I finally get to tackle this big one; sorry for the delay. I'll start off by saying my perceptions are colored by reading The Social Contract by Rousseau, which I appreciated.
The Just World Fallacy (http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallacy/), along with a thorough reading of the works of Malcom Gladwell, have led me to the firm conclusion that luck, and your parent's social status, far more than hard work or even talent, are what lead to a 'life of luxury'.
Perhaps thats the trend these days, but progressing your family/personal wealth isn't dead; my father's paycheck has sextupled since we were below poverty level 18 years ago. Obviously I won't say we were the norm, but luck never had anything to do with it, nor did social status. My father was a lowly enlisted comm tech in the Air Force; there's not much social status that goes with that, and both of my parents came from the mountains of New York, the middle of nowhere. I will agree that we need more advancement and a shrinkage of the gap between the rich and the poor, but I refuse to believe its totally dead or completely dependent on luck and social status, whatever that is.
Then question, then, is "is there a moral imperative to share the results of your good fortune with someone less fortunate than you?"
The answer, in my opinion is "if the less fortunate person is going to perish without your assistance, there is."
Fortunately, the general consensus among civilized populations is that I'm right, which is exactly why most governments have some form of social service wherein they use legitimately collected taxes to give the poorest people what they need to have in order to keep them from dying.
Of course there's a moral imperative to aid the less fortunate, but I prefer to do it through charities. It doesn't mean that all governmental programs are morally wrong, but I do think alternatives should be pursued constantly. The fact that the moral imperative exists however has nothing to do with the original question of whether owning material goods is immoral.
However, we come to the tax issue.
There is no authority on earth that can morally determine what someone does with their material goods.
Bullsh!t. You live in a country, you accept as part of your citizenship that your government has some authority over all aspects of your life, including what you do with your material goods. Period.
The real moral problem is when people who take advantage of that same government's other services think that they're entitled to keep money that the government is owed simply because that money is being used for something that they're unhappy about. Get real -- EVERYONE'S tax money gets used for things they're unhappy about. Lord knows I have no desire to help fund the American military whatsoever, but it doesn't keep me from happily paying my taxes. I know just how critical the government is to my life, and I want them to have enough money to do everything that I need them to do. If they happen to send my friends and family overseas to shoot foreigners along the way, well, you have to take the bad with the good.
First of all, there is no RIGHT to taxation by any government on this earth. There is only the privilege of taxation granted by the consent of the governed; the mass of citizens that control (and are controlled by?) each government. Any government that attempts to assume the power of taxation, which is simply a seizure of goods with the promise of further services from those goods, immediately dissolves the bond between it and the governed, becomes a corrupt government and should be destroyed by any means necessary.
However, on the practical end of things, you and me are both citizens of our countries (sorry, I can't remember if you are American or Canadian
). We are signators to this grand social contract by virtue of being citizens, and here's where I agree with you; we all get taxed and those taxes will go to things we don't support. It doesn't invalidate our social contract because we both recognize the need for taxation for the survival of our governments and its services. I won't agree that this social contract grants the government GENERALLY to any control of myself outside of protecting others, or controlling goods I own. That would be a violation of our social contract unless legally done so through our respective Constitutions; the legal and physical manifestation of our social contracts.
There is no authority on earth that can morally determine what someone does with their material goods.
I think that stands for itself, if viewed with what I've typed above. The government itself is an amoral construct; one without inherent morals either way, closer to a machine or a corporation or union. Granting it the power/privilege to determine the use of people's goods is in itself an amoral choice, but one subject to the whims of those who run the government. The end result, the seizure and direct control of goods and services and taxation can easily become immoral by the actions of those in the government.
Owning material goods is the same thing as not aiding a dying person?
No -- but voting yourself a tax cut at the expense of programs that help keep people from dying is totally the same thing as not aiding a dying person. Abso-f***ing-lutely.
The problem, on a technical level, is that the original question did not present two options that are mutually incompatible. Someone who owns 30 Lexuses can save plenty of lives over the course of his, including but not limited to saving drowning people and donating other funds to charities and paying taxes while advocating more social welfare programs. If I wanted to be particularly asinine, I'd point out that 30 Lexuses aren't cheap, and that anyone who owns them has paid a tremendous cost to gain those goods, much of which would go to supporting the companies and jobs that poorer people need to sustain themselves. I think that the original question should have been "is allowing others to starve while not acting morally wrong or not" but since thats a pretty cut and dried question (only Kael doesn't care? I've skipped anything past your reply to me.) he substituted material goods to see if he could concoct a moral conundrum. Neopergoss' original question was fundamentally flawed.
I hope I wasn't writing too stringy again, and I hope you see where I'm coming from here. I love the theories of limited government, but I'm not so short sighted that I ignore the need for social welfare programs (which might've saved my cousin and his family) and taxation. I simply think they are a band-aid to the solution, which would create a more volatile economy where a large percentage of families would see their wealth fluctuate over a generation or two. I think we can both agree that stagnation of the poles is undesirable. Also, to recap, I object to the idea of taxation and governmental power as a right of the government; the day we think that an amorphous organization has rights over us is the day we've collectively manumitted those rights. We've simply collectively granted the privilege of those powers, subject to the consensus of the will of the people (note, Rousseau makes a distinction between the will of the people and the general will of all).
If you reply, I'm going on vacation this weekend, perhaps without my computer. I'll certainly try to remember to respond if you do, and I hope I cleared up some of your questions. If I'm being inconsistent in some way, please call me out. My opinions do vary from day to day, so some, like taxes day
I might be more libertarian than others.
