Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Ecurb]

It is not arbitrary. The criterion is not whether a government program is or is not "to our liking," but whether or not we benefit from it, which is (for the most part) a question with an objective answer. You can morally be forced to pay for benefits you receive, but not for government services (or any other services offered by anyone) from which you receive no benefits.

There is a tacit assumption lurking in many of the comments in this thread that governments occupy some sort of higher moral plane than mere individuals, and are exempt from moral constraints that bind individuals. That is the ghost of the "divine right of kings," debunked centuries ago by Locke.

Governments are constituted of individuals, acting at the behest and as the agent of other individuals. They possess no moral authority not possessed by the individuals who create and constitute them, and are not exempt from any moral constraints upon those individuals. If my neighbor may not force me at gunpoint to build him a house or contribute to his favorite charity, neither may any government he elects do so. Agents have no powers not possessed by their principals.

Of course we all want the government to benefit us. The question is: what government services DO benefit us? Public education? If public education (even if we don't personally use it) produces a more civil, economically viable society, don't we all benefit? Health care? If public health care results in better health care for everyone at a fraction the cost (as it seems to, based on comparing the U.S. system to those of other nations), don't we all benefit? Welfare and social security? Perhaps they cut down on crime and make life more pleasant for everyone. Wars? Hmmm. Maybe not.

Also, based on Morton's reasoning above, if my neighbor can't force my children to go to school, can't make me pay a fine for exceeding the speed limit, can't force me to serve in the army (in the past), and can't enslave me for selling illegal drugs, then neither can the government. OK. We get it, GE. You don't think the government should do anything but protect property rights (which, for some bizarre reason, you see as sacrosanct). Fortunately, the vast majority thinks otherwise, and controls what the government can and cannot do.

The "divine right of kings" is not so different from "the divine right of the first discoverer" advocated by Morton.

[GE Morton]

Indeed the land I own was made by me, as if I had not myself worked to make an environment for the creatures that live on my land, it would not be the same land at all.
Before I owned the land, it was owned by a man who grew vegetables, and before him it was owned by a farmer who grew barley on it. It is many many centuries since my land was a wilderness.

We are taking at cross-purposes here. The making of land started with a cosmic process, followed by local planetary geology, followed again by millions (billions?) of years of colonisation by life of all shapes and sizes. We do not make land; we live on it.

You're mis-interpreting what Belindi said. No, no one makes land ex nihilo, but they do indeed make it what it is, i.e., what plants and animals it hosts and can support and what role it serves in the economy and the ecosystem.

[chewybrian]

There cannot be interpersonal justice when you start with a de facto caste system and the deck is stacked. The Ayn Rand types want to glorify the effort that creates wealth, as if there was no advantage to the wealthy before they invested their money.

The fact that the wealthy man does not overtly take further advantage of the poor man does not mean the situation is just. He can hire him in an "arms length" transaction. The poor man 'earns' a dime while the rich man 'earns' a dollar. But was there any doubt who would end up being the employee and who would be the employer? Did they have anything close to an equal chance to earn according to their actual ability and effort? The spoils of many unjust acts were already in the pocket of the wealthy man before he decided to invest and offer the privilege of a job to the man who began with nothing.

That hoary argument has been refuted so many times I'd think anyone would be embarrassed to advance it.

EVERY wealthy man's fortune began from nothing. Every one of those fortunes began with some individual(s) applying their efforts and talents to raw materials available for the taking by everyone in the vicinity alive at the time, or seizing opportunities available to everyone alive at the time. As one example, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and currently the richest man in the world, was the son of a 19 year-old father and 17 year-old mother still in high school, who took baby Jeff with her to her classes. His father was the grandson of immigrants and the owner of a bike shop; when Jeff was 4 years old his parents divorced and his mother married Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who arrived in the US as a teen with nothing but his own talents and ambition, who worked his way through college, adopted Jeff and gave him his surname. While in high school himself Jeff worked as a cook at MacDonald's. Jeff Bezos launched Amazon with a $245,000 loan from his parents; the company is now worth $1 trillion.

