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It kind of depends on the issue. For something like "greatly increase taxes on the rich", for example, the issue actually is really simple and there's a clear right and wrong answer.
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Sep 27, 2014 20:24
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My Imaginary GF posted:You think there's a simple answer to a complex issue. Let me ask you this: How? To be clearer, the answer to "exactly how should we tax the wealthy" isn't as straight-forward. But "should wealth be heavily reallocated from the wealthy through government policy" does have an obvious answer. I don't think it's necessary for the public to have an answer to the first question in order to have an opinion on the second. It's sort of like not expecting people who believe carbon emissions should be reduced to have the scientific and engineering expertise to know the most effective means of doing so. edit: I would argue that it also stands to reason that the wealthy are always to blame for a system in which they greatly benefit. It isn't necessary to understand the exact mechanisms through which they accrue wealth in order to assign this blame, though it's obviously useful once you sit down at the drawing board and try to figure out how to change things. This is because there are only two possibilities: 1. A small percent of people own a vastly disproportionate amount of wealth due to their own intentional unethical actions. (this is the "obviously it's their fault" option) 2. A small percent of people own a vastly disproportionate amount of wealth because our economic system will inevitably result in this being the case, even if they didn't necessarily act unethically or engineer this to be the case. Even in the second situation, anyone with great wealth bears the most responsibility for either attempting to correct the situation or relinquishing their own wealth. To use an analogy, consider a situation where 10 people, most of whom are living in poverty, draw lottery tickets with a 1/10 chance of winning millions of dollars. Even though they personally weren't responsible for this lottery, they would still obviously have a moral obligation to distribute their wealth among the other people. This is why it isn't really possible to be an ethical billionaire. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 23:17
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