Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
]I'm harmed every single time the government hands my tax dollars to someone. I'm not harmed by that someone receiving the money. Get it?
.....
The base condition is to not provide subsidies at all. Creating them should be the exception, not the rule.
Are you differentiating between "subsidies" and taxes going toward things (e.g., abortions) or are they viewed conceptually the same?
Um... Each action should be judged based on the action itself. But the cost factor is constant. Well, sorta, there's another aspect to this, but it's hard enough to get people to grasp "spending cost 101", so I'm trying not to go too fast.
The base condition is "don't spend any money on anything". Period. All spending, and all government action should be by exception, not rule. What I mean is that we should not start with the idea that "government should do X, Y, and Z" because that's innately subjective. We start with "government does nothing". Then, we argue and debate and decide to allow government to do X, and then Y, and then maybe Z.
You're getting too far ahead of the concept I'm trying to get across.
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Gbaji wrote:
Thus, I may agree with a subsidy if and only if the absence of the subsidy harms me (or society as a whole) in some way that outweighs the harm of the subsidy itself.
This is where your argument becomes suspect. What is the general rule to determine the harm?
Do you mean the harm from the cost of the spending itself? Um... It's more or less the dollars spent (again though, there's another factor, but we can relate it to dollars spent easily enough).
If you mean the harm caused by the absence of a subsidy, that's a whole different subject.
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If you provide an objective and measurable determination (regardless if others agree), then there's no problem with the structure of your argument. However, if it appears that your rule is subjectively determined based on what you like, then your argument is structurally flawed.
Measurable is a bit unfair. What units do you use to measure the benefit to a society for creating a system which ensures a K-12 education for all citizens? Or an interstate highway system? Or a military? How do we measure the costs for not having those things? We could endeavor to assign dollar costs to these things, but I'll leave that up to the bean counters.
The "objective" part is a lot easier (if maybe not as specific as you may like). The rule should be that the benefit to be gained, or harm avoided should be measured (again, to the degree it can be) by its effect on the whole of society, not just groups within. For example, we should not measure the value of a public education system by the value gained by those who receive the education, but rather by the value gained to all society because they have it. So instead of looking at the increased labor value of an educated person compared to an uneducated one, we should look at the value to the rest of us because those people are educated. We'll have lower crime because more people are earning a living instead of stealing it. We'll have a more skilled work force, so our nation will be better able to compete in technology and science fields rather than just performing lots of manual labor. There's a host of benefits to the whole that arise from having a more educated population, right?
The reason you do this is to avoid the "vote for my own benefits" problem that democratic societies can fall into. If the decision is based on benefit to the recipient of the government spending, we'll soon find ourselves in a circle jerk of benefit providing. Each group agreeing to vote for benefits for other groups under the understanding that they'll reciprocate. I also happen to think it's unsustainable in the long run. If instead, we judge whether to benefit group A, not based on whether group A wants or needs that benefit, but on whether group A receiving it creates some change to society as a whole that benefits us all, then we avoid the problem. We can make rational decisions about spending and avoid making it about playing favorites, and who we like or dislike.
And when you look at this rule, you find that it fits a lot of the things we traditionally choose to spend money on. Some of them better than others, of course. But as we get into programs that the Left has pushed over the past 50 years or so, we find more and more of them fall into the "benefit group A because we want to please group A". And I find that problematic. Doubly so when faced with supporting arguments like "if you oppose funding for benefits to group A, then you must hate group A". That's ugly. And it's exactly the kind of favorite playing that a free society should attempt to avoid.
We should all be equal under the law. But when you get into the realm of government spending, and adopt the "if you don't fund X, then you must hate group X" approach, you're also effectively targeting that spending based on who you like (and I suppose how much you like them). And that creates inequality. We enter into a system where what you get is determined by the group you are in, and what sets of government benefits that qualifies you for.
I think that's a really horrific way to do things. And it all starts by mistakenly adopting the idea that funding should be based on whether we like or dislike the group that benefits from the funding. If, instead, we base it on whether the rest of us benefit from that group being funded, we can make much much better choices. And yeah, objective choices. At least to the degree that we can apply objectivity here.
Edited, Jan 14th 2015 6:54pm by gbaji