662. Should charity be illegal? Do capitalists really hate the poor?

(0:03 - 0:50)
Hey Rachel. Hey Brittany. So today I want to ask you a question that might seem so silly and that is, is it illegal to do charity? What do you think? Of course not.

Of course not. Of course not. Charity is not illegal.

You can help people. That's like the best thing. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like every Christmas time, every Christmas movie, every holiday is about how great charity is, right? It's not Christmas time. I'm just using that as an example.

Right. Yeah. Charity is a great thing.

It's voluntary and it's awesome. Everybody likes charity, right? You'd think, but there has been a really weird trend that I don't even want to say is new because I started writing about this when I first started writing professionally and that was eight or nine, actually nine years ago now. Um, maybe 10.

(0:50 - 6:08)
Um, so this has been going on for a while, but there's this trend where city, it's usually cities to city governments are arresting people or fining them for doing charity. And that sounds original or original. I was going to say outrageous.

And I said original outrageous, right? Does sound outrageous. You don't see that happen. Exactly.

And that's a really good question. And there are a lot of interesting reasons for this, but I'll, I'll give a few examples of times this has happened. So I know when I first started writing over this amazing old man, I can't remember his name.

I'll have to put in the show notes. He was 90 and every Sunday he would go and he would feed the homeless and it was against a city ordinance to do so without a permit. And he had gotten arrested.

I mean, this is an old sweet man who was getting arrested over and over and over again because he wouldn't stop feeding the homeless because they were requiring a permit. And I think this was in Florida. Yes.

Oh wow. I want to Florida. So you think, Oh, well that must be an isolated instance, but it's not.

So then there was another incident, like I think also nine years ago where it was Christmas, it was winter, it was snowy, it was cold. And a church had been letting, um, local homeless people sleep. They were giving them a place where they could be warm overnight.

And a government came in and said, you don't have like a permit to be like a place where you can sleep. Like it just has a church, you know, where you don't have the permit required to make it like an overnight stay. And it was like turning people away and like threatening to find the church.

So absurd. Because they're not like housing. Because they're not housing.

And, um, then there's another, another incident in, I want to think it's Ohio. It's like Midwest where a girl, um, she's a college student and she like really loves helping the homeless. And so she went out and she started like this little organization.

And then she, they basically, they said, you can't do the homeless feeding. You know, you can't feed the homeless right here in this spot. You have to go somewhere else.

And if you don't, we're going to arrest you. We're going to fine you. And you might think like, well then just go to the other spot.

Why is that such a big deal? Like maybe the girl's making too big a deal out of it. But here's the thing. The homeless people of that community knew that that's where they should go.

They knew that that's where the food was going to be handed out. And so it was a good, a good, just steady constant, right? Because you have to remember if you are homeless, you're probably not checking your Instagram or have a phone and know where to go. So this is a very, uh, it made sense to keep it in the same area, but the city was like, no, you have to move.

And then they tried to serve anyway. And then somebody was arrested. And the interesting thing about this particular organization is some charitable organizations, they get money or, and they can go like buy food, right.

Or like they get donations from places. But this girl had organized a whole group where they got up at like 3am and were making breakfast burritos. So they were like doing all this work and the police made them throw away the burritos.

They had to throw them away. So it's just these outrageous things. And then there's a story I saw in the newspaper from Arizona where there was a young man.

He's like 25. His name is Austin Davis. And he runs this group called Arizona Hugs, really cool kid.

And he just loves, he loves that community. It's not even that he was like, Oh, I think I'm gonna be somebody who's really involved in charity. No, he just, he's like a skateboard kid.

So he got to know the locals in his area. And usually the homeless population was very guarded because you have to realize a lot of distrust for authority and for people coming in your space because they're so used to being hassled. But he was skateboarding and he got to know them.

And so they kind of invited him in. And so he I mean, he's not homeless, but he has dedicated his whole life to helping them not just giving them meals, but he keeps their families updated to let them know what they're doing and where they are. He will drive them to drug treatment programs.

