Is financial freedom a good price to pay for a society with the equal distribution of wealth?

Question

We all know that communism doesn't work, neither does capitalism. Communism takes away people's unalienable rights as human beings too much and capitalism has little restrictions on the distribution of wealth.

I value freedom in everything with the exception of the free market.

mzz p: I agree. Capitalism just makes people empty and sad as it drives people to want more and more through peer pressure.

Most people my age want cars and ****. I got low expectations however I'm in a financial mess. Capitalism rewards peer pressure.

Well what if you're not a goal setter?

Answer 1

so a doctor and a janitor should share the same wealth? What would be the motivation of sacrificing ones life in medicine if there was no monetary motivation? I make 5 times what an entry level person makes. If I made the same, I would want the same lack of responsibilities that the entry level person has. Screw that. SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

Answer 2

Wealth is not a finite thing to be "distributed". Wealth is created through work, and destroyed through bad decisions. There is not some fixed amount of wealth - i.e if I get richer, someone else has to get poorer.
Want proof? If I have a $100 pile of lumber, and then expend some work and turn it into a nice piece of furniture with a value of $300, I have gained wealth, even if I don't sell it. Likewise, if I chop it up I convert it's value to firewood ($20 at best) and I have destroyed wealth. Nobody got richer or poorer besides me in this scheme.
Capitalism's lack of restrictions on wealth ownership is precisely what makes it work. The drive to do better is what moves us forward. Feel-good "working for the better of society" just doesn't motivate most people and little gets done. This is why the Soviet Union only produced approx. 1/2 of the US's industrial output in spite of a 30% population edge.
The lack of restrictions place responsibility on the individual, to get out there, survive, and make your own life better. As a result, we have a better life than anyone. You will notice that all the 1st world countries on this earth are capitalist democracies. This is not a coincidence.
Rather than whining that you don't have financial freedom, maybe you should look to yourself as both the cause of your financial crisis and the solution to it. You can do it. Almost everyone can.

Answer 3

1) People have no ualianable rights, that was the invention of those the americans during that fit they threw that we call the American Revolution.

2) Equall distribution does not work in a society. Take the example of Eastern Germany after WW2, no one truly enjoyed total equallity. Furthermore the populus enjoys a free market, where the people decide how much money they make and can be paid more for more intence and mentaly stimulating jobs. You cannot pay a cardiovascular surgeon the same wages as a construction worker or the clerk at Mcdonalds. If that system was implemented people would not work difficult jobs, they would do nothing being a clerk at Mcdonalds their entire lives doing nothing valuable for society.

Answer 4

it wouldnt artwork if it have been equivalent notwithstanding it certianly must be greater equivalent and artwork greater efficient. I advise can we surely need ceos to be on £4 hundred,000 in keeping with year and the cleansing team to in keeping with earning a hundred circumstances much less and suffering to make ends meet. Does certainly all and sundry surely need greater effective than £a hundred,000 a year. what the hell do they spend it on greater wges are an incentive to greater efficient coach and advance your self so there must be a differentiaiton between the salary of a knowledgeable healthcare expert and a street sweeper. in my view wages under a definite quantity must be taxed and located right into a fund to help human beings from the poorer backgrounds recieve guidance and guidance. There ought to additionally be provides for nesscary artwork occasion there's a scarcity of nurses in Canada they coul;d have a fund for loose guidance to be a nurse. This additionally reduces choose for imagration

Answer 5

You can't have one without the other. Freedom and free enterprise go hand in hand. If your not free to buy or sell your not free to have. If you have to rely on the government to decide what you may and may not have that's not freedom.

I reject the idea that the free market doesn't work. The free market is about serving your fellow man, you don't get paid unless you do or provide something useful to your fellow man. Socialism, communism and other systems, you only get paid for serving government bureaucrats.

Answer 6

yes it is, in my opinion.
As long as the wealth is enough to live on, I don't see a problem with it. In our capitalist consumer society don't we all get a little too carried away with having this or that? I don't see this as the best way to live. You just feel empty and sad.

to m-t-nest: that's cruel. A janitor deserves the same right to a good quality of life as you do. And quality of life is determined by one's income. (Btw, GO JANITORS - they work hard too!!! If it wasn't for them your hospital wouldn't be sterile!!!)

