In the same vein, if you want to help the poor and the weak, be rich and mighty — else you won't have the resourced to share with the poor, or strength to help the weak.
Well, they need someone rich and mighty to create this environment they can thrive in - poor people usually don't hire employees.
I mean if I didn't have to worry about money I'd probably devote my life to some interesting distributed operating-system problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
I think that the people who are already creating stuff would continue to create stuff, just exactly what they create would change.
I'm less worried about who would advance our knowledge and thought and more worried about who would manage the garbage or grow the food.
Also, how easy it is to build a good school and hire good teachers if you all are poor? Such are the cases where an infusion of wealth can help.
Regarding handouts, ask whether those who receive food at soup kitchens, or free meals for their kids at school, find the practice useless.
I'm sure if given the option of an intervention that actually addressed the underlying causes of poverty (i.e. socialised housing, UBI, or so forth), they wouldn't choose the gift of soup
The poor need an environment where those with more wealth cannot influence the outcome of political processes irproportionally.
The poor need an environment where the invisible hand of the market is not the fiscal equivalent of a one-way-valve, where the "free" market is praised as long as the employee wont use their work as a bargaining chip.
A handout is when someone gives you something you are not entitled to of their own free will. They can stop giving it to you at any time. If you are reliant on handouts, you are at their mercy.
That's the difference. With an insurance contract you are entitled to a payout when the conditions are met because the insurance company agreed to that as part of the contract. The only things you are entitled to are yourself, whatever you can homestead with your labor from unclaimed land, and what others voluntarily agree to give you. Insurance payments and every other form of voluntary contract fall into this last category.
> A handout is when someone gives you something you are not entitled to of their own free will. They can stop giving it to you at any time.
"Social safety nets" are not something you are entitled to. The government grants or denies them of their own free will (albeit using others' money). They can be reduced or revoked at any time, or extra conditions can be imposed for claiming them, and you would have no grounds to sue for compensation over those changes, despite having paid taxes to fund prior payments to others.
A handout normally refers to some rich individual giving money to someone or of the kindness of their heart.
2) New guy is unlikely to succeed in a market where there's a natural monopoly already filled by someone else. I'm not going to try to start a competitor to facebook.
3) Entrenched businesses have an interest in eliminating competition. Sometimes this happens naturally (walmart can take advantage of economies of scale in a way that 'mom and pop' down the road can't), and sometimes they go out of their way to prevent competition (e.g. big telecom bribing politicians to pass rules against municipal internet).
The resulting trend being large companies become more and more powerful over time, making it more and more difficult for an outsider to compete. This should be plainly obvious to anyone living in the USA, but it's theoretically the case even under completely non-corrupt circumstances (see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-ine...).
Therefore, no, I don't feel I could bring in 1000$ without them, but I am still being ripped off. The handout I give my employer is non-consensual.
Humans have a natural drive to be self sufficient, and it is unpleasant to rely upon the charity of others. We wish to be masters of our fate, not slaves.
Further, it is dumb to structure a society in a way that depends on significant numbers of its members routinely going against their own self interest.