low-end jobs
Nov. 9th, 2004 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioMore recently, I've interacted with automation that is designed to specifically replace humans rather than broadening service. The automated check-out at grocery stores is the big example here. Instead of one cashier per line, stores now need one employee per 4 or so lines. This isn't making things more convenient for customers; unlike ATMs, the scanners are only available when the store is open anyway.
There are practical reasons I tend to avoid the automated checkouts, mostly related to speed. The line for the human has to be about three times as long as the line for the machine before the machine looks like a time-saver. People may get more proficient at scanning and packing over time, of course.
But I find that even absent that consideration, I'm reluctant to use the machine. Doing so helps to eliminate a low-end job that might be the only job the job-holder is capable of doing. Most of the cashiers I see at the grocery store aren't college-age kids looking for spending money; they're middle-aged and sometimes visibly handicapped.
This is not wholly a compassion-based argument; it's also one of expedience. I think we as a society are better off if almost everyone has a productive job. And some people are only capable of the lower-end jobs that are most in danger of being automated away. (Aside: for this reason, requirements for high minimum wages are also a bad idea -- don't make it cost-ineffective to hire people at prices they're willing to work for!)
We cannot avoid automation, of course, and in many cases it's a good thing. I'm no Luddite (she says, typing on her computer :-) ). But I kind of wish that we could focus it a little differently sometimes.
And yes, sometimes the humans are annoying to deal with. Last night I lost close to ten minutes to an inept cashier, and there is one (mentally challenged) bagger who I will never again allow to touch my groceries because he seems utterly bewildered by ideas like "the bread goes on top" (multiple failures). People who aren't capable of doing the job shouldn't hold the job anyway just out of pity. (Giant Eagle was right to fire the guy who was partially eating food and then putting the package back on the shelf, and I don't care that he didn't understand that this was wrong.) But y'know, the machines aren't painless either -- just try to get a scanning error fixed. And for the most part, the people holding these jobs are quite capable and willing to work, and I find I'm rooting for the people over the machines.
Re: Humans
Date: 2004-11-09 08:56 pm (UTC)Canada does not permit the "haves" to buy additional care. This means they come across the border to get care because they don't want to accept the standard level (or standard waiting-list time). I know that this happens at least somewhat because I know people who do it. Note, by the way, that if the US goes this route then we won't have the option of easily crossing the border for care; flights to Europe are a lot more expensive than drives to New York.
So if you have a minimum level and the ability to buy more then you're on firmer ground, except that then you might see the quality of that minimum drop because the policy-makers are "haves" who do not themselves use the system. (Sort of the way Congresscritters are exempt from the Social-Security Ponzi scheme.)
So on the one hand, you're tempted to force everyone into the same level of care as a prod for making it a reasonable level, but on the other hand, it's not fair to penalize people who have the resources to do better. Isn't this the fundamental problem of communism?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-09 08:56 pm (UTC)I don't like the "self-checkouts" anyway... if you buy alcohol or tobacco products, or if you're writing a check, you need to deal with a human anyway... and I almost always buy alcohol and tobacco products, and usually want to write a check for them.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-09 09:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-09 09:11 pm (UTC)The problem is that people need to eat, have clothing and shelter, and meet other basic needs... everywhere.
Let's suppose we set a minimum wage of $5/hour. What happens to the person who was making $4/hour?
- They get paid more for the same amount of work -- this is inflation, and means that pretty soon $5 is worth what $4 used to be worth...
- or, 20% of them are laid off, and can't find jobs, and need payments from the government of at least $5/hour equivalent...
- or, they are asked to do more work in the same time, which may not be possible -- a McDonald's burger-flipper needs to be there all the time, regardless of whether there are customers or not.
What's a good solution? Well, it may be that the government (i.e. us, the taxpayers) need to subsidise these jobs by some degree. People showing that they make $4/hour might get an electronic account that can be used for rent or food purchases at a rate of $1/hour worked. Or we can subsidize them in some other way. That continues the basic problem, but stabilizes it for a while. The long term solution is, oddly enough, to automate all the $4/hour jobs out of existence, while providing education to the displaced workers that allows them to land more remunerative jobs.
The crying shame is that we spend billions on war instead of on sensible assistance for our own people.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-09 09:25 pm (UTC)"Real Programmers insist on scanning their own items at the grocery store checkout, because you just can't trust keypunch operators to get it right the first time."
