The Right to be Charitable (or Not)
Posted by David Miller, Feb. 01, 2010
A couple of days ago I heard Jason Lewis on the radio talking about how socialism does not create wealth (after Obama’s “where opportunity is absent government must create it” comment it’s obvious that some people just don’t understand that fact) and that the only way that socialism can seem to work is if there are people in society selfishly creating wealth to be redistributed. While Jason started going on about how much better natural self interest is for society than synthetic altruism (my terms, not his) I began thinking that the right to be charitable is one that we must each earn in life.
As an example, I cannot donate a million dollars to help the relief efforts of Haiti. No matter how much I might want to I simply don’t have the money. There are other people who, through some combination of hard work and chance, have amassed a million dollars or more of money they don’t need for themselves and they can choose to donate that much money to help in Haiti. They have earned the right to make a decision about whether they will do something that generous, but I have not earned that right.
As I thought about it I realized that while we must earn any goods we might wish to be charitable with the choice to be charitable is one that anyone may make with whatever quantity of goods and skills they have acquired, whether they are objectively wealthy or not. The real catch between socialists and capitalists is that, unlike capitalists, socialists believe that it is possible for some person or group of people besides me to decide how charitable I should be with my goods. The socialists believe that the force of government should be used to enforce a minimum level of charity from each person in society whereas the capitalists think that each person in society should be free to make their own decisions about how charitable they should be with their possessions. Interestingly it is that capitalists that give more to charity than the socialists.
February 1st, 2010 on 11:13 am
Although the number of talk radio shows is more prolific than ever, I find in myself a decreasing tolerance for these shows. I have only tuned into Mr. Lewis’ show a few times for relatively brief periods. Perhaps I have insufficient material upon which to base my opinion, but the general tone I have noted makes me disinclined to tune in with any degree of regularity. Still, I agree with Mr. Lewis’ take on this matter.
The basic progressivist approach to wealth is a lack of recognition of several property. Any possession held by anyone, in this brand of thinking, has been obtained only through the good graces of collective society. You could not have received your last paycheck, for example, had not countless people contributed to your education and opportunities.
Your personal initiative in this matter can be discounted because you did nothing to deserve the basic opportunities that led to these earnings. You did nothing (in this thinking) to merit birth or to merit being born into relatively favorable circumstances. You did nothing to merit having a higher IQ or more individual drive than many other members of society. You did not pay for your primary or secondary education. Your whole basis in life is personally undeserved. You owe everything to the collective!
In this view, the collective has the right (and even the obligation) to confiscate any excess of this world’s stuff from anyone that has more than whatever the collective deems to be an acceptable amount.
Of course, this view disregards the fact that the actual will of “the collective” can only be properly ascertained through each member’s free expression of will. Apparently this is just too disorderly. Rather, the favored approach is to have a deterministic great leader and/or a small body of deciders use some type of limited expression of public will to claim legitimacy to make top-down rules that apply to members of society in the name of “the collective good” or even “public will.”
True believers suggest that such a system can function if everyone will become of one mind and relinquish personal will to the greater good. It is acceptable to enforce this through various levels of threats of violence. (Quite a different approach to “one mind” than the “Zion” discussed in the scriptures.) In real life, such a socialistic system can only partially function, as Mr. Lewis says, by virtue of many members of society acting in their own self interest; very often acting at odds with what progressivists believe to be for the collective good.
February 1st, 2010 on 11:45 am
I used to avoid all talk radio completely because all the ones I heard – conservative or progressive – spent at least as much time being wrong as right, and generally the more time the spent being right the uglier their tone. Somehow I stumbled onto the Jason Lewis Show and found one that was right much more than wrong and not just plain belligerent/rude in tone. I listened to it regularly for a month or two before I concluded that I had little to gain unless there was a specific issue I wanted to hear about. I tune in less and less frequently. All that is to say, I totally understand your low tolerance for talk radio.
As to your comment – you articulated the progressive side with eerie precision. Just go look at the comments I got from two prolific progressive commentors at my site when I first posted this. They stated the same ideas – sometimes using almost identical verbiage – but the difference is that they believe those ideas and you don’t. I just wish they could see how silly it is to argue that the collective is preeminent over the individual in determining our individual circumstance. We are all collectively guilty for those who experience poverty (everyone except the poor people) and we are collectively responsible for the wealth of the wealthy (everyone except the wealthy – they just stole it from the collective). If I am nothing but the product of the conditions around me I might as well be a biological automaton (wait, that sounds like something the progressives would believe).
February 1st, 2010 on 1:24 pm
Staunch progressivists seem to have a tremendous penchant for thinking along the same lines as the Borg Collective of Star Trek fame. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(Star_Trek) )
My encounters with these folks reveal an obsession with some kind of deterministic utopia — a state of bliss that is to be achieved by design and (ultimately) force. They imagine a kind of human freedom within the confines of their design that simply cannot exist under such conditions. They imagine Eden when their design carried to its natural end would necessarily create hell — perhaps a hell where everyone would be forced to be ‘nice,’ but a hell where actual liberty would not exist.
February 1st, 2010 on 1:49 pm
Eden without agency – seems like I’ve run across that plan somewhere else . . .