There is no contradiction. You hate women.

“I saw no other reason for it to attribute to me feminine pronouns as the like other than a cheap attempt to denigrate me”

Seems pretty self explanitary – let’s see what other think shall we? Especially the women here, I wonder what their thoughts are?

Though not. (yawn)

“I saw no other reason for it to attribute to me feminine pronouns as the like other than a cheap attempt to denigrate me”

Spot the woman hater!

Who said it was an insult. Are you paranoid? Do you somehow think women are inferior? Because that is how it is coming out. Not only a confederate flag waving troll but but a sexist too? Sad.

Scott D:

Minimal redistribution is only meant to feed the poor of the state from which is governs – not the world. It is free-market charity that tries to feed the worlds poor but shows again and again why it is unable to do so – personal preferences will never allow the last person to be fed.

Minimal redistribution has only the same failings as the free-market that prevent it from working. These are the organs of the state not doing their job properly. The free-market requires rules provided by courts and a police force in order to function and these MUST be provided by the state. Were these not to be provided by the state you have a state of ANARCHY in which we are actually already in – just that the largest voluntary groups are called governments.

There is the same potential and scope for negative consequences if the provision of these services go awry than if the redistribution mechanism goes wrong.

You also might want to read this:

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html

I think that there is a lot wrong with Hardin’s economic views in general, but he does lay out the case quite convincingly for why redistribution, carried out with the aim of feeding the world’s poor, is a path to self-destruction.

For rational individuals, this should mean that referring to one as female in order to insult is immature. How this entails a problem on my part with women is beyond me.

Democratic minimal redistribution by its very nature only redistributes amongst the members of that country. There is no requirement to undertake any foreign aid – this should all be done by private charity as you suggest.

Problem is that the low amounts of such charitable aid amongst such obvious plenty in the developed world gives one little confidence that were there to be more money in these peoples back pockets that they would donate enough more or simply buy another Hummer.

Overseas Charitable Aid is not a necessary requirement of free-market charity because each country should be able to look after itself more or less. Overseas charitable Aid SO FAR gives a very poor indication of the desire or preference to help everyone that actually needs it.

ferdinand marcos of the philippines, over 500 million usd, and we’re talking about when the dollar was worth a lot more.

the list of bad guys is endless, tax revenues are not.

You are correct that alot of development aid comes from western governments and there is general agreement it is not enough. Therefore it is not minimal redistribution because it does not even meet basic necessities.

If you are sure there are no countries that can be used as a comparison then I accept your point. There really is no definitive evidence either way that charity can or can’t provide for the needy. However there isn’t any credible evidence that it can’t.

That was in fact my original proposition that we don’t know for sure whether charity would work but we do know for sure that if a stable, democratic government with a firm rule of law and running liberal free-market policies redistributed a minimal amount of resources to cover the basic needs of the poor then this would DEFINATELY work. Choose any developed country and eliminate all taxes except a minimal redistribution and watch the economy flourish whilst no-one starves.

Under a pure free-market this is probable but you just cannot say for sure.

The Catholic Church would err on the side of caution because the minimal amount lost has significant gains of ensuring the poor are fed.

here it is again, re-articulated:
“how do you propose to ensure that monies, collected via taxes from wealthy-nation citizens, actually arrive to the poor, not intercepted by corrupt government officials?”

your answer seems to be, let’s forget about those countries and concentrate on the easy-access countries (of which there are none, because they all have huge import taxes, custom imposts, regulations etc). there are no countries in dire need of aide who have secure property rights.

ethiopia has more resources for sustenance than singapore or hong kong, which were poor forty years ago. the latter got no aide, ethiopia has had bucketloads (and most from redistribution). why is your redistribution failing, notwithstanding the billions spent?