Originally posted by DoctorScribblesOf course it is a grim view, but I don't see how it is inaccurate. You're trying to tell me you wouldn't steal to ensure your survival, if that were the case? I know I would. I would kill to ensure my own survival or the survival of my loved ones, if need be. And I don't think it would be an outrageous assumption to think that most of humanity would as well. I think sometimes you're enhanced deduction skills can cloud your capability to use common sense.
You must have a grim view of humanity if you think that poverty tends to corrupt one's moral aversion to theft. I think this view is not only grim but also inaccurate. I think that the less money one has, the more respect one tends to have for money. The more respect one has for money, the more repulsion he will have at the idea of being an accomplice in theft and receiving the benefit that somebody else has worked to produce.
As for your Robin Hood analogy, who better to steal from than one whose life won't be affected in the slightest by such a theft?
But like I said, it's neither here nor there.
Originally posted by rhbAll I can think of when I read this post is Anna Nicole Smith who married that old oil tycoon Getty and inherited hundreds of millions of dollars.....after a , what was it, one month marriage. She got rich. He died happy. Hey, Rwingett, there's some more money to go after.
Surely what Gates does with the bulk of his wealth after he shuffles off this world will determine how great a philanthropist he is recorded as being?
The name escapes me right now but there was that dude who had something to do with Oil and made loads of $'s (name begins what...?!) and he set-up the foundation that is really famous (sheesh what is it - Rock ...[text shortened]... y reach good causes... would he be such a bad guy then?
Edit - both Rockefeller and Carnegie?
Originally posted by rwingettThis is a good point. Allow me some time to prepare a worthy response. Please don't time me out of this debate if I don't respond to this point immediately.
We come to the question of what does it mean to "earn" money in a system that is seriously flawed. Bill Gates amassed his wealth in accordance with the rules of the current system. But if that system is flawed so that it inherently favors a huge disparity in wealth, then can we say that he has "rightfully" earned that money? The plantation owners in the ...[text shortened]... th the contrubution of slave labor. In that case did their fortunes rightfully belong to them?
I do understand that your beef is with capitalism itself, and not with somebody who plays the game of capitalism to the best of his ability.