Reddit reviews Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare
We found 2 Reddit comments about Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
https://www.amazon.com/Regulating-Poor-Functions-Public-Welfare/dp/0679745165
Still the most cogent and definitive answer to the question you raise. Well, that and maybe this one too.
https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-Classics/dp/0140445684
Each one is necessary and useful but in its current form is too easily abused by centralized power, I think many people from across the political spectrum would agree on that. Right-libertarians think big business needs to be deregulated for those goals to succeed. Left-libertarians think big business needs to be cut off from its sources of privilege for those goals to succeed.
Taxation is the state's version of financial collaboration for projects. Right libertarians think taxation is stupid because it discourages huge businesses from making zonkers profits. Left libertarians think taxation is stupid but in general they don't prioritize things like tax breaks for corporations; the hugest corporations are the primary beneficiaries of state policies, and until we focus on stripping these billionaires of their modern aristocratic privilege it's hard call giving them tax cuts "libertarian" at all.
Universal health care would be great, the ACA is a long way from that. Right-libertarians would probably give you some stuff about "the most efficient healthcare is in a free market" and then just focus on relieving its burden to employers and healthcare business/insurance. Again big pharma, healthcare, and insurance are among the biggest beneficiaries of intellectual property monopoly, industry subsidy, and privateering "privatization" programs. As a left libertarian what stands out to me is that the whole paradigm of workers buying health insurance through their employers is absurd. Your employer does not buy the candles on your birthday cake, it doesn't make sense for health insurance either.
Welfare is a huge move in the right (left) direction, unfortunately state welfare has been abused by central power to manipulate the working masses. The state increases welfare funding in times of crisis and impending revolution, and squeezes the fund when it wants to ramp up production and generate a surplus of labor. It even resorts to propaganda campaigns to try to make surplus labor feel guilty about alleged sloth. This one is fresh in my mind, I'm reading an excellent book called Regulating the Poor: the Functions of Public Welfare.
But again cutting welfare is not the focus of left-libertarian thinking. I'm paraphrasing some blog I read a while back,
> ... it's like the state holds us down daily while big business comes and breaks our left leg with a baseball bat. The state gives us some crutches so we can still go to work for the big business, threatens taking away our crutches if we misbehave, and so on. Of course our first priority isn't gonna be "abolish our evil state crutches!" We're more concerned with the baseball bat.