(January 23, 2015 at 11:18 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: If you were honest, you would admit that the developed world's top .01% richest people have sufficent resources that if their fortunes were intelligently and carefully redistributed, it would be enough to change the situation of the 10% poorest people in the world for the better dramatically. THEN, you can talk about the ethics of it. Because if you're not honest enough to concede a fucking point, you're in no position to be taken seriously on ethical matters in the first place.
You can always make one person better off by giving them things belonging to another. But on the whole are you going to make the world better off? If all of Bill Gates assets were given to Joe Dirt, would the world be better off? Joe Dirt would be better off. Bill Gates would be worse off, and everyone else would probably be worse off too because it is unlikely that Joe Dirt is going to be a better manager of those assets than Bill Gates is.
Look, I am all for re-distributing money. You've heard me time and time again espouse a universal basic income. My point in this thread is to point out that the rich do not own most of the stuff that actually makes peoples lives better. In terms of stuff that people actually want to consume, rich people own very little of it. The bulk of that kind of stuff is in the hands of everyone else. Taking shares of Microsoft away from Bill Gates and giving them to Joe Dirt isn't going to make the world a better place.
