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Why shouldn't we want the government to feed those that can't afford to feed themselves? What about poor children? Should they suffer because their parents are poor? Isn't it good to spread the wealth around? |
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The simple answer is that anything the government gives to one person is taken from someone else. Rephrase the question this way: What's wrong with having the government force some people to help others? What's wrong, in brief, is that there's no moral justification for it, and it's a violation of individual rights. The full answer to this question is really Ayn Rand's theory of government. For an introduction, see the essays "Man's Rights" and "The Nature of Government". |
Rephrasing the question: "What's wrong with government using people as means against their will?" In a free society, where any gov't activity is based on consent, and individual rights are guaranteed in a Bill of Rights, it's a context-dropping perversion of basic moral principles to speak of organized groups of people (whether as a gov't or not) directing an individual's rightly-earned wealth this way or that without his consent. The context-drop in, e.g., Rawls's Theory of Justice is massive. (People should at some level look after one another, though, in the usual commonsense way.)