay, food's addressed, how about other types of welfare? That's a little tougher, but let's take a look at a couple other federal programs:

AFDC's overhead costs range from 12% to 16% depending on the source. The CBO probably has more figures, but I don't have my FY2008 Federal Consolidated Budget handy

The Children's Defense Fund has overhead of 17.6% on a yearly budget of ~$20 million;
The Marine Toys for Tots program has overhead of 2.5% on an ~$220 million budget, only .3% for admin costs;
The Pine Street Inn, Boston MA homeless shelter, feeds and shelters "more than 1,200 homeless...men and women each day" - overhead of 16.7% on an ~$30 million budget;
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America has overhead of 9.4% on an ~$25 million budget;
And the Red Cross has overhead of 10.6% on a $3 billion budget.

The Social Security program is praised for having only 1% in overhead costs associated with its operations. That's all well and good, but the IRS does most of the work for the SSA in collecting the actual funds used in its programs, shifting the overhead to another agency, and of course to thousands of HR staffers at corporations who have to shuffle paperwork associated with it. A typical closed-end mutual fund, by example, will have operating overhead (for which the fund client is charged) of 1%-1.5%, but the mutual fund company also has to advertise, sell, and do other activities to bring in customers.

Comparing the numbers, it appears that in multiple categories private charities are more efficient at disbursing contributions. And there's a significant amount of charitable activity in the US: according to this report from Purdue University on 2005 charitable activity, prepared for Google of all organizations, about 31% of all "charitable donations," around $78 billion, was spent to help poor or disadvantaged people.

[Count Chocula]

Why am I "forgetting" charities? Charities naturally rise; so if there are none to prevent people dying from famine, what is there to prove charities will save people in famine? When, in fact, they constitently failed to do so?

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, Stas. "Charities naturally rise" - yes? Would that imply that governments don't? Shall we compare how old a nation's government is to its effectiveness to "save people in famine?" Heck, we could even discuss famines of the 19th and 20th centuries, and - guess what - I bet most of them were caused by government action. The two that come to the top of my mind were.

The Red Cross AND the UN, by the way, might disagree with your "prove charities will save people in famine" declaration.

[Serafina]

Of course, both the U.N. and the Red Cross are massive, government-like, non-profit organisations .

[Samuel]

Why am I "forgetting" charities? Charities naturally rise; so if there are none to prevent people dying from famine, what is there to prove charities will save people in famine? When, in fact, they constitently failed to do so?

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, Stas. "Charities naturally rise" - yes? Would that imply that governments don't? Shall we compare how old a nation's government is to its effectiveness to "save people in famine?" Heck, we could even discuss famines of the 19th and 20th centuries, and - guess what - I bet most of them were caused by government action. The two that come to the top of my mind were.

The Red Cross AND the UN, by the way, might disagree with your "prove charities will save people in famine" declaration.

Name them. I can only think of the Great Leap Foward and Ukraine as falling in that category.

Stas's point is that charities to stop famine don't really exist/work. The closest example I can think of is the band-aid concert to raise money for Ethiopia, but for the most part, no one cares. Not to mention the funds came in after many people died.

[Junghalli]

The problem with relying on charity for alleviating poverty is that charity is subject to the tragedy of the commons. Left to their own devices, most people won't donate, or won't donate enough, because they'll figure they have better things to do with their money and somebody else can take care of it. If you doubt me one need only compare the number of people who donate significant portions of their income to charity to people who pay taxes, or look at how well charity worked in the early twentieth and nineteenth century - it was worse to be poor then than now.

I'll give you an example I'm familiar with: private scholarships vs government college grants. It is much easier for a low income student to get a college grant than to get a private scholarship. If you're poor enough you can get a grant, whereas scholarships are usually given out as prizes in contests with many applicants and only one winner, because people aren't donating anywhere near enough money to fulfill the demand. If charity were truly an acceptable substitute for government assistance, private scholarships should be about as easy to obtain as grants. They are not.

As offensive as it is to democratic sensibilities, the ugly truth is people will only hand over enough money for a viable safety net in a society like ours if they are forced. They are far too selfish and apathetic to do it of their own initiative, generally speaking.

If we were to rely on charity as a safety net, it would have to be something like the Muslim Zakat, where donating a certain percentage of your income is mandatory.

[Darth Wong]

Comparing the numbers, it appears that in multiple categories private charities are more efficient at disbursing contributions.

This is like saying that a small business is more efficient than a gigantic multi-national corporation. That's true, but there are certain things that the small business simply can't do. Charities are limited in scale, their donations drop off in hard times (precisely when they are most needed), and they are demand-driven, ie- they sway about with public opinion, with no real damping mechanism. Also, a lot of charity work is really just a local feedback loop. For example, families who donate money to support local youth organizations are doing so precisely because they are local organizations, and their own kids or kids' friends will be able to take advantage of them. How many soccer moms would willingly donate money if they're told up-front that it will go to help rehabilitate ex-cons, for example?

