Metavirus Pseudònim says:

a couple points. first to one in the OP: “Being a good Samaritan with other people’s time and money is a morally worthless and tragically misguided cause”

I think you were just caught in the moment and didn’t mean to make such a broad statement. But, your language as written is just not true. We can argue over whether this or that policy correctly, efficiently or judiciously addresses the moral issues that underpin the policy. But the key economic issues of our time are bursting with deep and difficult moral issues.

Take Social Security of retirees as a quick, easy example. We had a problem in this country for a long time when it came to dumping off our elderly into poorly funded and horrific institutions where they were basically left to eke out a meager existence before dying a slow and and painful death. Our democratic society came together at a time when senior poverty was at a staggering 50% and, through Congress, made a profoundly moral decision to attack a situation (that had become appalling and unconscionable); by creating a safety net that would allow seniors to receive a modest income and thereby save them from the institutions, the homeless shelters, and the cold, dark alleyways that slowly sucked the lives away. I don’t see how you can view this policy — as enacted by the people duly elected by the citizens and taxpayers of this country — as “morally worthless”.

I often get to a point in conversations with libertarians (usually libertarians who are much less open-minded than you) where we’ve examined Social Security (e.g., the policy details, the means for implementation, the inefficiencies, etc.) and I finally come to the point of saying something to this effect:

“Let’s get basic premises on the table here:

(a) Is a nationwide baseline safety net (of some kind) for the old, infirm and disabled -- that is designed to eliminate as much abject poverty in these groups as is reasonably possible -- a just and moral cause for the American people to enact?

(b) If so, then what would be most effective scheme to prevent the abject poverty of as many elderly as possible?

(i) (Q) Leave people to their own devices to save and be responsible for their own retirement? (A) Nope -- because most families earning near the median American income $50k/80k (single/married) have seen their wages flatline, in adjusted terms, over the past 30 years while everything has gotten more and more expensive. This wage stagnation coupled a large chunk of inflation that has been built up during the meanwhile means that these folks usually have just enough money to pay for their daily lives and save up for a few big life events like college and a wedding, without much if anything left over to throw into a retirement plan (which will never appreciate to the value they need to retire at the right time and keep them from working menial jobs to make the ends meet).

(ii) (Q) Leave it to the states to figure out? Maybe by giving states some money do it? (A) {Cough}.. excuse me… … There, all better. So: this is simply a really bad idea. From an efficiency standpoint, have four-dozen-plus local state Social Programs, that effectively all do the same thing, is a monstrously inefficient way to go about it. You’d have hundreds of billions of dollars wasted in duplicating, well, EVERYTHING (staff, processes, bureaucracies) for each implementation. Not to mention the nightmare decades-long legal wrangling about each state setting up barriers to paying benefits to people who move around, most of which would violate the constitution’s so -called “travel clause” (see Privileges or Immunities clause). Finally, you’d have to some to terms with the fact that lots of states (see, e.g., most in the South) would likely so dramatically underfund the program (and divert most of the rest of the money to pet projects) as to make it hardly worth having. Thus, you would would have a system that is (A) vastly more inefficient, (B) highly likely to be subject to decades of state-barrier-raising and resulting court battles, and (C) an inferior system in terms of the overall number of seniors that are kept out of poverty.

(iii) (Q) What about privatize part of social security and give people personal investment accounts that they can manage like an IRA? (A) On this, my best answer really do go back to option (i) above -- because it again relies on the vast majority of future seniors making timely and prudent decisions with their accounts and its door is window is left fully open to the winds of recession, on the eve of retirement, wiping out a huge chuck of their retirement money.

[and so on and so...]

At the end of the day, these conversations usually end with some bromides like “We can fix the loose ends over time and make it better”, or “We can tech people how important it is to be timely and prudent in their investment decisions -- We’ve go to at least try” -- or something equally unsatisfying.

The simple fact is that no one has proposed a viable alternative the social security plan we currently have that would be as efficient or effective as the system we have now. And for a program that is easily in the green until at least 2035, and then flush with cash out toward the end of the century if we just eliminate the stupid income cap of $100k on FICA collections.

Anyway, that was a REALLY long comment to make a simple point. These are all profoundly moral questions that a system of democracy was set up to debate, ponder and address. “Being a good Samaritan with other people’s time and money” is not, as you say, “morally worthless”. It happens all the time in civic service and NGO work. It also happens in government because the will of the people is expressed through their elected leaders and, no matter how stupid they may often be, the citizens of this country deserve and possess the right to drive the government’s leaders and bureaucracy to address and try to remediate deeply moral issues by spending causing their tax dollars on these issues.