Does the Libertarian party in the United States support government aid for the mental

[aid632007]

Does the Libertarian party in the United States support government aid for the mentally handicapped or do they believe that private charities churches or families should aid them ?


http://www.lp.org/

[Kregisen]

Can't speak for the LP but my views are that it makes no difference if someone is mentally handicapped or not.

The point of being against welfare ISN'T because it's giving people money, it's because it's TAKING that away from somebody else....changing the recipient of stolen money doesn't make the money any less stolen.

[MelissaWV]

Does the Libertarian party in the United States support government aid for the mentally handicapped or do they believe that private charities churches or families should aid them ?


http://www.lp.org/

Government agencies do not do a very good job of personalizing care or allocating resources. Even if you have no problem with taxation and the forceful taking of someone else's money for a better cause, you must admit that the cause is suffering at the hands of its current stewards. Private charities are often far more careful of their money, because they don't know when their next shot of funding is coming. The Government knows it will get its tax revenue, and Government agencies are often encouraged to spend their money (whether wisely or not) in order to ensure their funding remains the same from year to year. If your goal is quality and personalization of care, and to get people into decision-making posts that will actually have the patients' interests at heart, then it's only logical that "government aid" is not the answer.

[WaltM]

Government agencies do not do a very good job of personalizing care or allocating resources. Even if you have no problem with taxation and the forceful taking of someone else's money for a better cause, you must admit that the cause is suffering at the hands of its current stewards. Private charities are often far more careful of their money, because they don't know when their next shot of funding is coming. The Government knows it will get its tax revenue, and Government agencies are often encouraged to spend their money (whether wisely or not) in order to ensure their funding remains the same from year to year. If your goal is quality and personalization of care, and to get people into decision-making posts that will actually have the patients' interests at heart, then it's only logical that "government aid" is not the answer.

so who does a good job? you?

[akforme]

so who does a good job? you?

The logical fail in that argument is the assumption that anyone automatically has greater morality than others. Just because somebody is from government has no bearing on they job they will do. In fact since our government doesn't allow choice they probably will force something that allows them to funnel money to some crony. It's easy to spend other peoples money, and you really don't care if you get all your bang for your buck as long as you get a cut and you give the perception of doing something.

To the poster, watch "The Century of the Self" on google vids. They will always use emotion to justify using force on others.

[Knightskye]

YouTube - Ron Paul Interview 1988 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anmlPvmd1Ew)

Fast-forward to 3:09 in the video.

[MelissaWV]

so who does a good job? you?

I do a good job at what I have experience and knowledge to do. If I had a family member who needed help of that sort, I'd research a variety of programs at my disposal and see which one sounds best. Some programs are going to be geared towards "salvaging" someone's mental state, and some are going to be geared towards pills. Some are going to be focused on natural remedies, and some are going to be focused on making those who aren't likely to ever get better as comfortable and safe as possible.

If the person in question didn't have family, then they would be likely to end up in a shelter or, possibly, die. That isn't much of a change from what happens now. There would be, however, a market for assisting these people at low/no cost. I would think that some universities would treat folks for low/no cost as long as they could document the results. These would not be "new treatments" that use the mentally ill as guinea pigs, but instead it would be to help students gain experience with diseases while they are in school. This already happens with other disciplines, but I am not sure to what extent it goes on with the mentally ill. There would be charities which assist with this kind of treatment as well.

If the person did harm to another, their treatment/punishment would likely be determined by local laws. I doubt that most places would toss them in jail and throw away the key, because doing such is dangerous to inmates, counterproductive (the person is not likely to better their behavior or provide any solace/compensation to victims), and ridiculously expensive.

To put it another way, when I say "state-run mental facility," is it a pleasant image that comes to mind?

[fisharmor]

There would be charities which assist with this kind of treatment as well.

I don't think anyone ever spends enough time thinking about how little churches do for their communities these days, and how much they would do, if there was a perception that there actually was work to do.

There are an awful lot of people in this country with a divine mandate to help the less fortunate - who are also taking it in the ass in order to pay for state mental hospitals (in between our mass killings of brown people and the other more important functions of legitimate government, that is), so any leftover crumbs they give as charity inevitably end up going where crumbs are most appreciated - overseas.

Also, the state is making its sole ambition to kick religious charities out of the country altogether. Catholic Charities closed up shop completely in Massachusetts in 2006, rather than comply with a mandate to allow gays to adopt. And there's a similar threat on the table for religious hospitals - the day they are forced to perform abortions, those hospitals will close their doors forever.

It's also no coincidence that churches have gone all soft in the head and embraced liberal theologies that deny individualism and respect for human life - the state has forced them out of their original business of trying to afford the less fortunate as much dignity as they could, and so in order to justify their existence they've transformed themselves into the higher-power-themed social clubs we have today, where yesterday we had some vibrant Christ-centered charities.

I have no doubt in my mind that if all funding for mental hospitals evaporated tomorrow, there'd be a period of chaos, but it'd get handled within a year and within two years would be better than it is now. Of course, it would require that we get that funding money in our pockets, so we could give it to charity voluntarily.

[KurtBoyer25L]

I wouldn't mind a system that frees up private efforts to help those in need, while maintaining some type of government backup for situations where people are suffering and the private interest simply isn't there. But it typically would be. And the amounts of money involved in a sincere, efficient effort to help would be so minuscule compared to what the government spends on war and welfare. Just think if the entire DEA budget was spent on building nonprofit hospitals in each major city. When we talk about billions upon billions spent on one embassy in London, I think people don't relate those sums of money to real issues at home. 200 billion dollars could effectively eliminate hunger in the United States, if loaned to sincere & talented individuals to build self-sustaining private help organizations in every state. I'm not saying this should happen, it's just food for thought.

It's hard for me to comment directly on the mental illness issue, especially since I read Szatz, haha. I think there are truly helpless, mentally ill or malformed people. But there are also hordes of mental casualties of our sanctioned drug vendors and psychiatric tyrants.