On 2/23/2012 11:12 AM, Hawke wrote:
On 2/22/2012 2:50 PM, George Plimpton wrote:


What did I say that would make you think that I don't think that people
who do more or work harder don't deserve to get more in return for
putting out more than others do? I call that fair.

I call it "fair" if they don't work as hard, but work smarter, and get
much higher rewards.

No one is entitled to any particular level of success.


No one is entitled to anything.

People are entitled to their lives, of course. That's considered a
universal human right, and it is *NOT* a right "given" by anyone or any
group of people. It is a fundamental condition of being human.

No one is entitled to any material goods and services - there are no
positive rights to anything you would like in life.


We make the system that we want. We can
make a fair one or we can make an unfair one.

In terms of people's opportunities to succeed in life, we have a fair
system.


Throughout history we've mainly made unfair ones.

Except in the United States. In the US, ours has been a preeminently
fair system, except in its treatment of blacks, and that was corrected
more than a century ago.


Granted we can't make anything perfectly but by
now humans do know enough to make a system that is mainly fair to most
of the people.

And ours is.