[Kibby]

So I didn't wade through all 13 pages of posts mostly because a large number of the posts were pointless (no, not yours). To thoughtfully answer the question posed going back to Sklansky's first assertion about the axioms and implications is useful. Let's taking a second to breakdown the question within that frame. I will quote it for reference purposes.

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Assuming the US has a population of 300 million and the wealth it now owns, should a baby born with no arms and no legs, (with no chance of being fixed), but otherwise healthy, be kept alive and healthy by the government if no one else will do it?

If you answered yes to that question, my second question postulates that ten percent of all children are all of a sudden born that way. Same answer? If so what would the percentage have to be for you to change your answer?

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I will generalize the two questions posed for simplicity.

Q1: With great wealth, should a group people provide comfort for a member of society that is likely to be unproductive throughout his life. Assume that the number of people requiring this assistance is small.

Q2: What if the number of people is large?

Here are the axioms I will use to make my argument.

1) Providing care for a person (personally) encourages others to provide care for other people.
2) When resources are expended to care for unproductive members of society, resentment can grow within those who are productive, but accumulate less wealth (don't make as much $$$)
3) The goal of government is to promote a harmonious, healthy society.

Those axioms in place, let's look at out choices in terms of the two questions. Between both questions, we either have the choice to expend resources on unproductive members of society to care for them or not to.

Q1- I believe the proper thing to do here is to care for the unproductive members of society. We do this because we wish to demonstrate that people are valuable and that its a good thing to ameliorate the pain of others. The burden, spread across the country, is minimal compared to our capacity to generate resources. (If someone wants to debate this point. . . good luck) There are plenty of examples of harmonious societies that care for unproductive citizens in this way. Moreover, those societies also tend to have lower crime rates and lower infant mortality rates among other indicators of a healthy society.

Q2- The government should not support these people. The implication would be that, on average, 1/9th of every person's labor would be going to support those who are unproductive. This would lead to instability as those at the lower ends of the economic ladder would naturally protest this situation. In terms of economic competition globally, this would cripple any society. While there may be an example, I can't think of any nation that has greater then 10% of its population unproductive from birth, supported that segment of the population and has sustained that support through a generation.


Thoughts?