‘Redistribution’ (ie. theft) is an exercise in pointlessness.
Using coercive force to fund public goods is also ‘theft’, but still it can end up with near-unanimous support. So I don’t think that this is a good argument in and of itself.
As long as there is scarcity there will be haves and have nots, and wealth will accumulate as a natural function of time and successful strategies. You can reset the game board as often as you like but you can never ensure a permanent and even stalemate. Even assuming you could destroy the entire point of competing, well then you’ve destroyed everything you get from that too.
This post isn’t really about leveling the playing field. (Even in the stupid example with nobles, the nobles still end up 1000x richer than the peasants.)
There’s little in the way of ethics here, it’s just individuals making pragmatic decisions to make their own lives easier.
Ethics is individual level altruism in pursuit of group level pragmatism. If it was just individuals making self-centered decisions, they would reject taxation as libertatianism advises.
Using coercive force to fund public goods is also ‘theft’, but still it can end up with near-unanimous support. So I don’t think that this is a good argument in and of itself.
This post isn’t really about leveling the playing field. (Even in the stupid example with nobles, the nobles still end up 1000x richer than the peasants.)
Ethics is individual level altruism in pursuit of group level pragmatism. If it was just individuals making self-centered decisions, they would reject taxation as libertatianism advises.
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