There is no ethical system in the world in which that transaction could be considered good or right or just.
That is because the ethical systems in arise as a consequence of power structures, structures created, managed, and maintained by the moneyed upper classes. I think it is just as unethical to allows a person like Bill Gates so much more power and influence over the allocation of resources than any normal person has. It is in my view a gross injustice that such differences in power and wealth exist.
"Require" is a tricky criteria
Excellent point, and my view assumes that everyone's desires could be reasonably fulfilled within a fair (not necessarily equal) allocation of wealth. That might not be the case, and certainly a central management of resources (that determines what is "sufficient" for people) has a history of failure in its largest experiment, the USSR. But certainly it is possible for people to have choices about what is sufficient for them that are made within more equitable restrictions, i.e. people have more equitably sized (not necessarily equal) portions of wealth to allocate toward their material desires.
It's impossible to create wealth from nothing
Who said anything about wealth from nothing? There's a lot of wealth right now, but there are incredible inequities in the way it is distributed. And, I would argue that wealth creating activities are inhibited for many because only those with access to large amounts of capital can easily "start up" new businesses -- new sources of wealth. Furthermore, so many people are forced to live in deprived conditions that their potential to live as productive contributors to the gross amount of wealth is degraded, if not thwarted entirely, or even turned into a drain (as is the case of people we put in prison -- they drain our wealth without creating anything). You can't generate wealth from nothing, but you can distribute it more equitably, and you can focus on areas in which wealth-creation is inhibited.
If I have more money than you do, I can buy more things than you can. So there will always be inequities.
Sure, there will always be inequities, but can these inequities be reduced to the point where they will not seem "material" (and maybe I should have used the word "substantial"). You might be able to buy a Lexus or a Ferrari, and I can only buy a Honda Accord, but I don't care about that inequity because an Accord serves my needs quite nicely (and I tend to consider people who are so vain as to pay and extr $20K - $40K for a car a little pathetic). There IS however a substantial difference in wealth between the person who can drive a Lexus and throw parties that feature ice sculptures of his kid, and the person who cannot reliably feed his or her family. Those are the kinds of differences we can work toward reducing.
If you change the rules of our economic system to support your idea, you generate runaway inflation
Only if you adhere to the simplistic notion that we're just pumping up the numbers rather than reallocating wealth and working to eliminate current inhibitors of wealth creation.
Poverty just is. It's a fact of life, in and of itself neither good nor bad.
You state that my axioms are false, and I would argue that your position rests upon the above axiom, that poverty will always exist. I don't know if that is a false axiom or not, but to say that "poverty will always exist, therefore poverty cannot be eliminated" is circular logic. Furthermore, to say that poverty is neither good nor bad presumes that you do not value human comfort nor think of human suffering as "bad." If you will grant me the presupposition that human suffering is bad, you have to accept that poverty is bad (whether or not there is anything we can do about it). Furthermore, even if you care nothing about human beings, but value wealth, I have argued above that reducing gaps in individual wealth will possibly create m
Anything that affects the quality of life (food pills, moon colonies, freeways, videophones) is also political. Anything that is subject to human innovation is technical, which can include poverty. Some of the technical innovations that have been used to combat the effects of poverty are high-tech jails, more efficient and "human" ways of executing criminals, more effective security systems to protect the rich from the poor. Unfortunately, the technology utilized to combat poverty is usually used to combat the poor, not the core problem. And the politics that determine technological innovation are geared toward innovations that benefit the middle and upper classes. We can't be too confident in our delinations of "political" and "technical."
I think you're right that poverty is relative, and certainly many of the poorest people in the U.S. are rich in comparison to the poorest people in countries like India or Burma. In this respect, in saying that poverty can never be truly eliminated, you echo the words of Jesus: "The poor will always be with us."
However, I think we could work toward reduction in poverty by reducing the gap between the very rich and the very poor. If you could close that gap enough, and ensure that all people (not just in one country or another... but everyone in the world) had the means to thrive, then perhaps people would cease to think about who is poor and who is not, because everyone would have what they require. In this (admittedly utopian) way, poverty may indeed be eliminated because differences in wealth cease to have material effects.
I think that to say "The poor will always be with us," or that poverty can't be eliminated should not be a reason to dismiss the problem. It should be an incentive to keep us continually focussed on a problem that has real human consequences and truly negative, wide-ranging effects on all of society.
People are always predicting an end to poverty... I'm still waiting for that. Unfortunately, poverty seems to be becoming more widespread, not less. The NYT reports today that almost 20% of children under the age of 5 live in poverty... one out of every five. We all know about this vague phenomenon called "the growing gap between rich and poor," but I don't think we really recognize how profoundly it affects all of us. People are waiting for colonies on the moon? How many brilliant scientists never become brilliant scientists because they did not have adequate nutrition and education when they were young? I'm not saying poor people never do great things, but we put a lot of obstacles in their way while we allow the Bill Gates's of the world to become so astronomically rich as to be literally inconceivable.
Aside from an end to poverty, I would like to see no-fat pizza, burgers, and french fries...
