AC/DCdude17 said:
Our power company charges a fixed low income assistance charge and a
percentage based low income housing and community service charge
from EVERY customer. The power company have no choice. The
government is making them do it. The low income customers are given
REDUCED rates courtesy of involuntary donation other customers are
forced to make by power of law.
This is a government operated class discrimination that must be
banned!
Your comment is OT for the list, and so I'll be brief and try not to
carry the thread forward.
First, all governments in the whole of history have engaged in what is
called economic redistribution. Also, philosophical arguments against
redistribution tend to be particularly American, recent and to work
from contested axioms. So there is nothing self-evidently wrong with
redistribution, and the burden falls on you to build a case.
If you have objections to redistribution in practice, you need to be
specific; if you object in principle, you need to justify your
position somehow, particularly your starting axioms. That is, you
can't just state your objection and presume everyone else will fall in
line. Did you make your statement here because you knew folks would
hesitate to criticize because doing so would be OT?
Second, while redistribution generally requires discrimination (it
distinguishes rich from poor), it is not obvious there is anything
intrinsically wrong with discrimination. If I help a little old lady
across the street, am I not engaged in age discrimination? Further, it
is not "class" discrimination at all. An empiricist definition of
class is sociologically inoperative, and so I suggest you not use the
word here. To be persuasive, you must say what you mean.
Third, redistribution has nothing to do with the "left." The present
regime in the U.S. is clearly capitalist, and redistribution is
clearly a long-term capitalist policy. The left would do away with
capitalism and its tendency to generate gross social inequities. If
productive property were socially owned and controlled (the aim of the
left), then, while there would still be some need for redistribution,
with the removal of the principal source of inequity the
redistribution would probably become far less significant. That is, if
you don't like redistribution (such as by insurance companies), then
you should probably be supporting the left.
