I don't think they can actually defend it though because they take it to be axiomatic that the rich deserve their wealth and the poor deserve nothing, mostly because they are themselves at least relatively rich. It's hard to accept that you have what you have because you were lucky, not because you particularly deserved it, because we have a myth of merit in our societies.

You know, my mum never went to college. She is pretty sad about it, but her parents pushed her out to work at 16. They bullied her to take office-type classes at commercial college, so she never got to study the things that interested her. And yeah, you can be pushed around by your parents when you're a quiet 13-year-old girl. They never would have supported her at uni, so it was just impossible. That's how it is for working-class people. Not only do you not get the support of the people round you, they actually resent you for being smart enough to do it.

So how was she ever going to become wealthy? Start a business? Doing what? Most businesses fail. And the ones that don't, it's mostly luck. You're in the right place at the right time or you just luck out. The right people adopt you on a whim and you're made.

My mum can do esoteric philosophy with the best of them. She's an autodidact. How many people even read Schopenhauer? My mum did that for fun.

So is wealth inequality moral? Hell no. But the wealthy are never admitting it.

yea, people are super results oriented.

That's obviously not to say that if you work harder you increase your chances at success.

I think a lot of business practices and political ideals are amoral as opposed to immoral.

lol MB, that explains alot. His entire world view is based on the sad life of his mother.

Use it to pay government fees that can be payed in cash.

Libertarians tend to belive that everyone deserves to have a chance to be rich. People are different so some have a better shot than others. The entire point is that everyone should have a shot.

The poor certainly deserve better than what they have. Unfortunately they suffer the most from the terror raign of government programs. I'm furious if my taxes are raised 1% or if my currency is destroyed and inflation is through the roof while it's reported as 1-2%..the poor shlob that tries to buy bread to survive on with their marginal unit of money and not consumer electronics,hookers and blow is the one that gets really ****ed.

Lol just lol. Guys like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs must be the luckiest people on the planet for being able to start multiple successfull businesses.

What you describe is essentially the worldview of people who like to tell themselves how smart they are but oh my they got so unlucky and life isn't fair and that's obviously th eonly reason holding them back, couldn't possibly be their own failure. There's other people who accept that they were dealt a not so good hand but chip up anyways.

gasp, someone's life experience shapes their worldview!!11

there's obviously a tiny fraction of the population that will be successful over and over, regardless of where they start out in life. This will be a product of innate skill, work ethic(which can be a combo of genetics and life experience) and luck. Take luck out of the equation...do we really want a system that only works for a tiny fraction of the population? Just so everyone has a *chance* to be rich? I just don't get why people want to make life a lottery.

There's a not entirely unrelated but not entirely overwhelming article in the NYT from yesterday on the 'veil of ignorance':

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...er=rss&emc=rss

I just strongly object to the notion that entrepreneurship is all luck anyways. Especially if it comes from someone who I suspect has never tryed to build a business in the first place and has the opinion that people who are not Marxists who talk about Marxism are automatically to be labeled idiots.

The last thesis I wrote happened to be on entrepreneurship and I feel I have a decent grasp on it. I'll just categorically say that claiming it is all luck is both dumb and ignorant.

I'm always amazed how people seem to know how entrepreneurship works and have it all figured out but at the same time claim "lolz them rich just don't know what it's like to be poor"

We want a system that rewards people who contribute to society the most. Egalitarianism is a lie. We are not all equal. Some people are more valuable to society than others.The free market allocates the most resources to people who do the most for society, and the people who do the least get the least. I'm sure MB's mother is a great woman, and I'm sorry she had ****ty parents. Life isn't fair. Some people are born with ****ty parents. Some people are born poor. Some people are born with disabilities (physical and mental). Life is hard for everyone. I know a lot of wealthy people who are very unhappy. Atakdog made a great point earlier that everyone ignored. Being wealthy doesn't necessarily make someone happy. But if you want society's resources you need to contribute to society. Again, contributing enough to society to make someone rich isn't easy for a lot of people. But life's a struggle, and the crux of the libertarian argument has always been that it would be a lot less of a struggle if the government would get out of people's way and give them freedom to pursue happiness.

I don't think that success is even close to being all luck.

But I think most people tend to underestimate the variance in life, rather then overestimate it. Especially in business.

Although that by itself isn't an argument for any particular policy, but it does at least explain why I personally don't find arguments along the lines of taxes being theft, or against any kind of redistributive social programs, to be particularly compelling, at least when those arguments are made in the absolute. It all seems like tradeoffs to me

Why do we want it? It doesn't strike me as in and of itself good, only if this system somehow promotes a better society as a whole, measured by some means.

Because there's a rich history of people saying things akin to 'a good test of a civilised society is how it treats its weakest members'.

To be honest this is increasingly sounding like a bit of a rerun of nature versus nurture. Half the people are saying 'but there's so much luck involved', the other half 'there's so much skill'. They can both be right, and then the solution has to take both into account. But pointing to one in advocating a solution seems to be partial at best.

When the people who contribute the most to society get the most, it creates an incentive to contribute to society, thus promoting a better society.