I admit that I like the self-scan express lanes at those few stores near me that have them. I know how to use them, so it can be a major time-saver for me. But if there are lines all round, I'll go stand in line for a real cashier.
And I *would* be willing to pay higher prices for places that hired enough people to keep the lines moving smoothly. The supermarket industry is one of the most cutthroat in the country, though. Sigh.
self checkout AND real people
Date: 2004-11-09 09:35 pm (UTC)I'm not sure that the self checkouts have cut down on actual humans in my store- where there would normally be two staffed checkout lanes with two cashiers (there are rarely baggers, except for peak times on the weekend), there are now 4 express self checkouts staffed by one person, thus, in my opinion, actually freeing up another cashier to be at a regular lane.
I don't think that automation in this respect is a bad thing. I think it keeps tempers down and allows people to move through stores much quicker. I find that I'll use a store more often if I know they've got a self checkout.
That's just me, though. I realize I'm from a generation where things have always been more automated than previously- I personally have never had to deal without ATMs and the like.
(continuing to resist the urge not to argue)
Date: 2004-11-09 09:35 pm (UTC)The book Myth and Measurement argues for this theory with some empirical evidence: looking at what happened to employment statistics when one state raised its minimum wage and a neighboring state did not. Of course, not everybody is convinced.
I report, you decide.
Re: Humans
Date: 2004-11-09 11:11 pm (UTC)Yeah. Let me be real, real clear on this. I really am proposing that maybe you and I -- clearly both "haves" -- should, for moral reasons, accept less good health care for ourselves, for the sake of other people having better health care. I hate, hate, hate this. It scares the bejesus out of me. This is life-and-death stuff, and the consequences of this sort of decision could be personally catastrophic and tragic to me and the people I care about.
But there are also people I care about who can't afford the medication they need to maintain a chronic illness so it doesn't spiral out of control. There are people I care about who only ever see a doctor when the problem has gotten to be such a crisis that the emergency room is the only option. This is not news, I'm sure.
This all scares me intensely.
But I also have to live with myself.
So please -- I would LOVE to be wrong on this one. Check my logic:
1) Given: The nationalization of medicine in Canada is why it is worse than the medicine in the US, which is private.
2) Id est: The private medicine of the US is better than the nationalized medicine in Canada, because it is private.
3) Private medicine -- medical care sold on the open market as a commodity -- is subject to the law of supply and demand in pricing.
4) The law of supply and demand in pricing stipulates that the price of a commodity will stabilize at that point on F(supply, demand) which maximizes F.
5) The law of supply and demand stipulates that as the price rises demand falls off. This is for the economic definition of "demand" which does not mean "wants", but means "has cash on the barrel head to pay for".
6) For any prize above zero, there are, definitionally, buyers for whom that price exceeds their demand. The further above zero it is, the more buyers that is.
7) Since F(supply, demand) never stabilizes with a price of zero (since it maximizes price X purchases), there will always be buyers for whom the price exceeds their demand, again, where "demand" include "capacity to pay".
8) Therefore medicine which requires being sold as a commodity (as our 1 and 2 above) to attain superior quality, as a concomitant requires for that quality that some known number of buyers be unable to acquire it.
Did I screw up anywhere? I'll be the first the say that economics is not one of my pursuits. (I'll tell you where and when economics and I parted company in a different thread.)
As far as I can see (and I welcome correction) the quality healthcare I enjoy can only exist if some people can't have any healthcare at all. That is, it seems, the logical outcome of arguing that our superior medicine is a result of it being a commodity.
(If, however, we can argue that our superior healthcare is due to something else, we can have our cake and eat it, too. A nice thought, but I'm dubious. Willing to entertain arguments though, if anybody has 'em.)
continued
Date: 2004-11-09 11:11 pm (UTC)So, if my logic is right, then the situation isn't:
to force everyone into the same level of care as a prod for making it a reasonable level
It's a matter theft.
it's not fair to penalize people who have the resources to do better
It dawns on me there's this interesting edge case I don't know the Libertarian position on. So, how do Libertarians feel about laws prohibiting the sale of stolen goods?
In any event, if I am managing to undersell my local Walmart by means of hijacking its widget delivery trucks, seizing its inventory of widgets and then selling them for less than Walmart does -- cause, hey, I didn't pay for those widgets, so they're pure profit to me -- I don't think that makes you entitled to buy widgets at my price instead of Walmart's price. If the police busted me, and you were to complain to them that they were interfering with your "personal liberty" to buy things by taking away your supplier, everyone would look at you like you were crazy, right? Would they be wrong to do so?
