On Income Redistribution

[Daktoria]

...so I guess I've seen something that I hadn't considered before.

Ideally speaking, we would live in a world without abuse, negligence, or prejudicial development. That is everyone would honestly apply themselves to become successful on an even playing field, and we could simply acknowledge free markets, property rights, offer and acceptance, etc.

Now, let's let reality sink in.

In reality, many people are abusive in taking advantage of fellow workers, playing favorites with judicial systems to manipulate property rights to their favor, and many people are spoiled brats in getting additional opportunities to become successful while others struggle to even get a foot in the door or build themselves up.

Ideally, this wouldn't matter. After all, society would have the resources in place to engage in retribution justice to make things work out...

...but society doesn't.

In reality, society doesn't always have the resources to engage in retribution. Heck, some people deliberately get things wrong to make a point that there's a cutoff point in enforcing justice. They believe that useless people ought to get abused, neglected, and prejudiced against, and they try to persuade others that the upholding of justice for others is similarly useless...

...so the question remains, "How do we deal with this difference between ideals and reality?" Is a free market really free, or is it just cover for libertines who abuse, neglect, and prejudice against others they don't care about?

Don't get me wrong. I agree that utility preferences are subjective in determining appropriate prices and quantities in the economy, but this is an issue of justice, not equality or appeals to popularity.

 

[Rshermr]

...so I guess I've seen something that I hadn't considered before.

Ideally speaking, we would live in a world without abuse, negligence, or prejudicial development. That is everyone would honestly apply themselves to become successful on an even playing field, and we could simply acknowledge free markets, property rights, offer and acceptance, etc.

Now, let's let reality sink in.

In reality, many people are abusive in taking advantage of fellow workers, playing favorites with judicial systems to manipulate property rights to their favor, and many people are spoiled brats in getting additional opportunities to become successful while others struggle to even get a foot in the door or build themselves up.

Ideally, this wouldn't matter. After all, society would have the resources in place to engage in retribution justice to make things work out...

...but society doesn't.

In reality, society doesn't always have the resources to engage in retribution. Heck, some people deliberately get things wrong to make a point that there's a cutoff point in enforcing justice. They believe that useless people ought to get abused, neglected, and prejudiced against, and they try to persuade others that the upholding of justice for others is similarly useless...

...so the question remains, "How do we deal with this difference between ideals and reality?" Is a free market really free, or is it just cover for libertines who abuse, neglect, and prejudice against others they don't care about?

Don't get me wrong. I agree that utility preferences are subjective in determining appropriate prices and quantities in the economy, but this is an issue of justice, not equality or appeals to popularity.

In real terms, I think we have come to know that the wealthy have power and the middle class does not. And it comes down to money in politics. The wealthy love more wealth, which provides them more ability to control the economy, the law, and more. And they pay big time to control the message, and to get people behind them with the message that they craft and broadcast.

 

[Daktoria]

Well we shouldn't jump to conclusions, you know?

This is a situation of, "It doesn't matter how much you have, but how you use it." For example, big business can help people in struggling situations become economically successful by offering opportunities they didn't locally have, and small business can be abusive from being run by jerkish entrepreneurs who take advantage of how workers are unorganized and not being looked after.

 

[boedicca]

How do we deal with this difference between Ideals and Reality?

Let go of the nonsense that you can impose a Utopia on other people and leave them alone to pursue their own lives as they see fit.

Thank you very much.

 

[Daktoria]

Well right, that's the point. Some people aren't willing to let it go. They insist on interfering in other people's lives because they can and they anticipate there will be nobody to stop them. Instead, they just blame the victim with rugged individualism.

 

[boedicca]

Well right, that's the point. Some people aren't willing to let it go. They insist on interfering in other people's lives because they can and they anticipate there will be nobody to stop them. Instead, they just blame the victim with rugged individualism.

And some people blame the successful for their own personal failures.

 

[Daktoria]

...and some people realize that they apply themselves to become successful whereas some successful succeed by abusing those who apply themselves.

 

[boedicca]

...and some people realize that they apply themselves to become successful whereas some successful succeed by abusing those who apply themselves.

Then those who are being abused should disassociate themselves from the abusers.

