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LarryFromMo Wrote: May 16, 2012 7:13 AM
I think he's talking about competition. If Tom the mechanic can fix cars with better service and less cost than Joe then Joe is going to go out of business. In a sense Joe is a "loser" since he went out of business. This isn't bad because everyone else is better off with lower prices and better service and perhaps Joe would even be better off in a different line of work. The Liberal/Democrat approach to this situation would be to tax Tom in order to bail out Joe's business. This is what happened with GM and Chrysler.
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MoreFreedom Wrote: May 16, 2012 9:14 AM
You're right Larry. In a free society some work harder than others and those that work harder typically achieve more wealth than others in their field. Sometimes one gets ahead via luck. The differences in outcomes among the individuals is called unfair by some. Socialists and communists claim this is unfair. It's easy to see the differences in outcomes, but seldom does one see the differences in earlier effort. It's a false claim in a free market, because one reaps what one sows.
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Tacitus X Wrote: May 16, 2012 11:52 AM
If others choose not to transact with Joe, he hasn't lost anything since he never had it in the first place. By contrast, if the government comes and takes 40% of Tom's earnings, then HAS lost something. I'm all for competition rewarding merit and weeding out incompentence. Nontheless, the essence of the free market is voluntary transactions for mutual gain, not winners taking from losers. If you misconceive it in those terms, most you speak with will choose socialism as being kinder and fairer -- which it isn't.
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When my wife was a liberal, she complained that libertarian reasoning is coldhearted. Since markets produce winners and losers -- and many losers did nothing wrong -- market competition is cruel. It must seem so. President Obama used the word "fair" in his last State of the Union address nine times.
We are imprinted to prefer a world that is "fair." Our close relatives the chimpanzees freak out when one chimp gets more than his fair share, so zookeepers are careful about food portions. Chimps are hardwired to get angry when they think they've been cheated -- and so...
Making Life Fair