The traditional forms of charity are church and family. The same goes for groups like unions but unions are usually not well regarded by the people who advocate for more charity.
Part of the idea of a secular nationstate is that the prime loyality of people isn’t to their church community or their family but to the nationstate. We consider different loyalities to be a sign of corruption. The politician or judge who puts the interest of his church community or his family before the interested of the nationstate is a huge problem.
Lack of loyality to the nationstate is a huge reason why many African countries don’t work. When government officials don’t act in the interests of the nation but their clan the government doesn’t work effectively.
Our secular nationstates do get loyality by engaging in actions like providing welfare for their citizens. Providing health care, both by regulating it and by organizing payment, is the same. In Hansian’s terms it shows that the nation cares for your wellbeing and it gets loyality as return.
There are similar reasons why an organisations like Hamas or the Muslim brotherhood does a lot of charity. It’s what you need to do for getting a certain kind of loyality.
In other words, welfare exists because destroying welfare is a coordination problem
That doesn’t explain why the laws that create welfare were passed in the first place and why laws get sometimes passed to increase welfare payments.
I need to think more about your suggestion about loyalty, but regarding the last point: it actually can explain it, in the same way. If each individual receives a social advantage from supporting the creation or enlargement of welfare then welfare will be created or enlarged, even if each individual would rather it wasn’t (because again, the political influence of each individual separately is very small).
I don’t think “Moloch” is a good word for “People vote according to what they think is a morally good instead of voting in their own self interest”. People not voting in their self interest is good.
Charity means that an individual person who donates more money won’t have a significant effect by funding a big charity but a high person cost. On the other hand, raising the tax rate has a much lower personal cost for the amount of good that gets created. Paying for collective welfare collectively makes a lot of sense you believe it should be funded but don’t want to fund a disproportionate part yourself.
The traditional forms of charity are church and family. The same goes for groups like unions but unions are usually not well regarded by the people who advocate for more charity.
Part of the idea of a secular nationstate is that the prime loyality of people isn’t to their church community or their family but to the nationstate. We consider different loyalities to be a sign of corruption. The politician or judge who puts the interest of his church community or his family before the interested of the nationstate is a huge problem.
Lack of loyality to the nationstate is a huge reason why many African countries don’t work. When government officials don’t act in the interests of the nation but their clan the government doesn’t work effectively.
Our secular nationstates do get loyality by engaging in actions like providing welfare for their citizens. Providing health care, both by regulating it and by organizing payment, is the same. In Hansian’s terms it shows that the nation cares for your wellbeing and it gets loyality as return.
There are similar reasons why an organisations like Hamas or the Muslim brotherhood does a lot of charity. It’s what you need to do for getting a certain kind of loyality.
That doesn’t explain why the laws that create welfare were passed in the first place and why laws get sometimes passed to increase welfare payments.
I need to think more about your suggestion about loyalty, but regarding the last point: it actually can explain it, in the same way. If each individual receives a social advantage from supporting the creation or enlargement of welfare then welfare will be created or enlarged, even if each individual would rather it wasn’t (because again, the political influence of each individual separately is very small).
I don’t think “Moloch” is a good word for “People vote according to what they think is a morally good instead of voting in their own self interest”. People not voting in their self interest is good.
Charity means that an individual person who donates more money won’t have a significant effect by funding a big charity but a high person cost. On the other hand, raising the tax rate has a much lower personal cost for the amount of good that gets created. Paying for collective welfare collectively makes a lot of sense you believe it should be funded but don’t want to fund a disproportionate part yourself.