Ah and what makes you think work and property are perfectly correlated? Not all wealthy people work hard, and not all poor people fail to work hard. And how would the wealthy acquire their property without the benefit of society?
Oh, it's perfection you people want?
Too bad, this is the real world, with real people in it, and sometimes someone leads a life full of **** simply because that's the breaks.
No utilitarianism is a matter of maximizing the greater good,
With stolen property.
Don't forget that part.
So, **** the greater good, I'm not my neighbor's slave, and I'm not responsible for the greater good, unless I'm paid five orders of magnitude more than I'm currently getting.
Now that we've dispensed with this utilitarian bull**** in fine Anglo-Saxon style, you got anything real to back up your position?
Utilitarianism focuses only on the final product of actions, and is path independent.
Well, you see, the rest of us don't fail to see that the final product of utilitarianism is slavery.
Slavery.
Bad.
Got it?
And pragmatism may tell you they might as well start a career burglarizing houses such as yours if they never got the education (another positive right) needed to pursue legitimate opportunities.
Education isn't a right, welcome to reality again. It's an entitlement. And...federal funding of the entitlement is not allowed by the Constitution.
Social contexts create all rights,
No. Social context defines limits to the power of the collective to enforce it's desires upon the individual.
That's if you want to be accurate in your phrasing.
and the modern one is not the same as the ancient one. Limited lack of morbidity certainly can exist without clean water, but that doesn't mean clean water isn't a positive right in the context in which it can be fairly distributed.
Clean water isn't a right. People that don't have it, and many don't, wind up dying.
It happens.
Seriously, it does.
A right is something that nature can't take away or give. Rights are defined in the context of human relationships with each other, not with the natural world.
It is if you're a child, and that's who we're talking about when we speak of right to basic education.
Oh, is that why so many free-loading socialist slugs pretend the government is their mommy and they want some more time at the nipple?
A child is owed an education by....not total strangers, but his parents.
And only his parents.
That doesn't mean we should encourage laziness, but no I'm not willing to let people go without their needs being met so that you can buy a nicer car.
What part of "its not your money" do you simply refuse to understand?
Personally, I say that all people who support socialised medicine should put their name on a list and when the program is implemented they get hit with the bill, spread out among only those who supported it. Because it's your plan so it's only meet that your money finance it.
On the other hand, we do need a mechanism to encourage investment, so it would be ideal to not go overboard on progressive taxation, but some level of progressive taxation is reasonable on utilitarian grounds.
There's no such thing as "progressive" taxation, it's totally regressive in it's effects. Call it what it is, socialist taxation.
I think the problem is you believe you earned it.
Yeah, reality works like that.
I worked for it, therefore I earned it.
cause, then effect.
An essential rule in the physical universe
We do not exist in a vacuum.
No, fortunately the planet we evolved on has an atmosphere.
Society is interdependent
And I get paid for my work, thus ending the obligations society owes me and what I owe it.
and while success can certainly be catalyzed by effort, there are no guarantees. Successful people are indebted to their parents, customers and, indeed, all of society.
No, successful people don't owe "society" jack ****. They were paid for their efforts and presumably their efforts were productive, or they wouldn't have been paid. (Clearly I'm exclusing politicians and lawyers from this assessment.)
Yes it is, else they will cost us more money, be less productive citizens, be more likely to turn to crime, be more miserable than is necessary, etc. Why should the poor work hard to improve themselves and society when they do not have a reasonable opportunity to do so? And all of that is beyond the whole matter of being a civilized society rather than a Darwinian economic jungle.
The poor don't have to work, and no one else is obligated to work to feed them. So if the poor don't want to work, they go huuungreee!
Happens.
Seriously, it does.
More seriously, it's not my problem. Their body, their choice, and all that stuff, ya know?