I suppose there’s one advantage to more warfare spending, as opposed to more welfare spending. Most of the harm done by welfare spending is done here, in the United States, where I happen to live. The welfare state has made most US cities unliveable, which pains me greatly. On the other hand, most of the harm done in warfare spending is done elsewhere, in places where I’m not likely to ever be.

The cost is the same to me. I’m taxed no more or less, regardless of how the criminals in DC choose to spend the money. But for purely selfish reasons, I’ll take warfare over welfare any day.

And isn’t it interesting, that our government has created war zones all over the world with its warfare spending, and war zones in every US city with its welfare spending.

Welfare causes unemployment – it doesn’t help people out as much as it hurts them.

If you really want to see the effects of welfare, perhaps you should check out the slums, which is caused by rent control, or the amazing state that most black families are in – that is, no state at all, with most black children being born in wedlock. Ergo, an overwhelming majority of violent criminals, drug dealers, etc are black males.

Why am I bringing this up? Probably because the State more or less destroyed the black family through the ‘no man in the house’ rule which more or less destroyed the black nuclear family – a rule imposed by the welfare state.

NYC and other cities are capitalist oriented, not welfare. Living off of other people without their consent is called parasitism. I don’t owe you anything, and you don’t owe me anything, money wise, unless we agree in trade terms.

Abolishing the minimum wage, and becoming more capitalistic instead of welfare oriented will end poverty, and joblessness.

And ‘wastland’ is spelled ‘wasteland’.

Gary,

I’d just as soon see the entire federal government abolished, but I suppose some secession is better than no secession.

You write, “Speaking of welfare we are not talking about only in-kind transfers, but also services offered by the state such as infrastructure development, education, after-school programs, etcetera.”

Indeed, all state spending is ultimately for the same purpose; the forcible transfer of wealth from some to others. You seem to think that some spending gives better results than others, and subjectively you’re correct. To a parent too lazy and ignorant to educate and discipline his own child, public “education” and “after school programs” are a good thing. They relieve the miscreant from the responsibility of raising his child to become a responsible adult.

But to others, the forcible funding of these “programs” makes it more difficult to raise a family, since the high taxes we pay reduces the means by which we can educate our own children, forcing those of us who might want more children to have fewer, since wives are forced to work for money wages just to pay the taxes.

You mention nice places to live in Boston. I grew up in Boston, moving out in 1974. It was an interesting city, full of many very nice places to live. And those nice places encircled a central area, known as the high crime neighborhood, where the ***** people lived. If you weren’t *****, that part of the city was effectively a no man’s land. I lived in Dorchester. Washington Street runs north/south through Dorchester. To the west was the ***** neighborhood, to the east, non *****. If you wanted to go to a part of the city to the west of the ***** neighborhood, you went around it, not through it. It was as if it didn’t exist. Nobody even mentioned its existence. You just knew not to ever go there, or even talk about going there. If you looked on a map to see how best to get from the Back Bay to Dorchester, or Roslindale, you would see streets that went there directly. But no non ***** people ever took those streets, they went the long way around.

While I rarely visit Boston these days, I’m always surprised at how many more neighborhoods have become high crime neighborhoods, and I wonder what traffic patterns are used by non ***** people these days, particularly women, and at night. The nice places to live in Boston are getting smaller and isolated from each other.

As a child in the sixties, my parents usually didn’t lock the doors, unless we went away for the whole day. But only nine years after Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” transformed most ***** families from two parents to one, criminals had made our peaceful little working class neighborhood into a war zone, and our family fled to the suburbs. Within three years several homes on our street had burned down, including that of our former next door neighbors.

Welfare is every bit as destructive as warfare, it just uses different types of weapons. When a Marine in Iraq beats a man to death for having a photograph of a Shiite leader the US doesn’t like on his car, it’s clear what the cause of the man’s death is; blunt trauma to the head by a “brave American”. When vast acreage in a city like Detroit is bare of any habitable buildings, it’s not so clear to the average person what the cause is. But it’s government that sent the “brave Americans” to Iraq, and it’s government that makes the rent control, minimum wages, subsidies to young unmarried mothers, zoning and licensure restrictions on small businesses and all the other things that destroy civilization.

“Again, the US is wasteland, besides the aforementioned cities. And the lower and the more regressive the tax rate is the more of a wasteland the region is. Just look at the South and the mid-West. Sometime I think the Northeast should separate from the rest of the country. And all you can keep your wasteland and not burden us with your stupidity.”

The South’s economy is excellent. As you suggest, people are voting with their feet: for sunshine and low taxes. The Midwest, of course, is where they grow all our food. Its cities are clean, the people friendly, and as noted, they have made excellent use of all that fertile soil from the Mississippi Basin. I don’t know what they show on TV up there in Yankeeland, but I can assure you the South and Midwest are not “wastelands.”

By contrast, New York and California are seeing an outflow of their net tax producing, middle class populations.

“New York and California are seeing an outflow of their net tax producing, middle class populations.”

Why don’t you back that up with some evidence?

“Do you really believe the graduates of our nation’s education colleges have such skills?”

Not all, we must pay teachers more and require all of them to have master’s degrees like they do in Europe. Besides, I think even those mediocre educated teachers are more effective than some joe shmo six-pack who probably cant even name all of the US state. Remember only like 40% of US adults could point out Iraq on the map. Do you really want these people teaching their children? Two wrongs don’t make a right!!!!

“The South’s economy is excellent”

I visited West Virginia last year. Phenomenal economy, I encountered the fattest, dumbest and poorest people I’ve even seen. I thought Jamaica was poor; this place doesn’t pale in comparison. Anyways, this is useless discussion. You obviously prefer to live in Rural, or what we in the Northeast refer to as the “wasteland” and I prefer the metropolitan urban regions. I love Manhattan and Boston, and you love, I don’t know whatever is it is that you call home. End of discussion.

