Bush Creates Legacy Battling HIV-AIDS

[A18]

Is every government expenditure of confiscated property a good and righteous act, so long as it is diverted toward some noble end?

One of the most irritating aspects of modern politics, is the utter inability of the average person to think in terms of trade-offs (i.e., to think at all). Every dollar spent fighting HIV/AIDS, could have been spent on innumerable other objectives. Why was HIV/AIDS the most worthy target? How about the goods not produced and the consumption forgone? These costs are of course invisible. We have no idea what this money would have been spent on had it not been borrowed/taxed away from the private sector, nor can we know the ultimate effect of such policies on income-incentives.

The point here is not that "battling AIDS" is a bad thing. Of course, it is not. But we do not simply "battle AIDS" in the abstract. We allocate scarce resources toward that end, and in the process forgo their other potential uses.

How is this decision to be made? The reality of the matter, is that governments are never in a position to compare societal costs and benefits in the way an individual might weigh personal costs and benefits. Even putting to the side the touchy subject of interpersonal utility comparisons, there is the knowledge problem. For government to reliably improve "social utility" to be above and beyond that of the natural market order, it would have to have a stunning degree of information that is simply not realistic or workable. Outside of the most extreme cases, it requires a giant leap of faith.

There is one thing we (and governments) can know, however. That is that government spending effects a redistribution of power and influence and society. I view that as a cost in and of itself.

I would allow free people to decide what portions of their incomes to devote to charitable purposes, as well as the proper object of that charity (AIDS, cancer, poverty, whatever). The incentives of the natural market order are undoubtedly "imperfect" in some sense or another, but God alone has enough information to improve upon it with any reliability.

[A18]

After stressing the relevance (and existence) of trade-offs in a society with scarce resources, I concluded by saying that "I would allow free people to decide what portions of their incomes to devote to charitable purposes, as well as the proper object of that charity (AIDS, cancer, poverty, whatever)." My post explicitly states that the "incentives of the natural market order are undoubtedly 'imperfect' in some sense or another," but nevertheless adds that "God alone has enough information to improve upon [them] with any reliability."

Ebowed's supposed reply is in fact no reply at all. "People only donate to charities," he tells us, "which help things which directly affect them ... or things which are immediate and shocking." Yet even accepting this rather dubious proposition to be entirely and unassailably true (despite his citing no evidence for it whatsoever), it does not cast any doubt on what I said.

This response would be understandable if I had made the argument that humans are so wise, rational, informed, and virtuous, that whenever social utility might be maximized by a transfer of wealth, charity will follow; and that government intervention is therefore simply unnecessary. In fact, my argument is squarely grounded in the basic propositions that:
  (a) We live in a world of scarcity. The pursuance of a particular end, means that another end will either not be pursued at all, or at least will not be pursued as effectively. --AND--
  (b) Government is in no position, due to lack of knowledge (and even accepting the utilitarian assumptions of the "efficiency" worshipers), to effectively balance and compare the competing interests at stake when arranging a coercive diversion of resources.
--Hence, the maximize-social-utility justification for violent intervention in human affairs must be rejected here as without merit.

Even if there were no charity whatsoever, my argument would be unaffected. It is based on the general reliability of the voluntary, time-tested property-and-price mechanism, and the inability of improving upon it by violent means. Thus, I would not attempt to do so, and would instead condone only those non-commercial transactions that are not coercive.

Ebowed concludes by saying that "[i]f [I] want something done, [I should] get the government to step in." But as I have explained, it is not about the merits of a particular end as an abstract matter, but the concrete trade-offs involved, that matter from the standpoint of societal welfare. And even pretending, erroneously, that there would be no impact on the incentives of persons to earn income (depression of production), the question still remains whether it was worth taking these resources away from another end, and putting them toward this one. With government, cost-benefit analysis is virtually non-existent.