[djrobstep]

Dying in the gutter because you can't afford health insurance seems pretty miserable to me. Working at Walmart for minimum wage to make Sam Walton's useless children richer seems pretty miserable to me.

There are many well proven ways to make people more equal, strong government welfare programs being one. They are very straightforward.

Culture doesn't make people winners and losers, a brutally enforced system of authoritarian capitalism does.

[ozy]

You are saying one thing, but describing another.

We want people to always have good opportunities to bootstrap themselves out of a terrible situation (your gutter and wallmart situations). But we don't want to remove all the rewards from turning time into value.

"brutally enforced system of authoritarian capitalism" think you have a few opinions there that are deeply rooted in feelings ...

When you are alone on an island, the world rewards you when you spend time changing things for the better (eg hunt for food). If in that situation you have the opportunity to trade you will be even better off.

Things only go south when free markets also create a free labor market. Then the power of markets pushes strongly on those wages. Even if there is no evil intent by anyone, companies not ignoring this push will not be around for long ...

[fudgepack99]

You're pretty clueless as to the history of capitalism.

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of traumatised soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/...

Blum:

http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

The Centre for Investigative Journalism

http://www.tcij.org/

Some history on US imperialism by us corporations.

https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-histor...

[ozy]

Why am I "pretty clueless" when your comment does not even address anything I said, let alone counter it?

You add a whole different perspective, but one that is fully compatible on top of what I said, nobody is denying that part of capitalism. Powerful people, no matter what system, can do horrible things without regard for the victims ... and under capitalism companies can become powerful too.

[fudgepack99]

You don't understand what is happening, the elites are at war with all citizens of their respective states because they fear the free flow of information through their society. That is why are collecting everything. Go view the privacy video and skip to 1:02:30 and watch.

So hear it from national security advisor of the united states. If you are the non fraction of the 1% you are the enemy, aka spying is aimed at politically controlling your perception because they know your brain doesn't see the world as it is. See the science:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Every citizen called a "global menace" here by Zbig:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Government does not work for you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYFxtNgOeiI

Book:

http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf

Privacy video

https://theintercept.com/a-conversation-about-privacy/

[ozy]

Again, since I didn't talk about those issues, you cannot conclude what I do or do not know.

[sewer_bird]

I don't see a contradiction between Equality of Opportunity and welfare programs. Indeed, they seem to be proposed hand-in-hand by most people, so I'll set aside for a moment the emotional content of your argument.

I do not see how invoking 'authoritarian capitalism' serves as a refutation that cultures of human beings creates winners and losers.

The distinction to make here is that Equality of Outcome requires everyone to have the same outcome. Feeling as you must do, surely you would prefer a reduction in inequality, not mandatory equality?