Why Making Altruism Voluntary Can’t End The Entitlement State
For those of you who haven’t heard me speak on entitlements, I’ll give you the 10 second summary: Why does the entitlement state grow? Because no one is willing to challenge the altruistic notion that we are our brother’s keeper. The only way to stop its growth is to reject this notion.
One of the questions I’m often asked when I make this point is, “Isn’t the problem, not altruism, but the idea that we should be forced to behave altruistically by the government? We don’t need to reject the notion that we are our brother’s keeper to end Big Government. We just need to demand that each person voluntarily assume responsibility for his brother.”
It’s a plausible argument for anyone who believes that being moral means personally choosing to do the right thing. Does a person who helps others because the government forces him to really deserve moral credit? But here’s the problem. This argument puts the emphasis on the moral character of the giver rather than the need of the receiver. Altruism, though, says that what matters in life is other people’s need: their need is a god you have to serve regardless of the effect on you—materially or spiritually.
Imagine a society without an entitlement state. Sure, many people would receive aid through voluntary charity. But if the government stepped in then they would receive even more aid, right? Well, if their need is the standard, then on what possible basis could an altruist object? On the grounds that he wants to get moral credit for his sacrifices? How utterly selfish!
Indeed, this is precisely how the debate played out in American history. In the era before the entitlement state, poor Americans received plenty of aid. But the supporters of government intervention merely came along and said: Fine, but why not do more? As the more consistent altruists, they inevitably won.
The only way out of this trap is to reject altruism at the root. The only way to stop the entitlement state is to defend the individual’s moral right to exist for his own sake.
7 Comments to “Why Making Altruism Voluntary Can’t End The Entitlement State”
Imagine a society without an entitlement state. Sure, many people would receive aid through voluntary charity. But if the government stepped in then they would receive even more aid, right? Well, if their need is the standard, then on what possible basis could an altruist object? On the grounds that he wants to get moral credit for his sacrifices? How utterly selfish!
The key here, is that “making altruism voluntary” is necessarily making it optional — i.e. doing so necessarily subordinates altruism to the individual’s right to choose.
This is known as “liberty.”
When the individual retains the final right to choose, including the right to choose not to be his brother’s keeper — than he is by definition not his brother’s keeper, but his own keeper.
This is egoism.
Egoism == liberty != altruism. QED.
The final right to choose is not any final, complete consistency, at least, not of altruism. What’s lacking is physical force (I’d say INITIATORY force), without which you have not even the essence of altruism. Even if the voluntary charity giver is denied, even if he denies himself, moral credit, it’s still not altruism. And, consistency is only a side issue. It’s either altruism, meaning, done by force, or it’s not altruism. The only way out is to reject altruism, and to reject initiatory force, as the only way out of the entitlement state and out of all statism.
Love how Jim May put it!
“‘making altruism voluntary’ is necessarily making it optional — i.e. doing so necessarily subordinates altruism to the individual’s right to choose.”
‘The right to choose’ is but one liberty among many. The fact of the matter is, liberalism (both its high and classical variants) has traditionally been concerned with the development of person’s individual autonomy and independence - and in this spirit, it has granted a special, inviolable basis to a set of essential liberties, which are posed to be essential attributes of person’s. That is, in so far as they are diminished, an essential part of that person - as a moral agent- is also diminished.
The claim of libertarianism that one’s liberties hold the same normative relation to oneself as external property, is more than peculiar. This renders all rights property rights, meaning all rights are tradable and alienable - one can essentially contract away one’s own moral autonomy and independence.
This deeply contradicts the founding premises’ of conventional liberalism (again, classical and high liberalism), meaning who actually posesses someone’s rights is morally irrelevant in judging a situation - leading to (as Samuel Freeman has noted), such ridiculous ‘just’ and ‘non liberty-violating’ situations as all the worlds rights belonging to one person.
Remember here - even Libertarians don’t hold an absolute, non-arbitrary conception of ‘right to choose’; they hold a Lockean conception of rights, wherein person’s only violate liberty if they violate someone’s rights. Meaning that, people don’t have the ‘right to choose’ - as Nozick says - to place a knife in someone else’s chest.
Ultimately, the right to lose one’s own freedom is not respecting liberty, it’s just losing freedom.
NOTE: I also find it more than ironic that distributive practices are derided as ‘Entitlement States’, when this movement derives its most intellectually acute and concrete premises’ from Entitlement theory.
Well said!
When an egoist sees an altruist sacrificing his values, he says, “I wouldn’t do it. Since your actions don’t affect me, I don’t care what you do. Let’s just part our ways.”
On the other hand, when an altruist sees an egoist pursuing his values, he says, “I don’t do it, but neither should you. Your actions deprive the poor—the only ones who matter. So if you don’t change your ways, I wouldn’t mind using force. My congressman told me he can help me with that.”
Atul Kapur: by “Well said!”, I believe you mean my statement, not those of Anonymous or Jim May. If I’m right, then your statement is true, to which I add in reply, The altruist and the congressman (also an altruist) will force the egoist in the surrender of his values for lesser, non- or dis-values. By the same token, he who willfully sacrifices himself to give charity ain’t off the hook, whether he thinks he’s, thus, morally virtuous or not. As they force the egoist, so they force him additionally to more sacrifice of himself. With the element of force this time, he really is an altruist now, provided he agrees, merely by not objecting. And the egoist, if he doesn’t object, also becomes an altruist and stops being an egoist. They both become part of the force carrying on the forcible sacrifice: altruists practicing altruism. There must always be objection, rejection of altruism morally, as only a cover for initiatory force. There must always be egoists practicing egoism to the fullest extent possible to them. That means us.
I think selfishness is a beautiful thing. If helping you does not benefit me, why bother? If a soup kitchen feeds people but won’t encourage them to get jobs so they can donate money or to even volunteer their time as a token of gratitude for what was given to them, then what good are they accomplishing?
You have to take care of yourself first, and then you have to take care of the people that take care of you, and maybe then you can focus on perfect strangers. Furthermore, charity without the expectation of results tends to corrupt.
I for one hate Habitat for Humanity, these people build homes for people who make too little money to buy their own. Why not encourage them to live in a trailer? Why not encourage a factory to move to town so you can employ them?
Consider what people do for themselves. In Venezuela the very poor build their homes with bricks on the mountains, after a flood that caused great destruction, Hugo Chavez spend millions building them homes somewhere else. While the homes looked beautiful on the outside, they were full of construction defects. Furthermore, the new residents found themselves in a place with no jobs, no schools, no nothing. So what did they do? They went back to the mountains and rebuilt their slums.
See? People are better off when you leave them alone.
http://libertarians4freedom.blogspot.com/