was talking with a Portguese friend of mine about the catastrophic socialist policies of his government (ours now that I have citizenship), and he agreed that the bureauracy and poor incentives are bad, but he differed with me on the need for a social safety net.

I agreed a social safety net is important, but asked him, what’s the best way to go about building it? Is seizing significant portions of the population’s declining wealth via force and letting bureaucrats squander most of it, only to redistribute some of it, or to create the most prosperous society imaginable such that the amount needed for a safety net would be a tiny portion?

I get that we don’t want to count on the beneficence of our overlords, but what if it only required 5 percent of a country’s wealth to take care of the elderly, infirm and incapable rather than 50 percent? What if that 5 percent were delivered with 80 percent efficiency rather than less than 50 percent?