Of course, not every great fortune was acquired in one generation. More typically they begin with a grandparent who starts with nothing but becomes successful enough to give his children a head start, with a good education and an example to follow. One or more of them then apply their own talents, to the family business or to some interest of their own, and create even more wealth, and in a few cases, enormous fortunes. Bill Gates' father was a successful attorney, who could afford to send his kid to Harvard. But few of the thousands of sons and daughters of successful attorneys become multi-billionaires.

No, not every kid has an equal chance at success --- because their parents did not provide them with that chance. No one else has any obligation to do so, and few will have little interest in doing so. Their interests and responsibilities lie with their own kids.

There is no "caste system" (i.e., legally or culturally defined boxes, each with its own prerogatives and privileges, into which people are assigned at birth and confined for life). There is only the bell curve, which which governs the distribution of virtually all traits in living organisms, including, for humans, talents, strengths, drives, and ambition --- traits that parents tend to pass on to their kids, along with the fruits thereof.

There is nothing morally wrong with that.

What a load of Rush Limbaugh rhetoric! Many great existing fortunes began with a theft, with enslaving people or taking ridiculous advantage of them. You can pick as many cherries as you want, but lots of today's wealth grew from slave ownership, exploiting coolie labor, benefits accrued from discrimination, from denying unfavored groups the right to vote or run for office. The list is too long to go through, but anyone with open eyes can see that these things happened. We can see further that people alive right now are enjoying the fruits of these injustices while others are suffering the lingering effects of them. I would be ashamed to NOT acknowledge this.

I said there is a de facto (existing in fact, although perhaps not intended, legal, or accepted) caste system. The rich man can invest his wealth and live on the profits without breaking a sweat or even paying taxes, while the poor man has neither chance, and rarely gets enough to break the cycle in his own lifetime, no matter how hard he works.

[Ecurb]

That hoary argument has been refuted so many times I'd think anyone would be embarrassed to advance it.

EVERY wealthy man's fortune began from nothing. Every one of those fortunes began with some individual(s) applying their efforts and talents to raw materials available for the taking by everyone in the vicinity alive at the time, or seizing opportunities available to everyone alive at the time. As one example, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and currently the richest man in the world, was the son of a 19 year-old father and 17 year-old mother still in high school, who took baby Jeff with her to her classes. His father was the grandson of immigrants and the owner of a bike shop; when Jeff was 4 years old his parents divorced and his mother married Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who arrived in the US as a teen with nothing but his own talents and ambition, who worked his way through college, adopted Jeff and gave him his surname. While in high school himself Jeff worked as a cook at MacDonald's. Jeff Bezos launched Amazon with a $245,000 loan from his parents; the company is now worth $1 trillion.

Of course, not every great fortune was acquired in one generation. More typically they begin with a grandparent who starts with nothing but becomes successful enough to give his children a head start, with a good education and an example to follow. One or more of them then apply their own talents, to the family business or to some interest of their own, and create even more wealth, and in a few cases, enormous fortunes. Bill Gates' father was a successful attorney, who could afford to send his kid to Harvard. But few of the thousands of sons and daughters of successful attorneys become multi-billionaires.

No, not every kid has an equal chance at success --- because their parents did not provide them with that chance. No one else has any obligation to do so, and few will have little interest in doing so. Their interests and responsibilities lie with their own kids.

There is no "caste system" (i.e., legally or culturally defined boxes, each with its own prerogatives and privileges, into which people are assigned at birth and confined for life). There is only the bell curve, which which governs the distribution of virtually all traits in living organisms, including, for humans, talents, strengths, drives, and ambition --- traits that parents tend to pass on to their kids, along with the fruits thereof.

There is nothing morally wrong with that.

I'll grant that there's nothing wrong with being rich. Especially not if you pay your fair share of taxes. However, it's irrelevant whether the rich somehow "deserve" their wealth through either merit or hard work. Who cares? Why should hard work and intelligence merit wealth any more than winning the lottery? The protestant ethic of wealth being a "just desert" ignores Ecclesiastes:

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

Why should anyone care whether rich people worked hard, or are talented, or merely invested in Bitcoin? Why (indeed) do people care about the disparity of wealth? The two silly notions are related: people care about the disparity of wealth because they associate wealth with merit, and they don't want to think other people are more meritricious than they. Let's face it: most of us are rich beyond the dreams of most of our ancestors. We have cars and computers and plenty to eat. We have health care and houses (except for the homeless). What SHOULD concern anyone of a humanitarian bent is to make sure that the poor are fed and housed -- why should anyone care whether the rich are richer than we are? (I'll grant that the rich should help pay for the safety net, because they have the money to do so.)

p.s. Jeff Bezos is a jerk. I don't begrudge him his money, but I still think he's a jerk.

