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There’s something unseemly about a society where a lot of people have to rely on charity to survive and there is an uncritical charity-cheerleading track of the discourse flowing withgratitude, humility, etc. I appreciate those who do basics-giving, but it’s a job for taxes
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The US is particularly prone to this pattern. Americans *like* a society built on benefactor-benefactee relationships of humility/gratitude as a basic building block. “Charitable person” is in the top 5 American archetypes. ESP religious and high-society subtypes.
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Inefficient though it might be there’s a dignity-preserving aspect to receiving safety-net support from a well-run bureaucracy that catalyzes personal agency and provides an impetus towards self-sufficiency in a way personal dependence on “the kindness of strangers” does not.
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I suspect conservatives who get into a moral panic about creating parasitic dependency/welfare queenism etc actually *want* to preserve the humiliation-based culture of community charity (not saying those who give *want* to humiliate, but that’s often the structural effect)
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The actual effect of being the beneficiary of highly personal charity is often resentment. Beneath the mask of expressed gratitude is often anger, a sense of unwanted burden/obligation, unworthiness, low status in the community etc. It can drive people to leave communities.
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Blanche duBois in A Streetcar Named Desire is of course the best-known American portrayal of the oppressiveness of “kindness of strangers” cultures. Tennessee Williams’ other play Glass Menagerie has similar themes. There was a really good quote by him on dignity I can’t find
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Basically, problems created by industrial scale extraction, negative externalities, or direct cruelty can’t be solved by palliative measures based on family and church scale compassion. Impedance mismatch. You need same responses that rhyme with the causes.
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Taxes and entitlements *are* responses that rhyme with causes. Entitlements are not a dirty word for me. I expect to rely a bit on social security and Medicare when I retire. I would like single-payer nationalized healthcare with an option to buy extra privately. Etc.
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Individual charity is fine and has a place in the scheme of things for those who opt-in to specific webs of mutual community obligations, like joining a religion. It’s just neither the whole solution or one that is even relevant to everybody.
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