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I feel like this question is conflicted on the issue of 'disproportionate' inequalities. To be clear, most academic and scientific experts are paid well, proportionately more than many other workers in society. Few people become conspicuously wealthy as an intellectual expert, but it is a comfortable lifestyle when one achieves it. So the question isn't ...
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Leaving aside the accuracy of Robin Hood, I'll address your points directly.
The first being that if we assume a free market exists...
There was no free market in England in Robin Hood's time. The disparity in the usual telling of Robin Hood is due to oppressive taxation by a corrupt usurper.
...regardless of how he redistributes wealth, a disparity ...
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I disagree with the premise that these two views are in some way contradictory or conflicting to hold at the same time.
The alleged discrepancy you're pointing out, when you boil it down to its core, effectively argues that "comparable" and "equatable" are synonymous, which they are not.
Note that this answers mainly focuses on the ...
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Disclaimer: I just skimmed a bunch of Wikipedia articles and old stories. I think I got the gist of the history about right, but can't claim this to be authoritative.
tl;dr- Robin Hood was never really meant to be a good guy. Instead, he was a brigand who ran a criminal enterprise, much like Al Capone. Early stories noted how the criminal enterprise's ...
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Wanted to register a small framing challenge here with a few tiny notes (please do try to understand this as a good faith attempt to clarify the concern!)
It seems somewhat ill-fitting to import any of our contemporary economic concepts onto the feudal context. We can leave aside the early premonitions of a burgeoning mercantilist class capable of acting as ...
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The root of this concept lies in a theory, most closely associated recently with theorist David Sloan Wilson, that moral behaviors --specifically altruism --convey a group-level survival advantage. The idea itself is quite old, but it has recently experienced a revival after being dismissed for a long period of time. (Note: The theory is still considered ...
answered Jan 8 '18 at 16:11
Chris Sunami supports Monica
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While this is not a philosophy question, it raises a few points.
First, I don't personally know of any version of Robin Hood where he takes from riches who got rich because of their cunning and entrepreneurship. Usually they are rich because they harass peons with taxes that are justified by no service (as opposed, for exemple, to tax paid against police ...
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Let me set Rawls to one side and bring Marx on stage. It may be a mistake to translate the complex, abstract idea of "equality" into the monetized value measurements of a modern economy. Even Marx recognized that is was silly to suppose socialism meant no more hierarchies or expertise or status systems, some sort of social flattening.
Equality is a ...
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The question is how much well-informed citizens need to be to exercise their democratic rights. The answer depends on theories of democracy. The duty of citizens to be well-informed can be very demanding or not demanding at all. Some theories even require moral duty not to vote. I explain these three views in the following.
J.S. Mill's theory can be argued ...
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He was definitely force of good from historical perspective
Robin Hood lived in feudal society. According to some versions of the legend, he was disgraced feudal lord (Robin of Locksley). In feudal society all political power and most of the wealth belonged to nobility . On the other hand, majority of population (peasants, serfs) had no political power, ...
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1. It was never "your" income to begin with
There is a key idea one should realize before going any further: there is no such thing as "your" income (unless you have earned it on an inhabited island, or in a lawless jungle, relying on yourself and no one else).
When you are earning money within a societal framework, leveraging on its laws ...
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John Stuart Mill in On liberty will say that what makes a violent speech violent (construed as 'legally violent', that is, a legally impermissible act to do onto others) depends on the context. What makes a violent speech legally violent is a matter relating how or when to legitimately exercise freedom of speech. Mill's answer to this question is the Harm ...
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Your summary doesn't really match your longer-form thoughts. You seem to have at least two questions here:
Supposing Robin Hood had some historical existence, what would have been his goal in taking from the rich and giving to the poor?
Any sufficiently ambitious goal is impossible (corollary: any goal that is possible is insufficiently ambitious). Suppose ...
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(From a utilitarian perspective.)
There's a tradeoff here that arguably Rawls perspective doesn't fully recognize. It all comes down to the diminishing marginal utility of wealth.
