What are the major arguments for why the state should not provide for the basic necessities of its people? I am thinking of things like water, food, and housing as "basic necessities".
I think some people prefer a state not to provide these things, but I don't understand why. Without access to these necessities, some people will likely die.
The state cannot wave a magic wand and generate the water, food, and raw materials necessary for providing what you've defined as basic necessities. The state has to either pay for those resources, or force someone to give them to it. In a modern state, the state usually pays for goods by collecting taxes in the form of currency from its people. So, in order to provide its people with basic necessities, it must first take from them money to pay for the necessities. The basic argument against the government providing basic necessities for all, then, is that in order to do so they have to increase the tax burden on their population.
Whether or not the state is justified in using its power to take taxes and spend them on basic necessities for all is a moral argument about what duty the people have to support others with their work, and whether the government should be the ones to execute that duty. Individualists would say that a person has no particular duty to help others in need, so the state should not force them to do so by proxy. There is also an argument that the same money that would be given to the state to provide necessities would be better spent on charities and other organizations dedicated to the goal, because they will better manage it, and because that money is being given freely rather than taxed.
This does not even attempt to address the issue of what "basic necessity" actually means. Even the simplest necessity, water, needs to meet a certain standard of cleanliness and get sanitized before it can be considered potable, a standard which is wildly different depending on what area of the world you live in.
DISCLAIMER: The question can be interpreted two ways: (1) "What are the reasons not to provide" - which is a subjective question because not everyone agrees with said reasons; and (2) as @J.Doe's comment noted, "What are the major rationales that people use to justify the state not providing basic necessities".
As such, I provided the answer to the second form, listing major rationales. Therefore, each bullet point below should not be taken as objective "X is true", but as "X is a reason held true by some people who oppose the motion". In other words, please don't request that I prove the objective truthiness of each argument, as the answer is descriptive and not prescriptive
At its core, many arguments condense to the fact that basic necessities aren't free.
The phrase "state provides X" is a nice verbal abstraction which in reality means "someone's resources are taken[1], so that the state has the resources to provide X".
For every $10,000 that your state "gives someone in basic resources", that means at least[2] $10,000 has to be taken - using the power of the state - from another person, usually against their will[3], [4] (in most modern states, that means if that another person refuses to fork off that money to the state, they get sent to jail for tax evasion. Like Wesley Snipes but not as good looking or rich :)
Another alternative (often combined with the first one) for that abstraction is from the supply side instead of demand side. To wit, the state forces basic necessity providers to work for less - or no - pay - to provide those necessities.
"For less" - that's for example the economic model of socialized medicine in most Western European countries - their model works because their national health system severely underpays their doctors, especially residents; as well as other medical service providers. Since it's single payer, the providers have no recourse; they are forced to accept being underpaid (ex1, ex2 for UK).
"For no pay" - that was, for example, the economic model of "panem et circenses" ("bread and circuses") model of the dole in Ancient Rome (and yes, that "panem" is the exact origin of the name of the country in "Hunger Games" books and movies). Rome could afford said bread (in the form of "dole") for so cheap because of slave labor; and obviously, gladiators providing the entertainment were slaves.
Aside from that main consideration, there are other ones. They include things like:
Efficiency considerations.
The state is often a very poor vehicle for providing anything well OR efficiently. The stereotypical example here is the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
Basically, you're incentivizing people to be a burden to others (and people do tend to respond to incentives, surprise!). If I can make &^*(ty life decisions and be sure that I'll still be taken care of no matter what, I'm far more likely to be lazy, and make bad/imprudent choices.
This issue isn't some newfangled neocon/libertarian notion. It was most famously discussed by Aesop in one of his fables.
It can cause issues for overall economy.
The specific cases of education and health care demonstrate that efficiency and redistribution may conflict.
(["Social and population policy. Considerations on efficiency and equity" by Gomez De Leon Cruces J ] - PubMed 12158040)
It presents an unstable (and very dangerous) equilibrum in a society.
Absent abundant cheap energy (not available on Earth yet, or anytime soon), abundant material goods (not available yet), and general post-scarcity economy, you need a sizeable portion of population making net contributions to the economy.
