by Eric Peters
May 24, 2025 - Libertarians - those strange ducks who espouse the alarming-to-some idea that no one owes anyone else any portion of the money they worked for (among other strange and
alarming-to-some ideas) - oppose forcing anyone to “contribute to Social Security for just that reason; on account of being forced to, for openers. Their money is taken from them to finance retirement “benefits” for other people who - for just that reason - have no right to those “benefits”.
The government affirms this harsh fact.
Its High Court has ruled - that is, decreed - that Social Security “benefits” are alms that no one has a right to - which is reasonable based on the fact that every cent of “benefits” paid out is not the “contributor’s” saved-up/invested/interest-accrued money but someone else’s money, extracted from them just as it was extracted from him. That is why Social Security is often referred to as a Ponzi scheme, named after a famous fraudster who lived 100 years ago. The difference now is that this fraud is both legal and compulsory.
It is also alms.
Yet it also isn’t, in that alms, properly speaking, are freely given. You know of someone who has fallen upon hard times; or you know of a charity that aids people who have fallen upon hard
times and you wish to help by donating money. This is a very different thing than being compelled to hand over money, which is what occurs when you are forced to “contribute” to Social Security.
Having got all of that out of the way, the question arises: is it immoral to accept “benefits” derived from the government having forced someone else to finance them? This question seems to
answer itself. Obviously, it would be immoral to walk next door to your neighbor’s home, knock on his door and demand that he hand over “benefits” because some other person had previously knocked on your door and demanded that you hand them over. It is an example of the old truism that two wrongs do not make a right.
It is the natural and normal desire of the victimized to be made whole. This desire is as understandable as it is legitimate. The illegitimate part intrudes when someone else who had nothing to do with the victimizing becomes the victim of the victimized.
Social Security victimizes all of us.
At least, all of us who have been forced to “contribute” into it. Which is everyone who has worked because everyone who has is forced to “contribute”. Our common victimizer is not each
other but the government that set up this racket, this system of intergenerational robbery-parasitism. It has made the old predatorily dependent upon the young and it has made the young resentful of the old for depriving them, to a very great extent, of being able to save and provide for their own old age and for making them, in their turn, dependent upon the government for alms.
There is thus no easy way to break the chains that bind us. Many of the old who are dependent upon their “benefits” cannot reasonably - or even morally - be expected to do without them. Not because they are owed these benefits but because it would be wrong to deny them the alms upon which they have been made dependent. But it is not necessary to force the young to become dependent - by forcing them to “contribute” to Social Security - because it is not necessary to force the young to finance the “benefits” paid to older people. All it would take is to divert some of the money that goes to support what is absurdly referred to as “defense” spending. Much of the latter having as much to do with the defense of the United States as the drugs that were pushed on 320 million Amerikans had to do with “stopping the spread”.
Both had - and have - much to do with something else.
“Defense” spending - much of it, probably two-thirds of it - has to do with projecting the power of the government of the United States and the lampreys that feed upon its leavings across the globe, a very different thing than “defense”. The actual defense of the United States could be paid for with far less of our money. Let Boeing, Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas and Blackrock et al, earn an honest living. Let Israel, Ukraine et al pay for their own defense.
If such a doctrine were to be implemented, the “benefits” paid out to the current generation of older people who depend upon them could be financed without having to force a single young
worker to “contribute” toward the financing of them. Then the young workers could be freed from the chains that bind them to the older generation, thereby vitiating the natural and legitimate resentment that comes whenever anyone is chained to an obligation that is not rightly theirs. They - the younger crowd - would also likely be able to retire sooner rather than later, having been able to save and invest (and so multiply the fruits of their own labor).
This would work. This would be moral. This would greatly benefit everyone - except the predacious people who want us to be chained to one another, resentful of one another and - above all - dependent upon the government for alms in our old age.
