“Charity is not a primary virtue”, said the great philosopher Ayn Rand. True enough. Charity is not an all excusing virtue. We aren’t sacrificial fodders for others need either. Is that all there is to it? In my opinion, Ayn Rand was the most charitable of all of 20th Century writers. What more could be done for poverty alleviation other than to enter the intellectual battlefield and fight for liberty?

Contemptible wretches would ask, as they often do-What has ideas to do with it? If you all are so concerned, why don’t you enter politics instead of finding fault with everyone else? Words aren’t enough to express the contempt I feel toward such imbeciles. Their approach, they say, is “Ready-Fire!” “Aren’t our problems to be solved by action?” they ask. Did it ever occur to them that action is, simply, ideas put into practice? Have they ever given a moments thought to the fact that, to fight for ones cause, one should know the issues and principles in and out? No? We would kick the rotten dog aside and pay no heed to its yelping.

All that we enjoy now, we owe it to the views of early libertarian thinkers. It was they who paved way for liberty bringing down infant mortality and raising life expectancy. We have moved much far from the state in which most children didn’t survive beyond their first year and life expectancy was less than twenty. The cracker-barrel response to this would be that it was technological progress and quality health care that made things the way they are now. It never occurs to them that technological progress has its roots in economic freedom and that no such contribution could be ascribed to controlled economies.

The greatest charity is, needless to mention, a libertarian education. If you doubt my statement, I tell you, the very fact that you had lived long enough to read this is an apparent proof of its validity. Queen Anne of England had seventeen children, but none of them lived long enough to reach adulthood. What makes you presumptuous enough to think that you deserve it all? What if you were born in the pre-capitalist era? What do you think that made it all possible? Isn’t it all the result of a long philosophical struggle, from Aristotle and Aquinas to Locke, Spencer and Rand-From Cantillon and Hume down to Mises and Rothbard? Who would deny the influence Cato’s letters had on the American Revolution or Boetie’s work on India’s Freedom struggle? Did not Ayn Rand prevent a Socialist America, having considerable influence over the Reagan administration and almost all of libertarians?

Power hungry monsters usually remind us that we could wipe out poverty if only we would be willing to sacrifice a little more. “What good would it do, for a corporate CEO to have one more private jet?” they ask. An overwhelming majority of world’s population lives in near starvation. Any sane, intelligent person can look upon this fact and pass his judgment that charity, definitely, isn’t a solution to this problem. How are we supposed to deal with a problem of this scale through sacrifices? When they say sacrifices are to be made out of profits, they ignore the basic economic fact that every penny given to charity is taken out of what would have been employed in capital investment or personal luxury.

Charity is, needless to mention, a virtue on a free, uncontrolled, unregulated economy if exercised in the right manner. Not for a single moment am I saying that we shouldn’t help men thrown into poverty by no fault of their own, but we should know what makes and keeps them poor. What makes the underdeveloped countries poor is nothing, but their own policies and lack of economic freedom. At most what we could do is to educate ourselves, and in course of time, others, on the prospects of liberty. Laissez faire works, and websites, are banned in such nations, and it would take a mind of great strength to discover them. It just obviates that their leaders know what they do and there is no such thing as economic right without political rights-meaning: freedom of expression and thought. It would certainly be argued that their problems need immediate attention, and I have nothing to say against it. What I am trying to put across is that ‘charity’ or welfare state as a policy would only exacerbate their problems. Welfare state certainly is charity at the point of a bayonet. It makes little difference to economics whether charity is voluntary or not, either.

We now see the richest men on earth running around like Santa Clauses, which forces me to believe that they do really believe what they preach. At least on a conscious level, they do, otherwise they wouldn’t have been willing to spend their hard earned money that way. We get to one more reason why a libertarian education is essential for each and every man on earth. It would relieve the rich of their guilt and the neurotics of their inferiority complex. Alienation and scapegoating has a lot to do with it.