The fact that someone has the "resources to do better" does not mean that they're entitled to be provided with a market of stolen goods (or otherwise criminal goods, e.g. assassinations are also illegal to buy) in which to spend those resources.
I do not see it as either unfair not to let people buy things they could only have by depriving others of them, nor as a "penalty" and certainly not as a violation of "personal liberty".
Isn't this the fundamental problem of communism?
That depends on whose "problem" you're talking about. If you're talking about "why people who don't like communism don't like it", I think you're right, but that's quite a different thing from the implementary issues which people who like communism see as its problem. I've spoken with at least one communist Russian who approved and believed in that system (whose answer, BTW, to "So then why did you leave?" was "Anti-semitism") who felt that the "failure to reward" thing was a complete non-issue in reality. I'm modestly inclined to agree, due to my understanding of psychology.
Personally, I think the fundamental problem with Communism is the same as the fundamental problem with Libertarianism: pie-in-the-sky ideal systems which intersect with human reality really poorly. They assume spherical chickens.
Re: Humans
Date: 2004-11-09 11:54 pm (UTC)Helped run the Mom, Son, & Daughter deal. We paid everyone what we could afford,(no executive bonuses) or what they were worth and hoped they'd leave if they weren't worth minimum. Our health care plan involved fish medicine and shiatsu. One does what one can. None of us were rich. My job was to make myself unnecessary.8-)
Re: part 1
Date: 2004-11-10 12:07 am (UTC)Me rationalist. You rationalist. Rest of world.... not so rationalist.
Yeah, really insanely, mind-bogglingly stupid and self-destructive.
I decided the field of economics had little utility to me, when I was about 20 and several local stores responded to dwindling patronage (lower demand) by raising prices. To make up for lower sales, you know.
*beat* *head* *on* *desk* *beat* *head* *on* *desk* *beat* *head* *on* *desk*
At which point I threw up my hands and acknowledged that the the laws of supply and demand only worked to describe markets on a macro level of earthlings, or on a micro level that was populated by people from some more intelligent planet.
(Yes, the shops went out of business.)
Have you ever actually tried to have the "if you have fewer customers maybe you should drop your prices" conversation with a vendor? I've had people look at me like I was absolutely out of my mind for suggesting that.
Heck, I expect there's SCA branches out there which responded to dwindling event attendence with trying to share around the cost of the same hall among fewer people. "Oh, no, we have fewer people, so now our event prices have to go up."
I could go on, and on, and on (and probably have :) with the unbelieveably counterproductive, cockamamie, "do you just not grasp capitalism?!", "how have you managed to stay in business?!" things I've witnessed in the business world.
Did the buffet owner who wasn't willing to pay more than $X/hour for waitstaff consider hiring more waitstaff (rather than paying the existing ones more)? Or was there also some meme about the "correct" number to have, in addition to the "correct" price?
Three answers to your question:
1) Not memetically, but there are other issues which force the number of heads, e.g. no matter how economical you think it would be to have 40 people all work one hour a week, you are unlikely to find workers willing to play along. The costs of overhead can mean it's cheaper to have fewer workers and pay them more -- or it can mean it's cheaper to have many workers and pay them less. Depends on circumstance, cost per employee, and market conditions.
2) Here, I don't think that would have solved the basic problem. If you need three waiters to work three hours each, but are unwilling to pay enough so that there are three people would take the jobs, being willing to hire four people at less money than anyone will accept doesn't solve the problem. It's not like we're talking about overtime here.
[cont]
continued
Date: 2004-11-10 12:07 am (UTC)3) I didn't get to discuss it further with the people involved (I confess, I was too stunned and lost the initiative -- there are a lot of details I wish I'd been more on the ball to seek out), but I will observe that there was (and is) the surrounding economic condition: This city has massively sky-rocketting rents. Things were bad all over, but much worse in the region where this restaurant was. (I don't know how to estimate tip-worker's income, so I use non-tip guidelines. Right now the Federal minimum wage for non-tip workers is $5.15/hr. That's $206/wk before taxes. I pay below market for my one-room apartment: $825/mo. Do the math.) People in waitering jobs in that region were being priced out of their apartments. They had a decision:
(1) Move to where they could afford the rent and commute in.
(2) Move to where they could afford the rent and get a new waitering job there.
(3) Don't move, and try to get more wages to afford to remain in neighborhood.