Unfortunately, due to moral hazard, you won't have that; ensuring that earlier or later you'll run out of Other People's Money to pay for those "basic necessities". Exacerbated by double demographic bombs of (1) Well to do spoiled westerners not having enough kids to fund their retirement and (2) people who are on basic income - and thus have the leisure - out-reproducing those who are willing to work by a large margin. In a way #2 is already happening, e.g. in Israel with secular vs. Hareidim communities being a very clear example stripped of external factors like race differences.
People have different, and often, unreasonable, expectations of what "basic" means. @Brythan's later answer covers this better than mine, but my explanation is as follows:
One person's "basic necessities" aren't an objectively defined category and may differ from other's.
E.g. Do we include food in basic necessities? OK, that seems somewhat reasonable to most people. Do we include ANY food? including overpriced and unhealthy junk food, sodas etc...? including exotic expensive food like quinoa or beef (instead of oats and chicken)? What about people who'll use their food stamps to buy 4x-priced organic food at upscale food retailer that's near their house instead of spending extra 1 hour going to cheaper generic supermarket with far less expensive non-organic food? Does their food lifestyle get included in "basic"?
Do you include housing in basic necessities? OK, that's a bit more controversial but I can see people at least somewhat agreeing with where that premise comes from. Do we include ANY housing? Does it have to be housing in super-expensive metropolitan area or can we insist that basic housing MUST be in a much cheaper area; and if you need to commute longer for work, that's the cost of having "free" housing.
How about healthcare? Again, in principle, people may agree to an extent (very few people object to Medicaid in USA). Should we cover exotic and unnecessary and expensive medical stuff like sex reassignment surgery? Cosmetic surgery? "BEST" medicine (patented instead of generic pills)? How about medicine that's required as a result of someone's bad choices and not bad luck? I really don't feel it's fair to make me pay for replacing an alcoholic's liver. If he didn't want to die, shouldn't have drank his liver away. How about super expensive end of life treatment for someone whose life expectancy is <6 months in 99% of cases?
How about college education? Do I really have to pay for someone to study modern interpretive dance and if I refuse to, I'm a bad greedy person? What's wrong with requiring people who get "free" education to be forced into plumbing classes or nursing school?
How about Internet? Some people assert "free" broadband is a basic necessity (my personal POV: give me "you need expensive broadband to be able to study" - somehow, prior generations managed to get educated and successful first without internet; and then with dialup. Wikipedia doesn't require broadband, nor does StackExchange. Streaming movies/online games isn't "basic").
Additionally, there are non-rational, political tribal reasons.
Basically, support for "basic income", like most of social welfare spending, is associated with - using American political grouping - "blue tribe" (typically incorrectly expressed as "left wing").
Therefore, people are very likely to oppose the concept merely because they - for reasons that may have absolutely nothing to do with this specific topic - belong to "red tribe"; and that imposes a pre-built bundle of sociopolitical positions that people tend to adopt, often without bothering to familiarize themselves with nitty gritty details (this is true for both tribes of course).
So, some people oppose this just because "Daddy always voted for Reagan who was against welfare, so I am too against it". It's not based on issues but on tribal membership.
[1] - one might quibble that deficit spending using sovereign debt avoids the problem of taking someone's money. Except that's incorrect - you simply time-shift the resource collection from current taxpayers to the next generation whose taxes will be used to service that debt.
[2] - In reality, it costs the state much much more than $10,000 to provide $10,000 worth of basic services
[3] - yadda yadda social contract social shmantract. The whole point is that the "social contract" does NOT have a nice and tidy wording that says "X, Y and Z are included" - see section #6 of my answer
[4] - and if you say "well most people want to help those less fortunate" - if they truly want to help them, that's what voluntary donation to charity is for. When you "help" someone by giving them Someone Else's Money, you didn't help anyone. The person who had their money taken helped; and they weren't asked if they wanted to, at least by you.
Someone lives in Utah (United States), about fifty miles from Salt Lake City in the middle of a desert. Water costs about a dollar a gallon, as it has to be brought there by truck. Who should pay? The individual choosing to live in the middle of the desert? The county? The state of Utah? The US? North America? The world?