“your own views on economics and ethics weren’t so backward”

That’s a value-judgment and not a fact!!!

“and especially when you’re posting these views on a website dedicated to liberty”

I love liberty too. I consider myself a social libertarian. Economic liberty, as espoused on this site, is nothing but absolute adherence to property rights. This is not always conducive to social or political liberty which I think acceded in importance to economic liberty. Again, these are value-judgments and are not facts. There is nothing factual or empirical that would lead me or you to conclude that one political philosophy is better than the other. It’s all about what you value more. Taking from that vantage point, anyone with some philosophy training can construct a solid and a rational argument for its philosophy.

Gary, if your position is a one based on subjective value, you have undermined your own position. Economics and ethics is not a subjective science; there are real theories and logic that can lead us to understanding both.

Now, I’d like to make some points which I’d like to see you answer.

1) Liberty is something that is intristic to our rights as human beings; therefore being taxed and regulated – for the sake of others – necessarily means that some have (political) rights that other’s do not.

Quote:

“I love liberty too. I consider myself a social libertarian. Economic liberty, as espoused on this site, is nothing but absolute adherence to property rights. This is not always conducive to social or political liberty which I think acceded in importance to economic liberty.”

What you really mean is that because some people want to hold onto property, others will suffer. But your position is exactly the same; some people suffer in our current political climate and others do not. Political liberty, by you, grounded in popular opinion, which is democracy, is ludicrous. We cannot find solutions to problems or ‘find’ rights or liberty by appealing to votes. Shall we decide matters of mathematical theory by arm wrestling?

2) Have you bothered to see clear minded research on the effects of the welfare state? The destruction of the black nuclear family, the rise of unemployment, and the goofy ethics of allowing a certain class of people to live, parasitically, off of the others.

You say that these are value judgements, but you are incorrect; you state that you can see the wealth of NYC and other cities through your ‘Yankee eyes’, but you are apparently incapable of seeing the destruction caused by taxation, welfare, and the rising crime associated with fatherlessness and the destruction of the nuclear family.

3) We receive all things we have because of the market. You seem to have the view that the State brings with it liberty – which it does not. Capitalism is what grants the State the ability to live parasitically off of others; and the more socialist democrat programs that you support, the weaker the host becomes. It is not a symbiotic relationship; it is one based on parasitism.

Some questions I’d like you to answer;

1) If liberty is a value judgement, how can you defend the notion of using force against certain people who do not agree with your views? Shouldn’t people be allowed to decide, for themselves, how they want to live?

2) I’d like to see an ethical argument on why we owe – through the threat of physical violence – others our money. Why? And if so, what grants the State the ligitimacy to pursue these ends, and not the common man? What if my family becomes impoverished, and I decide to lay claim to all the money that you have earned. Should I do this?

3) Roads, water, and military defense has been handled through the market. Exactly why do we need to have the State to supply these ‘public’ goods?

4) Why is it more moral to use force to accomplish things that we can do without force? If, without taxes, we are capable of providing for education, retirement, and other options, exactly how is it more moral to justify using the business end of a gun to force other people to do this?

5) The State does not bring prosperity. Here is the crux of why your views are backward; the State can consume wealth, but it cannot create it. There is an overwhelming body of literature that points to the workings of the State as inherently clumsy – and some economists such as Mises have made the assertion that without prices and profit and loss, the State is flying blind, making decisions arbitrarily and not knowing how to use goods in the most effective way.

6) The prosperity you see in cities such as NYC is the result of capitalism. Do you really think that the State created these cities? Or that the market is not capable of providing services such as police force, roads, etc that the State does? One is incorrect, and so is two.

7) You call yourself a social libertarian, but you’re actually a Socialist Democrat. I don’t think you are fooling anyone on this board with your claims.

8) If you believe that liberty, unrestrained by property or the basic respect of human life is the ultimate highest goal, rather than liberty restrained by property rights and right-to-life, you are a nihilist and moral relativist.

9) If we all have certain rights, why can the State do what I cannot? What argument do you have for me not stealing money from you through the threat of a barrel of a gun? Democracy? What if the majority of people voted that you should be converted to sound moral and economic theories by force; namely the theories of Austrian economics and ethical intuitionism, while being hung upside down? Would this be reasonable and ethical?

“Shall we decide matters of mathematical theory by arm wrestling?”

I think its pretty fooling to compare mathematical theory to economics or ethics. According to the Austrian argument, the most you can know in econ can only be derived from deduction. But if you cant use induction or empirical evidence, than how do you know you are right. Maybe the “devil” if f*ing with you and purposefully leading you to the wrong conclusion. Logic is liberating, I agree, but it’s not absolute and never complete according to Gödel. So can one know that their theory is better than the others? This all could be a grand illusion…..

“At least you can admit that you are a nihilist – as I suspected. ”
I really don’t see any other way to live. I am very proud of my believes in nihilism and secular humanist. I do not run away from ever admitting this anyone.

“you are destroying the same wealth and honorable citizens that have enabled people such as yourself to live off of money that you feel they owe you”

I don’t know what you are talking about dude, but I work as an IT professional and I do no not live of the welfare state. And I disagree that it always destroys wealth. Besides, you are not always entitled to what you create. I wish that was true. I think you are stuck in the wrong century, your argument would of been much more effective and respect if you lived during Medieval Times. Let me remind you that we are living in Postmodernism.

“if not the moral courage and guilty conscience to admit when you are wrong.”

How can I be wrong when I am right? Remember I am nihilist I don’t carry regrets of whatever is that you call “guilt.” From that vantage point in order to be wrong there has to be a right. But again, I refer you back to my nihilism for the answer to that question.