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Comment by jonfw | Hacker News Reader

> Why would I be proud of a country where people beg on Facebook for donations when their family gets cancer

So asking for charity is bad, but forcing the government to use it's monopoly of force to take money from others for you is good?

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Every person is born, without their consent and with a self-preservation instinct they didn't ask for, into a world where almost every resource is withheld from them by that same government violence you're complaining about. Access to resources is mostly distributed according to how good your ancestors were at killing people. Welfare is a partial correction of this injustice.

I doubt I can convince you, but yes, no cancer patient should have to beg for their treatment. And yes, I think it is good that the government takes money from its people to that end. The alternative is that the rich people decide who lives and dies, and I find that reprehensible.

The government deciding who lives and dies, however, is fine and OK?

As opposed to private insurers (who routinely deny treatment for people deemed as "not sufficiently likely to recover," assuming they even bother applying a reason) or hoping that the charitable giving of a person's friends and families will carry the day?

Absolutely. I will, with no hesitation, be fine with that trade.

A government, or more broadly, a society has no requirement to earn a profit and every incentive to keep its citizens healthy and happy so as to be positive members of society in order to perpetuate that society.

Remember that, in some areas of the country, fire protection is for-profit and if you didn't pay your fire company dues, your house will burn while you watch. Meanwhile, in the "socialist" areas with government-owned-and-operated fire departments, everyone's residence will receive at least some protection.

One, the government doesn't decide that. It's lovely propaganda, but it's just not what happens. Not in countries with decent healthcare, and not in the US.

Two, if there's any body who would need to decide that, yes, the government would be a much more appropriate body than individuals - it is at least theoretically a representative of the whole population.

I don't understand are you purposely deflecting or are did you not understand his point. Maybe it's easier if we used schooling as an example. Do you believe, today, that the government decides which children go to school? I think any reasonable argument would be no, the government, tries to ensure every child goes to school.

Would you rather replace this with a system where children had to beg on gofundme for middle school tuition, where funding is implicitly decided by who has the best sob story and appeases the FB algorthim for that day.

Replace school with health care and his point is clear.

You're right! It's better that for profit medical & insurance companies, with CEO compensation 800% higher than their average worker pay, makes these decisions.

I agree that it would be best if everyone could receive a high standard of care without begging, but I would personally prefer this to be paid for with minimal government intervention. I believe that charity is good for both the donor and the recipient, as it creates a feeling of social connection, through more 'personal' institutions, and develops a sense of empathy in the participants, which is lacking in government programs.

Unfortunately people aren't charitable enough to sustain a population.

Is that not the entire point of society? I sacrifice some of my independence so that I can enjoy the infrastructure of civilization? None of us are an island.

I think the best parts of society come from collaborative and social effort- where people agree to share resources in pursuit of a common goal.

I don't think the entire point of society is to force people to participate in your choice program under threat of jailing

> I think the best parts of society come from collaborative and social effort- where people agree to share resources in pursuit of a common goal.

people who don't share your (presumably) anti-state views probably think this is basically what government is.

if you rephrased to something like "government action ought to be the last resort for solving the problems of a community", I could agree with you.

This is the most negative possible framing of the argument at hand.

In my personal position, I want to "force" the government to "use it's [sic] monopoly of force" to accept a little more tax money from me in exchange for making sure that my fellow citizens, whether they're less fortunate or not, don't literally die because they don't have enough pieces of paper to pay for healthcare.

A majority of citizens, including those who regularly give to charity, are not equipped to properly allocate their charitable contributions. I'm not talking about making sure their money goes to the right problem area, I'm talking about making sure it's not funneled into a con man's pocket. Take a look at the financials on major charities and you'll quickly realize that philanthropy doesn't work all that well.

Side note - the government collects taxes, and must continue to do so in order to exist. If you're against taxes as a concept, you're against government existing altogether. If that's the case, your political ideology is effectively anarchism.

the usual counterargument would be that there is more dignity in petitioning the government to consider it an entitlement/right than in begging for money on facebook.

It's better to force somebody to give you what you want, than to agreeably do so?

One important part of charity is that it benefits the donor as well as the recipient; government intervention creates a disconnect, and diminishes empathy.

How is paying taxes less empathetic than paying an NGO?

We've agreed to cooperate under a government, and that requires taxes. To resort to "they'll use force to make you pay!" is sophistry. There are many, many steps to tax collection beginning with social pressure to conform. Like anything else, the force comes in under extreme cases where somebody sociopathically ignores all pressures and penalties for a considerable time.

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