[Sy Borg]

I would never advocate kicking people who are down, full stop. It makes no sense to punish a person for having an awful life if they are just minding their own business and not harming anyone.

It's like the question about whether one would strangle a child to cure cancer. Again, I would not. No matter the circumstances, most people I know would not kick a person who is down on their luck, just as they would not strangle a child (aside from Homer Simpson). It's simply not negotiable and, to a fair extent, basic instinct that can be rationalised after the fact.

The question then becomes what will happen to the poorest in society within the authoritarian states that our democracies are soon to become. Further, as the world overpopulates ever more, we can expect that quality homeless programs, such as in Finland, will not be feasible for the needy multitudes of many nations. The scale is too great.

I see no answer for this other than simply dealing with the consequences, as is the case with overpopulation itself and other wicked problems like climate change, ecosystem breakdown, rapidly growing inequality and loss of public intellect. As with the homelessness issue, there is much hand-wringing but no possible answer because inequality is at least as systemic as it is episodic.

Interventions that prevent people from falling into disaster make sense on the surface - "a stitch in time saves nine". However, the politics of the situation - especially the loudest media voices - make such policy difficult to sell to a working public seeking to pay lower taxes right now and who don't much care to pay for future benefits to society.

[mystery]

I would never advocate kicking people who are down, full stop. It makes no sense to punish a person for having an awful life if they are just minding their own business and not harming anyone.

It's like the question about whether one would strangle a child to cure cancer. Again, I would not. No matter the circumstances, most people I know would not kick a person who is down on their luck, just as they would not strangle a child (aside from Homer Simpson). It's simply not negotiable and, to a fair extent, basic instinct that can be rationalised after the fact.

The question then becomes what will happen to the poorest in society within the authoritarian states that our democracies are soon to become. Further, as the world overpopulates ever more, we can expect that quality homeless programs, such as in Finland, will not be feasible for the needy multitudes of many nations. The scale is too great.

I see no answer for this other than simply dealing with the consequences, as is the case with overpopulation itself and other wicked problems like climate change, ecosystem breakdown, rapidly growing inequality and loss of public intellect. As with the homelessness issue, there is much hand-wringing but no possible answer because inequality is at least as systemic as it is episodic.

Interventions that prevent people from falling into disaster make sense on the surface - "a stitch in time saves nine". However, the politics of the situation - especially the loudest media voices - make such policy difficult to sell to a working public seeking to pay lower taxes right now and who don't much care to pay for future benefits to society.

All true.

The secret sauce is to make it attractive to be generous. The same day that women decide to be more attracted to a man that is generous vs greedy is the same day all of the social issues around wealth will be solved. Women have the power to fix the world, by simply wishing it to be instead of wishing for more power and driving men to get it. Men will create the world that women praise them for. When helping orphans and the homeless becomes a higher value in mate selection than signs of greed such as financial success and physical beauty those issues will be almost instantly solved.

[GE Morton]

This is the problem when you treat something like ''Natural Rights'' as if it is an ''objective'' foundation which can't be questioned in any circumstance, no matter the consequences. Firstly, it's not objective it's just something somebody made up, like any other right, and secondly if it causes unnecessary harms in some circs you have no failsafe.

Now you might take the position, as some Libertarians do, that individual freedom is the correct moral foundation which all Oughts must flow from. In which case, you're arguing for a moral foundation which takes no account of harms to others. Or if you start caveating your moral foundation of individual freedom to take account of harm to others, then its not really your foundation.

The advantage of a foundation like ''The wellbeing of conscious creatures'' is it not only gives you a basis for considering what Rights are appropriate, it allows you to check that in practice any particular Right is meeting your overall foundational moral goal. If it isn't, then you can re-think, because the Right isn't an end in itself, your foundation is.

If by "some libertarians" you mean me, I'm mystified, Gertie, as to why you would claim, despite the extended exchanges we've had, that rights are the "foundation" of morality, or that "individual freedom" is, when I've given that foundation many times, and neither of those is it.