On the one hand, the existence of inequality is necessary because most people are motivated by incentives and selfish goals. If it weren't for inequality, there'd be no selfish ...
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There's some non-sequiturs in your thought process.
Generally, whether or not people consider something to be morally right is irrelevant to reward or punishment.
People don't always do things they think are morally right. Maybe because they'll be rewarded for doing what they think is wrong, or they'll be punished for doing what they think is right.
Your ...
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It is simply an analogy, in the context of the discussion regarding Søren Kierkegaard's quest for the knight of faith :
People commonly travel around the world to see rivers and mountains, new stars, [...]. This does not interest me. But if I knew where there was such a knight of faith, I would make a pilgrimage to him on foot, for this prodigy interests ...
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moral rights
"Rights" aren't a moral or ethical category. They are a juridical category.
to mourn
To "mourn", on the other hand, is psychological, not moral or juridical, phenomenon.
So, the "moral right to mourn" is a conflation of disparate concepts, which becomes meaningless at all three - juridical, moral, psychological - levels.
Juridically, ...
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You have missed the fact that this is happening during a feudal period. A lord’s job was to protect and provide for the needs of his people. If he didn’t do that, someone else would. In this case, while the King was away, the mice did play —- including Robin Hood.
His redistribution of the wealth, wasn’t a socialist impulse, but rather an attempt at ...
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Ethics and morality are often used by philosophers as synonyms. Some philosophers have suggested that we use the words in slightly different ways, where “ethics” would refer to a system describing right and wrong action in particular contexts like a profession or a role (like “business ethics"); “morality” would describe rightness and wrongness in the more ...
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Contrary to Jobermark, I believe Kant provides a very straightforward answer to your dilemma. Kant's based his categorical imperative on one question "Is it universalizable?", and in your case the clear answer is vote for what you think is right for everybody (presumably in your case that is party B, since it would help more people than party A). Here's why:
...
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One important aspect is that people do not get rich because of hard work, people get rich because they take risks in business. Jeff Bezos is not extremely rich because he has worked hard. He is rich because he has taken several risks that has payed very well off.
That is not to say that knowing what risks to take or not is a skill, and as such can be valued. ...
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(b) happens often enough.
"I prefer Gore to Bush. But, I just heard Nader talk, and now I prefer Nader to Gore."
If you have 51% support for Gore, 49% support for Bush, and 0% support for Nader, but some Gore supporters decide they like Nader even more than Gore, the numbers will go to e.g. 48%, 49%, 3%, and Bush will win the election, even though nobody ...
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Your question is essentially a variation on a debate in the autonomy literature. The question that arises there is the relationship between autonomy and free choices. The two examples most common in the literature are prostitution and burqas. The question in these instances and yours is this:
To what extent is autonomy to be located in the immediate will of ...
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The idea that it exists to strengthen the patriarchy is silly; the concept of fatherhood directly benefits the female vastly more than the male.
According to evolution, it likely came about as a consequence of human's extended childhood. Because of the immense amount of resources that a human child requires, and the fact that a human woman is very limited ...
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Even if we accept your basic assumption --that responsible fatherhood in human beings dates back only as far as the dawn of human societies --that doesn't imply it can't be part of an evolutionary process. Suppose that human societies have been around 10,000 years, and that being a good father provides a strong advantage to your children. That's plenty of ...
answered Jun 4 '15 at 16:58
Chris Sunami supports Monica
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It's in society's interest and consequently also in his interest to do so. There is a good book, Liars and Outliers: Enabling The Trust That Society Needs To Thrive by Bruce Schneier.
Society thrives when there is security, trust, and cooperation. These three depend upon moral, reputational, and institutional pressures in society. Religious reasons fall ...
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Democratic ethics - Habermas' discourse ethics
Rawls certainly offers one approach to a democratic ethics. I'd like to suggest another approach, that of Habermas.
In the tradition of critical theory (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1997), Jorgen
Habermas's main aim has been to construct a theory focusing on an analysis of
advanced capitalist industrial ...
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