> Thanks to legalized corruption ( lobbying ) the rich are able to twist laws and regulations more and more to their advantage. What you are describing is regu

> Thanks to legalized corruption ( lobbying ) the rich are able to twist laws and regulations more and more to their advantage. What you are describing is regulatory capture, and you don't have to be against wealth inequality in order to be against this. This is common ground between traditional conservatism and traditional liberalism. > ...who is talking about absolute equality here? The principled/moral argument goes something like this: - Wealth inequality is a symptom of an unjust system. - We see wealth inequality. - Therefore, we *must* have an unjust system which created it. - Therefore, we should *correct for injustice in the system* by creating laws X, Y, Z to bring about greater equality. ) Instead, you seem to be arguing that: - Wealth inequality is undesirable for some unstated reason. - We see wealth inequality. - We would like to reduce wealth inequality for some unstated reason. - Therefore, we should implement some laws Q, R, and S to reduce wealth inequality (presumably to one of your "shades between black and white"). The first argument is a moral argument. It says "wealth inequality is bad." When confronted with the fact that no two people start out in the same place in this life, it can fall back to "So? that doesn't mean they should be stuck with where they started, because wealth inequality is bad!" When confronted with the fact that freedom means people with different values being allowed to make choices with different outcomes, it can argue against that freedom, because it considers Wealth Equality to be a virtue. The second argument is an argument of degrees. To what degree is wealth inequality acceptable, and at what degree does it become unacceptable? That's not a moral argument. It's lost its fallback position of morality. The person making the argument has already agreed with the principle that in some cases, under some circumstances, wealth inequality is acceptable. Now we're just arguing about where the line should be. Reasonable people can disagree about where the line should be in an argument of degrees, but neither person can claim a moral high ground in such an argument, because they aren't disagreeing in principle. You should either strengthen your position by making the moral argument, or agree with the GP who said that forcing absolute equality on everyone is a moral hazard. Where you seem to be at the moment isn't a very defensible stance to take.