What’s the Point of Civil Society When the State Can Do it Worse for More?

Will, I couldn't agree more. To put it a tad unfairly (just a tad) liberals want the money to first employ their friends in redistributive government agencies (run by employee unions) then redistributed to the poor/enviroment/foriegn nations.

The question I would like to bat around with libertarians is exactly how to displace the managerial class and replace with a more entreprenurial/ownership class.

What I find funny is the suggestion that the world's most successful investor is now malinvesting his money. Something tells me Warren Buffet knows a little more about it than Chait. Another howler is when he suggests that business owners in the '60s were less greedy than they are now. They were civic-minded! No, they didn't accept regulations because they saw opportunities to manipulate the government to shut out competitors. Not at all.

What world does this guy live in?

I'll give him something, though. I saw a similar point made not too long ago by Alexander Cockburn: Buffet could indeed do more for impoverished Africans by giving his money to the government. How?

"At the moment it seems that the Gates couple's core focus is the war on AIDS and malaria, both ravaging Africa. How to improve the Dark Continent's overall well-being? America's senators and representatives can be bought for bargain-basement sums. A modest disbursement by the Gates Foundation--let us say $50,000 for each senator and $20,000 for each rep--would most certainly buy enough votes to end the current government subsidy, $4.5 billion for 2004, to cotton growers. The entire crop that year, the last for which figures are available, was worth $5.9 billion and the subsidy enables US growers to export three-quarters of their harvest and control about 40 percent of world trade, thus destroying the farm economies of countries like Mozambique, Benin and Mali....With overthrow of the cotton subsidy as a pilot program, Gates could launch a wider onslaught on the subsidies doled out to large wheat, rice and corn growers."

(Original post here: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07032006.html)

1) "Americans gave more money to charity last year than the entire 2005 GDP of Denmark—which is bigger than Greece’s, Ireland’s, Portugal’s, and Argentina’s."

I feel unimpressed by your choice of nations. Their populations combine to about 68 mil. compared to the US population of about 295 mil. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop-peopl...

Denmark has a population of about 5 mil, or about 1.7% of that of the US. Thus, if the incomes were the same and Americans gave about 1.7% of their income to charity, it would equal the total income of Denmark, about as you say is true. As it turns out, Denmark has a slightly lower income per capita then the US. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gro_nat_i...

My point being, comparing US charitable giving to anything about much smaller nations seems unmoving to me. About as wrong as if I were to cite crime statistics an saw things like "More people in the US have used crack than Luxembourg has citizens" or some other odd comparison. http://www.policyalmanac.org/crime/archive/crac...

Perhaps I am misapplying this to you however, as I am mainly annoyed when I see similar things cited to say "look how charitable Americans are."

2) "The worldview that holds that the same amount of money voluntarily spent on direct charity would have been better spent if only it had been coercively appropriated through a wasteful process of political competition..."

I thought that the suggestion was that the same amount of money voluntarily spent on direct charity would have been better spent to coerce appropriations from others, as in "How much would it cost to influence the political system to move 1/10 of 1% of the budget..."

3) I actually like the piece, just those two sticking points for me. I also understand from one of the grads at the IHS Social Change thing that I may have sounded far more critical of your blog then I really am. I'm just not a supportive person I guess.

That's great rhetoric, sincerely!

I also have to sincerely compliment Will on his choice of several interesting issues in that piece ... and the equally interesting way in which he conjoined them.

Let me just choose one issue, the attempt to define "state" and "civil society" in relation to one another. Instead of writing an essay on that, I just refer you to an excellent book.

Anthony Black "Guild and Civil Society: From the Middle Ages to the Present"

This book, which is now called:

"Guild and State: European Political Thought From the Twelth Century to the Present"

(I have not read this new version.)

was recommended to me through the Institute For Humane Studies by way of I don't know whom.

I guarantee, you'll be happy you read it if you havn't already.