Friends Of The Poor

Leftist: You Libertarians are so heartless! You don’t care at all about the poor and the downtrodden. Compassionate people could never accept your ideas!

Brian: You are mistaken, my friend. Libertarians propose measures that will increase the purchasing power of the general consumer, reduce unemployment, make the labor and education markets more open and dynamic, increase opportunities for start-up entrepreneurship, and increase real wages for the world’s workers. How can these things be anything but beneficial for the poor and downtrodden of the current world? And given this, how can you possibly say that libertarians don’t care about the poor?  

Leftist: Only according to your crack-pot economic theories will libertarian measures result in such things!

Brian: Ok, perhaps we should have a debate about the validity of free-market economic theories then?

Leftist: No, no, that would be unbearably tedious! Forget about economics for the moment and let’s get right to the heart of the issue: libertarians want to do away with the government-provided social safety net that prevents the poor from becoming destitute. You cannot deny that!

Brian: No I cannot, most libertarians wouldn’t support a government social safety net of any kind, and none would support the current ‘welfare state’ measures in place.

Leftist: Aha, I’ve got you! So libertarians don’t care about the poor! 

Brian: Not so fast. Imagine that there are two men, Greg and Fred. Greg comes along and violently expropriates the bakery that was owned and operated by Fred. In return, Greg promises to give Fred enough bread every day to prevent him from starving. Seeing this, another man, John, demands that Greg return the bakery to Fred. Greg refuses, saying that Fred is better off now than he was before. Who do you think cares more about Fred, Greg or John?

Leftist: What are you asking me irrelevant questions for? Just admit that libertarians don’t care about the poor already!

Brian: I might later, but kindly indulge me for the moment.

Leftist: Fine. Obviously John cares more about Fred, Greg is just a scoundrel. What’s your point?

Brian: Greg is the government, taking away opportunities from the poor (Fred), and handing out scraps to them instead. John is the libertarian, demanding that the poor’s opportunities be returned, even if they are no longer to be handed out the scraps.

Leftist: The analogy is only valid if we assume that the poor have the capacity to exploit these so-called ‘opportunities’. But a lot of poor people simply do not have the capacity to exploit any opportunities to make a living on the market, no matter how many of such opportunities there are or how attractive they seem. 

Brian: You are right, there are indeed such people among the poor; we can call them the ‘dependent poor’. But I would venture to say that the majority of people currently designated as ‘poor’ are either currently working at low wage jobs (‘the working poor’) or have the capacity to work but are unable to due to the artificially rigid labor market (‘the potential working poor’). Would you agree that a number of libertarian proposals would be good for these two groups at least?

Leftist: If we accept the validity of your economic theories, then yes. But the ‘dependent poor’ will simply be out of luck in your libertarian paradise, and hence libertarians do not care about them.

Brian: You forget about the private charitable efforts that would almost certainly be made to help out the dependent poor.

Leftist: Private charity is fickle, undependable, and inadequate all-around. No responsible thinker with a social conscious would rely on such an instrument to solve any major social problem.

Brian: Let me ask you a question: do you think that anyone would have leftist political views if everyone in the world only cared about their own narrow interests and were devoid of all benevolence?

Leftist: What a silly question, of course not! Leftists are generally people who care deeply about the well-being of their fellow humans. A world full of selfish egotists would be a world full of right-wingers!

Brian: Alright, and is there anyone that is forcing these people to hold leftist political views, or are they just naturally benevolent?

Leftist: Forcing us? Of course not, we are just naturally benevolent!

Brian: Great, so you agree that a significant portion of the population is benevolently concerned about the well-being of poor people?

Leftist: Sure, I agree with that. Leftists do occasionally win elections after all! But what on earth does all this have to do with private charity?

Brian: To the extent that we can rely on the natural, voluntary benevolence of a significant portion of the population, we can rely on private, voluntary charity to the same extent. This benevolence can either take the form of support for leftist ‘welfare state’ policies, or it can take the form of private, voluntary charity, depending on what kind of society we are living in. In a libertarian society, natural benevolence would take on the latter form exclusively, benevolence that would be bolstered and encouraged by the greater general prosperity that would exist in such a society.

Leftist: Interesting, but I still feel uneasy about it. There’s no firm guarantee that the poor will get the help they need to survive in the libertarian system, a guarantee that only the government can provide.

Brian: But there is in fact no firm guarantee that the government will adopt such policies. There is no guarantee that the government will not neglect the poor. There is no guarantee that the government will not conscript the poor into its armed forces and send them to die in droves in some horrid hell hole or other. Only if you or I were the supreme dictator could we offer such guarantees. In reality, it is the people who participate in a political system, as voters or officials, who will determine whether the government tries to help the poor or not, just as it is the people who participate in a system of private charity, as donors or charity operators, who will determine whether charitable resources will go towards trying to help the poor or not. There is no firm guarantee in either case.

Leftist: Well, I think I understand the libertarian perspective a little better now, and I don’t find it quite as heartless as I did before this discussion.

Brian: Of that, I am very glad. It is through such small steps that the world will be changed.