[Byron]

Very good article on private charity from Imprimus.

http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/charitable-giving-and-the-fabric-of-america/

The healthiest forms of societal improvement result from lots of little experiments. Some will fail, but others will succeed and be copied. This is the method by which private philanthropy proceeds.

 

Think about what happens every autumn weekend at hundreds of stadiums around our country. What is involved when you move a crowd of 50,000 from the stadium to their cars to their homes? If you tried to plan or direct that from a central perch, it would be a mess. There are too many variables. The average fan may not realize that he’s exhibiting what scientists call large-scale adaptive intelligence in the absence of central direction, but that’s what he’s doing. There are lots of less trivial examples of this. Essential human tasks like food distribution are managed without any central organization. There’s no agency in charge of making sure that Fort Worth doesn’t run out of milk, but it never does. That’s what happens in a free society. Lack of uniformity and coordination is more often than not a blessing.

[Byron]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0807848417/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

Much more than a means of addressing deep-seated cultural, psychological, and gender needs, fraternal societies gave Americans a way to provide themselves with social-welfare services that would otherwise have been inaccessible, Beito argues. In addition to creating vast social and mutual aid networks among the poor and in the working class, they made affordable life and health insurance available to their members and established hospitals, orphanages, and homes for the elderly.

[CynthiaGillis]

My family in Winnipeg belonged to the Hebrew Beneficial Society, a fraternal organization whose sole purpose was, as I recall,  to provide members with medical care, in a form of insurance.  If a member could not afford some unexpectedly high medical cost, the Hebrew Beneficial Society took care of it, out of the annual dues.  My father was always so proud to be a member, because it showed we (Jews) took care of our own, and we (our family) never needed charity.

I believe the member would then repay the Society, but I am not sure. My memories of this are somewhat scanty, as I was a very young child at the time.  

It was intended for Jewish people, obviously, and I think I knew then, for the poor.  So as we moved up in the world, and could leave our “wrong side of the tracks” neighborhood for the suburbs, we no longer belonged.  I am not sure whether it ceased to exist or our family stopped belonging.

I find it so odd that this apparently excellent system of caring for the responsible poor was replaced by the gigantic socialized medicine system that Canada has now — and that my family were ardent supporters of socialized medicine.

They, of course, went to the Mayo Clinic for their care!

[dtsullivan@charter.net]

These posts (8751, 8753, 8755) are wonderful illustrations of the principle that as government grows in illicit ways, initiating force via laws and regulations, and sometimes by taking over entire industries, some of the things we lose are visible, but many more are never seen.

Among the visible losses are the passenger rail industry, destroyed by Amtrack, and now the coal industry, in the process of being destroyed by environmental laws. Among the unseen losses are nuclear power plants and oil refineries never built because of legal restrictions, and countless other businesses not started because of restrictive licensure or other onerous regulations.

Cynthia Gillis’ posting brings up another unseen loss: a potentially massive, wonderfully practical system, lost to socialized medicine. Not only religious organizations but unions, charitable and fraternal organizations, professional societies, and a thousand other private groups could have (and would have?) formed similar insurance-like voluntary associations had government stayed the hell out of the way. (In fact, I would bet many such organizations probably did once exist, but have gone out of business because of Medicare, Medicaid, and the like.)

One small example: while not exactly like the beneficial society Cynthia wrote about, in my early years as a dentist, I had joined the American Dental Association. I always opposed the politics of the ADA, but they used to provide the member benefit of access to a low cost, high quality Blue Cross / Blue Shield Program. As government restrictions on health insurance expanded, they stopped offering it (and I quit the ADA forthwith).    

[Byron]

In fact, I would bet many such organizations probably did once exist,…

 

The 19th century was full of mutual aid societies of all types.

I always laugh when people tell me that only government can provide for the poor. 125 years ago the poor were providing for themselves. And did not remain in poverty for the most part.

So much human misery has been caused by our government, it is very sad.

What a magnificent gift we were given by Madison, Jefferson and the others and what a mess we have made of it.

[dtsullivan@charter.net]

Inspired by Byron Price’s posting (#8781), which made perfect sense, I Googled “19th century mutual aid societies” and found numerous articles confirming that “the 19th Century was full of mutual aid societies of all types.” 

Here’s an excerpt from several paragraphs into an essay with the following link: http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/from-mutual-aid-to-welfare-state

It blames the burgeoning welfare state as the biggest reason for the demise of such organizations. 

“The heyday of all five societies was during an era when millions of Americans lived on a scale of poverty which would be considered intolerable by today’s underclass. Despite this, millions invested their scarce resources in erecting a vast system of fraternal mutual aid. Although insurance gave some protection, those who subscribed to fraternal societies gained access to services not easily guaranteed in a commercial contract. The lodge offered its members the formal and informal components of mutual aid and sought to educate them in a set of values.

The ideals of these societies illustrate the many variants and the breadth of the fraternal value consensus. The United Order of True Reformers and the Independent Order of Saint Luke advanced programs of ethnic self-help; the Ladies of the Maccabees wanted female political and economic emancipation. For the Security Benefit Association and the Loyal Order of Moose, the key goals were to impart life skills and establish social-welfare institutions. There was considerable diversity in the economic profile of the memberships served by these organizations. These differences, however, should not obscure the commonality. All these societies drew from the same basic fraternal pantheon of self-help, individualism, self-government, civility, and mutualism.”

[Author]

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