That "foundation," as you call it, is the axiom, "Develop principles and devise rules governing interactions between moral agents in a social setting which allow all agents to maximize their welfare." I take that to be the underlying aim of most moral theories and systems over the centuries, and also to be equivalent to your "[promote] the well-being of conscious creatures" maxim (though there may be disagreement as to the extent to which moral agents and conscious creatures overlap).

Rights, as classically understood, are not the "foundation" of a rational morality. They are a means of implementing it. Saying someone has a "right" to something merely means that he acquired that thing without inflicting loss or injury on another person, which would violate that axiom. I.e., he acquired it righteously. The first possession principle is accepted as the determinant of rights because it is empirically verifiable and because first possessors per force will have inflicted no loss or injury on other moral agents in acquiring the thing to which they claim a right.

Freedom, too, is an implementing condition for the axiom, not the "foundation" of morality. Persons can maximize their welfare only to the extent they are free to act. It is also entailed by a second postulate, the postulate of Equal Agency, which asserts that all moral agents have equal status in the eyes of the theory. Equality entails liberty, because any restriction upon the liberties of one agent by another, as long as the former is not himself violating the axiom, immediately establishes a master/slave relationship between the two, wherein the former asserts or exerts dominion over the latter.

And if your foundation is the welfare of conscious creatures, you can acknowledge that individuals can have somtimes contradictory notions of flourishing which means some rights to individual freedoms is appropriate, while also acknowledging that basic welfare needs are also necessary to flourish, and rights are appropriate there too. It's a negotiation and compromise which won't achieve perfection for each individual, because we're all different, but it gives you a rule of thumb to guide you.

What constitutes welfare, "basic needs," or "flourishing" is subjective and idiosyncratic. Per my theory "welfare" is defined simply as, "the extent to which an agent is able to pursue his interests and satisfy his desires." I agree, of course, that for most people, adequate food, shelter, good health, etc., will be prerequisites for pursuing their interests and satisfying their desires. But for many, if not most, people, enabling (most) others to pursue their interests and satisfy their desires is not a desire or interest high on their own priority lists, and forcing them to surrender a portion of their time, talents, and efforts to that cause is a prima facie violation of the Equal Agency postulate and hampers their ability to maximize their own welfare, in violation of the axiom. To justify it you will need some additional principle that does not contradict the first two, or a different foundation entirely.

[GE Morton]

What a load of Rush Limbaugh rhetoric! Many great existing fortunes began with a theft, with enslaving people or taking ridiculous advantage of them. You can pick as many cherries as you want, but lots of today's wealth grew from slave ownership, exploiting coolie labor, benefits accrued from discrimination, from denying unfavored groups the right to vote or run for office.

That is preposterous Howard Zinn bee-ess. Here is a link to the Forbes "400 Richest Americans" list. Please go through that list (I've done so for the first 20), identify those whose fortunes arose from "theft or enslaving people." (I disregard "taking ridiculous advantage of them," because that is a meaningless charge, mere demagoguery). Then produce the evidence supporting your claim for those persons.

https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/

I said there is a de facto (existing in fact, although perhaps not intended, legal, or accepted) caste system. The rich man can invest his wealth and live on the profits without breaking a sweat or even paying taxes, while the poor man has neither chance, and rarely gets enough to break the cycle in his own lifetime, no matter how hard he works.

The fact that some people are rich and others poor does not demonstrate or constitute a caste system. You're again trying to re-define a common word to better fit your incoherent ideology.

As I said before, EVERY fortune began with someone who had little or nothing. There can be no thefts until there is something to steal, and nothing to steal until something is produced.

[Sy Borg]

I would never advocate kicking people who are down, full stop. It makes no sense to punish a person for having an awful life if they are just minding their own business and not harming anyone.

It's like the question about whether one would strangle a child to cure cancer. Again, I would not. No matter the circumstances, most people I know would not kick a person who is down on their luck, just as they would not strangle a child (aside from Homer Simpson). It's simply not negotiable and, to a fair extent, basic instinct that can be rationalised after the fact.

