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The Samaritan State and Social Welfare Provision

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Abstract

Christopher Wellman and some allied scholars argue that a ‘samaritan theory’ can justify state coercion. They also suppose that states may provide robust, social egalitarian welfare provisions for a variety of reasons that would arise within samaritan states. However, the most promising reasons—samaritanism itself, natural socialism, relational equality, and anti-crime paternalism—cannot support robust provision without discarding the strong presumption favoring individual liberty (including both personal rights and private property rights) which must motivate the samaritan theory. Consequently, a samaritan state cannot be a robust social welfare state.

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Notes

  1. While the most systematic recent analyses of political authority focus on the state’s ability to impose legal obligations, rather than its right to coercively enforce those obligations, the two questions are closely related. For example, see Simmons (1979, 2001).

  2. The samaritan argument is contested, of course. Simmons provides a detailed rejoinder (2005, pp. 179–188), although his criticisms are more telling against citizen’s obligations than they are against state coercion.

  3. In addition to serving as the representative contemporary argument for statism in Cambridge’s for/against series, samaritanism is now covered by introductory surveys such as Knowles (2009).

  4. While Renzo denies that samaritanism supports compatriotic preferences, he thinks it would support cosmopolitan welfare provision, although possibly to a lesser extent than Wellman and Delmas imply.

  5. I focus on Delmas’s general assertions because her analyses of disaster relief, personal security, civil rights enforcement, and other particular policy issues in the United States rest on misconceptions about American institutions. For example, her defense of the U.S. Postal Service conflates Federal Express’s high-price special delivery with routine mailbox delivery. Yet federal law bans private carriers from the latter service precisely because the U.S. cannot compete with cheap, private rates (Olds 1995). Concerning the possibility that social welfare provision is needed to secure political efficacy, rather than flourishing or security from domestic abuse, see the discussion of Elizabeth Anderson’s argument below.

  6. Thanks are due to the journal’s anonymous reviewers for pointing this out.

  7. Delmas asserts in a different context (civil disobedience) that samaritanism can demand extremely costly sacrifices, including risking death, and only draws the line at imposing a ‘high risk’ of destroying one’s ‘prospects for a flourishing life’ (Delmas 2014a, pp. 298, 306). This far exceeds the easy saves that underpin samaritanism’s intuitive appeal. Moreover, even if we should voluntarily perform harder saves, permitting the state to impose them would obliterate the presumption favoring liberty and authorize substantial intrusions (such as lottery-based organ expropriation) that better comport with natural socialism (see the discussion of Fitzhugh below).

  8. Note that the OECD’s aggregated social expenditure data do not include education and health spending. Concerning education spending by governments at all levels, see pp. 175–177. Concerning health spending, see pp. 218–219. For other social expenditures, see pp. 190–193.

  9. Thanks are due to the journal’s anonymous reviewers for suggesting this point concerning baselines.

  10. Dangerous circumstances within civil society are addressed below, in the context of the ‘anti-crime argument’.

  11. Because there is substantial variation—with higher-taxed people such as Swedes generally giving less than lower-taxed people such as Americans—I calculate a population-weighted average for OECD residents. Charities Aid Foundation (2015) reports the base data.

  12. Payne (2009) reviews the recent literature on crowd-out effects. Vamstad and Essen (2012) use Sweden as a case study to support their theory that the citizens of universal welfare states ‘give considerably more money to causes not addressed by the state’ (p. 285).

  13. I bypass more canonical works—such as Marx and Engels (1998)—because these deliberately rest on efficiency and economic determinism, rather than an explicit moral theory.

  14. I omit discussion of Anderson’s arguments concerning epistemic democracy and the egalitarian distribution of socially produced goods. These are either less directly relevant here or rest on the kinds of ‘natural socialist’ premises that were discussed earlier.

  15. One might add that the purportedly inherent value of political participation does not suggest that it must be distributed equally. Aristotle, who regards political office as an inherently worthwhile opportunity to display and exercise virtue, naturally concludes that political power should be granted in proportion to political virtue. (Aristotle 1984, pp. 1281a3–1281a32).

  16. One of the reviewers points out that greater political equality might be secured through policies that do not redistribute wealth, such as mandating voting or encouraging membership in more directly participatory democratic institutions. On the other hand, some scholars argue that differences in social power, which track closely with wealth, tend to blunt or even defeat the egalitarian influence of formally equal participatory offices. (See Guerrero 2014; and by way of contrast, Gaventa 1982, pp. 53–55, 138–150; Schlozman et al. 2012, pp. 567–568.) Since it is at least debatable whether formal offices can close the gap between the Pericleses and the hoi polloi, Anderson’s claims seem sufficiently plausible to merit critical attention here.

  17. Note that these data include spending at all levels of government (not merely national government) and underestimate coercive social welfare expenditure (because they exclude government-mandated private spending by employers).

  18. These OECD states have per capita annual GDP’s exceeding $20,000, substantially redistribute wealth, and earn the highest ranks from Freedom House for freedom of expression, freedom of association, effective and equitable rule of law, effective property rights, and functioning democratic accountability. See OECD (2016c, p. 48) and Freedom House (2016). Note that my argument does not presuppose the justice of current property holdings in these states. Even if one supposes that current holdings must be amended to undo the consequences of unjust acquisitions or exchanges from the past, such rectification would intimate the redistribution of particular holdings, rather than tax policies that punish people without regard for the historical origins of their income or wealth.

  19. Although Gregg argues that such provisions would eliminate the need for coercive government, coercive taxation is presumably needed to fund them.

  20. Roughly speaking, luck egalitarians support state interventions that are designed to ensure that people’s opportunities are not determined by unchosen misfortune, while left-libertarians hold that individuals are naturally entitled to their bodies but not to the products of natural resources. See Arneson (2011) and Vallentyne (2009).

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Wulf, S.J. The Samaritan State and Social Welfare Provision. Res Publica 24, 217–236 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-016-9350-1

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