Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
Can't I pay my taxes voluntarily? Happily, even?
Because I am actually happy to do so. The social democratic state's just that much more effecient at combating poverty than I am. My meagre access to wealth allows the state to resocialize and fund social programs that charity programs just don't do, as they've never done.
The state is the natural extension of your property. It is, as a fundamental design, the checks and balances that make sure you have property at all. It's a natural extension of you. Understanding this makes way to understanding how the complex nature of a human society functions: communists understand this and despise it, anarcho-capitalists understand this and despite it, juvenile libertarians don't understand it. The point is that there's no need to differ between the sacrifice of charity and the sacrifice of taxation for the sake of making social programs.
Basically, seeing how social programs are much more effecient and not really morally relevant to Jesus, he would love them more. The minimal-state design with corporations of great magnitude utilizing their power to gain profits from the horrible existences of child workers in Thailand? Jesus hates that. Laissez-faire capitalism sucks in Jesus' eyes.
And don't go "It's the individual capitalist who's responsible for his actions in regards to God anyways". I get the idea; Christianity is internally accountable to the individual and you are responsible for your own salvation. The wealthy Thailand enslaver has plenty of freedom within the laissez-faire system to shut down his business and donate his wealth to charity and live for the rest of his life as a voluntary in his local church.
But it does not do. The problem is that it's self-contradictionary of laissez-faire supporters to claim the moral alignment of Jesus. The whole point of capitalist economies is to gain wealth and happiness from capitalizing. Shutting down your business or not capitalizing on your possibilities goes against the very foundations of this economic system. If this system of Thailand enslavers is inherently contradictionary to Jesus' preachings, the system is contradictionary to Jesus' preachings. The biggest issue is that the virtue and ingeniousity of the hard-working laissez-faire capitalist is widely preached as a moralism. It is contemporarily seen in varying cases of entitlement, eg one's own hard-earned money and the infamous term welfare queen. These are morally weighed values, part of the laissez-faire capitalist moral system, and cannot coexist with Christianity as a moral system.
And yes, the case of the Thailand enslaver is not the case of all laissez-faire capitalists, but the majority of our goods are made in dehumanizing circumstances and help preserve the status quo and further enwealth the rich; textiles, coffee, sushi shrimp... The system attempts to preserve itself and to further the wealth of the rich. I will not spend this thread debating the moral implications of this system in itself; I rather want to outline that it isn't according to Christian morals and the supporters of both laissez-faire capitalism and Christianity should revise their worldview.
Know that I am not a socialist, it merely boggles my mind that I can't be a supporter of a strong, balanced state without being anti-Christian or that my virtue in faith is not recognized by some self-declared "Christian" libertarian going on about how salvation is attained only through voluntary charity while his food and clothing is produced in child-poisoning toxic waste.
