Excellent point. People are very quick to praise charity, donations and volunteering, without realizing that having to rely on voluntary actions to keep the world spin is dangerous and morally unjust.
I didn’t find the argument compelling. It was essentially “Donating to charity removes the urgency around removing the real problem: capitalism.” But whether or not capitalism is the problem is not decided. If it was decided, whether or not we could change it is not decided. If we could change it, whether or not the things we could change it to is better than capitalism is not decided.
I can donate to charity now and accomplish some good, rather than wait for some nebulous and uncertain future that may or may not be an improvement. The moral thing to do seems clear.
Forced “altruism” through taxation, and government “giving” without any personal, family and community support and mentorship — that can be strongly argued to be immoral.
The results seem to speak for themselves; see multigenerational community collapse (eg. inner cities), vs. children coming out of faith-run children’s homes, or in distressed families supported by faith communities.
Comparing community collapse situations to small charities who can choose their wards is just silly.
It is less silly, but also misses the point, to assume warehouse ghettos were sincere attempts to improve the lot of anyone. There have been moments, and the history of different efforts is varied, but most of these efforts were to ghettoize and sequester minorities, not improve conditions.
It amazes me the extent to which The Wire has become something from which people argue policy. I feel like a significant percentage of people's arguments come from fiction.
Conversely, people have long argued that accumulation of property is itself immoral.
Libertarianism (the original libertarianism, as founded by Dejacque, not right-wing libertarianism) was founded on wanting to go further than Proudhon's infamous "property is theft" - Dejacque argued that freedom is only possible if one rejects the very notion of accepting that some people have a right to restrict others from having their needs met by enforcing property rights and the like.
That either taxation or altruism is necessary is a failure of society and community in the first place.
EDIT: It's fascinating to see how unwilling people are to see a counter to the argument above of taxation being immoral. The idea of taxation as immoral is after all another fairly extreme fringe view.
