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Comment by crowdpleaser | Hacker News Reader

No.

My humanity is more important to me than others. I have to take care of myself because I know others would resent me if they had to take care of me. I'm sure you wouldn't be thrilled to provide for me if I came to your house with my hat in hand.

And you feel the same way - we're just arguing over where to draw the line. If you save any money that could be donated to those in need, you've also put money above humanity. Have you ever bought a Mcflurry? Did you really need that sweet treat more badly than someone needed a malaria net?

So where's the line of sociopathy? What's the permissible amount of money to put above humanity?

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If you come to my house I'll happily call an ambulance for you. We have enough collective resources to treat the life-threatening illness of everyone within our borders, legally or not. We can worry about fixing immigration separately. Even when someone isn't a citizen, you should do your best to help people in reach not be sick. And this doesn't mean you have to give them an income for free.

And as a society-level thing it makes sense to fund with the general tax fund. Charging the countries of origin does sound like it should be attempted though!

Trying to fix every problem in the world is more fraught. We probably should be trying harder, but there are severe issues where throwing resources at a poor country invites corruption and can be worse than doing nothing at all.

>If you come to my house I'll happily call an ambulance for you.

And I'd do the same. My objection is that my tax obligation is roughly the GDP per capita - that's well above and beyond calling an ambulance. What are the limits of what you'd do for me? Could I come into your kitchen and eat until I'm full? Could I play your video games if I were bored? Could I ask for a sexual favor?

>We have enough collective resources to treat the life-threatening illness of everyone within our borders

Why stop at the borders? Is the inside the border / outside the border distinction more ethical than the illegal vs non-illegal distinction?

> What are the limits of what you'd do for me?

You don't get to come in my house unless it's an emergency. I'll help pay for things you need, but if you keep coming for food and shelter and you're not a citizen then we can get on deportation proceedings. (I don't want to tie deportation to medical attention because it can lead to people getting sicker, likely costing more, and definitely dying more. But for other things we can.) If you want niceties then here is the library and you can use the resources inside to search for a job.

Food for the starving would be a negligible part of taxes.

> Why stop at the borders? Is the inside the border / outside the border distinction more ethical than the illegal vs non-illegal distinction?

I think I addressed that fine in the last paragraph of my previous post.

But also this is what we have control of, and we should make the best of it!

If we could pay some single-digit percentage of GDP and provide basic health care to the entire world, I'd suggest that we have a pretty strong moral imperative to do so. But I don't believe that's the world we're in.

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