On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:35:49 -0800, George Plimpton
wrote:

On 2/18/2012 2:59 PM, wrote:
On Feb 18, 4:34 pm, wrote:



It depends on how I am using the word fair. In a moral sense is it fair
that 1/2 are rich and 1/2 are poor? That would be no.

The answer, of course is "yes", it is fair. Fair does not mean equal.

It has been shown beyond all rational dispute that your definition of
"fairness" is worthless bull****.

Only to you. How I define it is how normal people do it. You can try to
justify having crazy views any way you want but they're still crazy. You
can say smoking tobacco is good for you all you want, but it's not. Your
idea of fair is equally nutty.


Hawke

I do not think that most people would agree with your definition of
fairness. I think most people would agree that it is perfectly fair
for 1/2 the people to be poor and the other half rich , if all the
people have an equal opportunity to be rich. In other words if the
rich are rich because they earned the money and the poor are poor
because they prefered to not spend any time or effort in earning
money, then it is fair that some are rich and some poor.


What people who believe in rough equality of opportunity don't
understand is that totalitarians like Hawke-Ptooey only believe in
equality of *results*. If you take two people of roughly equal innate
ability, give them roughly equal education, and then turn them loose,
then if one of them due to a superior work ethic accumulates a much
greater fortune than the other, Hawke-Ptooey and other "egalitarians"
like him would say the result is "unfair".

I've known some hard-core egalitarians, and, except for some college
students who were experimenting with ideas, I've never known one who
would say that a difference that resulted from "a superior work ethic"
is unfair. More likely they would say that being born with a silver
spoon in one's mouth, like, say, George W. Bush, leads to unfair
results with lesser effort than someone who works hard but who doesn't
know how to leap those hurdles of birth, crony connections, legacy
admission to the schools that tend to privilege even lazy students
with the right pedigrees, etc. is likely to wind up with an unfair
result.



In our society not all people have an equal opportunity so some people
are unfairly poor and some are fairly poor. The same for riches. Some
inherit a lot and are unfairly rich and some are rich through their
own efforts and are fairly rich.

I don't see anything unfair about inheriting a fortune for which one
never worked.

This brings up interesting social question, which Rawls addressed
better than anyone else. Most people think that parents have the right
to pass on their wealth to their children. They see the "fairness"
issue in terms of what's fair to the giver.

When you start probing the fairness to the one who receives the
wealth, you get a big split in opinion. The wealth itself still does
not offend most peoples' sense of justice. But when you introduce the
idea of entrenched power that accompanies wealth, and its
self-perpetuating property across generations, the answers tend to
swing the other way.

Defenders of inheritance point out that a lot of family fortunes don't
last through many generations. Opponents point out that a lot of
family fortunes *do* last through generations.

Again, the wealth itself is not much of an issue. Power over others,
and privileging generations to follow in terms of the opportunities
they're afforded which are not afforded to others, offends most
peoples' sense of justice. In those cases, inherited wealth upends our
basic approval of fortunes acquired through merit.

This is not a question of logic. It's a question of social views about
what constitutes fairness.

If I bust my ass and acquire a huge fortune legally and
ethically, and want to leave it to my son, why shouldn't he have it?
What would be unfair would be to interfere with my right to bequeath my
fortune as I see fit.

Again, you have wide agreement avout *your* right. You have less
agreement about your son's right.

--
Ed Huntress