Overwhelmingly, it seems #2 won. Apparently when people in low-paying service positions moved out because they couldn't afford to live here any more, they didn't stick around, commuting to their old jobs; they got new low-paying service positions out where they live. The people taking their old apartments were "young professionals" -- white-color workers who certainly don't wait on tables.
A lot of restaurants folded. A lot of restaurants are trying to get by on a few vastly over-worked waiters.
And a lot of restaurants raised their prices, and are doing fine.
Survival of the fittest, I'm sure, but that's cold comfort to the food vendors who lost market, commercial landlords who lost restaurant tenants, cooks who lost jobs, etc. A business' success is good for many more people than the business itself.
Overall, though, in the last couple decades I'm not sure they've been a net gain for workers.
Very true. I think of unions as "supply-side corporations" -- they are corporate vendors on the labor market. What we call corporations are "demand-side corporations" because they're the ones with demand for labor, they're labor-buyers. (Really, an incorporated company is a union of employers, engaged in collective bargaining over the price of all the jobs at a facility.)
As such, unions are just as heir to the sorts of counterproductive stupidity I've discussed above, as their demand-side brethren are. They are just as likely to become corrupt, or taking over by stupid people.
This is sort of the fundamental problem of corporatism.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-10 12:23 am (UTC)He also doesn't mind when I bring in gobs of recyclable bags once a month. I'm unsure about tipping when he does this, and I don't always have the cash. I have to rethink our non-relationship.
I once asked an ex-employee whether I'd ever made her feel like a barnyard animal. Produce or hit the knackers. Since that's what I got at LizArd. And the really dumb pet store She said no. So I was a good boss. She's also my adopted little sister and one semester shy of a Ph.D. in genetics. I'm so proud of her. Not that she didn't do it on her own.
We walk the earth caringly, but not always knowingly.
Re: part 2
Date: 2004-11-10 12:37 am (UTC)You know, that's exactly what the other Libertarian I mentioned above said. You could have knocked me over with a feather. A socialist libertarian! His rationale (which I approve of) is that a truly free market in labor is so desireable it is worth it to adopt a public policy of guaranteeing subsistence to all human beings, so that they can engage in the labor market without the threat of starvation, exposure, or lack of medical care making them exploitable.
I could get behind that.
more dollars are available for private aid. Sure, some people, given a tax cut, will say "woot! 60-inch HDTV here I come!", but others will channel more into charitable efforts because they have more. I don't know how much and it sounds like wishful thinking, but I also know a non-trivial number of people who tithe, so who knows?
Well, I'm a Reform Objectivist on alternate Tuesdays, and as such think of private aid as a consumer commodity: the consumer pays money to get a warm fuzzy feeling. Sort of like cable TV. Donating is essentially a selfish act of ego-gratification and, if one is so theologically inclined, self-soul-saving.
So I don't really see private charitable giving as really intersecting with the problem of social justice and welfare. People give where it feels good to them to give, not where it is most needed nor where it is most useful to society. As environmentalist activists are happy to point out at length, the money will pour in to protect an endangered mammal with cute offspring, but an ugly bug which happens to eat other ugly bugs which predate on human crops, and keep those crop-eaters in check? It can go pan-handling in Harvard Sq.
In a society with as much bigotry and prejudice as we have, relying on people's good will tends to mean that the haves donate money to haves-with-problems, not to have-nots. White people are more likely to donate money to causes which benefit poor whites, not to poor blacks. Christians donate to christians. It's how it is. I'm not even sure that that's wrong, on some level. I think people should be able to support their own, if they want.
But if we want that freedom, then, but are also trying to make our society just in the rudimentary ways, and not have people starving in the streets (which, I, wholly selfishly, would like) we need to have a social system which doesn't rely on personal predilection for where the money goes, that systematically attempts to address big-picture problems.
Re: Humans
Date: 2004-11-10 12:43 am (UTC)1. I don't have to worry which doctor I go see.
2. I can choose my doctor without being penalized financially for using the PPO option
3. When I am sick, I go to the doctor without worrying about the headache of paying and being reimbursed. Since I am back in Canada, I am much more able to get the care I need instead of coming up to limits and unapproved treatment options. All the doctors know the system out here!
4. Cobra - yeah I had to pay 300$/month for about a year. Enough said
5. So you hear about Canadian waiting times and surgery. Well yes non-urgent stuff takes months but if you need to be seen ahead of the queue you are critical. My aunt had cancer related surgery - she waited days. My grandmother had excellent care before she died. It's not as bleak as the media puts it.
