Equality lies at the center of social justice. Counting possessions does not measure equality. Social justice requires equal treatment under the law, a right to the fruits of our labor, and the right to express our beliefs. A marketplace permits simplistic answers to the kind of questions equality raises. Markets have little to say about ethics or morality. There is a market for stealing other people's labor which generates a good deal of conflicts and great loss, not the least of which is the ability to trust the people you rely upon.
Equality means little where some people possess the right to appropriate other people's labor, which often occurs when someone takes an unreasonable share of the profits of someone else's labor. Overt slavery is obvious. Relative slavery is hidden in the games elites may play for money.
People or enterprises that must accept insufficient compensation to maintain the laborers or their children suffer a slave-master relationship. The recipients of the undervalued results of that labor simply argue that the market for labor dictated the result, even where the profits for the recipients are enormous. The forces of greed manipulate that market to justify the extortion ethic. Capitalism is moving in that direction for the sake of a handful of people able to accumulate wealth.
Labor, like other means of production, requires some level of capital to function; in the case of labor it is food, cloths, heat, and education. Slaves work for less. Their masters make huge sums of money by gaming finance to produce nothing at all except more money games.
I cannot help asking the question why anybody needs the second hundred million dollars for any other reason than ego and power; the power to manipulate finance and labor. CEO's, among others, do not make corporations successful any more often than they make them fail for their own profit. The masters of the game have given us an extortion-based economy that now depends on bubbles to keep the money flowing. Yet a huge military budget is still needed to keep the money flowing.
Wall Street's need for cash has fathered high risk instruments of credit supported by huge conflicts of interest and tax-payer bail-outs when the schemes fail. Regulators retire from government and become lobbyists for the industry they were regulating--not a good environment for social justice.
Those games have developed so quickly and the power that they impose on finance and politics is so great that it casts doubt on the ability to reverse the trend. The resulting disparity of wealth that damaged the greatest economy ever was accomplished by reductions in taxes and increases in subsidies for the rich. The disparity in wealth is so great that only increases in taxes and reductions in subsidies can restore the general welfare now in danger.
Politically this is no longer possible. Big money can buy too much. What is missing, that which restrained such use of power in the past, is a moral compass and intellectual honesty. Intellectual honesty must overcome the lies that increase the chances of winning the game. Intellectual honesty is not infallible. A moral compass must resolve the critical issues. What should the moral compass define?
We are what we adapt to. I cannot say it too often. We change when it is necessary to adapt. Failure to adapt may produce harsh consequences. Adaptions for on-the-ground problems, and adaptions based on philosophy and ideology may conflict with one another--the pragmatic versus some view of purity. Necessarily, the first commandment must be that no adaptation may harm people or the environment that sustains them. Science has made it possible in both the physical and mental world to identify what is harmful. Politics is working very hard to silence a good deal of that information to avoid limitations on extortion and exploitation of the environment. We need regulations that require scientific vetting of all industrial processes and agriculture. Technological fixes can do more damage than the problem they were intended to cure. The choice of fixes often turns on which one is cheaper or who controls it--seldom the best test.
The next commandment must be to spread power broadly. At the time that the American Constitution was being drafted many thought that power would soon corrupt the separations of power that the founding fathers designed. Madison observed that there were so many divergent interests and wide-spread distribution of property as to discourage monopolies and other accumulations of wealth. Indeed, the prominence of many interest sectors fostered a kind of intellectual honesty and moral compass that served to spread power which lasted to the end of WWII. The spread of power provided the glue that bound the nation together. Everyone relied on help from their neighbors and their government. The war of all against all followed the decline of independent businesses and the rise of financial institutions and huge corporations.
Human nature has not changed. People will still take power any way they can. To allow anyone access to the kind of power that creates despots eventually leads to the government of despots. Instead of people working to solve community problems, the war of all against all looks at inequality for advantage. Too many people have a vested interest in other people's misery. We are what we adapt to.
Individual accumulations of wealth should not exceed people's needs and what comforts the community can support. People fear big government and ignore the impacts of big money which can do as much damage as any government. There will always be a government. The issue now is whether it will be the government of money or the general welfare.
Congress was once a great deliberative body. Real problems were solved by looking at the facts and the conflicts to make a coherent policy. Campaign costs have risen to the point where legislators spend more time and money on running for office than on listening to the needs of the people. The greatest incentive in governing now turns on who will have the right to appropriate other people's labor and how. That also follows from the religion of money. Congress now spends more time on lobbyists to determine how the pie will be divided. Lobbyists now write the laws and ignore the facts.
The incentive to create an elite who gain power by rigging the market so that some profit from their labor while others receive far less for their labor requires a limit on anyone's accumulation of wealth. It matters little if the amount is one million or two million annually. It will limit the ability to accumulate wealth that overpowers the majority by removing the incentive to accumulate excess wealth. The same is true of private property. Excessive accumulation of property creates another elite.
Some ancient cultures hold that no one person can own the earth and its treasures. They belong to everyone. Private property is not the problem. The problem with real property lies in the failure to properly value its uses. The tree next door gives you shade. You do not pay for it.
Water, the most important resource, is plentiful some places and scarce in other places. If people are allowed to own it, they can make other people pay large sums for what is rightfully a community asset, thus stealing other people's labor. People who own property must pay the community the community-value of that property. Hoarding or wasting water would soon become too expensive. Such forms of taxation would finance schools, medical care, and most government functions. Ignoring the value of property to the community creates another elite.
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