It should be obvious that the proper reaction to “Charity sucks” is to find a non-sucky charity; even if none exists (which the argument doesn’t say!) then do something guaranteed to help more than harm, like covering random strangers’ medical expenses. Anyone who uses it not to give to charity is insincere or very stupid. And I’ve never heard anyone say “Aid hurts, therefore I buy video games instead”, whereas I’ve heard lots of people say “You shouldn’t say ‘Aid hurts’, because people will use it as an excuse to buy video games instead”.
I’d assume that arguments suggesting medical spending doesn’t help would apply to covering a stranger’s medical expenses: e.g. increasing prices, encouraging continuing unhealthy behaviour, whatever.
And people don’t often declare they’re not giving to charity, so your second point is hard to test. But people often use the fact that aid isn’t always effective as a reason to oppose or believe in reduction in government spending on aid (last week’s Question Time in the UK is a case in point). It’s used to muddy and close off a line of thought, just like ‘well we probably can’t stop global warming anyway’, ‘loads of diets don’t work’, whatever. While they may not state it, I think it’s VERY common for people to give up on an objective because of a lack of a clear path to it, and furthermore to seek such lack of clarity as an excuse for abandoning the objective.
It should be obvious that the proper reaction to “Charity sucks” is to find a non-sucky charity; even if none exists (which the argument doesn’t say!) then do something guaranteed to help more than harm, like covering random strangers’ medical expenses. Anyone who uses it not to give to charity is insincere or very stupid. And I’ve never heard anyone say “Aid hurts, therefore I buy video games instead”, whereas I’ve heard lots of people say “You shouldn’t say ‘Aid hurts’, because people will use it as an excuse to buy video games instead”.
I’d assume that arguments suggesting medical spending doesn’t help would apply to covering a stranger’s medical expenses: e.g. increasing prices, encouraging continuing unhealthy behaviour, whatever.
And people don’t often declare they’re not giving to charity, so your second point is hard to test. But people often use the fact that aid isn’t always effective as a reason to oppose or believe in reduction in government spending on aid (last week’s Question Time in the UK is a case in point). It’s used to muddy and close off a line of thought, just like ‘well we probably can’t stop global warming anyway’, ‘loads of diets don’t work’, whatever. While they may not state it, I think it’s VERY common for people to give up on an objective because of a lack of a clear path to it, and furthermore to seek such lack of clarity as an excuse for abandoning the objective.