John Williams wrote: > On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Trent Shipley<tship...@deru.com> wrote: >> John Williams wrote: >>> There are billions of people around the world with worse healthcare >>> than virtually everyone in the United States. If the goal is to >>> redistribute wealth to improve healthcare because of the belief that >>> everyone should have a chance to live and be healthy, then why not >>> focus on redistributing wealth from people in the US to the people in >>> the world who have far worse health care than those in the US? >> Why not? >> >> The basic reason is that people are both tribal and self-interested. > > Would this be an accurate expansion of that? > > "It is ethical to take wealth from some people in order to help other > people with less resources, but only if all of those people are in the > same political boundary"?
Whether it is ethical or not depends on what ethical system you adhere to. It sounds like a reasonable ethical proposition to me. Many Americans would find no fault with it. > If so, then why is the political boundary more important than the fact > that there are other people outside the political boundary who are > much worse off than most of those inside? And when I say why, I am not > looking for a sociological answer about tribes, but rather an argument > about ethics. The people outside the boundary are not my responsibility. They are not my people. Furthermore, they don't participate in my moral economy. The status of the poor in my country has an immediate effect on me. I may be among the poor, and if I am not I may have feelings for my fellow countrymen, and even if I don't there is a real cost to tripping over the hungry and homeless in the streets, and the crime associated with extreme poverty. Poverty is a society wide expense. Poverty in another country is an external expense, especially if it is a result of unfair global capitalism favoring the metropole or of old style colonialism. And as every business student knows, and externalized cost is a good cost. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
