Individuals who value the feeling of helping someone more than their money. Still others are the result of mass voting or coups of small dangerous groups of people (stability is a good thing even a dictator can bring.)
The lighthouse has been covered to death here. Search the archives and you’ll find plenty of debate about that. My personal hypothesis is whichever individuals need it more than they need their money. Whether it’s a single corporation with a lot of freeloaders or (most likely) a group of people whom it would benefit sharing the cost but with some freeloaders. For shipping companies who need lighthouses, consider it a business cost with the added effect that anyone can benefit from your effort. For individuals who just really enjoy boating, well, eat the cost or stop boating at night. There are plenty of places that aren’t lit but we don’t cry foul that there’s no lighthouse there.
In the case of the lighthouse being ‘used’, use by people who don’t pay doesn’t increase the cost of maintaining the lighthouse, so it isn’t really analogous to something like welfare or roads whose costs are determined by how many people use them.
OK, charity. Charity is good, but in my wife’s case charity is clearly inadequate. Charity raised just $16 million in 17 years; a recent stem cell transplant study required a $20 million NIH grant. Do you just abandon 150,000 people, throw up your hands and “sorry, no cure for you”?
Wait a minute. How is mass voting not “coercion”, even if it is by an overwhelming majority? Isn’t the minority still tyrannized? And dictators? How can a dictator govern without coercion?
Yes. It’s a horrible thing, but if society won’t provide a cure, then they obviously preferred something else to those people being alive. People have voted with their dollars.
Now we’re going in circles. It’s not coercion if you choose to be subjected (remember those 2-3 pages where I explained “opt-in”?) to the government and the caveats of being in the minority on some issues.
So why are dollar votes worth more than ballot votes?
So you are back to asserting that in Libertopia, where the majority does not tyrannize the minority, everything good is a product of the free market or charity?
Then I must have misunderstood. What do you mean by this:
Does this happen in Libertopia or not? If not, then that reduces the means for good to happen.
Well, in the case Fear Itself described, people also voted with their votes. And they voted for a government that would fund things such as medical research, including research on diseases that are too rare to provide a commercially profitable market for medical treatments for them.
In a democracy with a government bureaucracy that funds various social goods, the overall social priorities of the citizens can’t be measured solely by how they allocate their charitable contributions. Most people are smart enough to know that they aren’t experts on all forms of beneficial collective investments, and to value having a group of professional public employees who are experts in that regard to help determine how their collective public revenues will be spent.
Yeah, if we wanted to we could dismantle the professional bureaucracy of funding and just rely on the personal preferences of charitable individuals to provide for all our socially beneficial but not profitable goods. But fortunately, most of us aren’t such idiots as to want to try that.
When Martin Hyde and Der Trihs both think your idea is shit, you know you’ve got a seriously minority view there.
It’s a lot easier to vote with your dollars when it’s not just your money. You’d be surprised what people will vote for when they only have to pay .001% and their neighbor has to pay 10%.
Hah. Thanks for the laugh. I know I’m in the severe minority which is why I don’t really get too excited at the prospect of having to defend myself.
I don’t see how tyranny of the rich over the poor is preferable to, or more noble than, the tyranny of the majority over the minority. Unless you are rich.
After hearing you rail for two pages about the tyranny of the majority and how the rights of the minority need to be protected against coercion, my head nearly exploded with the irony that the tiny minority of people suffering with a disease are, in your view, literally and justifiably sentenced to death because “people have voted with their dollars.” I guess the whole concept of protecting the little guy breaks down when money is involved.
It is my personal opinion that valuing human life above all else is an ideological claim and no more worthy of militarily enforcing than the ideology that we should protect, say, space travel above all else.
Because citizens are voting with other people’s dollars. When you aren’t losing something yourself, true value hasn’t been established.
Think of it this way. I prefer to buy my dinner for $5. I will part with dinner for $5. But if you present me with a $7 dollar dinner and add the stipulation that my neighbor will pay $5 and I only pay $2, I will buy it regardless of what he thinks, because my burden is reduced.
This is the way my ideal society would run, but then, I would find acceptable any society in which the consent of the governed is explicit.
I wasn’t aware disease only affected poor people. Someone had better tell Magic Johnson he isn’t sick after all.
That’s a good point. My first idea is maybe a central charitable agency could arise that distributes the donations at the proper level to the places that need it most. I see no reason that couldn’t happen.
You seem to be saying that those without dollars don’t get a vote, while those with many dollars get many votes. This is my fundamental objection to your politics; why is tyranny of the rich over the poor preferable or more noble than tyranny of the majority over the minority?
The is a particulary bad example. Magic Johnson could not have bought his treatment without the billions of dollars spent by the US government. So if you get sick, just make sure you don’t take a medication that was developed or tested with federal dollars.
You’re the the one who equated dollars to votes. I reject a society that gives more votes to some by virtue of wealth.
No, I like the system we have just fine; one man, one vote, and taxes paid by all.
Should Europeans and Asians be permitted to use American-developed drugs? After all, the ungrateful bastards didn’t even pay taxes, and they’re just leeches waiting for us to do all the work while they exploit the benefits. Right?
“Vote with your dollars” is an expression meaning to express your opinion monetarily. You “vote with your dollars” when you choose Target over Wal*Mart.
You think you really have as much influence over your environment as a billionaire, because you both have one vote?
Salk did a lot of his work right here in Pittsburgh. The nurse at my high school had worked with him when he was first developing his vaccine.
I also went to college with an exchange student from Rwanda who had suffered polio as a child, and one of his legs was twisted up so much as to be absolutely useless. He had to walk with a pole. It was absolutely unthinkable to me, that someone my own age had suffered from a disease that’s pretty much unheard of in this day and age here. Nice guy, too. This is the result of non-government “interference”.
And a professor of mine had to use a walker as a result of polio as an adult. It was the same year the vaccine was first being administered, but only to children.
For once, I’m in complete agreement with Martin Hyde. One wonders what disease might still be plaguing us if NOT for government research, or manditory medical procedures.
Money doesn’t just magically appear in governmental coffers. I doubt Rwanda has the amount of wealth to provide him with healthcare, privately or governmentally. If you want to suggest there should be an international government to redistribute wealth from the rich nations to the poor nations the same way our government sends it from wealthy citizens to poor citizens, which is the only sort of governmental interference that would ensure people like your friend are protected, that’s a different kettle of fish.
I would have even less influence over billionaires if you had your way. Our system does not resdistribute all the wealth and make every one equal, nor should it. It does give the poor a vote, something you wish to deny them.