Slashdot Mirror
There is no ethical system in the world in which that transaction could be considered good or right or just.
That is because the ethical systems in arise as a consequence of power structures, structures created, managed, and maintained by the moneyed upper classes. I think it is just as unethical to allows a person like Bill Gates so much more power and influence over the allocation of resources than any normal person has. It is in my view a gross injustice that such differences in power and wealth exist.
"Require" is a tricky criteria
Excellent point, and my view assumes that everyone's desires could be reasonably fulfilled within a fair (not necessarily equal) allocation of wealth. That might not be the case, and certainly a central management of resources (that determines what is "sufficient" for people) has a history of failure in its largest experiment, the USSR. But certainly it is possible for people to have choices about what is sufficient for them that are made within more equitable restrictions, i.e. people have more equitably sized (not necessarily equal) portions of wealth to allocate toward their material desires.
It's impossible to create wealth from nothing
Who said anything about wealth from nothing? There's a lot of wealth right now, but there are incredible inequities in the way it is distributed. And, I would argue that wealth creating activities are inhibited for many because only those with access to large amounts of capital can easily "start up" new businesses -- new sources of wealth. Furthermore, so many people are forced to live in deprived conditions that their potential to live as productive contributors to the gross amount of wealth is degraded, if not thwarted entirely, or even turned into a drain (as is the case of people we put in prison -- they drain our wealth without creating anything). You can't generate wealth from nothing, but you can distribute it more equitably, and you can focus on areas in which wealth-creation is inhibited.
If I have more money than you do, I can buy more things than you can. So there will always be inequities.
Sure, there will always be inequities, but can these inequities be reduced to the point where they will not seem "material" (and maybe I should have used the word "substantial"). You might be able to buy a Lexus or a Ferrari, and I can only buy a Honda Accord, but I don't care about that inequity because an Accord serves my needs quite nicely (and I tend to consider people who are so vain as to pay and extr $20K - $40K for a car a little pathetic). There IS however a substantial difference in wealth between the person who can drive a Lexus and throw parties that feature ice sculptures of his kid, and the person who cannot reliably feed his or her family. Those are the kinds of differences we can work toward reducing.
If you change the rules of our economic system to support your idea, you generate runaway inflation
Only if you adhere to the simplistic notion that we're just pumping up the numbers rather than reallocating wealth and working to eliminate current inhibitors of wealth creation.
Poverty just is. It's a fact of life, in and of itself neither good nor bad.
You state that my axioms are false, and I would argue that your position rests upon the above axiom, that poverty will always exist. I don't know if that is a false axiom or not, but to say that "poverty will always exist, therefore poverty cannot be eliminated" is circular logic. Furthermore, to say that poverty is neither good nor bad presumes that you do not value human comfort nor think of human suffering as "bad." If you will grant me the presupposition that human suffering is bad, you have to accept that poverty is bad (whether or not there is anything we can do about it). Furthermore, even if you care nothing about human beings, but value wealth, I have argued above that reducing gaps in individual wealth will possibly create m
Anything that affects the quality of life (food pills, moon colonies, freeways, videophones) is also political. Anything that is subject to human innovation is technical, which can include poverty. Some of the technical innovations that have been used to combat the effects of poverty are high-tech jails, more efficient and "human" ways of executing criminals, more effective security systems to protect the rich from the poor. Unfortunately, the technology utilized to combat poverty is usually used to combat the poor, not the core problem. And the politics that determine technological innovation are geared toward innovations that benefit the middle and upper classes. We can't be too confident in our delinations of "political" and "technical."
I think you're right that poverty is relative, and certainly many of the poorest people in the U.S. are rich in comparison to the poorest people in countries like India or Burma. In this respect, in saying that poverty can never be truly eliminated, you echo the words of Jesus: "The poor will always be with us."
However, I think we could work toward reduction in poverty by reducing the gap between the very rich and the very poor. If you could close that gap enough, and ensure that all people (not just in one country or another... but everyone in the world) had the means to thrive, then perhaps people would cease to think about who is poor and who is not, because everyone would have what they require. In this (admittedly utopian) way, poverty may indeed be eliminated because differences in wealth cease to have material effects.
I think that to say "The poor will always be with us," or that poverty can't be eliminated should not be a reason to dismiss the problem. It should be an incentive to keep us continually focussed on a problem that has real human consequences and truly negative, wide-ranging effects on all of society.
People are always predicting an end to poverty... I'm still waiting for that. Unfortunately, poverty seems to be becoming more widespread, not less. The NYT reports today that almost 20% of children under the age of 5 live in poverty... one out of every five. We all know about this vague phenomenon called "the growing gap between rich and poor," but I don't think we really recognize how profoundly it affects all of us. People are waiting for colonies on the moon? How many brilliant scientists never become brilliant scientists because they did not have adequate nutrition and education when they were young? I'm not saying poor people never do great things, but we put a lot of obstacles in their way while we allow the Bill Gates's of the world to become so astronomically rich as to be literally inconceivable.
Aside from an end to poverty, I would like to see no-fat pizza, burgers, and french fries...