Not the GP, but I actually don't care at all about living in a "wealthy country," I'd like to live in a country where our resources are allocated appropriately, we're able to invest in ourselves and our futures, and people have access to what they need regardless of their wealth, influence, or ability.
That doesn't require wealth as much as it requires equity. We get wealthier every year but we don't get more equitable, and our investment in things like education, health care, and infrastructure is definitely not rising accordingly.
It has never been the case that we simply weren't wealthy enough to build a just society, it's that our society is structured to promote inequality and maximize the influence of the wealthy.
I think not caring about living in a wealthy country is a perfectly fine value judgement to make for yourself, but as someone with just a modest amount of experience living in poor countries, I highly value wealth.
Maybe my value system that blames wealth is misappropriating the value to wealth when really it's things that correlate with wealth? That's possible of course, but with such consistent correlation I have to imagine it's hard to separate wealth from the society that I most prefer living in.
Happy to be wrong, as equity is a lot more palatable emotionally.
Well it's hard to say without knowing more precisely what you mean, but I can imagine any number of factors that might correlate with a nation's wealth, eg, people might have more time to engage in civil society, they have a stronger military and diplomatic position and so other counties aren't liable to meddle with them, they might achieve the appearance of improving conditions by commiting their worst abuses abroad (eg setting up a sweat shop in another country), etc.
I certainly won't claim that wealth isn't an important factor in outcomes, what I really mean is that it's not a great terminal goal for a society. We shouldn't be hoarding resources, we should be using them to create a better world for ourselves and for future people.
We definitely agree on wealth not being the goal, but my limited understanding and experience suggests that the goals worth having, require wealth to achieve.
Everything costs something, and maybe I'm looking at things through US centric politics, but in my experience people who are ideologically opposed to social programs use costs as a way to cloak their ideology in technocratic language and cast themselves as "the sober adults in the room" rather than ideologues.
In truth we waste a stupendous amount of money and human potential by, for instance, introducing a system of unnecessary middle men (insurance companies) to the healthcare system rather than negotiating with pharmaceutical companies as a nation with astronomical buying power.
Human potential, I'll note, is worthy in it's own right, but is also a very valuable through a strictly economic lens. People who meet their potential contribute immensely to the economy, people who aren't able to because their society never bothered to invest in them may contribute not not nearly as much as they could have. Eg, if we hadn't funded NASA, we wouldn't have a space industry (to say nothing of the many other industries that benefited in ancillary ways).
It's hard to judge someones true intent, but I don't know that I've ever met a person that opposes benevolent programs of any sort if they aren't associated with costs. So if people truly do oppose social programs based only on the cost (both direct and indirect) I do believe that's an ethically defensible position. It's hard for me to imagine a person who doesn't want programs that help people, though and only uses cost as a way to shroud their ill-intent. I hope you're wrong about these people existing.
You've never heard someone say something like, "handouts make people dependent on the government" or "the government shouldn't have a say in our healthcare" or "the government shouldn't decide whether my child learns about X"? Because I've heard each of these ideological arguments used against social programs.
I think the confusion here may be that you're seeing things through your own ideological lens (as we all do) and so you've classified these as "not truly benevolent?" (I don't mean that as a criticism, just a shot in the dark.)
I've heard people say all of these things, but I don't think that saying these things has any bearing on whether those people disagree with programs that help people.
> handouts make people dependent on the government
This is a judgement based on cost - you or I may disagree with the value of the cost, but it is a centralization cost which increases risk. Playing devils advocate, but if your livelihood becomes dependent on a government program and you also watch government programs risking collapse (such as US social security) then the risk becomes obvious that it exists (and each individual will decide for themselves how likely this risk is to manifest)
> the government shouldn't have a say in our healthcare
I think this statement doesn't really fall into the category of things we're talking about. There's nothing about governments involvement in healthcare that means the program is better or worse or more/less benevolent. It would depend on the government and their involvement.
> the government shouldn't decide whether my child learns about X
I would a similar argument as the previous for this.
> I've heard people say all of these things, but I don't think that saying these things has any bearing on whether those people disagree with programs that help people.
This is what I meant about "not truly benevolent," it certainly is the case that these are arguments that the social programs don't help people. All well and good, but my claim was that they were ideologically opposed to social programs, not anything about whether they were opposed to people being helped or something. I never said that at all.
> This is a judgement based on cost
But it isn't. It's a view about outcome, not cost. If we reduced the cost to zero somehow (obviously impossible but bare with me), their objection wouldn't disappear because it hadn't been addressed.
> I think this statement doesn't really fall into the category of things we're talking about. There's nothing about governments involvement in healthcare that means the program is better or worse or more/less benevolent. It would depend on the government and their involvement.
I'm not making a statement about being more out less benevolent, I'm saying this is an ideological statement, which it transparently is. "The government shouldn't have a say in healthcare/education" isn't any kind of factual claim. It's a claim about how the world ought to work.
> I think not caring about living in a wealthy country is a perfectly fine value judgement to make for yourself, but as someone with just a modest amount of experience living in poor countries, I highly value wealth.
I don't see how wealth of the nation helps someone in any way when their piece of it is so small that they can't afford food, healthcare and roof over their head. How is even rational to value something that is actively used to take what little they to enrich "nation".
That doesn't require wealth as much as it requires equity. We get wealthier every year but we don't get more equitable, and our investment in things like education, health care, and infrastructure is definitely not rising accordingly.
It has never been the case that we simply weren't wealthy enough to build a just society, it's that our society is structured to promote inequality and maximize the influence of the wealthy.