Answer 7

Capitalism dose not make people empty and sad people do that to themselves. Capitalism sets goals for people and makes people strive for them and when they get there they succeed.

Answer 8

"Distribution of wealth" is bullcrap. I worked for it, so what right do you have to sit on lazy butt?? Get out and work.

Answer 9

Freedom and equal distrabution of wealth are contradictions.

Freedom is the ability to buy or boycott what you want. To choose to live unwisely or to live wisely. Depends on a person's perspective and goals. Every penny removed from an individual reduces freedom both financially and real freedoms.

Here is an example. What if Corporation A did something you felt was abomible. You can choose not to do biz with Corporation A. At least with money that you personally spend. You have little or no control over the Gov who can and does spend without telling you. The Gov might be Corporation A's greatest customer. So you are directly contributing to the activity you so despise through income redistrabution.

Taking money away from an indivual directly reduces their freedom. It also reduces people to more of subsistance living . The less you have that is not needed for basic necessities the less you are able to support political/religious/social causes. There is a great deal that can be done with volenteer work but in the end resources costs money. The Salvation army in my opinion does more to help the poor that the Gov and all the other charities combined. Yes I've spent more than one night at the Sally in my day. Eaten more than one meal there that was the only meal I got that day. The Sally helps with utilities, bills and helping servicemen and families and many things.

The Gov has attempted and failed miserably to duplicate these efforts. Worse they have attached many serious controls to acceptance of Gov money. So not only is your freedom stolen by the loss of income. To get your alloted share you have to abide by rules which may or may not be aligned with your moral/philisophical views. They might not even be realistic or practical.

Capitalism is merely a system that is not a system. It is a lack of controls. For capitalism to work monolopies and other unfair influences on the market must be kept in check. Something that is not happening in the US. Thus the rampant corporate greed. In a working captialist society companies which suffered such evils would be quickly replaced by better companies. The problem is that these companies own our politicians and lending institutions. So attempts to compete are stomped out. The auto industry is a great example. They have repeatedly viciously elimanated any compitition they might have with unfair practices. Law suits being their favorite tactic. Sue the start up to death. With DeLorean they sic'ed the US Gov on him with the bogus year long cocaine entrapment.

Go to a grocery store and try to buy something not from one of the three big corporate giants which make almost all of our food, sanitary products and household products. Try to get a loan to compete in a market Microsoft has claimed. It's just not going to happen.

The laws are designed to keep small biz from becoming big biz. If you are competing with a major corp they WILL take you out one way or another.

The net result of the corruption of both major US political parties is this undisguised greed and gleeful destruction of our economy.

Next do not confuse economic system with form of government. It is the responsibility of society whether through government or through private efforts to care for the less fortunate in our society and provide opportunity for all of our citizens. We are only as great as the lowest member of our nation. So it is the responsibility of the Gov to provide an athmosphere that promotes it's own people. Another thing corruption has caused an utter failure in. The US people's welfare is not even an afterthought in DC and hasn't been in many years. You can change the face of the corruption but you are still stuck with owned puppets making the laws and wearing the face of the president.

Taxes are like attaching leaches. Every ounce of blood sucked out of an economy hurts the health of the economy. We could literally feed all of Africa with the money the US spends on tax collection alone. In fact tax collection is one of if not the biggest drag on the US economy. The IRS alone is a huge expenditure. Then you have to figure in the army of corporate tax lawyers. Time spent by individuals and money spent on tax preperation. With any system there will be cheats of necessity and just plain greed or incompentance. So court costs and incarceration are added on top of that. Prosecution costs as well.

Once collected you then pay people to allocate it and spend it. To reduce fraud you have to pay people to audit and create mountains of paperwork. Despite this fraud is everywhere and waste threatens to exceed what we actually spend on a given purpose. Paying taxes is very much like contributing to a charity with a telemarketer. If you read the fine print you'll discover with most that your lucky if pennies on the dollar actually get to be used on the cause you gave too. So too is true with the US Gov. By the time it actually spends a dollar on something it is supposed to do dozens of dollars have been sucked up by various causes.

