sleepy jack

First off I'd point out that saying income redistribution doesn't work is a bit silly if you're saying that from a global perspective. If you are Capitalism hasn't work out so well (particularly now for the United States) in comparison to countries operating under socialistic governments (e.g. Norway, Sweden.) If you mean just in the United States well I think that's when things get incredibly complex because you have to deal with tax policy switching under every administration, congress session, and so on. I think it has a lot to do with that inconsistency and then the problems that arise from the economic system which the United States is under - it's largely a problem of the rich's inherent advantages of the poor in the society; which they completely have. There isn't much actual redistribution in the United States. The upper class do enjoy the fruits of society far more than the lower class and most money goes to entitlements or other irresponsible spending/borrowing/wars/etc.

Anyway assuming were examining socialism from a moral perspective. My central political philosophy is in democracy and I don't believe democracy can't exist under a capitalist system. This is because democracy is, by definition, society being under popular control. Capitalism however is society being under control of those with the most fiscal power. You can see this in lobbyists and the dominance with which corporations have over elections and both parties. In a free market it becomes very easy for monopolies, oligarchies and so on to form and when they exist they became the central power as opposed to the people (this is the way it is in the United States. I don't remember the figures off the top of my head but the wealthiest in the United States control over ninety percent of the wealth. That just doesn't work. Someone in FDR's administration has this great analogy between that and some game. The gist of what was a country can't work when all the cards are in the hands of a few or maybe it was all the chess pieces. I can't remember exactly how it went.)

In addition to that I believe in economic justice. Martin Luther King once said if there's injustice anywhere then there's justice nowhere (or something to that effect) and I think that when the working class is being pissed on by the rich of a state then no one is really living in a fair society.

Now to go back specifically to how my money should be spent. I don't really believe in property (this applies to money, music, and so on.) John Locke's notion that there is such things as "property rights" always struck me as absurd because it really does interfere with everyone's rights around you and I've never understood how you can own something (other then yourself obviously, and again this, again, has to do with someone else owning you or using you would go against your own rights. The classical Liberal philosophy that your freedom ends where another person's begins is as central to Democracy to me.) I've never seen any real intellectual justification for why I should be able to own this and you can't. It contradicts my own values. I don't think property has any right, I guess I'm like the first nations in that sense.

That being said, I think the laissez-faire idea itself (ignoring the property aspect) that you and only you should be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor is flawed on the basis that it wasn't only you who sowed the seeds - there were others and the notion that only one individual should reap those seeds when it takes a community to maintain the field is just fundamentally wrong.

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