It's close. My point is that we need a clear definition of what's fair to start from. And it has to be a definition that is satisfactory to most people.
Interesting. If you have 51% of the people declaring that 49% percent of the people should start with nothing, and that they (by right of popular demand) should get the 49%'s stuff, as a starting point, then, ... that's a clear definition, I guess. And it's satisfactory to most people, I guess. I still feel vaguely unnerved.
While 51% can be defined as "most", "most" doesn't necessarily mean "at least 51%". I was being rather vagueish, because requiring 100% acceptance is likely to be impossible. For instance, I really doubt that the white supremacist movement is going to find any situation where members of other ethnicities get as much or more than any of their members to be "equitable" according to their values. But just because they won't accept a solution that everyone else does doesn't mean we should throw it away. They're being unreasonable.
Not to mention, you're just describing a bullying situation. If you present that scenario to most people, they'll say that it isn't fair. Because they don't know if they'll be on the 51 or 49. I mean, even some of the 51% could say that it's not fair to the 49% to just lose their stuff by popular vote. Which would mean doubly that most people wouldn't find that definition fair.
And of course, the problem is that there's enough variance in "fair" that you probably can't get more that 5 or 10 people to agree on what's fair in all aspects. Which is why I kind of tune out when people just harp on "fair" without being specific. "Fair" is a weasel word. "Not getting shot by the cops during a routine traffic stop" is a clear complaint. That I can work with.
Well, yeah: not having the agents of the monopoly on preemptive violence that the state has reserved to itself getting too trigger-happy is something that I think all us plebes can agree upon.
When you are talking about normalizing starting conditions (up-thread), you are talking about ad-hoc/post-hoc redistribution of assets. Presumably assets that have been earned at an earlier time based on providing customers products or services that they wanted to buy at a price they were willing to pay, at a margin above their cost to the producer, allowing the wealth to accumulate. Like Steve Jobs creating a company that sells iPhones generating wealth.
Now - Steve Job's offspring will start at a better position in life than my children will. They didn't earn it - but my children didn't either. I find myself vaguely uncomfortable with the idea that I/we could form a group of 51% or 55% or 65% or even 80% that would vote to expropriate from them their property, so that I/we could distribute those spoils amongst ourselves. Is the current state 'fair'? Almost certainly not! But legitimized piracy by democratic consent? Where would it end?
I mean, we could form that group anyway. Viva la revolution and all that.
And it's good that you're uncomfortable with it. It's an uncomfortable thing.
I am not talking about the redistribution of wealth per se. I'm talking about the footwork needed to get to the place where we can even begin talking about it. I'm acknowledging that it's difficult. That it needs some hard answers to wicked problems. Something a lot of people ignore in their "eat the rich" rhetoric.
And I'm not really advocating for any sort of change. I'm just saying if you want this, you need that first. If you want "a fair and rational distribution of wealth", you are first going to have to explain what that means to you, why it is fair, why it is rational, why it even needs to be done, and do it in a way that convinces me.
And to the point of fortune of birth, we're all affected by the circumstances of our birth. We're not all created equal in all aspects. Is that fair? Don't know, but it is how the world is. Some people are born taller, prettier, smarter, richer. When you get down to it, there is a large degree of our existence we didn't "earn" by the metric we judge inherited wealth.
You've triggered a thought related to something I've been thinking about for a while (and almost certain to be followed by one or more questions) that I would like to run by you.
But I don't want to compose it on a mobile device, nor at work, so it will be a day or so before I follow it up here.
Ok ... I'm pretty sure I'm going to express this badly - but I'll try...
A long long time ago, humans got humanized in places where small numbers of them grouped together and cooperated/traded/shared with each other for day-to-day life.
There might be a (for example) wandering minstrel, who might spend a week or four in each of 20-or-so places. Each of those 20-or-so places (and their surrounding area) might have 150-people-or-so, who would chip in to cover the minstrel's room-and-board-and-drink. It wasn't a rich living (for sure), but one could (in theory) get by). Let's call it 10~30 multi-talented bard/actor/repair-man for every ~3000 inhabitants.
To the degree that people were literate/educated or Western Europeans, they might swap bible stories and memorize the 10 commandments. Amongst which would be admonitions against greed, envy and lust. (The Buddhist would similarly admonish against intoxicants - except they weren't incredibly dedicated to banning stuff...)
So ... fast forward a while. We've got winner take all markets. Let's talk music/film, not sports (but the math can be considered similar): Instead of having maybe 1 itenerate per thousand people, we've 1 superstar per 5~10M people. Woah! Now it's big money, so we've got back-up staff, support, stages, studios, advertising, promos, sponsorship - but it went from (say) $100/month to $10M/month.
Now back to the sins of lust/greed/envy: I believe that we (humans) were not built to envy our neighbor's goods at that scale. There was no Bill Gates. There was not even a David Rockefeller!
So you get a guy (or girl) who is willing to provide a product (or service) to national or global markets, that people want, at a price that they are willing to pay, at a cost-to-produce dramatically less than that price (on a per-unit basis). You have the recipe for a kajillionairre, by that person simply making the world a better price by providing more/better stuff for less. (Or in the Steve Jobs case: by making a religion out of a pocket computer).
But! As wealthy as we all become, with our jobs and income, and housing and clean water and indoor plumbing and always-on-electricity and wireless internet and 24-7 entertainment and a global library at our fingertips and an every improving environment (on most metrics - you would have to track data and not watch the news to learn this), many of us, with our hold Monkey-DNA encoded greed/envy/competitiveness, are jealous of the "Captains of Industry" that have made our lives to much better. And we want to take their money ("The 1%!") and distribute it to a bunch of morons that (from what I can tell) are trust-fund babies that can't hold down a job. (Or even find a place to defecate that is not a police car - given how some of the denizens of OWS behaved).
So! (It took a while to get here). Do you believe that income and wealth equality could be, should be, a first-order goal, given that our current system has generated so much wealth? Why would we want to tear down something that is working for all of us, for the purpose of instituting an abstract noun that no one seems to be able to define? For my part, I'd rather be an increasingly wealthy part of the 99% and am grateful to the 1% for dragging us along with them...