 

[initforme]

If people don't want to make minimum wage, then DONT APPLY FOR THOSE JOBS. Businesses that offer only minimum wage jobs should STRUGGLE to find workers. Instead, people flock and apply. How dumb is that? You pay me minimum wage, I give you minimum production. A tit for a tat.

 

[oldfart]

Well right, that's the point. Some people aren't willing to let it go. They insist on interfering in other people's lives because they can and they anticipate there will be nobody to stop them. Instead, they just blame the victim with rugged individualism.

The problem with that logic is that it provides a perfect justification for ex post facto winners only. The French aristocracy were doing smashingly well in 1788. The peasants were starving. When the troops fired on the women demonstrating for bread, the rest became history. Marat and Robespierre got no response when they asked the heads on the pike how they felt about justice now.

Of course M & R would soon be dead themselves. It was left to people like Lafayette who had learned from his good friend Washington that there is a time for a leader of a revolution to retire from public life at the height of his popularity. But Lafayette born to title, land, and wealth had seen the feudal past in France and an egalitarian future in America and chose wisely on his return to his native land. He refused to serve in Bonaparte's government although Bonaparte rescued him from Austrian imprisonment, and refused the offer of the July 1830 Revolution to make him dictator of France.

Power justified by power alone is no justification at all.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

You pay me minimum wage, I give you minimum production. A tit for a tat.

dear minimum production when others who want to get ahead are giving maximum will keep you at minimum wage all your life.

Do you understand now?

 

[Daktoria]

...and some people realize that they apply themselves to become successful whereas some successful succeed by abusing those who apply themselves.

Then those who are being abused should disassociate themselves from the abusers.

Eh... way to blame the victim while basically giving people the right to push others around. You basically just gave abusers a circular argument. They don't like people, so they can push people away. If people don't relate with getting pushed, then people should go away on their own.

That's as good as the excuse libertarians say of, "If you don't like it, you can leave."

Fine, then government can tax business for 100% of what it earns, and if business doesn't like getting abused, it can dissociate!

 

[Daktoria]

Well right, that's the point. Some people aren't willing to let it go. They insist on interfering in other people's lives because they can and they anticipate there will be nobody to stop them. Instead, they just blame the victim with rugged individualism.

The problem with that logic is that it provides a perfect justification for ex post facto winners only. The French aristocracy were doing smashingly well in 1788. The peasants were starving. When the troops fired on the women demonstrating for bread, the rest became history. Marat and Robespierre got no response when they asked the heads on the pike how they felt about justice now.

Of course M & R would soon be dead themselves. It was left to people like Lafayette who had learned from his good friend Washington that there is a time for a leader of a revolution to retire from public life at the height of his popularity. But Lafayette born to title, land, and wealth had seen the feudal past in France and an egalitarian future in America and chose wisely on his return to his native land. He refused to serve in Bonaparte's government although Bonaparte rescued him from Austrian imprisonment, and refused the offer of the July 1830 Revolution to make him dictator of France.

Power justified by power alone is no justification at all.

Are you saying those who perpetually interfere in others lives are like Robespierre in that they eventually get what's coming to them?

 

[oldfart]

Well right, that's the point. Some people aren't willing to let it go. They insist on interfering in other people's lives because they can and they anticipate there will be nobody to stop them. Instead, they just blame the victim with rugged individualism.

The problem with that logic is that it provides a perfect justification for ex post facto winners only. The French aristocracy were doing smashingly well in 1788. The peasants were starving. When the troops fired on the women demonstrating for bread, the rest became history. Marat and Robespierre got no response when they asked the heads on the pike how they felt about justice now.

Of course M & R would soon be dead themselves. It was left to people like Lafayette who had learned from his good friend Washington that there is a time for a leader of a revolution to retire from public life at the height of his popularity. But Lafayette born to title, land, and wealth had seen the feudal past in France and an egalitarian future in America and chose wisely on his return to his native land. He refused to serve in Bonaparte's government although Bonaparte rescued him from Austrian imprisonment, and refused the offer of the July 1830 Revolution to make him dictator of France.

Power justified by power alone is no justification at all.

Are you saying those who perpetually interfere in others lives are like Robespierre in that they eventually get what's coming to them?

No. But thank you for advancing that argument.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Power justified by power alone is no justification at all.

thats a philosophical question and philosophy is going to be over your head. Why not try to figure out if you're a liberal or conservative and then tell us why?