That is a marxist slogan and they're slogans.
That is no excuse for not replying with a substantive argument.
Are you equal to a racist? If someone kidnapped you, and the police called your mom and said "Hey, we couldn't locate Dada but here's an equal that will serve the same purpose" and they come in with a morbidly obese woman of colour (you're equals, remember that), what do you think would be your mom's reaction? Would she be OK, since you're all equals?
To be equal to someone doesn't mean to be identical. You're also the only one who doesn't seem to get what I mean by equality—maybe because you'd rather not be forced to make a substantive reply.
The amount of effort he puts in is disproportionate to the rewards he reaps, but think about it. He has a skill that is so rare and that has the potential to alter permanently the lives that it makes no sense that it should have the same value as that of someone who knows nothing but how to tighten screws. He also takes much bigger risks. A bad decision by Mr. Gates could cost the comfortable lives of thousands and it did sometimes. So he earned all of his billions, and it's up to him alone to decide how to spend them (on charity), not you, not Obama, not anyone else.
Again. Who has the rarer skill set? Who has to make the riskier decisions?
I don't contest the fact that people like Bill Gates have amazing and rare abilities. What I contest is the idea that this gives him the right to have absolutely outrageous amounts of money.
Let us put aside the idea of Marx's "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" for one minute. Let's go back to the juxtaposition that I put forth before, between the single mom working three jobs and the financial company CEO. According to the capitalist society, he is literally millions of times more useful than she is. She's struggling just to survive. He has more money than he even knows what to do with. Do you think that's just? What about a mine worker who has to work himself to a sweat every day and will probably die at 60 due to health complications, do you think that's a proportionate comparison? What about the poor Indian worker whose daily calorie intake has tanked since the capitalist market reforms 25 years ago?
Here's what all of this comes down to: even if you believe that the CEO has a right to a greater degree of luxury, is
millions of times justified? Is it justified for one person to have a fully staffed personal jet while other people are malnourished?
Still, what's also going on here is a rather incredible romanticization of rich people. It's a common trope that people employ in defense of the rich elite: assert that they deserve it because they're such incredible superhumans. Well, when you commit yourself to a serious examination of reality instead of telling fairy tales, you'll find that things are a lot more nuanced. The financial industry is a good example. It's very daring to try and paint these people as deserving of their ungodly wealth when you consider the fact they brought the complete world economy to its knees recently thanks to conduct that they knew was systemically damaging. They did it because it benefited
them.
There are many other reasons for why it's savage and inhumane to permit such a degree of elitism to exist. It's not so much different from the court of Versailles, the only real difference being that, thanks to propaganda, completely regular people like yourself are finding themselves making excuses for this continuous theft to go on.
That's not a caricature, IT'S WHAT ALL OF THEM ARE, WITHOUT EXCEPTION. Equality is and always has been nothing but a ruse. Behind every nice-sounding cry for equality there is the intention of putting in power one or another elite.
I have to say, you're not serious. Does
Jill Stein conform to your caricature of "the leftist leader"? What about Noam Chomsky or Peter Kropotkin or Anton Pannekoek or Rosa Luxemburg? What about the fact Chomsky even explicitly said he doesn't like the word "leader" because that implies there is one person who sets the agenda for others to follow, and that conflicts with the most basic tenets of both socialism and anarchism. You're still equating left-wing philosophy with totalitarianism—that's not the attitude of someone who's interested in a serious, fact-based discussion.
That's would be like having cooperatives everywhere and people already are free to do that but they mostly don't.
As I said before, people don't really have much of a choice. They're stuck in the system. Besides that, the initiatives that do get started end up being crushed. A good example is Vietnam, which was completely destroyed by the US (they're still dying from chemical warfare) because it tried to break away from the pack. There are many others.
This is inherently also similar to the "vote with your money" argument. It's simply not a workable solution, which is why it's proposed by people who don't
want people to have a solution.
Yeah, do you know why none of them has anything to do with socialism? Because all it is good at is filling mass graves, that's why.
This is an incredibly myopic thing to say, considering that the US is responsible for literally
millions of deaths throughout the entire world. As I argued before, capitalism is a process that leads to massive concentrations of private, unaccountable power. Tyranny is a natural end result. The anarchist philosophy specifically dismantles concentrations of power. As I said before, what happened in the Soviet Union had very little to do with socialism because its primary tenet—worker control over the means of production—was dismantled right at the start, and the country ultimately went on to become a totalitarian state. Equating that with socialism simply means you don't know what socialism is.
Well you too will have to stop babbling communist propaganda material because I'm having a hard time trying to take you seriously
Again, these are all just poor excuses to not have to make substantive arguments.
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How do you feel now that Obamacare was ruled constitutional?