Trio and Friends

Ondrej wrote:theft is immoral, even if a mob of people agree, and rules/laws are ultimately enforced at gunpoint. So “taxing the 1%” to pay for the poor is immoral.

In reply, Ondrej wrote:This is something of a meme. The underlying idea is that the rich are wealthy enough (some will even go so far as to say it is unjust simply to BE so wealthy) and their wealth should be redistributed to things that everyone else can benefit from like, universal healthcare, “free” college tuition, etc. What distinguishes this from “conventional” taxation is that on the face of it, it is not designed to benefit everyone. It is designed to benefit everyone else. There is an unspoken resentment toward “the 1%” as though they have gained their wealth unjustly or have not suffered in life and so deserve to shoulder everyone else’s burdens.

In reply, Ondrej wrote:The attainment of property by means of coercive force, deception, or simply taking it while someone is not looking.

In reply, Ondrej wrote:Not quite sure what you are intending to get at with this question. I guess property must be a clearly defined noun. There might be a requirement that there is a mechanism for trading the property between parties but this might follow naturally from that property is a noun. Notice that this does not exclude people. This exclusion is performed artificially after the development of the concept on ethical grounds. And ownership of people has a long history showing it is quite possible. It is specifically because it is possible that we must artificially exclude people from this category.
More philosophically there might be something further below along the lines of agreed recognition, respect for the autonomy of others, and the existence of scarcity but this will just mire us in the weeds. I’m not sure we need to dive that deep.

More philosophically there might be something further below along the lines of agreed recognition