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“It is simply unfair to ask the environment that is everyone’s to take the burden of an SUV for groceries.”

This assumes that there is no actual need for such a vehicle in the owners other endeavors. Perhaps you think it would be less environmentally wasteful to perhaps have more than one vehicle? The SUV for what it is required for -> pulling a trailer or hauling goods that require less than a delivery truck but larger than a car for example, and then purchase a second, more energy efficient vehicle for around town errands? Think hard about energy and resource usage required to build and deliver me that second, not really needed car, and the resources I’m going to burn through to make enough for the purchase before you answer.

You are also making an assumption that everyone is driving around some big ‘ol V8 big block version, which any check of sales will show isn’t true. In my own case I had to get one for work. I needed something large enough to tote things all over town and keep them out of the weather and away from those who would grab them, sometimes driving on less than ideal dirt roads out to nowhere. It’s a HUGE 4 cylinder, a real pig on the gas… . You see I’m a *real* conservative, not a RINO born again. I have no desire to waste anything, such as using more gas to cross town then I need to (I’d rather invest it, or use it to help someone out who is both in need and looks like such help might actually make a meaningful difference for… as in it will help them not need more help because they actually have something worked out that makes sense… You’re jaw would likely drop if you had any idea how much personal help we provide in *our* community, the place where we can look at the need, look at the *why* of the need, and make a choice as to *our* resources). However, I also know some who own a large vehicle because they regularly need to tow a large trailer or what have you. Rather than purchase more vehicles (that they couldn’t afford, but hey, it’s America and we apparently don’t believe in paying for stuff anymore, so maybe that’s not an excuse…) they deal with the one they *have no choice* in having…

This is what happens when we trivialize and simplify real life into a text book problem. We make huge, and incredibly unreflective, generalizations on those who don’t agree with our initial outburst and “their” lifestyles…

You don’t get irony, do you? My post in response to Vel was a direct reflection of Vel’s previous comment, just reversed around, and in keeping with the main article this post is about -> both sides suffer from the disease, and both sides have many more reasons than simply the “science” for being so strongly attached to one of them, as in fact a lot rests on their ideas of society -> and that would be *both* sides. Did you catch that it started with a quote from the article?

The above was just standard “what a leftist is” (pretty text book in fact), same as the grade school mock sit com views of conservatives, in fact just the reverse of the comment Vel threw out above it.

I’d seriously take the time to digest what Nullius said above, in #41. The same differing view of “fair” holds for things like “freedom” as well by the way -> in Ploy Sci we used to talk about positive and negative freedom, and that the East and West were split along those lines… It is a far more complex issue to delve into then simply looking at it like an equation, where what we care about for validity is the result rather than the ideal…

I never actually stated what I thought fair was, though I think I can safely say it is likely much more in line if not the same as Nullius then most of those who babble here… And as Nullius also pointed out, I can be pretty damn sure I’ve paid more in taxes then just about anyone else in here, so ya, I benifited from my ancestors not making bad choices and not living beyond their means. I also benifited by being willing to work 16 hour days 7 days a week for years. I’ve also more than paid any “debt” for having had that privlidge, and I really hate people looking at me like their piggy bank. I think I’ve *earned* the right to finally relax. How’s that?

That’s a good way of putting it, that gets to the heart of the question. Do you believe in equality of opportunity, or equality of outcome?

The difference between the two is a source of many misunderstandings. You said that our idea of fair does not result in most people’s well being or happiness – I’d dispute that – but even supposing it is so for the sake of argument, it’s a statement about an outcome. If you give everyone the opportunity, and only a few take it, only a few will benefit from the resulting well being. Is that unfair? Is it fairer to take from those who put in the work, seized the opportunity, and give it to those who did nothing? Who produced nothing? So that they can be happy too?

“We are all the product of society and therefore indebted to it.”

There is no such thing as society. A society consists of people, and it is dangerous to impersonalise them that way. Evil starts when you treat people as things, as they say. By treating society as a thing, it becomes easy to feel entitled, irresponsible, to be ungrateful, resentful, or to want to shape and control it, to order it according to your own concept of the way the world should be. It’s a thing; what rights or feelings could it have?

A simple example – suppose unemployment benefit, rather than coming from the state, was given you by your friends, neighbours, and family. They see you down on your luck, feel sympathy, and help you out by working themselves and giving you part of what they earn. That’s good – I approve of it. Would it be so easy in those circumstances to feel entitled, to demand more at every opportunity, and to make no effort to get yourself out of your situation? If they had their own problems, and said they could no longer afford it, would you demand that they pay anyway? And have it extracted by force? As a human living amongst humans, could you do that?

Impersonalising your neighbours as “society” makes it far easier to do so. It makes it far easier not to judge, and to avoid the hard decisions.

We all feel sympathy. We will all help those around us we see who need and deserve it. But for those who give the most, who help others the most, because they have the greatest capacity to help – it comes hard to find yourself hated, for not giving more. It comes hard when others see your talents and effort as a bottomless resource to be plundered for their own benefit, for no effort or deserving of theirs, for no other reason or justification than that they need you. It is hard when you are accused of stealing what you yourself gave, because you didn’t give them everything.

We are all the product of the systems paid for, and in many cases invented, built, and run by the rich, and we are therefore indebted to them. The top 2% of earners pay around 40% of all income tax revenue. The bottom 50% pay virtually none of it. I’ll tell you, they give “society” vastly more than they ever receive in return! How else could so many others receive so much that they have no capacity to give?

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It’s another point of view. I don’t expect you to agree with it – I’m not going to spend hours arguing about it. But I think it would be helpful if people at least knew how others think and feel about it. We spend too much time fighting creatures of our own imagining, without understanding.

Do you think accomplished people truly arose from a vacuum and didn’t take advantage of the programs and system society provided. We are all the product of society and therefore indebted to it.

It is simply unfair to ask the environment that is everyone’s to take the burden of an SUV for groceries. It is identical to asking people to endure second hand smoke because smokers enjoy it so much.

“But it’s not just CWMs who do this. We ALL do. We all bring our subjective views on how society should operate to the subconscious process of coming up with our opinions on many issues. Egalitarians see climate change through the lens of their tribal preference for a social operating norm that is more flexible, more fair (as they would put it), less bound by hierarchies of class, so they are ‘believers’ in climate change rather than ‘deniers’ precisely because the solutions to climate change will necessarily shake up the status quo. That’s the hidden point in “Cool Dudes”.

So, your idea of “fair” is to dumb down to the lowest common denominator because you view “equal”, not as an ideal of opportunity, but rather the way the result should be as in a math equation. You don’t like the fact that some make better choices in their personal lives than others and thus get to enjoy the rewards of said choices (or the misery they bring, both part of the possible outcomes of actually choosing things rather than having things distributed by a third party…). You envy their success but don’t want to have to perform to enjoy the same thing. You’d rather be lost in the herd, always being able to say “those who know decided and I just went along” rather then be held personally accountable for that which you chose or fail to chose…

That it?

You see, it can be played both ways…