A complicated question, David. If you mean in a strict literal sense, of course that would be different. Many things are consumable, or not usuable by everyone. There’s not really a practical way to give your car or house to all mankind. There’d be distribution issues and other logistical problems.
Now if you mean to ask (as I think you do) wouldn’t we all have enough, then the answer is yes. If all men and women valued their neighbors as they do themselves, there’d be plenty of wealth to go around. This would be many peoples notion of Utopia.
But the biggest problem is the human heart/mind/soul- to do as you suggest would require rewiring humans to the point that I’m not sure we’d be human any more. Our greed, anger and all the other emotions & behaviors that society views as negative probably exist because they serve a purpose, namely helping to preserve the species in a hostile world. Trying to change human souls by fiat is hard, and you’d have to convince our genes that it wasn’t a trick.
It would only work if supply were infinite like in Star Trek with replicators. I mean there has always been the upper class that has most of the resources. But beyond that, I believe, that people who work harder or do work that not everyone can do deserve a bigger piece of the pie. I mean even in communal hunter-gatherer and farming communities that were very socialistic in nature there was still the best hunter, or the chief who got the big piece of chicken at the end of the day. And I think that’s the point. Even if in modern society greed is taken to an extreme some people just work harder and they deserve compensation for their work or enginuity.
Perhaps worried about another Depression. I really do not know. Actually, some of the weathiest individuals I have known are cheapskates. My mother-in-law, now deceased and I do miss her, waited tables for a living. This family has some major $ family members, and we would go out for drinks and dinners. Poor old, Pearl and the rest of us would pick-up the tab and Mr. & Mrs. Mega bucks, with the 5 carat rings, would sit and never raise a finger to pay the bill. Albeit, my ex made $50,000+ a year in construction, but still, they made much more. I guess that is how they became rich, the tightwads.
I doubt it, especially when the very poor have more children than they can afford to feed, nurture and clothe. Nope the wealth probably will not be shared until some common sense regarding birth control is created in the Third Word. We have sent doctors, nurses and birth control pills to many Third World countries, and many refuse to take the pills either as a Western conspiracy to kill them, or for religious reasons. The wealth is generally spread among those is one or two children, even King George has two children, note he and his wife did not have more hoping for a boy. One good vote in his favor.
LOL, should a solid middle-class person or a wealthy person have to protect themselves from the poor? No. Sorry, there are many ways out of the pit, you may choose one if you want, or remain in the pit, it is your choice, and I do not feel sorry for you. I was very poor, hell, I am and will be paying off my student loans for awhile, but I made a choice. Poverty, finish my M.A. and work or live on $25,000 a year starting wage. You have a choice in this land, make a good one.
Depends on the person, I drive an old 86 Acura, so what! I do not care if other instructors drive Beamers, their choice; their car insurance…
Do you really believe this of all the poor? Many of the poor I have met appear to want out of the pit.
I like the time to reflect and read as an instructor, hence, I am not economically rich; My son in contrast, well . . . . I did fail in this part. Money is not important to me; we need money to live, but frankly I am not into money at all, too many are. I guess I was just too poor in university and this probably left the money hungry scar upon the munchkin.
I can relate to the past you, aspacia. I’m at the university right now. I’m as poor as the cat that wonders around my house day in day out. I can recall how I planned life after graduation as a handsome young financier working for the Bank of England in Central London, promoted to the Governer within 10 years, consequently having my signature printed on the sterling notes, then move house into No.9 Downing Street just before 40 years old, getting a salary that would afford me a semi palace in Kensington, where to socialise with celebrity and royalty for the rest of my life. I didn’t give up this plan for losing hope. I gave it up because I no longer desire it. However, the reason that I no longer desire it is that my material destitude has forced my attention to spiritual development, namely music and philosophy. I count myself as lucky. I’m impenitent. I now plan to rule the People’s Republic of China as a career destination, but to live my days out in the street like M Ghandi, have my office in a wood shack beside the river and feed the wondering cat daily. My salary will go straight to charity. However, I will demand to be provided with forest survival equiptments, a cave on the high mountain dug so that I won’t be eaten by wolves during night sleeps, and a Concert Grand Steinway placed on the patio, a marble Beethoven torso fixed on the piano. A full sized Nietzsche waxdoll to be stood on the mountain peak, over looking the cave, the forest, the abyss, the river and the lake.
I forgot a little detail. If my mother still lives then, fuck charity, all my salary will go to her.
Uniqor, very ultruistic. After you graduate tell us what your profession is. Are you planning on becoming a communist and totalitarian as most communist countries devolve into?
I won’t tell you my prediction as it will anger you.
Chinese communism is all but dead, in spirit and word. As the future president, I have no intention to revive the old system. I want a complete revaluation of Chinese belief and morality since 1949. Hisotry needs to be put right so that people can learn from mistakes. I want Mao’s portrait brought down from the gate, have Nietzsche as replacement. I want, naurally, a capitalist economy. The goal China faces in this century is to westernize with a critical concious. China needs people trained in the western economics tradition, people who know the cultural history of the entire western reportoire, people who see the whiteman’s head through and through. China needs to put right what America has done wrong. China needs to bring about the return of the glory of ancient civilization. China needs to take the best of the west, namely Nietzschean philosophy, to advance the world into phase 3. I can help it to achieve those goals, although not at the moment, I need a decade or more, I have just started afterall, its a simple vision at this stage. I will talk about it in detail when I am done with Smith and Marx, Bach and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Goethe, Plato and Nietzsche. I will need a revision of the whole Chinese counterside. Then a grand comparision will follow, the conclusion of which will serve as the intellectual base for my political ideaology for how and where should PRC go. What I can tell you now is no more than that I plan to read Masters at Cambridge and work in London’s financial market for a couple of years before, possibly, moving perminantly to Shanghai. This is very loosely planned, but do not count on an economics sudent to become a freelance internet poster in residence. It will not be a good life, thus much I know.