[owsley]

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Do you know what it is called when you believe you have a "right" to that which must be produced by someone else's labor?

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A basic gut-check to see if you're a human being that is capable of empathy?

*GASP* I'd have to steal from wealthy people to ensure that the indigent have at least a faint glimmer of hope of receiving medical treatment within the decade. Do you honestly think that keeps me up at night?

There's a reason why Robin Hood is an iconic hero figure and Ebenezer Scrooge isn't.

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If you take a serious look at the libertarian belief system, you will find that people believe in it because they have taken a serious look at economics and how the federal government actually works, and who it actually benefits, and they have realized that those institutions work against the poor. High taxes that supposedly go to education/whatever, the minimum wage, all those things hurt poor people. I am not a libertarian for greedy reasons, I am one because I think everyone in society would be better off with less government influence.

As for what would happen to orphans or "people who lost the genetic lottery", there is no reason that altruism or charity would not exist in a libertarian society. Absolutely none. If I didn't have to pay the government so much in taxes to pay for wars, 50,000 nuclear warheads, pork spending, etc, I would give a lot more to charity. And when individuals give money to charity, they can discriminate between the ones which will spend the money efficiently and the ones that don't. Under our system, it all goes to the government no matter what you think about it and there is no recourse against them wasting it all.