Commenter Fox writes:
I would also add that Ezra seems to ignore the possibility that government interventions have crowded out private charity in the areas under review. His case might be stronger if organizations like the Red Cross and Hull House didn't predate government intervention.
I absolutely agree that government programs can crowd out charity. Universal health care, for instance, will substantially reduce the need for charitable donations helping low income communities access affordable pharmaceuticals. I see that as a feature, not a bug, but whatever. And it's further true that were government to totally recede and we reentered some dystopic, Gilded Age situation, there would be relatively more private charity to fill bits of the void.
That said, by the same token, government's absence in certain areas forces charities to crowd in. Health care, poverty, and a variety of other issue areas could be better addressed through comprehensive social policy with stable funding, continual data collection, and the capacity to scale up or down as needed (say, in times of recession). This is sucking charitable dollars away from areas where charities are relatively more effective than government, including the funding of innovative but untested program structures, arts funding, and so on. In other words, there are certain things charities do well and certain things government does well. When you force the one to fill in for the other, you get suboptimal results.
