The conceptual justification (not "need") for some redistribution is stronger if the lack of good outcomes is deterministic, yes. At least for me. For others looking into the long term it might not be (why keep the bad plants if letting them die makes room for more good plants to prosper?)

The problem with FORCED redistribution is in the disastrous efficacy of government action, and the nefarious way in which it is directed, very often to the last people who should deserve help.

The right, libertarianism in particular, isn't against voluntary redistribution and there are plenty of examples of that.

We are against government mandated redistribution because we don't trust government in general and we know what happens when you develop big welfare programs. Then there is the revenue side (taxation) which distorts production negatively in major ways with forced redistribution, given the sheer amount of revenue needed requires totalitarian monitoring practices, as the fiscal revenue available from healthy, non distorting taxes isn't enough to cover welfare (but it is enough to pay for the bone structure of the state, which is the protection of bodies and property from violence and the enforcement of contracts).

Given we , as humans, can vastly differ in our judgement about who deserves help and who doesn't, why don't you donate to the people you think deserve your help, and convince others to do the same, and let me do the same with the groups i identify as more worthy, if we disagree? why do you want to violently decide for me as well on that?

You need an universal framework as per the above "veil of ignorance" to justify forcing me to help people you think deserve help, and i don't. You need to claim that we are all equal copies that differ in outcomes just because of privilege, oppression, or luck.

You can't accept there might be cases of inferior outcomes caused by inferior choices (which is where i wouldn't help the person). At some point you even need to deny free will exists.

btw rightwing people in the USA are more generous, donate more, than liberals. If we want to talk about empathy

Abstract
Political ideology not only influences political activities, but also apolitical fields such as charitable giving. However, empirical studies regarding political ideology and charitable giving have yielded mixed results. To find out the effect size and explain the variation in effect sizes, we deploy a meta-analysis to estimate the average effect size and examine the potential moderators from four perspectives. Following scientific data collection and coding procedures, we identify 421 effect sizes from 31 empirical studies. Our meta-analysis results suggest that political conservatives are significantly more charitable than liberals at an overall level, but the relationship between political ideology and charitable giving varies under different scenarios. Furthermore, meta-regression results indicate that the measure of charitable giving, the type of charitable giving

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34429211/, and controlling for religiosity can account for the variation in effect sizes.

How does this study control for the fact that religious causes in the US are considered charities? Hearty LOL at bible-thumping dumb****s having more empathy because they keep buying private jets for charlatans .

I think I read somewhere that the Mormons run something like an 10-11 figure investment fund just from their tithes alone.

lgbtq+123 causes are considered charity as well, funding BLM riots is charity, and so.

Interestingly, as usual, without failure, if BLM founders buy mc mansions with donated money that's charity, if there are donations to religious group we find objections, while of course 100% of the money collected by the government and redistributed finds it's way to the proper recipient.

There is always waste in all donations to middlemen, but at least if it's private donations, you can personally do whatever you think works for due diligence to select proper causes and proper organizations to donate to those causes. And rightwing people donate more (=more empathy). That is still = more empathy even if you think the causes they donate for, or the organizations, are not the right ones.

You can't with violent forced redistribution managed by a chaste of illegal-to-be-fired "civil servants"

Bolded is quite obviously vacuous and doesn't withstand trivial analysis.

My point is that god botherers do not donate to their churches because of empathy. They do it to secure their place in Disneyland in the sky or whatever other dumb**** reason their preachers sell to them.

Sure so the hidden motivation of rightwing people to donate aren't empathy, while donating to the church of gender or blm rioters is fully rational with no second motives, or terrorist-funding UNRWA is a perfectly pure attempt to help people in need.

I didn't say that all left wingers donate because of empathy. I said that your assertion that religious donations made by right wingers are self-evidently due to empathy is absurd.

it isn't, but whatever. Even purportedly self-motivated empathy is still empathy

Explain to me what tithing has to do with empathy.

Explain to me what buying a bigger private jet for Kenneth Copeland has to do with empathy.

Starting with, who is the empathy for?

If by "tithing" you mean giving some money to a church voluntarily (it was a mandatory taxation back in the day ), evidently it's about empathy for the groups of people you perceive benefit from that church existence, or will benefit in the future, what leftists would call "positive externalities" of that church existence.

The people getting direct welfare help from that church to start (if they exist, or if you perceive they exist), then everyone else who benefits socially and spiritually (according to your own perception) from the message being spread by that church, from the access to the community the church represents. That is, the portion of those people who can't or won't pay their own share of the costs the church incurs to exist.

In case of old iconic churches (dunno how frequent that is in the USA, but it's normal in europe) you are also contributing to keep incredibly nice architecture accessible to the public , another positive externality that shows empathy and so on.

As for the jet to that guy, i don't know who he is, i don't know if that's a guy who scams donors for the jet or not (ie, do they know they are buying him a jet?), supposing he is not scamming , then they can easily believe that guy with that jet will help people lives more and better so it's worth it. Same as when climate change activists use jets to go to international conventions to talk about how jets are causing climate change.

