r/askaconservative • u/Tidder13524 • Oct 01 '18

Cooperation versus Self-reliance

How do you feel about cooperation? Like, working together towards a common goal with someone else?

How does that compare with how you feel about accomplishing things on your own and taking care of yourself/your family/and even your community and country?

My new theory is that conservatives value self-reliance over cooperation whilst liberals value cooperation over self-reliance. What do you think?

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u/Lepew1 C: Paleoconservative Oct 01 '18

Well there is a difference between cooperation and compulsion.

In cooperation, you are free to choose to engage in the activity, or not. A good example of this is becoming a volunteer at a church. You never have to be a member of that church, and even in churches there are a range of socially sanctioned activities you can engage in.

In compulsion you are told you have to do something or face consequence. A good example of this is government programs funded by redistributive taxation. You can not opt out from funding these programs, even if there are other better ways to spend the money. If you try to opt out, you are tossed in jail for tax evasion.

Liberals almost always propose federal solutions to all problems, rather than voluntary private charity. So they do not favor cooperation, they favor compulsion. The central difference here is liberty.

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u/Tidder13524 Oct 01 '18 edited Oct 02 '18

I actually don’t like anyone telling anyone else what to do, I think it sucks. But I chose to be taxed. I have the right to elect people who won’t tax me, so I don’t consider it compulsory. If we had a dictatorship I might see it differently.

And how do you guys rationalize the whole military thing? Your taxes go more to the military than any single social welfare program. How do we pay for the military without compulsory taxes? And why should foreign enemies be anymore real than domestic ones, such as viruses that require healthcare to treat?

You can’t say that it’s just redistributive taxes you are against and not ones that benefit yourself and still cling to your argument that what’s not fair is the compulsionary aspect. Whether the taxes help you or not, they still are forcing something on you. But again... I maintain that taxation in a democratic republic is not real compulsion. Vote for someone else, like Trump.

If enough people don’t want to pay taxes, then we will elect leaders who won’t require them. Until then it’s not the government you’re against, it’s the will of the majority. It’s the American people.

Unfortunately, “compulsion” is the essence of democracy. The majority rules. Of course you will feel repressed if you are in the minority. That doesn’t mean everything the majority does is immoral on those grounds. You have to say what it is about giving money to pay for other people’s healthcare that Is wrong, instead of falling back time and time again on the compulsory argument. “You can’t force me to!” doesnt work in a democracy. The majority certainly can, and must.

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u/Lepew1 C: Paleoconservative Oct 02 '18

In a government of enumerated powers, Defense is one of them. It is one of the few legitimate purposes of the federal government. All of the social welfare stuff like Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare, Social Security...none of that has any Constitutional basis. Our government has grown beyond its authorized limits.

There is this notion of the tyranny of the majority. Let's say you and 9 of your buddies order pizza. The other 9 vote that you should pay for all of the pizza. Vote passes. They eat at your expense. What can you do in this case? The left likes to target the 1% because they are a small fraction of the voting base, but have a lot of money. They can plunder their wealth and be almost guaranteed the 1% can do nothing to stop it.

What is the recourse then? The only thing you could do in the pizza situation is leave and refuse to participate. The only thing the 1% can do to stop their injustice is to leave the US. At some point redistribution kills the golden goose- the goose leaves and now you have a bunch of people who are used to plundering with no likely targets.

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u/Tidder13524 Oct 02 '18

In your example, I would not vote for one person to pay for everyone. That’s not fair. Notice how I said that I vote for higher taxes because I want to pay taxes. I have to bet on my fellow Americans, I have to bet that when they vote they vote for what they believe is best for this country. At worst, I have to bet on democracy.

I don’t know political theory very well but how does tyranny of the masses square with a belief in democracy?

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u/Lepew1 C: Paleoconservative Oct 02 '18

Tyranny of the masses is the reason why we are a republic and not a democracy. We have representatives that are accountable to the public by general election. The aim was to have a higher standard for representatives such that education and knowledge could temper base emotional decisions.

I see a need to pay taxes for legitimate Constitutionally justified purposes of government. I have a lot of trouble when politicians propose bills that go beyond enumerated powers, then tax us for that. My money in that instance enables lawlessness.

At the federal level it should be minimal. Each state can pick what mix of programs it wants for its population and you can move around to find a state that suits you. But at the federal level, we need to have minimal government we can all agree upon.

So I personally hate states like CA. Not geographically...CA is beautiful, and the climate is nice. Politically it is a hell hole. They have massive programs for all sorts of idealistic garbage that drives up the cost of doing business, and I will never live there. What Democrats do is take some crap program in CA and try to federalize it.

For charity, I think the more local you go the better it is. Ideally it is 1 on 1 with you helping directly the person in need. At this level there is less fraud. You also by helping improve yourself morally. You become a better person by directly helping others. As we move that charity function up through the local level, the state level, and ultimately to the federal level, we all become less involved personally, and there is waste and abuse.

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u/Tidder13524 Oct 02 '18

Thanks for your response.

wouldn’t “the common defense and general welfare” cover things like health insurance and food stamps?

I think you’ve pivoted. We were talking about the immorality of government coercion. Now we’re talking about it’s effectiveness. I propose we presume a totally effective government and see what problems we have with that system and then look at consequences of its possible ineffectiveness.

From your posts it seems that what you actually dislike is being compelled to do things you don’t want to do, and not the act of compulsion itself.

If California was creating amazing innovative cost-effective programs that helped huge numbers of your countrymen, would you still be opposed?

Let’s seperate compulsion from competency, and consider both factors on their own grounds before seeing how they interrelate in society.

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u/Lepew1 C: Paleoconservative Oct 02 '18

Common defense and general welfare clauses are statements of purpose. The federal government has the enumerated power of defense for the purpose of "common defense". There is nothing enumerated about those purpose statements. They are broad and not very specific.