The question then becomes what will happen to the poorest in society within the authoritarian states that our democracies are soon to become. Further, as the world overpopulates ever more, we can expect that quality homeless programs, such as in Finland, will not be feasible for the needy multitudes of many nations. The scale is too great.

I see no answer for this other than simply dealing with the consequences, as is the case with overpopulation itself and other wicked problems like climate change, ecosystem breakdown, rapidly growing inequality and loss of public intellect. As with the homelessness issue, there is much hand-wringing but no possible answer because inequality is at least as systemic as it is episodic.

Interventions that prevent people from falling into disaster make sense on the surface - "a stitch in time saves nine". However, the politics of the situation - especially the loudest media voices - make such policy difficult to sell to a working public seeking to pay lower taxes right now and who don't much care to pay for future benefits to society.

All true.

The secret sauce is to make it attractive to be generous. The same day that women decide to be more attracted to a man that is generous vs greedy is the same day all of the social issues around wealth will be solved. Women have the power to fix the world, by simply wishing it to be instead of wishing for more power and driving men to get it. Men will create the world that women praise them for. When helping orphans and the homeless becomes a higher value in mate selection than signs of greed such as financial success and physical beauty those issues will be almost instantly solved.

I think societies attempted to make generosity attractive for a long time. Then the 80s arrived and greed became good, so to speak.

It's as much up to men to care about the consequences of their actions as it is to women. Your thinking appears to have been influenced by your participation on the misogyny thread. I have often does this myself, where another thread is strong in my mind when answering another. I then add 2 and 2 and effectively arrive at 22 because the links that seemed so obvious at the time, were actually weak and amplified in my mind by prior focus.

Besides, the fact is that hard-nosed, ruthless, materialistic men attract hard-nosed, ruthless, materialistic women, hence the hardball divorce settlements in elite circles.

How to make generosity to appear noble again? I have no idea. At present, generosity tends to be seen as facile, hypocritical and stupid, just encouraging parasites to avoid work.

Again, I think that the culture wars that have lead to a retreat from altruism stem from the competition and inherent tendency towards divisiveness in very large populations, along with a growing awareness of inequality. More people are becoming aware that that they their interests are being harmed by governments and major media outlets. Governments no longer represent the people, rather they favour corporations, especially those in the banking, fossil fuel, security, armaments, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, meat, finance and insurance sectors.

[mystery]

I would never advocate kicking people who are down, full stop. It makes no sense to punish a person for having an awful life if they are just minding their own business and not harming anyone.

It's like the question about whether one would strangle a child to cure cancer. Again, I would not. No matter the circumstances, most people I know would not kick a person who is down on their luck, just as they would not strangle a child (aside from Homer Simpson). It's simply not negotiable and, to a fair extent, basic instinct that can be rationalised after the fact.

The question then becomes what will happen to the poorest in society within the authoritarian states that our democracies are soon to become. Further, as the world overpopulates ever more, we can expect that quality homeless programs, such as in Finland, will not be feasible for the needy multitudes of many nations. The scale is too great.

I see no answer for this other than simply dealing with the consequences, as is the case with overpopulation itself and other wicked problems like climate change, ecosystem breakdown, rapidly growing inequality and loss of public intellect. As with the homelessness issue, there is much hand-wringing but no possible answer because inequality is at least as systemic as it is episodic.

Interventions that prevent people from falling into disaster make sense on the surface - "a stitch in time saves nine". However, the politics of the situation - especially the loudest media voices - make such policy difficult to sell to a working public seeking to pay lower taxes right now and who don't much care to pay for future benefits to society.

All true.

The secret sauce is to make it attractive to be generous. The same day that women decide to be more attracted to a man that is generous vs greedy is the same day all of the social issues around wealth will be solved. Women have the power to fix the world, by simply wishing it to be instead of wishing for more power and driving men to get it. Men will create the world that women praise them for. When helping orphans and the homeless becomes a higher value in mate selection than signs of greed such as financial success and physical beauty those issues will be almost instantly solved.

I think societies attempted to make generosity attractive for a long time. Then the 80s arrived and greed became good, so to speak.

It's as much up to men to care about the consequences of their actions as it is to women. Your thinking appears to have been influenced by your participation on the misogyny thread. I have often does this myself, where another thread is strong in my mind when answering another. I then add 2 and 2 and effectively arrive at 22 because the links that seemed so obvious at the time, were actually weak and amplified in my mind by prior focus.

