I don’t know why you would qualify this. People and ideas are different things. Disagreeing with a person instead of an idea is lazy and obligates you to start over whenever a different person repeats the idea. (Or you can take the expedient of pre-judging the entire class of people who share an idea.) You’ll like this: suppose we say it represents a different kind of morality. “People should fend for themselves” is not a cogent political philosophy, but if we are limited to sound bites, it is correct. What is the alternative, that people should not seek to advance their own interests? In practice, everyone fends for themselves. Saying that people should look out for their own interests says nothing about what happens when some people inevitably make bad decisions or have bad luck or otherwise fall on hard times. When I consider my own selfish interests, one of them is that I live in a world where people do not go hungry in the midst of wealth, where people can practice their innate social and altruistic instincts, where predators are not a protected class. Most people who hear this will say “Sure, me too, but not everyone is altruistic!” If most people start by saying “me too,” that’s a good start. Good for us. So, what stops me from feeding the homeless or hiring a foreigner? What stops the poor from finding affordable housing or making money braiding hair? Outsourcing our interest in helping others to the government is like outsourcing our interest in being protected from foreign conquest. It works, somewhat, but with considerable costs. I think it is worth discussing the costs and benefits of possible alternatives.Do not conflate beliefs with the people who hold them
Libertarianism is immoral
The difficulty is that given a choice between helping yourself or helping others, you'll help yourself first and help others with what you're comfortable giving up. That number is nonzero for most people, but it's also the lesser of the two for most people. Charity and altruism are real things that hold societies together, but without institutionalization they lead to tribalism and exclusion. Rush Limbaugh is reportedly an extravagant tipper - he'll happily give up large sums of money to people who bring him a meal. That's altruism in a way. But Rush Limbaugh would also happily abolish the government's ability to collect tax - in other words, Rush Limbaugh supports altruism for those he selects. It's like the whole faith-based initiative clusterfuck of the Bush administration - want food aid? go to fucking church, infidel. In order for a society to be fair, diverse and egalitarian, charity and altruism has to be distributed to people we don't think should get the money because they reflect views and cultures other than our own. Rush Limbaugh is not going to support "welfare moms" but reducing poverty requires that welfare moms be supported. Leave it up to personal choice, and... ...well, the Saudis are big on charity. 
I don't believe it was exclusively the black Roman Catholic community that contributed $3 billion in private donations to Haiti after the earthquake, and I don't think it is only Arab Muslims who are trying to help Syrians now.charity and altruism has to be distributed to people we don't think should get the money because they reflect views and cultures other than our own
You're better than that. C'mon, put your back into it. There are very few people who will point to Haiti as a success story, but fewer who would say that they'd be in better shape with 1/4 of their aid. Because yeah. $3 billion. But yeah. Still only a quarter of the aid distributed to Haiti. As far as Syria, the argument is that they've gotten little aid, primarily due to the complex and odious factionalism driving the civil war. Besides which, "Arab Muslims" are Wahabi while Syria is a brew of Sunni, Druze and Shia spread across Alawite, Twelver and Ismaili factions. You're making my point, not yours: Syria isn't getting aid because they're praying to Allah wrong but the problems in Syria are getting all sorts of money because they are.The United Nations said that in total $13.34 billion has been earmarked for the crisis through 2020, though two years after the quake, less than half of that amount had actually been released, according to U.N. documents. The U.S. government has allocated $4 billion; $3 billion has already been spent, and the rest is dedicated to longer-term projects.
Here is a tentative summary of the exchange about Haiti above, my side in italics: - People spend more on themselves than they give to others. - No disagreement. - Charity won't reach everyone because people like Rush Limbaugh won't support the out-group. - Here is evidence that people gave substantial charity to the out-group. - That doesn't count because the charity did not completely solve the problems, and because government aid was larger than charity. Is this a fair summary?
No. Me: The world will be a tyrannical and biased place if aid is determined by the charity of individuals. You: There was no tyranny in aid to Haiti. Also, look at all the aid people are giving to Syria, and it's not just the Saudis. Me: Government aid dwarfs private charity in the case of Haiti, therefore your argument is invalid. Also, Syria is an example of aid being withheld for ideological reasons, not where private aid is a success story, except for terrorism, where private aid is showing all the dystopian promise I was pointing out.
Okay, thanks for sharing your perspective. In my reading, concern about neglected out-groups was the primary thrust of your position, but you did not mention it in your summary. If I am so incapable of grasping your meaning (I was baffled by your sentence that included the phrases "Syria isn't getting aid" and "the problems in Syria are getting all sorts of money") then we can surely spend our time more usefully doing other things.
I'd still need to be convinced these are ethical rather than economic questions. Anyway, what if the answer is: scaling? Often seemingly-good ad hoc solutions accumulate until in toto they no longer make sense. Humans tend toward systems for a reason, though I remember you disagree with that line of argument.Good for us. So, what stops me from feeding the homeless or hiring a foreigner? What stops the poor from finding affordable housing or making money braiding hair?
All four examples appear to be both economic and ethical disasters. On being the right size: maybe these examples could be excused if they were the exceptional blemishes of large programs which are on balance beneficial. Is that your argument? I think people revere authority figures for the same reason they fear foreigners. These instincts gave better results among bands of a few dozen members whose interaction with other bands was mostly violent.
Is it better for human systems to exist than not? Probably, maybe. But asking whether they're beneficial is a sidestep from the question 'are they necessary', which is just a silly way of saying 'will they exist no matter what we do'. It seems so. We should figure out why, at minimum, before we undo a millennia-old pattern.