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As long as wealth is earned without coercion by providing goods and services to others, why should you care if someone is using their wealth to "feel superior"?
by dpatru 16y ago
As long as wealth is earned without coercion by providing goods and services to others, why should you care if someone is using their wealth to "feel superior"? What moral justification is there to take away (through taxes or otherwise) the wealth of someone who has earned it through voluntary exchange? If you choose to work harder than me in providing things of value to others and you grow richer than me as a result, why should I (or a democratic government) then have a claim on your wealth?
- stretchwithme 16y agoabsolutely. you have the right to the work of your own hands and mind. Your rights don't evaporate just because of a show of hands.
- bertil 16y agoI'm pretty sure no one has argued against the right for anyone to work for two centuries. (There were laws against that before.) What is discussed is what kind of property rules make society better, just like for copyright: absolutes don't work so well. Even if a man should be able to “do what he pleases” with his money, he can't buy nuclear warheads, or his last competitors. In some context, letting one person owns too much can be damaging; whether its his responsibility to do good, or society's role to enforce better ownership should depend on the cultural context and innovation. The economists who lead the study of how those interact won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008. Liberal property rights like what you advocate works best in extensive context like the original rural USA; within cities, evergetic rules seem preferable; when there are decisive, irreplaceable common goods like irrigation or seaport, more inclusive system, that let a community influence individual decisions are preferable. You need to make sense of the context that gave you the values that you care about, otherwise you end up either defending inappropriate non-sense, and forcing it onto others (case in point: Acta) or, lost (like all my fellow countrymen who wonder why our national anthem is so hateful).
- bertil 16y agoMost people who are richer became so because they employed others. They wealth did not just come from their talent, but the quality of the education that the government helped these workers obtain, the fact that they could arrive safety to work; they wouldn't be so rich if no fire brigade stopped the stocks from burning to the ground — that's the reason why wealthier people should be more taxed. My initial answer was about resentment, not tax rates. You strike me as a libertarian: Everyone is free of their opinion, so who are you criticizing them for being jealous? ;) No, seriously: some people, often not those who made their fortune by being nice to their clients, but their self-entitled heir, behave like pricks. I see it all the time when I go to fancy restaurants, and it actually bothers me. From anecdotal declaration from wealthy individuals, I'm assuming the original entrepreneur would prefer that their children behave, because they know the importance of being nice, but until recently, social rules have prevent them from disenfranchising them. Before Warren Buffet set an acceptable voluntary roof for inheritance, forcing heirs to behave was a social conundrum, resolved by guilt.