There is moral value in helping someone that, in your view, needs help.
For example, if you decide your neighbor needs some financial assistance, you can feel good about yourself if you decide to provide that assistance. You are under no obligation to help, but you have decided to do so anyway. Good for you! You are morally "good."
However, if you decide your neighbor needs some financial assistance, you should not feel good about yourself if you go across town, break into someone's house, steal some money and then give it to your needy neighbor. Shame on you! You are morally "bad."
As far as your neighbor is concerned, the outcome is the same. Your neighbor gets the financial assistance either way. And isn't that what matters?
No.
Propents of single-payer and other government-run type programs claim it is "moral" to institute such programs. They believe it is "good" for the government to provide such a program.
This argument makes a fatally incorrect assumption: That taking from someone else to help the needy is morally good.
It is not.
The initiation of force is wrong. Morally wrong. Always. Without exception.
Taking money from someone wihout that person's express consent is force. It is morally wrong. No matter to whom you decide to distribute the money, even if it is widows and orphans, it is wrong. Morally wrong.
The proponents of health care reform fail to see this. They think it is morally good to take from someone and give it to someone else they deem in need.
I will grant that the people in favor of this use of force have good intentions. They want to help the needy. They are woefully misguided.
They lose their moral compass when they decide it is moral to forcibly take someone else's money in the name of helping those in need.
There is no morality in the use of force. There is morality in voluntarily giving.
Perhaps those in favor of a "single-payer" health care system do not care. But at least they need to acknowledge the difference.
Is the initiation of force wrong? Really? Always without exception?
ReplyDeleteForce is not wrong, it is necessary to meet needs. We force a great many things on many levels.
We build houses, we destroy environments, we kill other things and apply our force to them to meet our needs.
Force is very prevalent.
It is neither good nor bad, it just is.
Why is your neighbour in need of financial assistance in the first place?
Who took his finance? What did he spend it on?
Did others take from him by force or coercion? Did he give it freely?
What is the value of giving your neighbour that financial assistance at your expense if nothing is returned, or learned? He may end up back in the same situation yet again and your efforts wasted. You would be left wondering, why you bothered doing anything in the first place?
There has to be an exchange of some kind, and a value in the lesson.
In your example if you substitute health care in place of finance, you will discover that all this effort sustaining sickness in this world is putting strain on everyone else.
However, if you were to let your neighbour go to ruin, how would that affect the community in other ways? It may create a flow on chain reaction creating financial problems for many others. Or, is quarantining the risk and cutting your losses more appropriate.
At the moment the system is not working because people are unable or unwilling to take responsibiity for themselves, and they are paying the wrong people. They are paying insurance instead of paying their doctor.
Perhaps self-funded is a better way to go.
Maybe there needs to be less interference from governments and private insurers and financiers in individual health care arrangements, and more payment to health care providers.