Should a subsistence farmer in rural Mexico pay taxes to support someone living in the middle of a desert in Utah? Should a goatherd in the Sahara pay taxes to support a person in Utah?
There are condominiums in New York City that cost $4000 per square foot, so on the scale of $4 million for a two bedroom apartment. Should sales taxes paid by the homeless in India or Ghana subsidize that?
I think it would be cool to live on a space station with artificial gravity. The International Space Station, which does not have artificial gravity, costs something like $3 million a square foot. And I shudder to think how much water and food cost. That's not even considering air, which you don't mention.
Those are extreme examples. We can set those aside by setting some maximum levels and not subsidizing people with incomes above that.
A less extreme example is that a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan (New York City) costs more than $1000 while a three bedroom house in Dallas, Texas can cost less than $1000. Why should people in Texas have to pay for people to live in Manhattan?
We could of course fix that by relocating everyone to places where water, food, and housing are cheaper. While we're at it, we could choose people's educational paths. Make sure that they were on the right career path. And of course it would be illegal to be unemployed. Of course, when the Soviet Union tried that, it didn't work so well.
Another potential principle is that people should pay for our own decisions. That gives us incentive to make our decisions carefully while still making our own decisions.
Why should the state not provide for the basic necessities of its people? I am thinking of things like water, food, and housing as "basic necessities."
Housing is built by people.
Water is purified into drinkable form and transported and delivered by people.
Food is grown or cooked or otherwise made ready to eat by people, and is transported and delivered by people.
Look closely at this abstract term you call "the state" and you will see that it is only composed of people. Really it is just an idea. It's an agreed-upon idea held by people.
An idea cannot do something. Only people can do something.
"The State" cannot do anything. It cannot breathe, it cannot think, it cannot fight, it certainly cannot feed people or house them or water them. Only people can do these things. Individual people.
Individuals who work in agreement with some other individuals can accomplish something. But what accomplished something? The idea they agreed upon? No.
No group ever DID anything. It either assisted the activity and "doingness" of the individuals in the group, or it hindered their activity. The group itself never DOES do anything.
Accomplishment depends on the willingness and ability of individuals to DO. Nothing is ever accomplished in any other way.
Preserving that willingness is a vital principle of successful management.
Try to restate the question only in terms of individuals without using the words "government" or "state" or any similar word, and see what conclusions you reach.
If you define "the state" as an entity that does not consist of individuals, that does not depend on individuals, and that does not require personal responsibility, willingness or activity on the part of any individual anywhere, but which can nevertheless be assigned the responsibility for the wellbeing of individuals—then I'm afraid you're looking at a fictitious beast. And one far more implausible than unicorns, dragons or the tooth fairy.
I think some people prefer a state not to provide these things, but I don't understand why.
It's not that we prefer them, it's that states have a horrible track record doing this. What if the state gave you (mostly) clean water (it's kinda brown and you boil it "just in case"), a simple 4 wall shack in a tract of shacks, and a sack of rice a month. All of your basic needs have been met, but only at the poverty line. Is that really a success? There's two points you need to consider
Businesses fail and cease to exist. People fail and go bankrupt. But the State cannot fail. Indeed, States can maintain failure long after any private solution would have fallen by the wayside.
Take health care. If the State, for instance, takes half your income in taxes and provides "free" health care, most people would say that's good. But what if that system made you wait an average of 20 weeks for necessary care? I once heard someone (in a non-political setting) talk about a dark time in his marriage when his father-in-law had a heart attack. He was treated in Toronto and sent home to await heart surgery... 6 months later. Yet there's no alternatives because Canada has made them all State-based. It's no wonder increasing numbers of Canadians seek treatment in the US.
The problem is that the State has created a distortion in the market. Private pay means you get treatment much quicker, but Private pay also means some people might not get any care at all. Politicians take the latter and rail against it as "unfair". Yet, there's no disincentive for the government to create long wait times for care. Indeed, if the free taxpayer subsidized healthcare actually killed half the patients it treated, there would be an outcry that would simply spark an electoral revolt and the new party in town would pass some minor, and likely meaningless, reforms (I can see the headlines now: "Reforms reduce death rate from 50% to 48%!"). This is the ratchet effect
This can be applied to other topics like
Let me go back to the health care thing and explain why it's not all it's cracked up to be. In single payer, only the State can pay for your health care and that money comes from higher taxes. But single payer is a cost control mechanism and cost controls never work in the long run.