As a result of the increase in resources due to this system of wealth distribution, even the poorest members have a higher standard of living than they would under any other system where an entity(government/armed thugs) uses violence to re-allocate resources from people who contribute the most to those who contribute the least.

Agreed, although I think that the first point argues that some degree of ability to create individual wealth is desirable - it doesn't to me prove that complete unmediated free distribution of wealth is the best system.

And consequently, I don't think it's a given that a pure free market system will generate the greatest economic growth possible.

You're right, it isn't proved, hence the endless debate. But now you and I are turning into a broken record, aren't we? Rehashing the same points. I don't think it will ever be proved a posteriori because there are too many variables to control. But so long as clowntable et. al. enjoy arguing a priori with strangers on the internet maybe one day we can win the crowd.

So did I but I never expected that would make me rich in a monetary sense. I still did it by free will because it was a better use of my time than other options. If I could go back in time I'd probably read him again so I'm lucky and didn't suffer a loss.

For someone opposed to property you are awefully concerned with monetary wealth.

I expect my PhD thesis to cause a major paradigm shift and if that fails I'll just link to it and reduce my posts to RTFM

I think he's saying he has personal experience with a very intelligent, hard working lady that wasn't able to pursue her goals, due to her lot in life. I guess we would disagree what portion of the population would experience the same thing. I think some people's perspective on this may be skewed because I think most intelligent, moderately hard working, white males do okay in North American society.

I think who really suffers are the hard workers of average intelligence and people with skill sets (that are very valuable to society) that aren't conducive to making money.

Artists, for instance. Sure the best artists will do okay but a libertarian society wouldn't work out so well for the average to moderately talented artists. I mean, even with all the mandatory funding for arts programs in our society (at least in Canada) average artists have a tough time supporting themselves. No way they could do afford to learn their craft with out art subsidies. I think the fewer mediocre artists out there then the less likely there'll be great artists who can make a living, especially unique artists.

meh, I'm way under-qualified to talk specifically about this kind of thing but there are plenty of valuable skills that I highly doubt would be properly valued in a free market. Supply and demand may be a necessary evil but I think it does a terrible job putting a fair value on things.

I read this article this morning, and I find it interesting that equality of opportunity questions seem to focus (at least in US politics) on the difference between the middle class (basically, income < $250k) and the very rich ("millionaires and billionaires"). The "pro-equality" position is middle class tax cuts funded by cutting public services and raising taxes on the rich. However, the people who are truly at risk of not being able to bootstrap themselves up are the people who are genuinely poor, not people making 200k a year, or even 100k a year. Those people can get into college, get onto some rung of the corporate ladder, etc. People who are in The Wire-schools don't have those chances. People who don't have the good sense to be born in developed countries don't have those chances.

I increasingly feel like 99% v. 1% rhetoric is used to subvert the language of equality and fairness that should be focusing on the 20% v. the 80%. Not coincidentally, a solid majority of voters live their whole lives between the 21st and the 98th percentile of income.

My mother hasn't had a sad life. When you grow up, you'll realise that life is not just about money. If you were in any way an interesting poster, it would be interesting that that's what you get from what I posted.

I take a more or less Rawlsian view of equity. I don't think the ideal world is possible now, but I do think a Rawlsian one is approachable and in some ways we were approaching it until the late '70s. Small ways, but still real.

bobman's post is really good.


I think privileged white young men seriously underestimate how hard it can be to escape poverty and how little "hard work" has to do with anything. Some people have to work three jobs just to put food on the table. They're not working hard?

It's easy to see life as played out on level ground when you're winning. Of course you don't want to accept you had a headstart or that it's unfair that you should have a lot and others a little.

If I were not an interesting poster, you would not respond. pwned again.

I don't find footballs all that interesting but I still kick them around.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/...economics.html

lol

Greg Mankiw is an idiot though.

If their art sucks or not enough people give a **** about it...tough life. You're not entitled to anything just by calling yourself an artist.

Or I guess to put it in other words..maybe art, philosophy and so forth aren't as valuable as people think and want others to think.

I completely agree with this. The bottom 20% or whatver number you want to pick suffer the most from government which is the true tradgedy. I don't even think many government programs are melicious by intend they are just not thought through well enough and often end up hurting the people they are intended to help the most.

And yet you claim entrepreneurs are basically just getting lucky for the most part. Empathy is a very valuable skill, maybe you should work on it a little. It goes beyound "zomg I'll stick up for $my_fav_cause" and includes trying to understand how people that are not you are wired.

You don't have to work hard, you also have to work hard in the right direction.

We get it. He just got tremendously lucky to become profesor at a respected university.

yea, guess i wasn't explicit but i'm not talking about subsidizing ****ty artists so they can avoid a "real" job. I'm talking about subsidizing art programs to keep average artists going because it's super obvious to anyone with an ounce of wisdom that the arts are really important to the vast majority of humans and likely very important to humanity as a whole.

do you disagree that supply and demand is really bad at putting a true value on stuff?

Do you think there's abstract "stuff" that would fall through the cracks in a true free market?

Do you recognize that some reasonably optimal application of socialism or libertarianism could both be viable options?