It's very interesting to me that (nearly) everyone agrees that reselling disaster supplies like masks, hand sanitizer, etc. for a large profit is terrible, but somehow selling literal essentials like food, housing, and healthcare for profit is just fine.
Yep. The flaws of that system are becoming clearer and clearer, not that you'd see it from the responses you're getting. "If people can't pay for housing, they deserve to be homeless! If people can't pay for healthcare, they deserve to be sick and die! Without a profit motive, we cannot do anything for our fellow man! It would be immoral to serve without profit, or to look for the greater profit to society!" Housing…
I have a question, if you don't mind answering. What are you doing personally to help the homeless and less fortunate than yourself?
I get that it is easy to sit behind a keyboard and complain that other people aren't doing enough. The way to help people isn't to demand that other people pay more, but to use your own resources for the causes which are most important for you.
Simply giving more money to the state solves nothing. It just makes the state bigger, more corrupt and less efficient. The resources get diverted to other goals which don't match up with your own. Perhaps it would be better to keep more of your hard earned money so that you can utilize it as you feel most appropriate?
Relevant?: https://i.imgur.com/MogFw59.jpg
It seems to me that the flaws aren't with the system, but with people who idly sit and wait for things to improve at the cost of someone else (the "rich people" scapegoat). Your time is often more valuable than money to those in need. Why don't you give up more of your time to help people. Perhaps quit your job and become a full time altruist?
Look, nobody "deserves to be homeless," but nor does anybody "deserve to be homed at the cost of somebody else's labour" Nobody "deserves to be sick," but also nobody "deserves to have healthcare given to them without compensating the healthcare giver for their time". It isn't "immoral to help people who can't pay" at all, but it isn't "moral to steal other people's property to pay to help others" either.
You seem to have a cartoon world view in which everyone should be in prosperity by default - but the reality is that poverty is the default state of all of humanity, and the only way that humans have ever lifted themselves out of poverty is through productive labour and innovation. If you are not productive and you can't innovate, you are not entitled to the successes of those who are.
This might seem a bit cold-hearted, but the people who are in the best position to help others are those who are not spending every hour of every day undergoing basic survival. People have a self-interest to look after themselves and their families first - and then once they've secured that goal, can begin to look how they can help others less close to them. The simple fact is that the vast majority of humans are in the category of figuring out how their own family is going to survive month to month, and the less fortunate are simply just that. You can't help everyone. You have limited capacity as a human, and the most effective way you can help anybody is to secure the well-being of yourself and your family so that you have excess resources and time to dedicate to helping others. If your economic output is limited, your time dedicated to helping people directly is infinitely more valuable than your time campaigning for more socialism.