Let's say you need an MRI. Under private pay, we'll say an MRI costs $250. MRI companies turn a healthy profit and companies that do them are abundant. Single payer comes along and says that the State (now the only legal payer) will only pay $50 for one (a price ceiling). That's an enforced 80% reduction in the price. The politicians look good for stopping the "greedy" MRI companies, but what happens is that you can now only make a profit if you consolidate. 20% of the payment means 80% of the capacity will leave the market. Companies that did only MRIs will close. Hospitals will stop replacing MRI machines and technicians. And MRI wait times will explode because there's no longer capacity.
The problem is that you can't get around supply, demand and price. There's no an unlimited capacity in any market for any good or service. What you're advocating is removing the price factor. Price ceilings never end well
Rent control is a price ceiling on rent. When soldiers returned from World War II and started families (which increased demand for apartments), but stopped receiving military pay, many could not deal with the jumping rent. The government put in price controls, so soldiers and their families could pay the rent and keep their homes. However, this increased the quantity demanded for apartments and lowered the quantity supplied, meaning that available apartments were rapidly taken until none were left for late-comers. Price ceilings create shortages when producers are allowed to abdicate market share or go unsubsidized.
Let's dissect it a little bit.
A state is a an organized political community living under a single system of government. (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 9th ed., 1995)
As such, it is up to people living in such community - some, or most, to decide what the government and state is responsible for. It case of a despotism, it could be up to a single person. In democracy, it is a communal decision, whether direct, or not.
I think some people prefer a state not to provide these things, but I don't understand why.
Depending on who and how decides what state obligations are to its people, reasons not to provide basic necessities will vary. A despot might believe in survival of the fittest. In a plutocracy, wealthy might see poor and malnourished as not a threat to their rule, thus not a problem they should spend their current or potential wealth on. Even in direct democracy, majority of people might develop an ideology, where providing basic necessities unconditionally by taxing a broader community is counter-productive to the goals of the community as a whole. The number of reasons is probably indefinite. How many of them will stand up to a check against humanistic principles we seem to have agreed upon, be it in context of UN decisions or via cultural exchange, is another story.
One possible "humanistic" and "Keynesian" solution could be e.g. that any member of the community can receive a loan to cover basic necessities, with appropriate limitations against abuse and with a fair annual rate. Obviously, community will or should also incentivize paying out these loans and dis-incentivize bankruptcy. State, as an issuer of a currency, could underwrite such loans to some extend, making it less Keynesian, but more realistic. The reasoning behind it is the same as why you would provide a loan to a friend in need vs. a money gift. However, it is not a widely adopted system, and the reasons are quite interesting to explore, but go beyond this topic.
In other societies, instead of doing it purely monetarily, it can be a part of religious or spiritual duties. Whoever is considered a "decent person" has to help build or maintain a local temple that in part can be inhabited by people in need and has to cook or bring food to them from time to time. To various extents, this is what really happened in various societies historically, helping society to survive under the harshest despots and worst economic collapses.
Most states do so to some extent, as it is vastly cheaper to provide these things directly than to provide effective access control.
For water and power, the distribution network spans a wide area, and connecting to it is fairly easy if you know what you are doing, and also pretty much undetectable. It would be possible to add network monitoring stations, but these come with their own cost in initial installation and maintenance, plus they increase the probability of failures.
It is thus cheaper to just give access to everyone regardless of whether they are paying, and then use the judicial system to collect payment. If it is impossible to extract money from an individual at all, it is still cheaper to accept the loss rather than attempt to protect against the loss.
The same thing also applies to medical services. Emergency care cannot be contingent on whether the patient can show that they are able to pay, because in many cases they will be unconscious and not carry ID, so emergency care centers are effectively becoming a very expensive and at the same time ineffective form of primary care for those that cannot afford cheaper options.
This can be optimized further by defining a basic standard of living that will be provided by the state, usually including food, water, electricity, telecommunication and medical services. Most states require that recipients of subsidies actively look for work or explain why they don't, and many states also set the level of service fairly low in order to "create incentives" to seek better employment.
