[American Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1945), p. 248
]
From a pamphlet by Daniel Defoe, written in the year 1704:
I humbly crave leave to lay these heads down as fundamental maxims, which I am ready at any time to defend and make out.
There is in England more labor than hands to perform it, and consequently a want of people, not of employment.
No man in England, of sound limbs and senses, can be poor merely for want of work.
All our workhouses, corporations and charities for employing the poor, and setting them to work, as now they are employed, or any Acts of Parliament, to empower overseers of parishes, or parishes themselves, to employ the poor, except as shall be hereafter excepted, are, and will be public nuisances, mischiefs to the nation which serve to the ruin of families and the increase of the poor.
That it is a regulation of the poor that is wanted in England, not a setting them to work.
The poverty and exigence of the poor in England is plainly derived from one of these two particular causes — casualty or crime. By casualty, I mean sickness of families, loss of limbs or sight, and any, either natural or accidental, impotence as to labor. The crimes of our people, and from whence their poverty derives, as the visible and direct fountains are
Luxury
Sloth
Pride
{ 10 comments }
Isn’t this fellow basically saying that charity is a form of a minimum wage? Which is to say, as long as people are content to live off charity they have no incentive to work?
“When Queen Elizabeth had gain’d her point as to manufactories
in England, she had fairly laid the foundation, she thereby found
out the way how every family might live upon their own labour,
like a wise princess she knew ‘twould be hard to force people to
work when there was nothing for them to turn their hands to; but
as soon as she had brought the matter to bear, and there was work
for every body that had no mind to starve, then she apply’d
herself to make laws to oblige the people to do this work, and to
punish vagrants, and make every one live by their own labour; all
her successors followed this laudable example, and from hence
came all those laws against sturdy beggars, vagabonds, stroulers,
&c., which had they been severely put in execution by our
magistrates, ’tis presum’d these vagrant poor had not so
encreas’d upon us as they have.”
Hence outlaw charity as well as welfare and punish begging such that people will either have to work or starve then you have virtually zilch unemployment. (Of course, after removing minimum wage laws, child labour laws, compulsory education laws, discrimation laws, etc.)
Quote from Gil: “Hence outlaw charity as well as welfare and punish begging such that people will either have to work or starve then you have virtually zilch unemployment.”
The difference between charity and welfare is that one is given voluntarily and the other is “given” through forced confiscation.
If somebody wishes to give charity from their own property, then that is none of my business no matter whom receives it, deserving or undeserving.
Welfare has far more to do with taking than with giving.
But the point isn’t whether charity is voluntary, it’s whether charity creates dependency and unemployment just like welfare. It does and therefore is as harmful as welfare. Or, alternatively, from receivers’ point of the view it’s the same as they get free goods either way.
The difference is that the one who offers charity can stop when he realizes he creates dependency. Or, he can keep giving charity if he can afford it and doesn’t care.
Welfare, on the other hand, doesn’t stop. Where is the signal that tells a society that it can no longer afford to offer welfare? There is no signal since it can increase taxes or divert tax funds from other “responsibilities” it has collected taxes for.
If taxes get to a high enough level, where that causes breakdown of society, welfare appears too far-removed to be investigated as the origin of the crash.
Gil,
You mischaracterize Dafoe’s argument. He is not calling for a return to Queen Elizabeth’s very strict stance against beggars, but is using her reign and those following to illustrate his point.
“The poverty of England does not lye among the craving beggars but among poor families, where the children are numerous, and where death or sickness has depriv’d them of the labour of the father. these are the houses that the sons and daughters of charity, if they would order it well, should seek out and relieve; an alms ill directed may be charity to the particular person, but becomes an injury to the publick, and no charity to the nation. As for the craving poor, I am perswaded I do them no wrong when I say, that if they were incorporated they would be the richest society in the nation; and the reason why so many pretend to want work is, that they can live so well with the pretence of wanting work, they would be mad to leave it and work in earnest; and I affirm of my own knowledge, when I have wanted a man for labouring work, and offer’d 9s per week to strouling fellows at my door, they have frequently told me to my face, they could get more a begging, and I once set a lusty fellow in the stocks for making the experiment.”
Strictly speaking, you are correct that Dafoe is saying that charity can cause unemployment. However, though he points out how charity can cause harm, he is not calling for the abolishment of it. Rather, he is saying that government interventions, in particular work-houses and laws that try to encourage local production and prohibit immigration, are the cause of poverty on the large scale he observes in England.
Though I don’t agree with everything Dafoe writes, I was pleasantly surprised by his grasp of the division of labor, subjective valuation, and market competition. When you take these simple truths as a given, the case for liberty logically follows.
The biggest way that welfare exceeds charity in the creation of dependency is the term “entitlement.”
Gee, Scott D, Dafoe quite clearly states charity is inadvertedly causing a great deal of poverty and misery and yet it’s okay because it’s ‘voluntary’. If charity is causing a great deal of miser and suffering though ‘good intentions’ and ‘unintended consequences’ then there can be a case to made that it could be a criminal offence to dispense alms. For example, some giving away free beer and ignoring the drunkiness and sickness it causes and pretending there’s no harm done because it’s all ‘voluntary’.
Outlawing something just because it can cause net harm is not an intelligent thing to do because it means that one can outlaw any activity as long as it provides a net harm to society. Furthermore, the potential that the outlawed activity will cost more outlawed than not touched by law is a possibility that one must consider. Finally, utilitarian legal systems ultimately fall apart due to the need of more laws to keep the old laws functioning properly.
This is science-fiction after all. I’m open-minded about this hidden implication early on in the movie, even if it’s terribly unlikely to happen in the future. So why is it that the humans on board the AXIOM seemingly regain some of their individuality by the likes of Wall-E? After 700 years of mindlessly doing things as ordered
When I have wanted a man for labouring work, and offer’d 9s per week to strouling fellows at my door, they have frequently told me to my face, they could get more a begging, and I once set a lusty fellow in the stocks for making the experiment.
Comments on this entry are closed.