I'm feeling hypergraphic so I'll continue to beat this dead horse.
sd5 wrote:
As noways & magma say, there'll always be people who want more than others because that's their motivation.
The reality is that such people, when thwarted by what they see as too high a tax impost, move or attempt to cheat.
That's no reason to relieve them of their social responsibility to, at least partly, share the wealth.
Otherwise we are accepting that they are intrinsically entitled to privilege
whichever way they've acquired wealth,
including prostitution, arms peddling, exploitation of low-paid workers, inheritance, better opportunity etc.
Is that what you believe?
You're against the notion of someone being 'intrinsically entitled' to privilige, yet you feel like all of society is entitled to
more wealth because someone makes more?
This is how it works.
If you buy a can of coke, you're entitling them to a buck, and they're entitling you to a can of coke.
Except, it's not just you. A lot people entitle Coca-Cola to a buck and Coca-Cola entitles a lot of people to a can of coke.
So the contract has been met millions of times. There's no fineprint, there's no magic invisible scroll in the universe that entitles anyone to more (some magical "social contract" no one has ever signed). "Entitlement" is a subjective value that each person has a different perception on, so you can't decide that your view of 'entitelement' takes precedent over the others. So when someone buys a can of coke, both parties fulfilled their end of their contract (entitled each other, to what each party wants). Coca-Cola didn't force you give them a buck and you didn't force them to give you a can of coke. It's a voluntary agreement from two sides.
Now you come in and say
you are more financially successful than I am, and now I, along with a lot of other people (some who have used your product in the past, some who haven't, are intrinsically entitled to some of that wealth. Therefore, it is only right to get the government (and their guns), to rob you of that wealth and give it to other people.
This is why the west is morally reprehensible. Everyone feels entitled to everything because they see people who are better off, without giving second thoughts to people who aren't better off.
This forum is a great example. All this money "we" spend on vinyl, music gear, high-end monitors, expensive computers, iPods, iPads, smartphones, big screen TVs. You can alll be mad at the 1% for wasting cash on frivolous luxuries. But if you look at MAJORITY of the people in the world. So many don't have any clean water, no education at all, no parents, no food, no vaccination, no condoms, no steady unlimited stream of electricity...
If a lot of people here truly believed that the rich are too well off, spending money on things they don't need while most of people are piss poor, then take a close look in the mirror and sell some of your high end luxuries. Stop buying cigarretes and buy less music, sell your expensive TV and console and live by the bare neccesseties, so the leftover money can go to people who can finally enjoy school/food/clean drinking water.
Then you're in the position to poiint your fingers at the 1%, then you can demand from them more equality (and not through government, but perhaps through boycotting their products). Until then, you're exactly the fucking same. Isn't 97.5% of all wealth in the west anyway?
That's what people tend to forget. Healthcare, abortion, education, aren't rights. They're priviliges. We're so fucking SPOILED in the west that we take everything for granted.
You determine if something is a right by imagining a desert island scenario.
If there's two people on an island, and one wants something without taking it from the other (using violence), then they have a right to it. But if for example, a woman wants an abortion, and there's not a single doctor in the world who is willing to give it to her for whatever reason, then she does not have a right to an abortion. I think that school/healthcare/abortions/etc are priviliges that EVERYONE in the world should be able to enjoy if they so please. I do with all my heart, seriously. But to entitle the whole world to things, a lot of which that have only existed for a few hundred years, as an inherent right, just sounds so spoiled to me and it takes all these amazing things we in the west have access to for granted. People have so little respect for the fact that they have all this stuff (I repeat, CLEAN DRINKING WATER FOR CHRISTSAKES), never stopping to think how special that is. And then they want MORE, MORE! What? Those filthy rich people have more? GIVE IT TO ME.
This is why this 'greedy libertarians who only care about themselves' meme pisses me right off. Yes, there are libertarians out there who are like that and they're entitled to feel the way they feel. But nothing that I believe comes from an unwillingness to share my things with other people, or for from the belief that if people don't get healthcare then tough shit (because I feel an actual free market where the prices of healthcare are decided by consumers rather than an industry that lobbies for high wages or by big pharma, would be a better and fairer solution, as history has shown). It comes from an unwillingness of threatening society with guns to give me stuff out of some false sense of entitlement.
