What right do we have other than to do whatever the hell we want without infringing on other people's rights to do whatever the hell they want? The right to food, health, shelter? Might as well say that everyone has a right to sex, drugs and rock and roll. Do I believe that we should work together as a society to ensure that no one in our country dies of starvation? Yes, I do personally, but instilling in the minds of the population that they are somehow entitled to survival is a slippery slope. Thankfully, the majority of people do not genuinely believe in a human right to a basic standard of life or we would find ourselves getting taxed 80% of our wages, likely through a global government, in order to provide food, shelter and universal health care to all of the developing world. It would be incredibly easy to make this point of view sound cold and uncaring, but realistically, it could easily be argued that a centrally planned system wherein some absurd percentage of our earnings were taken from us would result in a less prosperous world, fewer freedoms and a greatly reduced standard of living overall. Yes? No?
I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. Every Human wants to experience the highest standard of living realistically possible. And every healthy minded Human wants his or her fellow Human to share that prosperity. It's our basic instinct to be powerful, and standard of living is power. Also don't forget how we are pack animals and that we function as a group; if one member of the group is hurt we all are instinctively driven to assist. And as for taxes, it all depends in what kind of civilization you live in as well as the moral values of your society. 80% taxes, for easy example, is insane to most people from our highly individualist society of the west. But rewind to the Native tribal societies of North America and this would be considered a disgustingly and selfishly low rate. Also, it's equally easy to argue that a centrally planned economy would generate more stability and wealth. For example, the prices of corn in the USA were carefully regulated through control of yearly production. Farmers could only produce a defined amount of corn and no more. This helped direct the level of supply and demand and thus avoid inflation. Now a days though there is no such limit so farmers need to produce more and more corn every year to make the same profit. (source: King Corn, a documentary... my knowledge is a bit fuzzy on it though, haven't watched it since high school).
Sh777mtl: "What right do we have other than to do whatever the hell we want without infringing on other people's rights to do whatever the hell they want?" Of course, as soon as you want someone else to provide you with your "rights" you are infringing on them.
That's not true given what I guess you mean by "standard of living", but what exactly do you mean by "standard of living"? Define "healthy minded", "share", and "prosperity". Either by "power" you mean political power, in which case power is totally illusory and "standard of living" does not contribute to it, or another, more esoteric definition which is not connected to politics. Every man is an island. We don't have to follow our instincts. As opposed to, you know, objective morals. Our society is not individualist. Can you provide any evidence they even had taxes? It's logically impossible for it to do either. Guess who suffered because of that? And we get lower and lower prices!