Actual implementations differ. Typically, states with good infrastructure and dense population centers will provide more services unconditionally, as the benefits are more pronounced and the marginal cost is lower. Also, people in population centers are generally more open to central organization, as living in close quarters requires a lot of central planning anyway to be workable.
Another important point is that, if done right, this also keeps wages up because no one would accept a job that pays less than a living wage, so the state will be able to collect significantly more income tax.
Libertarians might contend something like:
Do you need men with guns to see to it that no one starves? If you don't need to compel people there are options other than government for filling the role.
In fact while several government programs for food or other vital resources exist in my area there does not appear to be a government program that will certainly get you warm, clean and fed tonight (other than a cell). Several non-governmental organizations do attempt to achieve exactly that goal, and have enough resources that they almost certainly are having a meaningful effect. My area has a reasonable number of people without homes or jobs, but very little death by starvation or exposure.
Other local organizations aim to take care of longer term needs or protect statistically vulnerable demographics. All funded by voluntary contributions.
That last line is often an important point for libertarians.
Because it's the default choice.
As soon as you start discussing how to provide free water and food and housing, the issue very quickly becomes very complex. What kind of water? Can the state be sued if the quality of the water isn't right? How big should the houses be? Can we provide houses for the poor outside the city walls? What kind of food is justified for the poor? How do we discourage people from wasting resources if they are free? Should we pay poor people a TV? Should poor people be allowed to own a car?
In fact, in the developed world it seems to be the standard that free water, food, housing, and medical aid is indeed provided by most states. But to what standard and by which means differs considerably by state.
And even developing countries have countless checks and balances that decrease the number of people that would otherwise freeze and starve to a slightly more acceptable level.
According to theory of social darwinism, society is a population which undergoes natural selection. It is an application of 19th century biological ideas to the social and political world. Although usually considered an ugly theory by modern standards, it was an extremely influential and oft-argued perspective in its time.
One application of this theory is that by providing basic necessities, the government would be ensuring that mal-adapted people continue to survive, which is a detriment to society. Why weren't those people capable of thriving in a competetive environment? Perhaps they had physical, psychological, or social disabilities - why would you want to pass those on to future generations? Perhaps they didn't have the skills or education necessary for high-paying jobs. In that case, why would the government want them to have children who are likely to have the same problem?
If you want to read more, Herbert Spencer is one of the best known names in social darwinist theory.
Some cynical theories by a few skeptics of the status quo:
You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs. --George Carlin
Scarcity and poverty creates fear, which goads workers to pay taxes to support a state that perpetuates the cycle. Providing those necessities would remove that fear, and break the system.
Al Capp's Shmoo stories are premised on the notion that if those basic necessities were already provided for naturally, then such a fear-based system of governance would deliberately ruin those provisions to preserve the institution of scarcity itself:
In a sequence beginning in late August 1948, Li'l Abner discovers the shmoos when he ventures into the forbidden "Valley of the Shmoon" following the mysterious and musical sound they make (from which their name derives). Abner is thrown off a cliff and into the valley below by a primitive "large gal" (as he addresses her), whose job is to guard the valley. (This character is never seen again.) There, against the frantic protestations of a naked, heavily bearded old man who shepherds the shmoos, Abner befriends the strange and charming creatures. "Shmoos," the old man warns, "is the greatest menace to hoomanity th' world has evah known!" "Thass becuz they is so bad, huh?" asks Li'l Abner. "No, stupid", answers the man — and then encapsulates one of life's profound paradoxes: "It's because they's so good!!"
Having discovered their value ("Wif these around, nobody won't nevah havta work no more!!"), Abner leads the shmoos out of the valley — where they become a sensation in Dogpatch and, quickly, the rest of the world. Captains of industry such as J. Roaringham Fatback, the "Pork King", become alarmed as sales of nearly all products decline, and in a series of images reminiscent of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the "Shmoo Crisis" unfolds. On Fatback's orders, a corrupt exterminator orders out "Shmooicide Squads" to wipe out the shmoos with a variety of firearms, which is depicted in a macabre and comically graphic sequence, with a tearful Li'l Abner misguidedly saluting the supposed "authority" of the extermination squads.
