What do you think of this objection, if markets would properly provide charity why was there ever a reason to deviate from the market of charity to governmental charity?
Jeremiah,
I am too lazy to look up the exact quote, but Burton Folsom Jr. in his book, New Deal or Raw Deal?, suggests that during the Great Depression charity organizations were actually pushed off the market by what was basically the monopolization of charity by the Roosevelt administration. My guess is that rather than a deficiency in charity, it was politically useful for Roosevelt to do this as it would attribute “saving the masses from starvation” to him.
It makes sense. It also could be said that the very wealthy and connected can tap into would be charity donations before distributing the remaining portions as well as maybe that by removing the localized portion of market charity business may in turn run ponzi schemes to tap into charity
“Properly” is subjective. Ferrari hasn’t properly provided me with a Ferrari, therefore, the government should nationalize Ferrari.
I’m replying late but I just read something relevant to your question. The quote come from Nock’s Our Enemy the State and says the following:
"It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.
Moreover, it follows that with any exercise of State power, not only the exercise of social power in the same direction, but the disposition to exercise it in that direction, tends to dwindle. Mayor Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent who had been complaining about the inefficiency of the police, that any citizen has the right to arrest a malefactor and bring him before a magistrate. “The law of England and of this country,” he wrote, “has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen.” State exercise of that right through a police force had gone on so steadily that not only were citizens indisposed to exercise it, but probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it."
He goes on to talk about charity and paints a picture of a a person walking by a beggar every day and being kind to them by sharing some pocket money. Once the State forces charity upon the population, through taxation and redistribution, the same person now walks past the beggar thinking to himself that the State has already set up a welfare program, why would this beggar need more pocket money?
So it’s more that that State stepped in when there was already a market for charity. There was never really a ‘good’ reason for this to happen. Because the State stepped in, now the market for charity has been severely diminished.
JD, to buttress Catalan’s point, iirc a lot of charity funds were wiped out by inflation.
The OP also presupposes that government programs were designed by benevolent central planners because of a free market failure. Well, of course there is going to be a market failure if you have a federal reserve.
when the government provides charity, doesn’t this drive up prices for real charities as they are now forced to bid higher for the remaining resources.
Same reason as always: Misinformation. The propaganda machines can churn out a lot of it. It’s the same reason people want to nationalize oil companies, health, and the banks.