So there's a lot of them have, you know, addictions. And he's just really, really immersed in this community. And it's such a cool thing to watch.

Until the city decided there was like a rule that's like, you have to get a permit if you're going to have special events in the park. And they meant like concerts, right? Things like that. But they never applied it to charitable things like handing out food until one day they're like, you know what, we don't we don't want to do this anymore.

I'll explain why in a minute. But then they started um, fining. Well, basically, they started telling these people that if they wanted to hand out food, they had to pay like hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a permit and for insurance.

And then they could still get denied the permit after they paid all that. So back and forth. This guy, Austin practices civil disobedience because he thinks, okay, they're telling me I have to either stop serving food or, you know, go to jail.

So he ended up being arrested a few times because he wouldn't stop serving food. And so all this, you know, is crazy, right? Because you're thinking we're supposed to be encouraging people to give back, to take care of one another, to be involved in our communities. And the government is always complaining about things being so expensive.

(6:08 - 11:29)
Anyway, wouldn't you think they would like that? Right. And it reminded me of the quote Ron Paul used to say, which is, don't steal the government hates competition. And even though it's like a different kind, but it's almost like they think they have the monopoly on charity, right? I think that you're the only ones who are allowed to do it, but they don't even do a good job of it.

So I don't know, Rachel, do you have any thoughts on this? Well, someone should tell Ezra Klein. I've been, he's a New York Times columnist who's written a book called Abundance. And he talks a lot about red tape and government interference.

And I've been listening to several interviews of his on various podcasts. And it's so darling, because someone on the left has discovered the laws of supply and demand, and how big government doesn't work very well. And yet he's still a liberal.

Like most people who discover this, they become like more conservative, small government, you know, government, leave us alone, we can handle this kind of stuff ourselves. But yet he's not, he's, he's staunchly a liberal. He hates conservatives, because his attitude is, well, at least we want something good to happen.

Like it's still back to intentions, you know, intentions, and ignoring results, you know, the intentions with big government programs do not produce results. So and, and, and I guess his side of the aisle, they're thinking, and he's finally come around to seeing the problem with all the red tape and the nonsense. Well, maybe we should just reform the government and make it work better.

He talks about government regulation. It's not so much that government regulates, they're not only the only the private sector. Yeah, government regulates itself, like government even regulates its own charitable social programs, so that even affordable housing built with government grants has and he went through like 14 steps.

No, that was broadband. He went through 14 steps with Jon Stewart. Like all of these steps for for stuff to happen.

But he he thinks that capitalism is still evil, because there is no profit motive to do any of these things. Like what's the motive for for feeding people in the park, if you're a capitalist, but the thing is, you can be a capitalist, and still be human and want to help people and still be involved in charity. Because like, if there was no profit motive for capitalists to help the poor, then why is there Walmart? Why is there dollar dollar general? And why is there Goodwill, you know, thrift store, which is not a nonprofit, it actually has a very good profit centered business model, which I happen to respect very much.

You bring up a really good point. And it's one thing that I've noticed lately. And that is that I think people just love to complain about anything anybody else is doing.

And what I mean by that is, you know, there's Mr. Beast, this big YouTuber, and Mr. Beast makes a ton of money from his videos, but all he does is give it away. I mean, he I think it was like, I can't remember the number, several people, several blind people, he bought them surgery, so that they could like see their kids and do and it was like this beautiful moment. And then people were like, well, you're only doing it for the views.

Well, you're only doing it for this, you're only doing it for this. And then I was just like, wait a second. And then my favorite was there was somebody in the blind community came out and said, Are you saying there's something wrong with blind people? And they need to have their vision corrected.

And it was like, this is something so comical, like it's so ridiculous. But it got me thinking like, what will make people happy? Like, there's nothing you can do, except for when the government does it, right? It's only good when the government does something. But if you give someone something, oh, you must be self interested, which as Ayn Rand said that that was actually okay, if you're self interested, because think about it.