After the shmoos have been eliminated, Dogpatch's extortionate grocer Soft-Hearted John is seen cackling as he displays his wares—rotting meat and produce: "Now them mizzuble starvin' rats has t'come crawlin t'me fo' the necessities o' life!! They complained 'bout mah prices befo'!! Wait'll they see th' new ones!!" The exterminator congratulates him.
"What are the major arguments for why the state should not provide for the basic necessities of its people? I am thinking of things like water, food, and housing as "basic necessities"."
I have a machine that makes a machine that provides clean water, basic nutrition, and shelter (bed, heat, a/c, and shade). Both machines require air (water is taken from the air), land, and sun to function.
There are two reasons not to give a machine to every human born.
First, there's over population. This is easily fixed. In addition to the basic necessities you'll need to teach people what happen's to a population that doesn't control it's birth rate.
Second, it would be difficult to convince people to do something unpleasant or demeaning. You wouldn't be able to hire someone to clean your toilet. This would be the end of the world for many people.
As you can see most of the problems come down to money (currency). If we did not use a currency based ecomonic model, then we could probably come up with a system where people just take as they choose.
If you removed money from your daily routine would it really change anything?
None of these things require money to happen, but we use it to implement limitations. How much money you have limits how much you can get. More money only means your limit is higher then someone with less money.
Money gets its value from scarcity. If everyone had a $500 bill, the $500 bill would have no value. But if everyone has a $1 bill, then a $500 bill is suddenly worth a lot. The bill didn't change, only its scarcity changed.
This is why socialism or "free stuff" as we call it in America doesn't pan out. Of course everyone wants free stuff, but the entire world is tied to a system of currency. So by giving stuff to everyone it devalues the worth and then it becomes hard to justify creating it. The countries that appear to be wealthy have exported their poverty to somewhere else. The poverty exists SOMEWHERE.
If you give everyone money in order to compensate for lack of money, then why have money at all? This is why you can't win the war on poverty or hunger.
Money gets value from scarcity, which means money creates poverty. Wealth is only a by product of money. The system itself relies on many more people being poor then rich. By pushing more money to a small group of people, money gets more value. "Middle class" is an equilibrium, which negates the purpose of money.
The concepts of "free stuff" and money are simply at odds with each other. You can't have both. You can have some bastardized middle ground where it kinda sorta works, and that is what the world has been doing for a long time. The constant ebb and flow of wealth and poverty keep the system moving along. But make no mistake, there will ALWAYS be proportionately more suffering under this system.
The modern, industrialized state has a moral obligation to pay for basic necessities.
Failing to provide the necessities to a segment of your population is a punishment for them not producing sufficient goods or services to deserve the level of compensation to survive.
In the United States, the notion of scarcity of resources is poppycock.
The problem with this form of punishment is that wages are not set by the value of work produced, it's set by the balance/imbalance of control of the employers. When the government tilts the balance of control away from labour, it depresses wages, and pushes people below living wages.
Other people who the government deems undesirable (drug users, petty thieves) are barred from working at jobs paying living wages by systems that charge them punitive fines that they can't pay back, and stigmatizing them with criminal records.
Update:
I don't think you can answer the question without addressing the other side of the question, and remove the basically eugenicist excuses.
How much would it cost to lift Americans now in poverty to the poverty line? Currently, there are about 45 million in poverty. I'll use wikipedia numbers, assuming an average of 2 persons per family unit in poverty, we would need to supplement those households to an income of $16,000. Considering that many are currently on on food stamps, working low paying jobs and other income assistance, I'll assume that on average they need 50% supplement, or $8,000 per year. $8,000 x 45 million = $360 billion per year. The US GDP is $18 trillion dollars. So that's 2% of GDP. The recipients of this assistance would spend every dollar, generating follow-on effects for the economy as a whole. As a comparison, we pay 15% of GDP per year on healthcare, for a system that everyone says is full of inefficiencies.
When you consciously don't take action to prevent the poverty of our fellow man in a country we claim to be the richest on the earth, that's the same as inflicting punishment.