And there's a significant amount of charitable activity in the US: according to this report from Purdue University on 2005 charitable activity, prepared for Google of all organizations, about 31% of all "charitable donations," around $78 billion, was spent to help poor or disadvantaged people.

Where is the other 69% of all charitable donations going, if 31% of charitable donations go to poor or disadvantaged people?

[Darth Wong]

Count Chocula, let's look at a real-world example of charities vs government programs: health-care.

There are 50 million uninsured Americans. One study found that roughly three quarters of a million Americans went bankrupt in 2001 because of medical expenses. I see no reason why 2001 would be an exceptionally high year in that regard; the number is probably at least as high now (actually it's probably quite a bit higher).

In Canada, a universal health care system would cover those people. According to your dogma, in the absence of such a system, private charity will step in. But if that's the case, then what the fuck happened for those three-quarter million people (and probably rising) every year?

[Junghalli]

But Darth Wong, how will they donate to charity when the government STEALS all their money in the form of taxes instead? If the government didn't STEAL so much of their money people would donate much more to charity.

[/lolbertarian]

[K. A. Pital]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, Stas.

I am saying that charity does not have any obligations before society on the volume of it's donations. People commit the funds they feel like commiting, and not more. Whereas in case of famine, it's a question of what must be necessarily commited to save people.

The ineptitude of the government, inadequate response and too little aid in case of famine are actually a malevolent act: the government is obliged to save the people in starvation, and extort the necessary amount of funds and food to do it. In case of charity, how could you argue that charity failing to save people is a malevolent act? Charity has no obligations. That's why it could not prevent famine deaths in the past, neither will it in the future.

So the question is not whether the charity or the government are "better" at alleviation: the issue is that the government can coercibly redistribute aid in such a fashion as to save all people, but the charity cannot coerce anyone into doing anything. It can only watch and see if the amount of funds commited is enough to save the starving.

The government has a technical possibility to save people from famine, which is dependent on it's own decisions - if the government fails, that's a result of bad judgement and a lack of effort, a malevolent act of neglience. The charity does not have such a possibility, and if it fails, that's just the way it is, it failed to amass the necessary funds.

Heck, we could even discuss famines of the 19th and 20th centuries, and - guess what - I bet most of them were caused by government action. The two that come to the top of my mind were.

You would be surprised - the way "government action" causes famine is very similar to the situation we are looking at - it's when a government continues to export grain despite people dying of famine. Basically it's when the government takes a free-market approach to the plight of the people and forgets it's obligations to save lives before earning monetary gain. Surprise.

But let's actually see the famines and the mechanism behind them. Great Irish Famine, Indian famines of the XIX-XX century, Russian famines of the XIX-early XX century, Bangladesh famine - that alone would make for a dozen great famines (and I'm sure there are more of them, some smaller than others) which were caused, or heavily exacerbated, by simple trade mechanisms, and the government took a neglient approach (i.e. did not forcibly redistribute goods to save the people but instead sat on it's ass while they died).

Soviet famine of 1932-1933 was caused by the government actively taking the market's role in the absence of a market, exporting grain at a time when people were starving. The difference here is that the government could have saved the people (and therefore has the blame), whereas the market laws would have inexplicably led to their deaths in a similar situation. Great Leap Forward was the same. And it's a case of government failing on it's obligations to save the people, not a case of the government acting like it should.

The only famine I can recall offhand when exporting regardless of the people's hunger was not a reason is the DPRK famine in the 1990s. It's just the result of their autarky and failed economy, and once again the government failed it's obligations, not behaved in a fashion like it should.

[Darth Wong]

Free-market libertarians love to point out that when government is corrupt, it forgets the needs of the people. What they forget is that the vaunted free market does that even when it's working perfectly. That extends even to charities, which focus on a particular area of need and have the luxury of being able to ignore everything else. That's why people need to get on TV in order to get charitable donations to help Little Dorothy get her transplant: the people (and the charities which represent their wishes) can't be bothered to worry about all of the suffering people out there. You need to get their attention and their sympathy, and if you don't accomplish that, then you're screwed.

[Vultur]

look at how well charity worked in the early twentieth and nineteenth century - it was worse to be poor then than now.

Definitely true of the urban poor, but that's not the only kind of poverty. Though admittedly it was not because of charity and thus not strictly relevant, the rural poor were if anything better off - before the inception of huge agribusiness and the vast rise in land prices due to population growth, small rural farmers could actually feed their families and sell their crops for money. (During the Great Depression, impoverished rural people in the East were much less affected than richer urban ones.)

[Vultur]

For some reason, I can't edit, so I'm adding this as a separate post.

I think part of the issue is people's admiration for (often idealized or wrong) views of the past. For example, the late 19th - early 20th century has been brought up a lot here; I have a (probably not completely rational) admiration of the culture of the time, despite the fact that I know (from a disinterested standpoint) that people weren't nearly as well off as today.

[Darth Wong]

It's usually the white males who think that the society of the 19th century was superior to the present. Of course, every one of them will deny that it has anything to do with racism or sexism, but it's a bit much of a coincidence that the power of the White Man (or more accurately, his ability to mistreat everyone else) was much greater back then.