Is it that they have to wait until wealth ‘trickles down’ to them? In the first place, no one has the right to another man’s wealth. In the second place, all unemployment would be voluntary on a free market, when minimum wage laws and coercion by labor unions are illegalized. Liberty could be achieved in one stroke, if men want it that way. Would it cure poverty in the same manner? I am not supposed to answer a question of this sort, as future is always unpredictable. I am tempted, but, to give an unqualified ‘Yes’ as my answer. After all, the problem of unemployment would be tackled in no time at all. When the burdens of taxation and regulation are done away with, the rest is simply a matter of time. We wouldn’t have to waste a lot of our resources, effort and time on dirty politics either. Our children would be free to pursue what they love. They wouldn’t be dragged to school or be forced to deal with propagandized texts. They would find learning all the more interesting and be ready at the earliest for a productive career.

I am not to say here that we should say to a starving man asking for a penny: “I understand, and have deepest of my sympathies with you. But, you see, I think I should approach your problem through free market economics. An unhampered market would solve your problems and I would be much better off if I spend it on some stocks I would like to purchase!”We should, but, keep in mind that poor on an unregulated market would be the handicapped, orphaned and ones struck by natural disasters. They could easily live off voluntary, private charity, and it would be in the very interest of the rest of the population to see to it that they don’t starve. There is also, considerable evidence to say the welfare state puts too many potentially productive men on its list and that it has more to do with culture than poverty. In the United States, for instance few Albanian Americans and Russian Jews are on the list, while most of them are poorer than blacks or say, Irish immigrants. It’s almost impossible to find a Keralite begging on the streets. One can’t fail to see that there are even men who cut off their own legs to make themselves worthy of it!

Charity, contrary to the popular delusion is not to be inculcated by coercion or moralistic preaching. Such measures would only encourage repression and resentment. Only in an individualistic culture would be it in ones own interest to help the needy. Quoting Rose Wilder Lane “We, Americans are the kindest people on earth; kind every day to one another and sympathetically responsive to every rumor of distress. It is only in America that a passing car will stop to lend a stranded stranger a tire-tool. Only Americans ever made millions of small personal sacrifices in order to pour wealth over the world, relieving suffering in such distant places as Armenia and Japan.”

Let us now move on to some wide-spread notions on charity. It is asked: Isn’t charity an act of selflessness, highest of all virtues? What could a man hope to derive from such an act? One could feel either happiness or resentment. There is no other way one can feel. One might do it for the sheer pleasure of it. Apparently, there isn’t anything selfless about it. It just draws light on the character and real intentions of men branding such an act selfless. A man might act contrary to his pleasure: He might donate what he has to charity striving against all his ‘instincts’ hoping to derive pleasure or prestige. He might even ‘succeed’ in making himself believe his own magnanimity; not knowing repression is draining all his energy. Deep inside, he feels resentment. Nevertheless, he too had aimed at something. His betrayal doesn’t alter the fact that he too has emotions. Man is neither a robot, nor a machine. It is neither possible, nor advisable for a person to act without giving a moments thought to the results of his act or the emotions he wish to derive from those acts. No man can act cutting off emotions and rationality.

It is also argued an act of charity is above an act of achievement as the intentions constituting the act are superior to that of an act of achievement. Who do you think to be superior-A man devoting his mind to a creative purpose, or a man who dispenses with the products of others creativity? Who has done more good to the world? To answer a question of this sort is to approve of its obscenity. Ends and means, obviously are far, far superior in the former.

A business man’s goal, they say is not alleviation of poverty, and it is just an unintended consequence of his acts. It is the same men who strive for ‘good’ (which they equate with charity) by governmental action: by initiation of force. Does ‘charity’ done by force say anything of the moral status of that person? Isn’t it too an unintended consequence, with the difference that the motive is not pleasure, but fear? Why do you state the first and evade the second, the principle involved being the same? Why do you consider ‘good’ motivated by fear superior to that of what caused in the pursuit of wealth? Why, then, do you persist again and again in what you pretend to believe in?