It's far worse to have a rising poverty line than to have people living on benefits with the assumption that a reasonable % of these are looking for employment. Even pensions to refugees and seniors have their benefits economically, such as the existence of spending, even if in little amounts, stimulating the economy. It doesn't take a genius to recognise that small amounts being spent in the economy is better than no amounts.
Welfare is derived from taxation which, on the most part, is taken from individuals and businesses income. You can just as well argue in this incredibly limited scope that by not taxing people as much, or at all, that same money would be spent or reinvested elsewhere. This is not a good argument for welfare.
Beyond that, welfare takes a significant part in improving the quality of life for many individuals, including students who would one day become greater contributors to society. Their future contribution in tax payments will likely pay-back their time on welfare and then some.
This is a much better argument to support welfare. However, instead of the current system of "if you mean requirement x, you get payment y" and that being the end of it, could we not reduce the tax burden of everyone and limit these situations to a direct partnership between the individual in question and the state? For example, a student could accept welfare under the condition they will repay it within some sort of conditions and timeframe in the future.
Furthermore, without welfare, those looking for employment may end up in situations where out of desperateness they seek employment which is greatly under-utilising their skills. Under-utilising your employees' skills is both corporately and economically inefficient.
I don't quite understand. Are you saying that if a person can't find employment in the field they think they are qualified for, instead of obtaining any employment below their expectations, they should obtain welfare instead? That sounds unreasonable and although you're correct that it's best to operate at peak efficiency, it's not always possible. It would much better serve (literally) everyone's interest if someone chooses to be employed when they can be instead of entering the welfare system.
Obviously there will be people who abuse welfare payments, like dole bludgers for example, but they are not the majority of people who require welfare assistance.
I agree. However, that doesn't mean they should be disregarded either.
I wonder where social order will come from? It only takes one aggressor to ruin a system without laws, regulators, and enforcers.
Social order comes from individuals. The omnipresent threat of retribution isn't the only thing holding society together. Would you go out to murder and burgle if there were no government laws that said you weren't allowed to? That's not to say that the current system is inherently flawed, but there is an all too common conflation that the state and government is society. That couldn't be further from the truth.
What the government does is necessary, and even if it's not democratically elected, it's likely some form of government will be in play in any society.
Resigning yourself to the inevitability of governance doesn't automatically legitimise the actions of the state. Surely you don't believe that whatever the government does in any respect is legitimate? What if there was a law that required the extermination of particular race groups? Unless you mean in the form of taxation which arrives at a similar logical conclusion: what if there was an 80% tax for particular groups of society? What I'm getting at here is what if there were better ways to go about taxation? What if we could reduce the tax burden of everyone in society and reach similar, if not better, outcomes?
It's all well and good to suggest that private enterprises will act in the intention of social well-being, but there's no guarantee that it would happen. And in all seriousness, even if private enterprises do somehow band together, that in itself is some form of Government. Moreover, who is stop or prevent the private enterprises from abusing their power as the providers to society
Who is to stop the government from abusing its power "as the providers to society"? I don't agree with the situation you've outlined but enterprises are beholden to consumers. They are beholden to stakeholders. They lose business, money, time and effort if they don't fulfil the demands laid out by individuals (assuming of course there are competitors to those enterprises). What does the state lose by ignoring its constituents? Nothing, really. It just has individuals hand over command to others. The government and those a part of it regularly abuse its authority.
"At least make taxation voluntary"
Oh please, even I, someone who can understand the necessity for tax wouldn't pay tax if it was optional. Yes, I identify that as hypocritical too, but keeping 100% of my pay packet is always going to be more appealing than needing to sacrifice some. That goes without saying that the economy would collapse without the Government having funds to spend and invest, general infrastructure in the country goes down the drain, social welfare is gone (to your satisfaction), medical centres, aged-care facilities, disability care, education facilities, the defence force, public services (such as transport) are all gone at the same time.
Yep, that's correct. That's what would happen if we were declared stateless overnight. However, scaling back the state shouldn't be out of the question. It should be gradual and reasonable. Some of the things you've mentioned are already provided on private models. In some cases it's not entirely possible to provide them on private models and therein lies the value of the state and taxation. Public transport, especially in places like Sydney is a prime example. It's not possible to run a transport system profitably in our case. Would I prefer we spend a bunch of money on making new trains (inb4 autism) and buses and assisting people get from point A to point B than on useless stuff like giving political parties money for winning elections? You bet. I think you would too.
I'm one of the advocates for limiting government on this forum, but I do see uses for the state. I do think taxation is theft and is therefore intrinsically obtained immorally, but that doesn't mean we can't be pragmatic about this stuff.
