Egalitarianism Argument
In an Egalitarian society, in theory, everyone is equal. Nobody has advantages over others. For example, if two brothers were trading baseball cards and the older brother knew more about the players he could then use his leverage (knowing more about the players) to scam his younger brother for the cards. This is unfair because not everyone in the deal is treated equally. The older brother is taking advantage of the younger brother and leaving him with less. If we look at the Michael Jordan example from Justice, written by Sandel, it is very similar way to the baseball card example. The Jordan example is that he is a superstar player that is making loads of money while other players, coaching and training staff make much less than him. This brings up a couple different issue. Jordan should be taxed for these two reasons: 1) Taxing him is justified because the government can then help the less advantaged, 2) Jordan got lucky with his talents so he doesn’t completely own his talents. In John Rawls version of Egalitarianism he uses the difference principle. The difference principle is used to determine if certain inequalities are just. For example, if a doctor is working in a developing country helping lots and lots of people overcome disease and they earn a lot of money in the process, it is okay for them to keep that money. On the flipside, Jordan played hard and worked so he could earn more money just for himself, it would then be unjust for him to keep all that money. It could be argued through moral desert that Jordan should get all the money he deserves. Moral desert means that people should get what they deserve. However, through what we know Michael Jordan hasn’t helped anyone as he’s gotten richer. He’s kept it all to himself. This idea is backed up in Sandel's Justice, “... only those social and economic inequalities are permitted that work to the benefit of the least advantaged members of society. (pg. 152).” So, according to the difference principle taxing Jordan would be the correct thing to do, since he hasn’t helped the less fortunate in the process. Jordan is no doubt a great basketball player, but he definitely has had some luck on his side. Jordan won the natural lottery. The natural lottery is when someone is born with natural talents, like Jordan’s basketball skills. Someone other than Jordan might work has hard as him or even harder, but because Jordan has so much more natural talent for the sport that other person will never reach the same skill level no matter how hard he/she works. Because of this, luck is not something that earns a social reward. Jordan simply got lucky with being born a talented basketball player, therefore, does not deserve full ownership of those skills. For this reason, Jordan should be taxed.
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Final Philosophy Argument
A ten year old boy, Kevin, had been hospitalized multiple times for acute heart failure which is when fluid builds up around his heart. According to the doctors, his chances of living any longer were very slim. Many other people with the same disease as Kevin die at a much younger age. Kevin’s family is very poor and couldn’t pay for the $17,000 life saving surgery that he desperately needed. The only way they could hope to pay for Kevin’s surgery was through posting a crowdfunding campaign and hopefully people would donate enough money. The campaign quickly got funded and Kevin’s life was saved. Libertarianism would best support healthcare for these three reasons: 1) It leads to advancements in the medical field which can save many lives, 2) Many people can get involved to make a difference, 3) With people making more money there can be larger donations to help people like Kevin. Libertarians promote the free market which is when prices are determined by supply and demand. This also create an opportunity for people to be creative and strive towards new and great things, it creates competition. Even though this can be viewed as a good thing, others will say it’s not. Because of prices being set through supply and demand, if something is in really high demand prices can skyrocket. Like in Kevin’s story, he needed a life saving surgery that probably isn’t worth $17,000, but because he needs it to stay alive, that demand makes the price go up. Making things this expensive makes it tough on people like Kevin because they don’t have the money, they probably don’t have insurance, but if they do their insurance probably doesn’t cover it. So what can they do? The only things they can do is hope the someone will donate to them. That being said, because there is so much competition within the market new things are constantly being made. Things ranging from social media to shoes to life saving medical equipment or drugs. Without a free market some of these spectacular devices might not of ever been create. People who have been able to live past a serious illness could be dead but are alive and doing better now because of these advancements. One may ask though how it’s fair to these people who need help to not allow them to have healthcare to cover their surgery. That’s a fair question. There are plenty of sites the you can post your campaign on and then on top of that, there are also thousands of other campaigns, so it makes it hard for yours to stand out. It also raises the question of who the best person to donate to is and if the story is real because there have been multiple reports of scammers who go on this website to try and get money. On the flipside, because there is such a broad outlet for these types of things, it is easy for someone like Kevin to post a story and receive donations for their cause. The driving point in Libertarianism is self ownership and even though someone isn’t forced to donate a lot of people still do it anyway. The global amount raised by crowdfunding is $34 billion and that number is on the raise. People are able to do with the money they have and they are proving that even with the money they are still helping people. Also, there are lots of non-profit organizations that people donate lots of money to help those in need. Even though Libertarianism promotes self ownership and allows people to do what they want with what they own it as long it doesn’t interfere with others well being and doesn’t directly set rules to help those in need, those people who need help still do get help. A critique to a free market libertarian society that has some very large income inequalities is that the poor need the money more. The way that would happen would that the government would increase taxes on the rich too later redistribute the wealth to the poor. That would in theory create a more equal society where everyone is at a closer level. This violates everything from a libertarian point of view. If there are these high taxes you can no longer do what you want with what you own. Now sure Kevin and people alike would probably benefit from this greatly and they might not have to depend on these crowdfunding campaigns. However, like stated previously many people still choose to donate to different campaigns and non-profits. Libertarianism could be viewed as greedy, which it might be, but it doesn’t promote greed and there are still good people out there. In conclusion, Libertarianism best supports healthcare because it provides ways for the less advantaged to get help while also maintaining stability for the wealthy in terms of not forcing them to pay high tax rates and allowing them to donate if they want. |