The solution is to get rid of corruption right? Wrong. Corruption is a direct factor of the size and age of an institution. The larger an institution the greater the waste and fraud. Even in a society which values honesty and does not tolerate corruption there will be large amounts of it in a large institution. Waste cannot be prevented. If you remove the controls then you make fraud easy to commit. Keep the controls and you spend the same money that could have been stolen in preventing it from being stolen. Either way the money never makes it back to the people.

Free Market and free enterprise are similer ideas but not the same thing. A market left to itself has time and time again produced wealth for those who depend on it. At least the opportunity for wealth. Bad luck, lack of motivation and a host of other disadvantages can be too much to overcome to obtain true wealth. Then again nobody said anybody was owed wealth. Only a fair opportunity to gather it in a fair way.

That brings up the second problem with any income redistrabution system. It puts more resources in the hands of fewer people That is a certain recipie for even higher levels of corruption. The narrower the base of resource control the higher the corruption. You can see it in effect with the monopolies in the US today and politicians. It has happened as a informal method of income redistrabution. You want to buy a gallon of gas for example. First you have limited sources for that gas. A few companies have long fixed gas prices and committed price gouging. It would be worse except that there is still the illusion of a free market. You can replace the greed in the suit with greed wearing a T-shirt. The second you put a resource bottle neck into the hands of a limited group of people you've created corruption and greed. The problem is that only a few companies control the resources and that they are in collusion. If you nationalize those industries you've narrowed that bottleneck even more. Created more power in a smaller group of people. When you endeavor in income redistrabution somebody has to decide how to allocate those resources. When you put that power into a person's hands you are begging for misuse of that power. You are more likely to get a one armed occtupus flying to the moon than efficient redistrabution.

In short you have not only robbed the "wealthy" you just made the poorer even poorer. You have also changed the faces of the wealthy but not gotten rid of wealth. Those engaged in income redistrabution will have every trapping of wealth even if you ban money. They will barter their power into goods and services. Even the most honest will start with a favor to a friend and before they know it they are a petty king.

Freedom implies the dilution of resources. The less control any individual has the more power every individual has. That is why every large scale effort at collectivism has actually reduced personal empowerment instead of the stated goal of empowerment.

The real solution to the problems of the US is a clean sweep. Toss the bums out, ALL OF THEM. Both parties. Ban them from every holding a Gov post or elected office the rest of their natural life or even setting foot in a Gov office except to conduct personal biz like renewing a driver's liscence.

Next quit letting lawyers write laws. It is a conflict of interest. The US law system is clearly written to keep lawyers in rolling in the dough. Lawyers may be a neccesary evil but it should be kept to as low a level as possible. So I feel lawyers should be banned from holding legislative posts.

We do those two things you'd be amazed how many problems solve themselves and how fast the US standard of living rebounds. Americans have the willpower. Have the ideas. Have the motivation. All we need is an open place to go at it. Every American will benefit such as happened in the late 1800s with the waves of innovations coming from America.

There are other forms of Gov interaction with the ecomony and people other than Marxism and raw capitalism. Unfortunately Marxist voices in the liberal circuit have drowned most of these out. In fact most people today confuse Marxism with Liberalism. Liberals existed long before Marx was born and are probably perpetual motion machines in their graves because of what liberalism has been distorted into by Marxists.

In my opinion Marxism is revenge. It is reaction. It is distrust of the human being. What we need is forward looking ideas, not a system built to address a class system that has all but disapeered. We need a system that promotes human beings not levels them. What human being wants to be held back to the level of the weakest in their nation? Do you really want to be treated like you have an IQ on the lowest end of the scale. Hmm too late the media and Gov already do that. Do you want to be limited in what you do because somebody else cannot do it? If Joe down the street is afraid of heights that means you cannot go hand gliding for example. That is what income redistribution boils down too. If you have an idea, a new way tough luck. Since Joe down the street can't do it neither can you. All the money you might have talked the wealthy out of to get your start is not there since there are no wealthy. Instead technology and society stagnates. Dies the slow suffering death of equality of condition while denying equality of opportunity.