In a system in which talent is inherited rather than “earned” we’d still want to give outsized rewards those with high skill when their efforts enrich all.
If you find yourself to be one of those with an unfair advantage and wrought with guilt, simpy use your skills to their fullest, for the betterment of all.
The purpose of the economic system isn't to provide everyone what they "deserve", is it? We want to provide the incentives for people, especially high achievers or people with high potential, to produce. The fact that this correlates reasonably well with people getting what we intuit as what they deserve is just a nice side effect.
Really, it's hard to even articulate in what sense a hypothetical person with low ability and correspondingly low output "deserves" material goods (provided by others), much less that he deserves as much as the person who is doing the producing. The low ability person *can't* produce much, but he also *isn't*.
It comes down to the free will debate, as Rothbard says in the quote here. Does anybody deserve credit for anything? We do not excuse somebody who commits pedophilia just because he is attracted to children and can't resist tempttions to which the rest of us are not exposed.
Nobody deserves credit for anything; but what's wrong with that? It's the antidote to pride and hatred. And there's good reasons to lock up dangerous people that have nothing to do with free will
In a system in which talent is inherited rather than “earned” we’d still want to give outsized rewards those with high skill when their efforts enrich all.
If you find yourself to be one of those with an unfair advantage and wrought with guilt, simpy use your skills to their fullest, for the betterment of all.
The purpose of the economic system isn't to provide everyone what they "deserve", is it? We want to provide the incentives for people, especially high achievers or people with high potential, to produce. The fact that this correlates reasonably well with people getting what we intuit as what they deserve is just a nice side effect.
Really, it's hard to even articulate in what sense a hypothetical person with low ability and correspondingly low output "deserves" material goods (provided by others), much less that he deserves as much as the person who is doing the producing. The low ability person *can't* produce much, but he also *isn't*.
Tyler's right. Wish you'd discuss free will with someone like Sam Harris because your mistaken belief in it is doing alot of work here
It comes down to the free will debate, as Rothbard says in the quote here. Does anybody deserve credit for anything? We do not excuse somebody who commits pedophilia just because he is attracted to children and can't resist tempttions to which the rest of us are not exposed.
Nobody deserves credit for anything; but what's wrong with that? It's the antidote to pride and hatred. And there's good reasons to lock up dangerous people that have nothing to do with free will