Report from the Front: Volunteers May Need to Volunteer.

June 18, 2003 -- AmeriCorps, the government corporation that pays people to “volunteer,” is cutting its handouts, which will mean the number of volunteers it can pay for will drop from 16,000 to about 3,000. The financially troubled program is a government attempt to promote virtue. Of course, when the government uses taxpayer dollars to pay people to do what government officials deem to be good deeds, those people aren’t really volunteers. (See Navigator article: You Will Volunteer!)

The principal virtues are those we must create for ourselves: rationality, integrity, honesty, productivity, self-esteem and the like. Programs such as AmeriCorps imply that it is morally superior for an individual to help others rather than to focus on pursuits that he or she finds more personally meaningful or fulfilling -- reading books, going to concerts, taking the kids to an amusement park, spending time with friends and family. We can only hope that AmeriCorps will disappear soon and once again make all voluntary efforts actually voluntary.