The True Charity
by Kenneth McDonald
When government expands, special interest groups divert
its powers to their own ends. These groups look upon
government as a way to get other people to pay for things
which group members would like to have but don't want to pay
for themselves.
Often this is done in the name of charity. For example,
Africans are starving and we in the West must go to their aid.
And some of us do. As private citizens we send money to
organizations that channel food to the hungry. But with
government aid programs, we have no choice on the matter. We
are forced to send part of our tax money to the governments of
starving nations.
Quite frequently, these nations are starving because
their own governments have made a botch of things. The
post-colonial years of Africa have been devastated by
collectivization, forced resettlement, confiscation of grain
and livestock through excessive taxes and obligations,
coercive labor programs: nothing less than state terrorism
against the farmers who formerly grew food enough for
everyone. Ironically, by coercing us as individuals into
yielding part of our incomes in the form of taxes to African
governments, our own governments reinforce the socialism that
is causing Africans to starve.
This quite minor activity of our governments in the name
of charity abroad is an extension of the major activity they
indulge in at home, namely the forced redistribution of wealth
and income -- "redistribution" being a more palatable term
than theft.
Again, this is done in the name of charity. It is to
relieve poverty, or to "create jobs," or to pay medical bills
for the sick, or to build "affordable" housing. In one form
or another the object is to subsidize particular groups of
people at the expense of others.
This process has been going on for so long that even
those of us who prize independence may be tempted to dismiss
it as an ingredient not only of taxes but of the duty that
citizenship and taxes entail. We pay the taxes and are quit
of the duty.
In this way governments have inserted themselves between
individuals whose instinct is to be charitable and other
individuals to whom they might have offered charity.
It is when we consider the matter as individuals that we
are brought up against the morality of it.
Rightly, we prize our independence. We achieve it
through self-reliance, a quality that bids us to husband our
resources so that we might not become a burden to others.
Self-reliance, then, is the quality that would appear to be
lacking in those that our governments oblige us to subsidize.
The lack is attributable to a number of causes ranging from
laziness to imitation, that is, growing up in places where
dependence upon government subsidies is accepted as a natural
condition.
Whatever the cause, to discourage self-reliance is to
condemn those who lack it to a life of dependence. Yet this
is where governmental redistribution has brought us. Charity
thrice removed has proved uncharitable. By insulating
recipients of public charity from the moral restoratives of
work and self-reliance, governments confirm them in habits
that morality condemns.
To all this the socialist replies: "Ah! But there is no
work for them. They are the weak who have been pushed to the
wall by a market-dominated economy. A caring society must
show them compassion."
The truth is that most Western economies are dominated
not by markets but by government interventions in markets. If
markets were free, no one would have the legal power to
dominate anyone. The rule of free exchange would apply,
namely that participants stand to gain from an exchange,
otherwise they wouldn't participate. In Frederic Bastiat's
words: "By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is
beneficial to all others."
This rule is self-evident. Why would anyone wish to
interfere with exchanges that are of such obvious benefit to
the commonweal?
This brings us back to the role of government. Ideally
it should be to maintain a peaceful society in which the
citizens would initiate the exchanges from which a nation's
wealth is created. The fact that no society embodies that
ideal is all the more reason why it should be not only
envisaged but also set as the criterion against which
societies are measured.
Since the quantity and kind of exchanges in such an ideal
society would be as varied as man's ingenuity, it would be
contradictory to limit them. What free men might agree to
limit is their own behavior. Thus each would recognize the
need to fulfill whatever contracts he was engaged upon just as
he would expect his fellow contractors to do the same.
Here, then, is a legitimate role for government: to make
and enforce laws (1) that require observance of contracts, and
(2) that safeguard persons and property from encroachment.
Those two precepts -- fulfilling contracts and refraining
from encroachment upon other people or their property -- are
fundamental to a society of free people. They are fitting
matters for a government to legislate because they constitute
the underpinnings of a free society.
Moreover, such a society would encourage the self-
reliance that forced redistribution policies have done so much
to discourage. As Leonard Read pointed out in Accent on the
Right: "The unprecedented practice of freedom in our country
has, one might say, catapulted many millions of 'the masses'
-- including you and me -- into a state of affluence
previously unknown to history....The alleviation of poverty is
a by-product -- a life-saving benefit -- along man's way
toward the higher ideal of liberty....Restore and preserve the
practice of free market, private ownership, limited government
principles; and one of the by-products will be as much removal
of poverty as possible."
The self-reliance that delivers independence is inhibited
by government interventions. The more that we can do to stem
those interventions and move our societies toward free markets
and private ownership, the more we shall help other people to
independence.
Helping other people to independence is the true charity.
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