Re: Economic musing, or a theory of deservation

On 2008-03-18, Dover Beach <moon.blanched@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Mary <mrfeathers@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
> news:99a1e0c9-323c-43b4-ba8e-ee43d71c7e6f@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
>
>> But yes:  I do.  I worked my tail off to get where I am:  worked on
>> acquiring marketable skills, worked on making myself valuable to the
>> company, and I continue to work to keep up in my field.
>
> Well, that's kind of the point that the writer is challenging.  We can
> mostly agree that some of your earning power can be attributed to being
> white and middle class and having decent parents and access to decent
> schools and so on.  The writer's point is that the part you're
> attributing to free will and hard work are also attributable to either
> nature or nurture, and either way, you don't get moral "credit" for it. 
>

Because, apparently, you don't get moral "credit" for anything.  What
about
the cute'n'fuzzy stuff? (end of the day taking off partners shoes, yadda
yadda?)
Same response.  You can't *magically* draw a dividing line between learned
or
innate behaviors at 'work' and at 'home' or in 'public'.  If he's going to
assert fatalism, by gum he should have the balls to follow the line of
reasoning through.  And all the way around, right back to where he
started.
Maybe we're fated to believe in free will.  Bobogam.

He's a journalist for a little newspaper who thought he'd take a crack at
the
old philosophical saw "free will vs determinism".  What's next, Buddhism?

-- 
Justin Hiltscher