Besides, the fact is that hard-nosed, ruthless, materialistic men attract hard-nosed, ruthless, materialistic women, hence the hardball divorce settlements in elite circles.

How to make generosity to appear noble again? I have no idea. At present, generosity tends to be seen as facile, hypocritical and stupid, just encouraging parasites to avoid work.

Again, I think that the culture wars that have lead to a retreat from altruism stem from the competition and inherent tendency towards divisiveness in very large populations, along with a growing awareness of inequality. More people are becoming aware that that they their interests are being harmed by governments and major media outlets. Governments no longer represent the people, rather they favour corporations, especially those in the banking, fossil fuel, security, armaments, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, meat, finance and insurance sectors.

yes, it's not that thread that affects me. I contribute to that one because all appear very clear on the topic. many or most ppl are slaves to the feelings they have and never advance to be able to allow thought and logic to cut through the emotions. I tell it like I see it instead of filter by what sounds good or I know would be approved.

Media as we know it is a huge part of what we have become. Watch CNN all day a few years ago and then try to like a person that is following Muslim faith. It was criminal what they did to the culture. Fox, wow what a sideshow. But look at the personal life of Murdoch, look at photos of him and his past women.. Wendy.. come on... A man chasing the approval of women. There is a reason for the saying of behind every great man is a great woman. Because it is biologically true in almost all cases. Can be rich and powerful and not be "GREAT".

Homelessness would disappear completely if women favored men that solved that problem vs favor men that build them a bigger home. Men are simple creatures that can be managed.

Any man that gives his wealth to the poor will be shunned by women looking for a mate. This is the root/root cause of even the issue of homeless. For we have plenty to provided adequate homes for all at least at this time. However, the evolution process will vote against us if we do that. I will likely bring some version of this into many topics as it is the number one issue facing humanity as a whole. That is, "we do not want what we want", and it is for sure a philosophical problem worthy of thought by smart ppl.

[LuckyR]

It seems to me that the use of "forced" is arbitrary. All of us find some of public spending to our liking and we all disagree with other expenditures. We resent the latter and our being "forced" to pay for them while we gladly pay taxes that provide the services we agree with, regardless of what they happen to be.

It is not arbitrary. The criterion is not whether a government program is or is not "to our liking," but whether or not we benefit from it, which is (for the most part) a question with an objective answer. You can morally be forced to pay for benefits you receive, but not for government services (or any other services offered by anyone) from which you receive no benefits.

There is a tacit assumption lurking in many of the comments in this thread that governments occupy some sort of higher moral plane than mere individuals, and are exempt from moral constraints that bind individuals. That is the ghost of the "divine right of kings," debunked centuries ago by Locke.

Governments are constituted of individuals, acting at the behest and as the agent of other individuals. They possess no moral authority not possessed by the individuals who create and constitute them, and are not exempt from any moral constraints upon those individuals. If my neighbor may not force me at gunpoint to build him a house or contribute to his favorite charity, neither may any government he elects do so. Agents have no powers not possessed by their principals.

Ah yes, receiving benefits. We all, presumably, are familiar with how insurance works. We are all forced to carry car insurance, but only a few will receive a monetary benefit (from a claim). This brings up the concept of what one purchases with insurance. It isn't the benefit, it is the coverage (whether you make a claim or not).

Thus if you or I pay taxes that goes towards welfare, but we don't ever need welfare, we still receive the coverage regardless of whether we happen to need it. We have the fire department available to save our home whether we actually have a fire or not.

Additionally, commenting on various issues on moral grounds is an extremely low bar, since moral codes are individual and subjective. Thus whether an issue is moral is essentially an opinion.

[chewybrian]

What a load of Rush Limbaugh rhetoric! Many great existing fortunes began with a theft, with enslaving people or taking ridiculous advantage of them. You can pick as many cherries as you want, but lots of today's wealth grew from slave ownership, exploiting coolie labor, benefits accrued from discrimination, from denying unfavored groups the right to vote or run for office.

