Yes, it certainly cuts both ways. Of course, your country’s welfare system is also available to you and your family if you ever need it, and you benefit more directly from social peace and democracy in your country, which is helped by these transfers. It is hard to see how you could have a functioning democracy without poor people voting for some transfers, so unless you think democracy has no useful function for you, that’s a cost in your best interest to pay.
Really, the fact that different sizes of moral circle can incentivize coercion is just a trivial corollary of the fact that value differences in general can incentivize coercion.
But an expanding circle of moral concern increases value differences. If I have to pay for a welfare system, or else pay for a welfare system and also biodiversity maintainance and also animal protection and also development aid and also a Mars mission without a business model and also far-future climate change prevention, I’d rather just pay for the welfare system. Other ideological conflicts would also go away, such as the conflict between preventing animal suffering and maintaining pristine nature, ethical natalism vs. ethical anti-natalism, and so on.
Yes, it certainly cuts both ways. Of course, your country’s welfare system is also available to you and your family if you ever need it, and you benefit more directly from social peace and democracy in your country, which is helped by these transfers. It is hard to see how you could have a functioning democracy without poor people voting for some transfers, so unless you think democracy has no useful function for you, that’s a cost in your best interest to pay.
Really, the fact that different sizes of moral circle can incentivize coercion is just a trivial corollary of the fact that value differences in general can incentivize coercion.
But an expanding circle of moral concern increases value differences. If I have to pay for a welfare system, or else pay for a welfare system and also biodiversity maintainance and also animal protection and also development aid and also a Mars mission without a business model and also far-future climate change prevention, I’d rather just pay for the welfare system. Other ideological conflicts would also go away, such as the conflict between preventing animal suffering and maintaining pristine nature, ethical natalism vs. ethical anti-natalism, and so on.