It’s called history dak. You asking to go back to a crude time riddled with injustice and unnecessary pain so that an ignorant majority can choose to abuse each other.
You haven’t shown how family values lead to those events.
Neither have you shown that they lead to the ones you say they will.
Have you ever gone to Church? The whole idea is people adhering to community standards in order to be included in celebrations. At the foundation of this is making sure you teach your kids right from wrong so nobody else has to. On the other hand, everyone is taught things secondarily in case of negligence.
If you don’t adhere, you’re not included.
I’ve been to a church maybe 10 times in my life.
What you’re describing sounds like socialism, just within the family instead of in the society.
In keeping with the OP. Why be fair if it is not earned? What makes the poor worthy over the wealthy?
There is a Simpsons episode in which Mr. Burns loses all of his money but is able to get all his money back by ‘improving’ on Lisa’s business idea. I think some people are just better at accumulating wealth. Did they earn it? They’ll probably say that they simply work smarter, not harder.
And so why punish them?
It’s not punishment to take 300k from a guy who has a million. He can still have everything in the world.
It’s punishment to let someone have less than they need because they were born not as good at accumulating wealth.
Why should we let people who are born better at accumulating wealth punish everyone who isn’t?
Smears, you want to take almost 1/2 of someone’s possessions. Money is property. How is that right? Is that not bullying?
Kris, does it matter not how a person has acquired their possessions?
As long as possessions have come into someone’s legal ownership, it’s bullying to take any back?
You realise that in a monetary transaction, for one person to gain money another has to lose money?
And do you realise that power imbalance allows some people’s “consent” in even legal transactions to be not entirely voluntary?
There is nothing inherently owned about “property”, at some point (for most of history) nothing was “owned”. Things were first owned from taking them by force, and only afterwards was any system of “voluntary” trade established. I’m not against voluntary trade of owned property, it’s just nowhere near as innocent as you’re making it out to be.
Back onto the theme of trade requiring one person to hand over money to another person, it’s just as much “bullying” to endorse such a process ending up with the vast majority of the world having far too little just for the sake of a small minority having looooooads. And that’s the reality of what this current system has ended up with.
This means we have to re-think how we treat “property”. A system is at its healthiest when it works in harmony with all its unequal elements co-operating with each other rather than compromising each other. Systems do generally have waste products, but how do we deal with waste and what do we define as waste? Certainly the non-working minority (employment hovers at ONLY around 6-7% in the US, which means 93%-94% are employed!) are demonised and labelled waste, yet a simple Philips Curve will show a Capitalist economy simply cannot cope with much lower unemployment due to inflation concerns. They’re practically necessary! And perhaps Capitalist ideology requires inequality in material wealth in order to drive the incentive to work and innovate, but how much material wealth is really needed for this to continue to hold up? Wealth is NOT unlimited, and some people having too much WILL compromise the very people who work for Capitalists in order to make them as filthy rich as they are. Profits CANNOT happen without these workers adding more value than they take away as their wage: profit is defined as coming from revenues being larger than expenses (wages).
In short, you (and countless others) really need to rethink the simplistic and innocent conceptions you have about private property and its management.
How did they get it in the first place?
Sales most likely. Say you charge 5$ for a pen that cost you 1$ . Someone, an adult of reasonable intelligence decides $5 is a price they are willing to pay. What is wrong with that? This goes across the board for any merchandise. If the buyer agrees to the price then all is fair. If that person does not check into prices and costs, they should not complain later.
This is one particular scenario. As such, it justifies very little concerning how people get money/property in general, which is what is in question.
And even within the bounds of this one particular scenario, what is so ideologically important about rewarding vigilant researchers and those who take advantage of the rest, at the expense of the rest? Why this particular material stratification?
Also, thanks for ignoring my previous post in favour of answering the guy who just paraphrased my first line. Is this due to the same laziness that gave rise to your current take on “earning” etc.?
I did not ignore it, I blindly missed it, I thought smears was the only reply so I pushed the “last post button” my apologies. I will reply ASAP.I am leaving for work, Its just a couple of hours. My apologies. again.
What’s wrong with it is the poor guy making pens can’t afford to eat and the pen salesman is driving a half-million dollar car.
