Michael Knowles

What you are actually doing is robbing human beings.

There's a person on the other side of the check.

And this is the problem with these gigantic social welfare systems.

I mean, we have programs for that.

If you are a Republican and you're only going to make the case that they need to be more efficient, these social welfare systems, these social welfare systems, if we just could get them more efficient, then they would be good.

But the idea that you have to pay me in order to go spend an hour with mom and read to her, that's just bad family stuff to me.

This is the biggest problem, I think, on –

Then you're arguing at the margins.

The reality is that many of these social welfare systems have actively deprived people of virtue.

Maybe the integralist, right?

This idea that the government has a role in everything that virtue should actually just fill.

And this is why when people say, you know, capitalism is emptying America of her virtue.

I mean, just to take a quick example, you know, Social Security, I understand why it exists.

It's like, well, no, you can be virtuous and also think that the federal government ought not spend my money paying you to go visit your mom.

No one's arguing for it to go away on a practical level.

But one thing that Social Security has done is it has crowded out investment for the future for people because they believe they're getting a check from the federal government.

And in fact, one of the things that you learn when you raise kids is that when you incentivize kids to do the things that they should do, they end up doing it less often actually.

And it has also crowded out people taking care of their parents and planning for the future in terms of their financial, making sure that their parents are taken care of.

Like if you have an expectation that your kids do chores, for example, without compensating them, they will do chores and they will be better about it than if you actually pay them to do their chores.

And so what used to be a sort of familial aspect has turned into a governmental aspect.