Like, I think somebody said about Mr. Beast, like, well, he's just doing it to feel good, like, good. If that makes him feel good. And it's helping people like I say, great, you know, why do some people go to church? Because it makes them feel good.

Why do some people do this or that? It's, that's okay. Self interest is okay. It's supposed to make you feel good.

It's part. That's such a good point. You know, and corporations, companies that make tons and tons of money, they have charitable projects that they do, they they donate some of their money, and they have scholarships, and they do all these things.

Why? Because probably as a as a corporation, it makes the people behind it feel good. I know for a fact that it does. Yeah.

And also, and also it looks good. It's good PR. It makes the company look like good people.

Yep. You know, and oh, you're just doing it for the PR. Okay.

So, so it reminds me of the musical Annie, which I love. I'm sure you've seen that original Annie back from the 80s. But that Mr. Daddy Warbucks was his name.

And his name is funny. Warbucks, you'll notice because he like made his money from some sort of war profiteering. The whole movie is very New Deal-ish.

We could get into Little Orphan Annie. It's a great movie, and the politics and history is fun, too. Yeah.

(11:30 - 12:50)
But the whole point is like, there's this rich guy that has bad PR, like the public opinion. And so his like, whatever assistant is like, I got it. Let's adopt an orphan for a week.

Notice just a week. They're like, we'll do a thing. We'll get an orphan.

We'll spoil the orphan. People think you're great. We'll give the orphan back.

This is the whole premise for this musical. The whole premise of the movie. But of course, of course.

This little, you know. She melts his icy heart. Raggedy Ann looking, redhead orphan melts his heart.

And he adopts her forever. And I think he actually ends up adopting the whole orphanage. I don't know.

The entire orphanage, just for fun. It's just like, that's okay. It's okay to do good things.

Yeah. If it makes you feel good. But I know we're running out of time, so I'll kind of pull it all together.

But I don't necessarily have an answer for why these things are being criminalized. There's a lot about, there's this thing called like NIMBYs, not in my backyard. And it's people who don't want certain things in their neighborhoods, right? And so when developers come in and they want to build new things, people are like, oh, that's great.

Let's build an apartment complex in this place that has been underdeveloped. But then they're like, oh, but keep these people out or keep these people out. And yeah, there's arguments being made for both sides, right? So this is a, we'll actually have to do a whole NIMBY episode because there are a lot of nuances.

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Yes. And Ezra Klein talks about that in his book Abundance a lot, that the NIMBY-ist types, not in my backyard, they're part of the problem. They are part of the problem.

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They'll go and protest because, you know, there's an affordable housing complex going up, but it's gonna block my view of the mountains, you know, or whatever. Yes. And so what I challenge you guys to do maybe for a little homework assignment is go research some of these instances I told you about and see if you can gather information to see like maybe why these things went into place.

And I don't have the answers. This is more like, it's all speculative, right? So why is the city so mad about this happening in this park? Why is it targeting, you know, these groups? But there's always some weird reason. So it might be interesting to see if you can track that down, see if you can see like patterns and things, but all this to say.

(13:38 - 14:42)
Yeah, real, real quick in St. Augustine, I just have a few thoughts. But in St. Augustine, which is heavily dependent on tourism, we do have a homeless population that likes to hang out in the heavily tourist spot and they beg for money. And for the most, like, that's a whole thing in St. Augustine, whether to leave them alone, or, you know, sometimes, sometimes they get more aggressive.

And if they were to drive our tourists away, then the whole city loses, basically, our, our economic foundation. So, you know, there's a lot to unpack there. There's a lot of issues on this.

So but I think at the core of this, charity shouldn't be illegal, you should be able to serve your fellow men, as long as it is not causing, you know, a direct threat to anybody. And private charity is how the world goes, goes round. You know, that's, that's how we help people, communities are everything, and the government can't do everything, even if it wanted to.

So I will leave you with that. Please don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, we'll talk to you later.

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Talk to you later.