The state is never going to be as agile as private people engaging on topics they are passionate about on their private time.
The problem with leaving everything to private charity is that only the wealthy people and churches doing the donating dictate what counts as "public good" without you and I having any say over it. We luck out when the donor has good intentions and chooses to donate to an organization doing good, and we have no say when the donor has evil intentions and chooses to donate elsewhere. Allowing a small handful of rich donors to decide what counts as a good cause is not ideal.
The thing about public goods is that people tend to agree pretty closely about what they are. The wealthiest person in the world benefits from, e.g. clean air just as much as you do. You should be a lot more worried about wealthy folks who don't donate to charity and just spend the money on big luxury yachts and the like, because these folks are essentially free-riding on everyone else.
I also agree that wealthy folks spending their wealth on luxury yachts while the public suffers is also something to worry about. Who knew? Gargantuan wealth inequalities are mostly downside for everyone but the wealthy!
Is there some data that shows that?
> The wealthiest person in the world benefits from, e.g. clean air just as much as you do.
We can find public goods in common for many groups, but that's actually a bad example. Wealthy people care about clean air in their neighborhood; pollution is therefore concentrated in poor areas. They don't site the new incerator (or drug treatment facility) on the Upper East Side of Manhatten.
Many needs are specific to poverty. For example, wealthy people are not subject to malaria; they are no illiterate; they don't need toilets or labor rights; they can afford college for their kids regardless of tuition; they have unlimited access to safe, fresh, healthy food. They don't need more available and less expensive health care, so they donate to cancer research and high-tech therapy and not to the medical clinic in the poor neighborhood.
It is problematic even with good intentions.
People don't have time, expertise or usually even the motive to systematically examine ROI. They or someone they know has a 'good cause' and they support it. For example, endowments at their alma mater - likely a school for wealthy kids, new buildings for the hospital (that serves wealthy people), new research in diseases that are problems for the wealthy, etc.
They can't know without talking to people who have experience with poverty, for example, and those aren't the people coming to dinner tonight.
If it is authoritarian, perhaps, but even that is still a matter of a group of people. Most seem to believe that government should be democratic. You may not find yourself in a democratic state, but that would only continue to contribute to what makes the day funny. Perhaps you didn't read the entire thread and are posting this without understanding the full context under which it is taking place?
But, again, that government is the very people we're talking about, at least as far as a democracy goes. Although even in the case of an authoritarian government, the individual authority is only as strong as the people are willing to go along with recognizing it, so it is not really that much different. No magic here, just people.
It's nothing to be proud of.
What you can be proud of is in REDUCING dictatorship, by removing power in centralised entities and giving it back to the individuals.
It is not - that would be some theoretical pure democracy, also called 'mob rule'. Democracy, as the word is actually used, requires universal human rights which protect the minority. For example, freedom of speech means the majority can't control the minority's speech, whether they like it or not.
Democracy also includes separation of powers, usually between legislature, executive, and judicial, which prevents the concentration of power.
> It's nothing to be proud of.
It's only something to be proud of if we make it that way.
Another, much larger aspect of government, especially democratic, is people getting together and doing things as a community that can't be done individually.
People getting together and doing things as a community does not require a government. We can and should do that of our own free will. That's not to say governments aren't needed. But labeling them as "people getting together and doing things as a community" ignores their ability to enforce their laws, including the sanctioned use of violence or the threat of violence to coerce people into obeying or to punish them.
That may be true, but government (at least a democratic one) is just people getting together and doing things, so if you already have one you can save the effort of the community trying to organize a second community on top of the community they already have for no good reason.
> But labeling them as "people getting together and doing things as a community" ignores their ability to enforce their laws, including the sanctioned use of violence or the threat of violence to coerce people into obeying or to punish them.
That literally tells of people getting together and doing things. These are not magical powers. They are simply community action. I suppose it highlights that people getting together and doing things isn't all sunshine and rainbows, despite your apparent dream for a world where there is only happiness, but such is reality.
I expect the aversion is that those who wish to donate to charity only want their friends, not entire communities, to benefit. The "trouble" with a community at large is that everyone is able to participate, whether you like them or not. That's not to say that a community cannot see a charitable benefit indirectly, but the key point is that they want to keep the primary benefit away from strangers.
The government is the only one with a legal monopoly on violence; it redistributes resources in the society and it's not run by incorruptible angels but by fallible human beings - human beings who were put there thanks to investments of millions of dollars.
It's a recipe for disaster.
Government is a recipe for disaster? Democratic government has worked for centuries without disaster.
> it's not run by incorruptible angels but by fallible human beings - human beings who were put there thanks to investments of millions of dollars.
Yes, that is the trick of every human endeavor, the great ones and the failures. It depends on you and me - let's make it happen.
That may be logical, but it doesn't happen. I've had unpaid parking tickets for long periods and nobody showed up at all, much less with guns. Where do you live that they jail you for it, much less go out and find you? Your local government must be very well-funded to have resources for that, not to mention having a fascist attitude - how popular is that with constituents?
> People getting together and doing things as a community does not require a government.
It depends - many times it is the most or only effective way. It has decision-making mechanisms - including elected representatives, hearings, experts - and executive mechanisms including employees, equipment, contract managers, processes, institutional information such as maps of infrastructure, and loads of experience. Imagine some neighbors in NYC trying to put in just a new streetlight.
> But labeling them as "people getting together and doing things as a community" ignores their ability to enforce their laws, including the sanctioned use of violence or the threat of violence to coerce people into obeying or to punish them.
It doesn't ignore it, but your prior comment repeats the Internet trope that that's what goverment is - a coercive mechanism with guns. That's only one narrow aspect - the great majority of what government does, and how society works, has nothing to do with that. It's for the outlaws, not for the great majority.
Of course not. It's quite literally just the people. If you cannot trust the people with your charitable donations, but still wish to donate to a person, then you're going to have to narrow that down to the specific person you can trust (i.e. your friends). There is no in-between.
Supporting government programs at the same time as you insist money could be better used elsewhere (at charities) is somewhat amusing.