Capitalism has an enormous blind spot, in that it doesn't contains ethic provisions on what happens in a free market to people not able to create value that others are willing to pay for. Given the relentless tendency of capitalism to optimize towards eradicating any inefficiency, it contains as a natural consequence the propensity to expel those people out of the system - i.e. the ethical proposition of capitalism is essentially "produce or die".
There are some relief provisions against this outcome of people being expelled from the system, supported by those who reject it as immoral; but they are typically frowned upon by those who see capitalism as an ethical system.
The first one is building an unconditional safety net to take care of those who have run out of resources to compete inside the system. There's also the possibility to create make-believe work so that everybody will be able to earn a living; not exactly efficient, but for some reason this tends to be better accepted by free market supporters.
(Replying to lone_haxx0r here, as the thread went dead while I was writing this):
> Why don't you 'steal' from your own pocket and help the poor?
See? That's exactly what I was referring to with "frowned upon by those who see capitalism as an ethical system" and with "capitalism has an enormous blind spot".
There's a rational argument perfectly consistent with libertarian free market principles, by which a government collecting taxes is not "stealing", as long as you don't take "anything a government do is evil" as a premise. If you begin from the assumption that people can willingly enter into contracts as long as their terms are legal and free from coertion, the argument goes like this:
- A country's land is owned by the state (or by its ruler, in case of a monarchy or a tyranny).
- There's a "social contract", willingly enforced by the citizens in that country (either explicitly or tacitly)[1], that the government has a duty to protect its citizens, and the citizens in turn will obey the government and pay due taxes in order to support the country.
- You were signed into that contract by your parents when you were born, as they had the legal authority over your rights to decide on your behalf.
- As soon as you legally become an adult, you can step out of that social contract by leaving the country at any time. By remaining in your country, you consent to its social contract, so you pay taxes to the government by your own will.
- Therefore, as an adult, you are not forced to pay taxes to that country where you acquired citizenship; but you don't have a right to be a free-rider by using the services provided by that country (military, roads, social welfare) without paying the required fee for those services.
- There's a free market of countries with open borders; people can vote with their feet in this market and migrate to their preferred one. You have no obligation to pay taxes at any one of them, but they have no obligation to accept you nor provide you with services if you're not willing to play by their rules.
TLDR version: creating governments and establishing taxes is the strategy we use to "'steal' from our own pocket and help the poor" in a sistematic way. Anyone not willing to participate is free to leave, but good luck finding a country that will not do the same.
> - You were signed into that contract by your parents when you were born, as they had the legal authority over your rights to decide on your behalf.
> - As soon as you legally become an adult, you can step out of that social contract by leaving the country at any time. By remaining in your country, you consent to its social contract, so you pay taxes to the government by your own will.
This is where you're wrong. By saying "you can step out of that social contract by leaving the country at any time." you could justify any political system, including monarchy, dictatorships, etc. as long as people can leave the country.
You might as well say: "If you don't like the country you were born in, just kill yourself." because you're rejecting the discussion about justice entirely.
> - There's a free market of countries with open borders; people can vote with their feet in this market and migrate to their preferred one. You have no obligation to pay taxes at any one of them, but they have no obligation to accept you nor provide you with services if you're not willing to play by their rules.
That would work if switching countries had a negligible cost. Switching to another country is not as easy as choosing a pair of shoes.
> you could justify any political system, including monarchy, dictatorships, etc. as long as people can leave the country
Exactly! Can you point at how precisely this is "wrong"? I thought that was the essence of libertarian free-market capitalism as described by people who propose it, that any possible consensual arrangement is valid as long as it is entered without coertion and it doesn't affect third parties? (Sometimes, even when it affects third parties; I've lost count how many times free-market proponents will skip over the topic of externalities, abandon the conversation when politely pointing them to the externalities involved, or simply insisting that those externalities could be magically solved by applyinng more private property to the problem).
It's not a system I personally believe in, but the people proposing it always put it in those absolute terms, with "private property" being an absolute moral value, and any system (like taxes) which limit it being considered evil; so hey - what's wrong with exploring it to its ultimate logical consequences, just from an unconventional angle? Or maybe rationalism is only valid when you use it to arrive to the same exact consequences that you started with?? Playing devil's advocate to show the contradictions of an ideologic system is a valid argumentation strategy.
> You might as well say: "If you don't like the country you were born in, just kill yourself." because you're rejecting the discussion about justice entirely.
Not at all. I'm merely exploring a definition of justice different from "private property good, government intervention bad" that I inferred from your comment considering tax-supported social programs as a "steal".
> That would work if switching countries had a negligible cost
People proposing free markets as the ultimate moral good typically do not take into consideration these concerns of the cost suffered by the people who least benefit from applying the immutable axioms; in my experience, they will justify people suffering poverty because they have a plausible way of escape by engaging in private initiative and consensual contracts. So how exactly is that way of thinking, that I have often encountered in the wild, any different from my thought experiment above?
There are some relief provisions against this outcome of people being expelled from the system, supported by those who reject it as immoral; but they are typically frowned upon by those who see capitalism as an ethical system.
The first one is building an unconditional safety net to take care of those who have run out of resources to compete inside the system. There's also the possibility to create make-believe work so that everybody will be able to earn a living; not exactly efficient, but for some reason this tends to be better accepted by free market supporters.