That is preposterous Howard Zinn bee-ess. Here is a link to the Forbes "400 Richest Americans" list. Please go through that list (I've done so for the first 20), identify those whose fortunes arose from "theft or enslaving people." (I disregard "taking ridiculous advantage of them," because that is a meaningless charge, mere demagoguery). Then produce the evidence supporting your claim for those persons.

There are three Waltons of the Walmart clan on that list. I've already shown how they are stealing from all of us right now:

https://www.jwj.org/walmarts-food-stamp ... easy-chart



Warren Buffet is on the list, and he owns $2 billion worth of JP Morgan stock. JP Morgan profited from the slave trade, along with many other major corporations still in existence who were never asked to return such profits:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/every-st ... p_catchall

https://africanamericangolfersdigest.co ... m-slavery/

JPMorgan Chase recently admitted their company’s links to slavery. “Today, we are reporting that this research found that, between 1831 and 1865, two of our predecessor banks—Citizens Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana—accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved individuals as collateral on loans and took ownership of approximately 1,250 of them when the plantation owners defaulted on the loans,” the company wrote in a statement.

This is easier than the Kevin Bacon game. I doubt you could find any wealthy person who could not easily be tied to profits from slavery or discrimination. Why would you think that was even a point of debate? The only debate is what, if anything, we should do about it.

[chewybrian]

Ah yes, receiving benefits. We all, presumably, are familiar with how insurance works. We are all forced to carry car insurance, but only a few will receive a monetary benefit (from a claim). This brings up the concept of what one purchases with insurance. It isn't the benefit, it is the coverage (whether you make a claim or not).

My grandfather used the same auto insurance company for more than 50 years, and never had a claim. He said he still got what he paid for and did not resent paying the premiums. All along, they gave him a 1% discount for each year without an accident. After 50 years, they sent him a letter telling him he could not get more than a 50% discount, despite all the profit they had made from his payments for half a century.

Thus if you or I pay taxes that goes towards welfare, but we don't ever need welfare, we still receive the coverage regardless of whether we happen to need it. We have the fire department available to save our home whether we actually have a fire or not.

That is the basis of my claim that we should do something about peoples' homelessness, as it could be us the next time around. We could lose our jobs, get sick, get hurt, or develop a mental illness. It won't move the needle for Morton, though.

Additionally, commenting on various issues on moral grounds is an extremely low bar, since moral codes are individual and subjective. Thus whether an issue is moral is essentially an opinion.

Isn't this one of the great yet unsolved mysteries of philosophy? Haven't great philosophers fallen into this trap over and over? They knock down some other attempt at setting down an objective foundation for morality. They claim there is no objective basis for morality. Then they attempt to lay down just such a foundation.

[Pattern-chaser]

Indeed the land I own was made by me, as if I had not myself worked to make an environment for the creatures that live on my land, it would not be the same land at all.
Before I owned the land, it was owned by a man who grew vegetables, and before him it was owned by a farmer who grew barley on it. It is many many centuries since my land was a wilderness.

We are taking at cross-purposes here. The making of land started with a cosmic process, followed by local planetary geology, followed again by millions (billions?) of years of colonisation by life of all shapes and sizes. We do not make land; we live on it.

You're mis-interpreting what Belindi said.

Actually, no. I was clarifying what *I* said, as I obviously didn't make myself properly clear.

No, no one makes land ex nihilo, but they do indeed make it what it is, i.e., what plants and animals it hosts and can support and what role it serves in the economy and the ecosystem.

All living things change the land they live on/in/etc, just by living there. And I won't quibble with you about the exact definition of "make". But to me, "make" implies creation, and what living creatures do to land is to change it, not create it. Geology and life are dynamic, and that's what is reflected here. On any piece of human-occupied land, their contributions (?) are just the latest in a very long line of contributions, stretching back billions of years. I think it's over-stretching the evidence to claim that we 'make' land.

It's also telling that you refer to humans allowing, or not, the presence of the various living things trying to live their lives on the land in question.

[Belindi]

Aren't the Chinese trying to make islands in the South China Sea, and didn't some rich people in Dubai make islands ?

Some English land areas were made from salt marshes and fen by means of drainage ditches and windmills. They did this in the Netherlands too.

There also tidal flats that are sometimes more land than sea, and vice versa.

It is saddening that humans are so powerful we can permit species to exist or not. But it is a fact that this is so.