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What you are ignoring is that some of these gifts actually help people by creating wealth, while others do not. Albert Einstein happened to be really smart, and

What you are ignoring is that some of these gifts actually help people by creating wealth, while others do not. Albert Einstein happened to be really smart, and this is a gift that he used to help society, by inventing the theories of special and general relativity. If we had taken away Einstein's intelligence, we would all be worse off for it. However, simply being handed a pile of money as an inheritance rarely helps anyone other than you. If the government had taken 90% of Alice Walton's fortune, who would be worse off? Alice? Not likely; even a billion dollars is more than you can practically spend during a lifetime. Most Americans? No, most Americans would be better off, because they would have to pay less income tax. Wal-Mart customers? Nope; Wal-Mart would almost certainly still be there, since there's no way in hell Sam Walton would have just given up just because his kids would only inherit one billion each instead of ten billion each. So who, exactly, would be worse off?

Dove 17y ago
Well, wealth can be used to create wealth, too, or even to help society directly. Some think that all of the wealthy are Donald Trump, but some are Gates and Buffet and Rockefeller and Carnegie. It does not seem to me that intelligence is always spent so wisely. There are investors like Stephen Hawking, philanthropists like Norman Borlaug, and then there are people like William J. Sidis. Wealth squandered or consumed is extremely visible, but I think many capable inventors and entepreneurs stay in grad school and go on to quiet careers--using their brilliance a nothing more than a ticket to a slightly easier life. The equivalent of quietly living off an inheritance. Your gifts belong to you. Spent or given back or squandered, they are yours to do with what you will. It is repugnant to me to claim that because The Gifted are not going to use their Wealth optimally for the Common Good, the State is entitled to seize it and spend it more Wisely. The idea stinks of jealousy and avarice; it is an excuse to take, not an appeal to justice. It does not matter how people use their gifts; the gifts are theirs. You can scale the idea right down to Christmas morning. All the same arguments still work, but the fundamental injustice is clearer. If I want to give my brother a bike, anyone could object that he did not work for it and does not deserve it. He will probably use it foolishly in childish revelry and break it in some ill-advised stunt. He only got it because he had the good fortune of being my brother; there are strangers I don't know who need and deserve a bike far more. Certainly he isn't going to create wealth with it, in fact, for all we know it's just going to collect dust in the garage. Surely the state is entitled to take it and give it to someone more deserving, and leave my brother a skateboard in its place? Ptui. My money is mine, and who I choose to give it to is my business. If I choose to enrich friends and family who I love, that is up to me--and is one of the main points of having money in the first place. You can criticize my choices or appeal to me for the common good or explain to me why it's okay for you to help yourself to what, in your opinion, I'm not using. It's all irrelevant. The point of ownership is that I still have the right and responsibility to use my gifts as I best see fit.

Dove 17y ago

Well, wealth can be used to create wealth, too, or even to help society directly. Some think that all of the wealthy are Donald Trump, but some are Gates and Buffet and Rockefeller and Carnegie. It does not seem to me that intelligence is always spent so wisely. There are investors like Stephen Hawking, philanthropists like Norman Borlaug, and then there are people like William J. Sidis. Wealth squandered or consumed is extremely visible, but I think many capable inventors and entepreneurs stay in grad school and go on to quiet careers--using their brilliance a nothing more than a ticket to a slightly easier life. The equivalent of quietly living off an inheritance. Your gifts belong to you. Spent or given back or squandered, they are yours to do with what you will. It is repugnant to me to claim that because The Gifted are not going to use their Wealth optimally for the Common Good, the State is entitled to seize it and spend it more Wisely. The idea stinks of jealousy and avarice; it is an excuse to take, not an appeal to justice. It does not matter how people use their gifts; the gifts are theirs. You can scale the idea right down to Christmas morning. All the same arguments still work, but the fundamental injustice is clearer. If I want to give my brother a bike, anyone could object that he did not work for it and does not deserve it. He will probably use it foolishly in childish revelry and break it in some ill-advised stunt. He only got it because he had the good fortune of being my brother; there are strangers I don't know who need and deserve a bike far more. Certainly he isn't going to create wealth with it, in fact, for all we know it's just going to collect dust in the garage. Surely the state is entitled to take it and give it to someone more deserving, and leave my brother a skateboard in its place? Ptui. My money is mine, and who I choose to give it to is my business. If I choose to enrich friends and family who I love, that is up to me--and is one of the main points of having money in the first place. You can criticize my choices or appeal to me for the common good or explain to me why it's okay for you to help yourself to what, in your opinion, I'm not using. It's all irrelevant. The point of ownership is that I still have the right and responsibility to use my gifts as I best see fit.