I remember a PBS series on this in 2004. This was after Congress had complained that PBS had too much of a liberal bias. They produced this show and it showed Bush's accomplishments in the AIDS/HIV arena. He even got Jesse Helms to sign on. Quite impressive.
Can you prove this lack of knowledge? And how do you define "effectively balance and compare"?
How many societies in history relied entirely on the voluntary, "time-tested" property-and-price mechanism and how were they superior to societies that balanced voluntary property exchange but were also influenced by other, coercive measures?
Precisely... and that matter is entirely subjective. One must have some basic concept of a collective 'society' or a nation with something substantive collectively at stake, to accept that governments can be actors or decision-makers in this subjective choice.
It is my view that many people who are opposed to social welfare or suspicious of charity altogether (though these two may be separate), generally tend to take a darker and more suspicious view toward the goals or beneficiaries, which is shaded by a darker view toward human nature. And that is a perfectly legitimate perspective. Free a man of his shackles, and his next step may be to mug you! Still, this tendency can be taken too far as well, and we are not going to resolve the matter by pulling rhetorically around our end of the scale in the argument over human nature.
There are also other things to consider, like the attractiveness of an endeavor, its side-benefits, its aesthetic value, its capability of being carried forward successfully, etc. etc., all of which are subjective but also which most people will fall around a certain standard deviation, and it is these factors which generally determine whether social welfare or an act of charity will be carried out and be successful.
