the right to be a scumbag

We could give it all back to you and hope you spend it right. 

--Bill Clinton, Jan 20 1999.

Think about this: If everyone spent their money "just right," government wouldn't have to "redistribute" it.  If you spent a more equitable amount on products that weren't quite as good, if you gave your business to people who weren't quite as deserving, and shared your earnings with people who just don't seem worth helping -- then in theory the government wouldn't have to override you, would it?

When you have money, you hold a sort of power over other men.  People are willing to serve you in exchange for a share of it.  Every dollar you spend is a vote of approval for what somebody else does.  But it also sends a subtle message of disapproval to everyone who didn't get that dollar.  By spending this dollar, I affirm that I'd rather work for whatever I'm buying than for all the other goods/services/worthy causes that I am not spending it on.

By spending money, you're also making a statement about the work you do: This is what I work for.  I value this product, and if you want the value of my work, then this is the value I expect to receive for it.

When government redistributes, it necessarily negates your values.  If you were going to put your money in the places where government wants it, then it wouldn't see the need to get involved.  By getting involved, government seizes earnings from labor I performed for causes that I do value, and uses it to endorse causes that I do not.

If you don't earn enough money to pay for your own subsistence, then as long as you are still alive you are dependent upon others.  In a comment yesterday, I shared that I once made the minimum wage (more than once, actually), and was unable to completely provide for my own needs. 

When I relied on others to make up for my shortfall, I was obliged to meet their terms.  Because they had earned the money, their values rightly dictated how I should spend it.  By giving value to me, their money bought them an interest in how I lived, for at least as long as I received it, and probably for as long as I owed them anything.

When I was living with my parents as a kid, for example, these terms were not exactly a bad thing.  There were valuable lessons in being expected to hold a job, to do chores around the house, and to be a considerate tenant.

On the other hand, I had the right to be a scumbag.  I could have said, "Screw your rules," and done what I pleased -- at the cost of being cut off.  I can't say that I needed that lesson -- and hopefully few well-adjusted people do -- but the prospect was certainly there if I couldn't live by the minimum social values of those who were paying my way.

If you give money to an organization like the Salvation Army, they don't just give it away.  They spend it on specific causes, and the people who benefit are required to live by certain values.  The process of choosing a charity is how you identify the values you want advanced.  It's discriminatory, in a beneficial way: It advances a good cause.  And even if you think "good" is entirely subjective, what matters is that it's good enough for the people who contribute of their own free will; good enough for someone to work for.

Anytime you can't pay for yourself you're dependent on others.  And as long as this is a voluntary relationship you will be required to live up to someone else's expectations -- to live by someone else's values.  When their money is spent on you, it's still a reflection of their values.  You are an investment, an extension of their efforts.  You are what's worth paying for, and in some way you become a part of what they work for; what they live for.

But government entitlement -- now there's a special set of rules.  Only government will actually pay you to be a scumbag.  If you're a real social outcast, you may even get special benefits from government -- maybe even a job, or at least a guarantee that you can't be turned down for one. 

And values?  You might have to take a drug test to get a job, but God forbid anyone ever has to take a drug test to get a government handout.  Your productive values do not apply -- just send money, thank-you-very-much.

And this is all your fault, by the way.  Because if you'd only given your money to the "right" special interests -- if you just "spent it right" to begin with -- then government would never have had to get involved in the first place.

Comments

[Tangy]

A great entry JG. It echoes the messages in a paper released last year by the Australian libertarian think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies.

In Australia, voting is compulsory and many believe that voluntary voting is actually discriminative against people at the lower end of the economic spectrum.

The paper looked at the idea of tying the right to vote to the responsibility to look after oneself as a way to overcome not only a dependency on state welfare but also to address to practice of pork-barrelling.

It reinforced Mills' argument:

He who cannot by his labour suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others...
Those to whom he is indebted for the continuance of his very existence may justly claim the exclusive management of those common concerns, to which he now brings nothing, or less than he takes away.

http://www.cis.org.au/occasional_papers/op111.pdf

[Ben in Boston]

The problem with your argument JG is that the value system under which most people will spend their money if you give it back to them in the current state of our country. Our society is increasingly built on the philosophic foundation of humanism. What we're finding in today's society is that through human reason alone you cannot arrive at a coherent set of values beyond personal peace and prosperity.

If all of us chose to spend our money only to advance our personal peace and personal prosperity, the country would descend into chaos. The reason the government is so unpopular nowadays is that it is clinging to the extra-humanistic values of the support of the poor and otherwise downtrodden. If we had an agreed-upon base for values outside of human reason (oh, say, Christianity for example) then support for the poor would happen naturally without the intervention of the government and we wouldn't have to have a huge government. People actually would naturally contribute to other's needs rather than having to be forced to at the point of a gun, because they would have a base for their values outside of their own personal peace and prosperity.

The problem is not the government per se, it's that we've lost our soul as a nation.

[John Galt the Visitor]

But JG, you are really only talking about FEDERAL government, no? Take the charity out of the hands of Federal govt, put it back into the states, or even further down, into the municipalities, and people can make their own choices more efficiently, as they are faced every single day with what is going on right in front of them. While I think the overall concept that Ben in Boston wrote misses it entirely, he does make one interesting point. There are, and should rightly be, groups of people who take a personal and community interest in helping others. Ben mentions Christianity, which is a good example. Other charities exist as well, and towns, cities, and states should return to taking some level of responsibility for society back from the Federal government.

Funny how people will freely donate cash to causes like "Cancer Research" or "Parkinsons Syndrome Research", even though one would think that the profit motive alone has already put billions in capital behind the search for cures by pharmaceutical, medical, and other corporations who stand to gain the most. When you donate to "cancer research", as far as I can tell, you're donating to for-profit organizations. The point is that the desire to give exists. Marshall it at the local levels, not from the Federal level.

[John Galt]

When Milton Friedman explained the problems inherent to government doing good with other people's money, I don't think he was limiting himself to the federal government.

[John Galt the Visitor]

Of course, you're correct that Friedman wasn't limiting himself to Federal govt. But most of our arguments against government intrusion are based on the Founding Fathers' vision of a federal republic, with strong states' rights and minimum federal government. To the extent that the States take over all laws, legislation, judicial, and executive roles related to "social" issues, and the Federal govt does only what the Constitution allows it to do (defend the nation, legislate interstate commerce, etc.), I would support some level of state and local government involvement in social programs. I would still never support government charity or redistribution of wealth.

[Mitch Baker]

I think the point the founding fathers were trying to make regarding this was that the federal government should be severely limited to external items and a few explicit items within the federal system (e.g., real interstate commerce issues,). Their concern was to form a nation, so they left a lot of the state and other more local issues to those locales, basically the concept of subsidiarity.

A good consequence of this is that, if the state (or county or city or whatever) in which you reside decides to start doing things you don't like, whether it is welfare, abortion, shall issue gun permits, criminalizing of marijuana, allowing gay marriage, etc, you can move.

At the state level, of course, we can still have similar arguments, and most states have constitutions to which we can look for guidance.

Regarding wealth distribution, I'd argue the federal government has basically no enumerated power to do so (i.e., not allowed), then I'd argue at the state level that wealth distribution is counterproductive and actually destroys wealth, leaving the lower class worth off (i.e., a bad idea). If I win on the first argument but lose on the second, I can pick a state more to my liking.