Political Theory

Re: The Aggressive Welfare State

Prateek Sanjay — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:00:00 GMT

Let's not go there.

The Singaporean welfare state provides heavily subsidised housing, education, and a lot of other bonus services to people from revenues earned from business activities, without taxing people.

In college, during the business organization and management class, our professor pointed out how Hong Kong gets most of its revenue from parking spaces, and that funds all its welfare programs.

There is nothing special about even heavily subsidised government services which says that they can only be run on taxation revenue. Smarter city-state governments have run these services, be them essential or additional, from sale of goods and services on the market. And they provide welfare services even on huge surpluses.

Taxation for public property that would be used by everybody is one thing - taxation for welfare is misallocation of resources.

The best allocation of scarce resources is increasing long-term productivity to give everybody an abundance of all that they need, not merely redistributing scarce resources towards short-term uses.

Re: The Aggressive Welfare State

Marko — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:39:57 GMT

Additionally, If this is found to be tied to the act of aggressively taxing person A to provide to person B, is person B, by default, an aggressor against person A?

What do you mean? Does not accepting the food means the person B goes untaxed? Or is there food to be taken up regardless of anyone picking it up?

Re: The Aggressive Welfare State

Marko — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:36:14 GMT

If it is aggression then what punishment do you propose would be proportional to it?

Re: The Aggressive Welfare State

K.C. Farmer — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:56:31 GMT

This is aggression.

The premise of the position ignores the fact that there are compassionate individuals who will volunteer their time and resources to people in need. A state is not required.

In addition, there are no guarantees in life. Each individual must take measures to protect himself. There are methods, through voluntary exchanges, to reduce such risk. Having a State force others to reduce one's own risk is an act of aggression.

I see a bit of a slant with the "death or severe harm from...the market" statement. How does the collection of mutually beneficial voluntary exchanges cause death or severe harm to an individual? It would appear to me that the individual is a rent seeker, and therefore is an aggressor.

Public goods and services are aggression when the State uses force or coercion to pay for such goods and services. The use of these goods and services are not aggression per se, but the act of rent seeking is aggression.

The State has intervened on any would-be free market, and has created a monopoly of force. As such, questions posed have more to do with the defficiencies of the State than of the free market.

Re: The Aggressive Welfare State

James — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:57:28 GMT

We all use government roads, don't we? If we witnessed a murder, I assume most of us would call the police.

Re: The Aggressive Welfare State

Skyler Collins — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 21:59:16 GMT

If Person B is petitioning for it, then yes. It's no different than Person B going to Person A and using aggression directly to get his "necessities".

On the other hand: http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block86.html

The Aggressive Welfare State

cognitivist — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:31:59 GMT

Is it aggression when the State is providing a necessity such as food, or shelter, to someone who has no reasonable alternative (over death or severe harm from nature or other individuals/the market), and therefore most likely would accept?

Additionally, If this is found to be tied to the act of aggressively taxing person A to provide to person B, is person B, by default, an aggressor against person A?

Disclaimer: I am not excusing the State for other aggressive acts, nor for aggressive taxation.