> > > Which is to say that you believe you know better how people should > spend their money than they do themselves. That people need to have > their money confiscated and spent by the intellectual elite since > otherwise people would spend it on a bunch of crap. >
No, what I believe is that regarding matters that effect a group of people we often make better, more responsible choices when we act as a group rather than as an individual. We are inherently selfish, but we understand that selflessness is both more noble and more beneficial to the whole. Acting as individuals we will tend towards selfishness; as a group, less so. That said, individuality and indeed selfishness have attributes that the group can't always compete with. Competitiveness sparks innovation and motivates people to work hard and they should and do expect to reap the benefits of their labors. The trick is to balance the two by allowing our competitive nature to flourish while not allowing our baser nature to take paths that will be detrimental in the long run. I think that while without our individual attributes we wouldn't have come so far so fast, but that without the group we would sill have claws or hooves. Doug
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