6. There was a cancer study a couple of years ago comparing Detroit and Windsor, ON. Upper and middle class had the same death rates. Lower class fared much worse in the US.
7. I walk out of the doctor without paying anything at all.*
*Ok in some provinces there is a monthly fee that is usually paid by your employer. There are subsidies readily available. When I moved back to Canada, I had to pay 50$ CDN/month for full coverage until my spouse's insurance started to cover me.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-10 12:48 am (UTC)Amen!
The long term solution is, oddly enough, to automate all the $4/hour jobs out of existence, while providing education to the displaced workers that allows them to land more remunerative jobs.
Maybe. A society with no jobs for which little-to-no education is necessary? Wouldn't that make education-vendors have a monopoly of sorts? Looked at through another lens, that's a society in which you need a permit to work -- a thought which makes my skin crawl.
Re: Humans
Date: 2004-11-10 04:06 am (UTC)But all this does is to redefine the "haves". Do you really think that, say, the family of a doctor is going to get the same quality care in this system that everyone else does? There will always be "haves" -- if not "have cash to pay for it", then "have connection to a provider who'll see me privately".
6) For any prize above zero, there are, definitionally, buyers for whom that price exceeds their demand. The further above zero it is, the more buyers that is.
This is true of health care, or food, or housing. The logical extension of your argument would be that no one should be able to buy any of those (above the median quality) because doing so means someone else would go without. If this argument is correct, then it's about much more than health care.
But what actually seems to happen today is that there is a government-subsidized minimum, in the form of welfare, and most people pay their own way. Why does it work for housing but not for health care?
theft
Date: 2004-11-10 04:14 am (UTC)The same way you do. The libertarian philosophy is fundamentally about the individual's right to be left alone. Theft is a crime against the individual, and its consequences are invalid. (That is, third-party buyers don't get to say "not my problem"; they get to seek damages from the thief who sold them the stolen goods.)
I hadn't considered the health-care situation as theft. If one agrees that buying better health care takes any care at all from the poor, then that's something that has to be dealt with. I'm not sure about that premise, though (see my reply above).
Personally, I think the fundamental problem with Communism is the same as the fundamental problem with Libertarianism: pie-in-the-sky ideal systems which intersect with human reality really poorly. They assume spherical chickens.
Well, that's true of any system, including Capitalism. There has never been a perfect implementation of any of them.
As for communism, the specific point I was wondering about was the slacker factor -- why should I do more than I need to when it makes no difference to my level of comfort? Is the Russian you spoke with saying that that's not how it plays out? I understand that it doesn't play out that way on kibbutzim (at least sometimes), but those are smaller self-selected communities where everyone knows everyone else. It's much easier to slack off on the guy a few blocks over who you don't like much anyway and who'll never notice you doing it.
Re: Humans
Date: 2004-11-10 04:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-10 04:22 am (UTC)Re: continued
Date: 2004-11-10 04:31 am (UTC)Apparently when people in low-paying service positions moved out because they couldn't afford to live here any more, they didn't stick around, commuting to their old jobs; they got new low-paying service positions out where they live.
That's what I would have expected. Employers treat the people in those jobs as interchangable, but the people in those jobs also (largely) treat employers as interchangable. Why commute in to the old job if you can get the same type of job more conveniently?
Re: part 2
Date: 2004-11-10 04:45 am (UTC)Who is this other person, out of curiosity?
A socialist libertarian!
An expedient libertarian. The ideal solution doesn't involve the government-provided baseline, but we do not live in an ideal world.
So I don't really see private charitable giving as really intersecting with the problem of social justice and welfare.
For most people it doesn't, which is why I wondered about the degree to which this would actually work. But for some, this is a religious obligation; the word tzedakah, usually translated as charity, actually means justice. We support the poor not because we pity them but because they are human beings who deserve it, and there but for the grace of God go I. I accept a personal obligation to aid those less fortunate, but I don't think it's generally the place of government to mandate it.
But yes, there will be the problem of distribution. It takes time to introduce better memes for directing support dollars. Most people give to the charities that personally speak to them because a lot of the basics are already covered by government handouts. If there were no welfare, I'll bet a lot more dollars would go to aiding the poor than to preserving cute mammals, because those poor would be in your community, in your face. Maybe this too is wishful thinking; we'll never find out, most likely.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-10 04:47 am (UTC)Me too. My requirements of a grocery store are, in order:
- be open at the times I want to shop
- have almost all of the stuff I want under one roof
- have human staff
- be cheap
Re: part 2
Date: 2004-11-10 07:43 am (UTC)Ooh, I knew you'd ask a difficult question like that. It was in a conversation on a very high-volume mailing list which I read in digest form (so the "from" lines don't reflect authors), some time in the last 2 years, plus or minus 1.5, by one of several resident Libertarians. Or maybe it was in a private off-list discussion. I've been grepping my archives, but haven't found it so far and am having trouble thinking of clever strings to grep on.
