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You could take 99% of the wealth from the top 12 wealthiest people in the US, and they’d still have over a billion dollars each.
I mean it is true if you’re doing it as a one-time event. This is one of the main critiques against Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance.
Yep, Socialism is necessary.
True. It would need to implemented alongside economic reform.
Trickle-down was an experiment. It was proven to be a failure based on the current wealth inequality. Now we just simply need to redistribute and try something else.
Oh really, would like to learn more.
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. So to start you may want to read up on Rawls’ theory of Justice as Fairness and how he uses the original position thought experiment (imagining society from behind the veil of ignorance).
Robert Nozick wrote a critique of Rawls’ theory: that it was a “patterned but not historical” principle (that it gives no moral weight to who produces what) and that “liberty upsets patterns.” That is to say, if you start with an equal society where everyone has the same resources you can’t expect it stay that way if everyone is free to exchange those resources with each other. Just like in the game of Monopoly, you’ll see winners and losers after enough time has passed.
This is all to say that the big problem for Rawls is that his theory is a “time slice theory.” It is very strong at describing how a society can be made to be just at a single moment in time but it fails to account for how that state of affairs can be preserved long-term without restricting people’s liberty. One can argue that the game of Monopoly is just according to Rawls’ theory because everyone starts with identical resources at the beginning!
Wow. That’s super interesting. I’ll have to check out these links. Thank you very much for the detailed reply!
OK let’s start by redistributing wealth hoarded in churches, prioritized by a product of the number of hectares of land owned by the church and the volume of redistribution propaganda the church has promoted
Wasn’t that one is the big shit shows in France, that the church didn’t want to give up land? They were forced to eventually
There was a disestablishment during the Revolution that seized land from the Catholic church. Revolutionaries also socialized vital records and institutionalized divorce, which had all previously been under the church’s dominion.
Depends. If you mean simple Social Safety Nets or UBI, these are band-aids on a much larger problem, that problem being Capitalism itself. If you mean public ownership of Capital and democratic central planning, ie Socialism, that is necessary and does work.
The problem with only increasing social safety nets is that these nets are eroded over time if you maintain Capitalisy power, and there is still the necessary rise in disparity that comes with late stage Capitalism as markets coalesce into syndicates ripe for central planning (which Marx took as meaning Socialism is the next phase in development of Mode of Production, as Capitalism creates the ideal conditions for Socialism over time).
I keep a “Read Theory, Darn It!” introductory Marxist reading list if anyone wants to read more, or feel free to ask questions.
Well it doesn’t. Because the people distributing and in charge will always get more. See that’s my issue with communist having grown up around communist regimes. It works great on paper but ignore the fact that humans are greedy and selfish and once they’re in power, will abuse it.
Things weren’t so equal in places like Cuba when the Communists took over. Everyone gets the same, except me cause I’m in charge, and my family, and my friends… It just devolves into human greed.
I prefer the old Roman model where the rich were expected to provide free services to the poor, and if they didn’t do their duty, the government just killed them and distributed their money.
History did. Nobody likes to hear that the only real way to improve their situation is through their own effort, regardless of whether you invest your effort in earning more money or by rejecting the rat race and growing in other ways.
Where in history did this actually happen? I’m not talking about people saying they did, or a communist revolutions where the wealth just shifted hands, when did the wealth get redistributed evenly in history?
Edit: I sort of misunderstood your comment in it’s context. Anything more successful than China’s Land Reform movement?
That’s the point.
I’m going to need you to clarify your first comment, because I have no idea what you are talking about or what your point might be. I thought I understood, but this follow up is baffling.
Yea, I don’t get it. Is his point that it’s impossible? Because saying it doesn’t work when it’s never happened leaves you asking “how do you know then?”
The point is that no matter what sort of social structure you invent, you’re going to need some sort of authority to determine who gets what if you want to redistribute people’s things. That authority position will be greatly coveted by those who desire to use it to monopolize whatever wealth your society possesses.
Right - but a well educated, fully engaged population in a democratic state can keep those types of people in check.
This is a difficult and ongoing battle with those that want to seize that power and wealth and it takes sacrifice and time to do.
well educated, fully engaged population
…is something you aren’t going to have when exceeding the average is “rewarded” by have any gains you may have made redistributed to underachievers.
I think your definition of redistribution and mine are not the same.
If I’m reading this right you are saying that any “reward” someone gets for over achieving will be punished and that person has to transfer a certain percentage of their bonus to an underachiever. That is to say that the redistribution is a direct hand out of your reward in the form of cash to some underachiever?
My definition of redistribution is that if you live in a society that values the education of its citizens, then the redistribution (ie taxes) is pooled and then spent in a way can help people out of difficult situations so that they can pursue an education and a career that will improve their lives and in a bigger sense improve the economic life of the country.
I see taxes as patriotic that if you truly believe in your country (that is the people that make up the country) you are willing to make a small sacrifice to help others become better citizens.
You’ve taken pull yourself up by your bootstraps a step further by eating your boots.
Nobody likes to hear that the only real way to improve their situation is through their own effort
Because people don’t like being lied to.
You should read “Utopia for Realists”. It gave countless examples in history where providing unconditional basic income works. Even as we speak, other countries in the past decades did trial on universal basic income and it worked. In one experiment, twelve homeless folks were given regular unconditional cash grants. Except for one, all cleaned themselves up and are renting an accommodation.
UBI works unquestionably. But how has it not been implemented yet? Aside from the “fuck you, got mine” attitude, as well as I hypothesise that in evolutionary psychology, because energy upkeep is high-demanding, it makes us think not contributing to a group in any capacity is being a dead weight, UBI is still not implemented because many say that property owners will abuse unconditional income by raising rent prices. Instead, many propose universal basic utilities, meaning everyone would get free housing and utilities, but still working to get their own food presumably.
But I do not know about the arguments on UBI and basic utilities because of the emerging and inevitable usurpation of humans by AI on the labour market. The current thinking on both UBI and basic utilities is making presumptions of operating under the current free market framework-- that everyone will still be working in some ways and contributing to society. Sooner or later, with the coming of AI, the current mindset about working as a default behaviour is becoming obsolete and being relegated, in my opinion, as a relic of evolutionary psychology.
Or by making the effort to unionize your workplace!