Tithing is pretty much a tax on the Morons, I mean Mormons, as I understand it. According to Wikipedia, the LDS Church (that's the Mormons) takes in somewhere between $7bn and $33bn a year in tithes (I'm clearly in the wrong business). Hard to compete with the "empathy" of millions of people giving up 10% of their income.

Kenneth Copeland is a televangelist who tells his followers/victims that he talks directly to god from his private jet or some dumb **** like that. There are dozens, probably thousands like him.

Your definition of empathy is overbroad, rendering its usefulness very limited. Under your umbrella, I could claim that buying a hot dog from a street vendor is empathy because it helps keep him in business and thus helps the community to thrive.

Accepting to pay more for a good/service because you think it's ethically sourced and/or you are helping small local businesses over international companies and so on is actually empathy yes.

Keep in mind that you can think that's misplaced empathy, you can disagree in the sense that you don't see positive externalities that justify the investment and what not.

But people both on the left and the right routinely choose to overpay a little to reward producers/sellers that they think benefit either the local community by existing, and/or "the planet" or whatever cause they like because of their business practices.

Buying at the farmers market because you like the quality more isn't empathy, doing it because of the reasons stated above is. It's often a combination of both things, true.

When you are sacrificing your personal resources (including time) for what you *perceive* are actions that have positive externalities (ie actions you think will benefit people that need help down the line, others than you or your family and friends), that's a proof of empathic thought and action

Such a broad definition of empathy renders the comparisons of the "amount" of empathy between groups of people meaningless. Under this definition you can argue that about 99% of what we do in our day-to-day lives is empathetic to someone, somewhere, somehow. The only thing that doesn't qualify under this definition is probably taking a dump.

no it doesn't cover 99% of behaviours, major life decisions are often not based on empathy.

Some people might choose their college major for empathic reasons, most don't. Housing is the biggest single expense in most people lives, and it has very little to do with empathy most of the times (rather the opposite, see white flight and gentrification).

It's rare for someone to choose his life partner because of empathy rather than for self interest (ie going with a worse partner on purpose to help him, instead of getting the best partner for you , you can find).

So no, my definition is broad but not excessively so

The point remains, the Mormons alone account for the revenue of a S&P 500 company. Add in the Kenneth Copelands of the world taking a private jet in each per year here and there, and your assertion that right wingers donate more because of empathy rather than fear, ideology, peer pressure, superstition, gullibility, idiocy, belief that they'll receive favours or preferential treatment from the sky fairy, or whatever else drives religious nuts starts looking rather absurd indeed.

Religion is big business. Using its turnover a barometer of empathy is just silly in the extreme.

Measuring empathy in donations doesn't seem very empathic.

While you barely distance yourself from eugenics as a conclusion to social/political theory, of course the entire exercise doesn't have to be about lineage. But in addition to your focus on, euphemistically speaking, biology, your "taxation is theft" absolutism kinda excludes any hope for common ground here, so I say thanks for your time and gl ^^

When did human empathy become a bad thing? Did I miss a memo?

I don't think anyone ITT is arguing that it's a bad thing. The Colonel seems to be arguing that buying Kenneth Copeland a private jet is a manifestation of it, though.

I mean, who wouldn't feel a bit of empathy for this guy having to fly business with the plebs?

Never fear, Jesus is here. Oh, and send money.



I'm sure the dumb****s donating to Trump v1 here are doing it out of "empathy", yeah.

Empathy is important, stop worrying about some idealized partner, just find someone who will hang with you for the rest of your life. Like Mussolini did.

A+

I hate to be that guy, but there are many combative people ITT that are bandying on about empathy in a pretty annoying way. Empathy is not the same as sympathy. Empathy is the ability to understand somebody else's perspective, which is best described as "putting yourself in somebody's else's shoes." An empathic person would be able to understand why a person may want to pay more for food from the farmer's market, without necessarily doing so themselves. An empathic person may be able to look at the political views of Luciom and Victor, and be able to say "I understand where you are coming from, even though I disagree strongly with everything you say."

This is contrasted with sympathy. If you pay more for food at the farmer's market, even if you don't believe there is a difference between that food and the food at the supermarket, it would be because you are sympathetic. You can be sympathetic to the plight of a person, sympathetic to a cause, whatever. If you read Luciom's or Victor's post and go "I agree with this guy and am going to tell everybody why", you are showing sympathy. If you give a lot of money to a charitable cause, it is generally because you share sympathies with the causes that charity champions.

I personally don't think that the people that are misusing the word "empathy" ITT have historically shown that they are capable of it in these forums, but that's just my take.

You wouldn't be saying that if you walked a mile in their shoes.

Joking aside, I was going to make the same point you did, but I went with the Colonel's definition since I was more interested in debunking his argument about religious donations being an indicator of empathy/sympathy with/for anyone.

Modern christianity is often not really designed for empathy. People have crises of faith when something bad happens to them despite the fact that bad stuff happens to people everyday. They are ok with thinking other people's cancer is deserved or part of god's plan but it's different when it happens to them.