On 2/23/2012 12:09 PM, George Plimpton wrote:
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.

Says who? Here you go again claiming rights you have. So you say it's a
"human" right. Who gave you that right? Humans gave it to themselves.
Rights do not come with birth. What rights did a villager in Mesopotamia
have five thousand years ago? Nothing. All rights are made up by men.


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

If men so deem it to be so then they will. Rights are whatever men
desire them to be, whether you call them human rights or you call it a
right to medical care. We decide what rights we have and which ones we
don't.



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.

I have yet to meet a rich person who doesn't believe that. On the other
hand most everyone else I have met thinks otherwise.



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.

Blacks, native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Irish, poor whites, all
were treated unfairly. The current system is grossly unfair to most
people. We're still not close to any kind of fair economic system.
Wealth distribution is completely out of whack.


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.

still not even remotely close. If you start out with advantages you have
a much greater chance of success than others do. Most people have almost
no chance of having a good life. Even in Europe young people now have a
better chance of improving their economic standard than young Americans
do. Shut up and look up the facts before denying it.

Hawke