Here's the point that I was getting at: if the poorest people in a society have adequate wealth to take care of the basics, then why does it matter if there are a few billionaires or even trillionaires around, provided they aren't causing the poorer folk to remain poorer?
But that's the problem, most people on this planet do not have enough wealth to cover even basic living standards. The fact that billionaires even exist is a pretty f*cked up example of what's wrong with the world. The only way they could have accumulated so much wealth is by ripping off less fortunate people down the social pecking order.
thanks, I don't need to answer topic after this at all.
one question I have though: why are middle class "capitalists" always defending the right of millionairs and billionairs? are you realy all thinking you will be one of them (that's what I call the "hollywood suggestion")? you would ALSO benifite from a more equal distribution
Because it's immoral to steal from someone who has done no wrong, regardless of how much money he may have.
If he has done wrong, then that is the issue that should be addressed. Suggesting someone should be OK with theft just because they would profit more than others is a pretty disturbing form of pandering.
(And surely no one actually believes that every rich person only got rich through wrongdoing. Not only does a single counter-example disprove such a theory, but the idea smacks of collectivism, and is just as bad as "every poor person is only poor because of their own actions and inactions.")
I'm not saying that every rich person only got rich through wrongdoing,
That's good to hear (I've come across that idea many times.)
BUT it can't be denied, not by anyone, that they are rich (indirectly or directly, doesn't matter) because thare are billions of people who are paid $5 a month.
Ah, well, I guess I'll deny it.
This seems to be a common misconception, that the pie of wealth is fixed, and the best we can do is to cut that pie into pieces that are more fairly sized for people. Of course, were the analogy accurate, it would imply that for someone to receive more of the pie, someone else, somewhere, has to receive less.
The truth is that wealth,
when allowed to be created (that's critical) can lead to a larger pie. This means that it's possible for *everyone* to receive bigger pieces. And it's even possible for the smaller pieces to grow larger at a much faster rate than the larger pieces do. The technology industry, including Bitcoin, is IMO the most obvious example of this.
Wealth redistribution, on the other hand, creates incentives and situations that suppress the growth of the pie of wealth.
It makes more sense to (1) ensure that the playing field is fair and open, and (2) to allow wealth to be freely created and legitimate progress (social and technological) to occur unimpeded.
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to make the situation more clear for some minds which are kind of closed:
imagine, back in the days, humans lived in caves, hunting mammoths. They have a leader, some people are better at hunting than others, some are even to old to hunt or have no ability at all.
so they go out to hunt. the leader is making a good job, best hunters are making a good job too, even te worse hunters are helping.
so they got a mammoth, everybody happy.
if we look at animals, probably the leader cut his meat first, than the best hunters, and so on. people with no ability to hunt cut their peaces at last. nothing wrong with this.
now let's translate the situation to modern world: leader takes half of mammoth, much much more he can ever eat. best hunters take all the rest of the good meat. worse meat for the rest of the hunters; all hunters take more meat than they can ever eat.
the rest (more than half of the clan) gets fat and peaces which rested at the bones.
I see what you are saying, but I think the analogy is flawed. When talking about the poor, we aren't talking about invalids who cannot provide for themselves, even when given the means to. And if the hunters in this analogy all have some reasonable ability to hunt, then shouldn't the question of "How did this state of affairs come about?" be broached? Because again, if the system that maintains this state of affairs isn't addressed, any attempts to modify the outcome is going to be short-lived.
The disparity in the outcomes should be a clue that something deeper is going on; fix the deeper issue, and the outcomes will fix themselves. Attempting to focus on the outcome as the means to an end will leave the underlying problem alone, and will eventually undo all the work done to adjust the outcome to one's liking.