Ok Sil, Its not simple that was just basic, I don’t type fast and have a reluctance to get long winded. I can agree with you but, I also see the downside. I have no problems with regulations on profit. I have real problems taking away legal property. I have problems with entitlement. If someone is receiving govt help then they should be put to work if physically or mentally able. I get pretty damn cold when it comes to pregnancy and welfare.
I see more and more young people settling for entitlement benefits. People want more and more free money so the idea is to make laws to take away from those that have.
Its like spoiled kids thinking they don’t have to do any chores.
We are very close to creating a system that encourages entitlement. The world, society, does not owe us a damn thing. Would you agree to making the healthy work for benefits and would you agree to forced birthcontrol for those that cannot afford children on their own?
Then why did he sell the pen for a buck?
Because a guy with a million dollars told him that if he didn’t, that he would open a pen factory in China which would run him right out of business.
Kris I’m all about property. That’s why I don’t like it when companies like google and ge and bain capital use up my streets and my police forces and all my infrastructure and refuse to pay the taxes they owe to keep it all going. You know these billionaires pay no taxes. They use everything up and that’s the property of the public and they refuse to pay. They all hide their money in Bermuda so that they can keep using up the roads and letting the schoolbooks get older and older and the classrooms get fuller and fuller and all the small businesses who don’t have bank accounts in Bermuda and factories in China go out of business then the billionaires tell them they need to get off their asses and work. Then when they go to look for work they realize that all the companies in their town are owned by 2 big companies and that they’ve conspired to fix wages at a level that only provides sustenance. You can’t go into business for yourself because the competition is too strong, and you can’t vote for more power because they own all the politicians so inevitably you live the life of a slave but with all the liabilities of your own life on you instead of the owner. Sort of like how back in the day you could open your own restaurant, now for most people the only thing they could do would be to franchise one. They’d make 4-8% of the gross and work like a slave and if anything bad happened the company would usher them out and shove the blame on them. They get to be a slave for 8% of gross at best as long as they pay 17-25% to the corporation and promise to hold all the liabilities themselves.
Please tell me I’m getting through to you. This is not the same place that you grew up.
I agree that long-windedness is something to be avoided. Length is for quantity of points that need to be made, and does not necessarily secure quality by any means…
- (I like to think my long post lengths are justified!)
“Entitlement” is a buzzword that’s thrown around by neo-liberals as though it only applied to the out-of-work, much like “distribution” (of wealth). All economic systems involve a distribution of wealth of some kind, obviously because wealth is passed around through trade until certain people end up with it and certain people do not. “Entitlement” is the feeling people get when they expect wealth to be distributed to them in a certain quantity. The out-of-work expect to have a minimum level of financial support so they don’t end up having to live like the Hindi Achoot in a 1st world country with affluence coming out of its ears. Capitalists also feel entitled to a certain level of profit “in order to justify their investment risk” (which just so happens to afford them excessive personal material wealth and access to ridiculous luxury). They are just as much part of a culture of entitlement as the out-of-work, except the out-of-work constitute an average of only 6-7% of the today’s US population (though a negligible proportion of the country’s wealth) whereas Capitalist entitlement covers a HUGE proportion of the country’s wealth. Moderating Capitalists properly is going to have an incomparably greater effect on solving deficits, debts and other financial problems.
Putting people who have no job to work because they are mentally and physically capable of it causes problems in a Capitalist system - it either drives down the demand for paid workers if the out-of-work are pushed into work at a reduced rate, or if they are paid at the same rate, the same real effect happens due to inflationary problems illustrated by that Philips Curve I mentioned earlier (caused by levels of employment that are too high). Current levels of unemployment are practically necessary to control inflation to the extent that it is controlled (under Capitalism). Trying to reduce it is no viable solution, so supporting these people is just the humane option given that we actually need them to be out-of-work for the benefit of society! So we need to look ELSEWHERE for solutions.
It’s only deemed as “taking away from those who have (money/wealth)” when they are deemed to have earned that money first (before having it taken away). Money is deemed to be people’s property only through the current method of wealth distribution. Altering the method of distribution will alter people’s perception of what is theirs (in light of social responsibility to the society AS A WHOLE) and so the perceived issue with which you have “real problems” will actually disappear altogether, and the economy will be allowed to flourish once more. Solved.
Also, don’t you see any double standards in opposing the “bullying” of the rich by taking away “their right to have their own money”, and condoning the bullying of poorer people by taking away “their right to have their own children” because their situation and abilities result in their lack of means to fund a basic human instinct?