I may give up grepping at some point, and just post asking if someone wanted to own that position. How interested are you to know?
Also, do you get enough email? If not, I could help with that....
For most people it doesn't, which is why I wondered about the degree to which this would actually work. But for some, this is a religious obligation; the word tzedakah, usually translated as charity, actually means justice.
I've heard it translated as "righteousness", too.
We support the poor not because we pity them but because they are human beings who deserve it, and there but for the grace of God go I.
This reminds me! There was a quote that crossed my desk which I thought you might like, from one Matt Gordon, on an email list I am on:
I accept a personal obligation to aid those less fortunate, but I don't think it's generally the place of government to mandate it.
I have much to say on this. I'm going to be non-linear here and jump ahead, otherwise I'll never to get home.
One of the Waytes (Laenus, the mad fiddler) made a fascinating point to me over dinner one night. He pointed out that through period, the Roman Catholic Church did all of the things we now think of as "Health, Education and Human Welfare": they founded and ran the universities, the hospitals, the almshouses, the monestaries (which housed many people who could not otherwise make their way in the world), and they patronized the arts.
They did this in part by imposing a simple flat tax upon their worshippers -- "tithe" means "tenth", and that's what it was. They also did it by pay-per-use services (college students paying to attend lectures, by the lecture, in a very clean capitalist system) and self-sufficiency and industry (monestaries strove to be self-sustaining).
With the eviction of religion from civil life, these functions were no longer systemically performed. For quite a while -- a bunch of human generations -- people got on OK without them. But it turned out they hadn't been fungible after all. The problems the Church had been solving didn't go away. And they compounded.
Eventually some situations got so dire, that the government wound up being brought in by the citizenry. So now we have government run schools and government funded universities and government subsidized hospitals and governmental arts grants. We don't have much in the way of poor houses, but we have some grant money going to battered women's shelters and homeless shelters and soup kitchens.
When FDR started the New Deal, it was, in a way, secular government throwing up its hands and saying, "Alright, alright! I guess someone does need to deal with this!"
It seems to me, in light of history, that a society cannot neglect these problems. Leaving individuals to sort it out on a non-systematic, ad hoc basis winds up imposing massive costs -- from the direct monetary through the costs of lost labor and human potential -- on society. There must be a systemic, institutional approach to dealing with them.
Maybe it doesn't have to be the "government", but I for one would be very unhappy to see it be the Church. Or churches.
[cont]
Re: part 2
Date: 2004-11-10 07:43 am (UTC)It seems to me, that there's a hole in our society. There's a place where no thing is. We have this concept "government" which orders how things are. But we have this echo of an idea of this other thing, the function of which was fulfilled by religious organizations, but for which we have no generic term, which tended the common weal and husbanded society itself.
In a religiously homogeneous environment, having the Church in that position solved the "people only donate to what they like" problem. You tithed, period. You didn't get to say that you didn't want your money going to those nasty lepers. You were welcome to give more and more specifically.
Right now government is in that place, and fitting badly.
What would you say to an institution (we need a name for it), existing in parallel to and independent of the "government" (yet which might be said to be a "government" of its own), to which all such social programs were relinquished and which got not one dime of tax money; and once a year you got a bill for one twentieth of your income which was completely, utterly, 100% voluntary to pay or not as you like?
The government would remain the people with the guns, responsible to make and enforce the laws which protect us from force and fraud, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, etc.
If there were no welfare, I'll bet a lot more dollars would go to aiding the poor than to preserving cute mammals, because those poor would be in your community, in your face. Maybe this too is wishful thinking; we'll never find out, most likely.
Why look forward when we can look back? The first national anti-animal-cruelty society was the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in England, founded in 1822. (America followed in in 1866.) Eventually the fact that it was illegal to beat a horse but not beat a child -- quite seriously, that was one of the arguments of the day in support -- lead to the founding of the The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the first child protection agency in the world, in 1875. England followed with the
London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty in 1884 which became the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children five years later.
No, it turns out the cute mammal thing goes back quite a ways.