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<!-- you can have any number of categories here --> [[Category:Adam Ozimek]] [[Category:Unindexed]] <!-- 1 URL must be followed by >= 0 Other URL and Old URL and 1 End URL.--> {{URL | url = https://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2017/03/29/libertarians-and-charity/#76eca6662344}} <!-- {{Other URL | url = }} --> <!-- {{Old URL | url = }} --> {{End URL}} {{DES | des = | show=}} <!-- insert wiki page text here --> <!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them. Use these explicit workarounds. --> <!-- otherwise, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}} --> {{List|title=Libertarians And Charity|links=true}} {{Quotations|title=Libertarians And Charity|quotes=true}} {{Text | I count myself as a libertarian, but I think libertarians need to do a better job overall. Not all libertarians, but too many, have utopian views of what markets can accomplish that lacks realism. One area where utopianism reigns is their view of what private charity could accomplish. The best place to see this shortcoming is in k-12 education. If we stopped funding k-12 schooling, would private charity step in to fill the gap? Here is why I think the answer is no: almost everyone agrees the state of K-12 education in this country is falling short of acceptable, and yet private charity is not stepping in to fill the gap. So why would it step in to fill an even greater gap caused by the government stopping from trying? If private charity is willing and able to step in and do a better job than K-12 then what is it waiting for? The same private dollars that would allegedly jump in when we shut down government schools could jump in today. Existing property taxes are hardly a budget constraint for the kinds of rich households, charities, and foundations that we’d expect to fund something like this. Defenders of this view will sometimes point to the Harlem Children’s Zone as proving the power of charity. I’m glad that they do this, because it precisely proves the limits of charity. HCZ does a great job of closing educational gaps, but they do it using with 30% of their budget coming from the government. So maybe if the government stopped funding education, the same donors would step in and fund that 30% gap. Let’s assume that’s true. This still raises the question, why is there no Harlem Children’s Zone for the rest of the places in the country where literacy rates and dropout rates are abysmal? None of this is to say that a small government combined with an extremely pro-active and successful private charity sector is impossible. Indeed, in a new piece Megan McArdle demonstrates how this is exactly what is happening in Utah. But this piece is the exception that proves the rule: look around you, most places aren’t Utah. The federal government is not so oppressively large that it’s crowding out civil society in most places. It certainly isn’t in Utah. Most places in the U.S. simply lack the civil, cultural, and social capital to replace basic government functions like K-12 education, food stamps, unemployment, Medicaid, and Medicare with charity and volunteerism. If you think cutting back the government will force society to become like Utah, then I think you’ve succumbed to the type of utopianism I described in the beginning. YOU MAY ALSO LIKE Civic Nation BRANDVOICE Young People Are Coming To Save Our Democracy UNICEF USA BRANDVOICE One Year After Harvey, How UNICEF USA Keeps Supporting Houston's Kids It’s time for some of that legendary Hayekian humility: we simply don’t know enough about how to create robust civil society, and there is little evidence that drastically shrinking the government will do it. Until we figure this out, or we evolve towards more societies like that, a large and redistributive government is a second best we are stuck with. Libertarians will be more useful and influential if they stop focusing on utopian solutions that to most people comes across as pretty obviously and intuitively false. How can we, on the margin, make the government better? How can we, on the margin, make civil society stronger? Fantasies about “getting the government out of education” or “getting the government out of healthcare” are distractions that undermine the credibility of libertarianism. }}
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