So my question is: What is the healthy amount for the richest to control? And why?
Seems the overall tenor of posts here are on control and principles.
In order to determine what is a healthy amount for the richest (in whatever dimension one chooses) to control. One must determine control and what determines how it is measured. I'd use this to get at principles since determination of how wealth is measured depends on this society values and that depends on what is important to the society.
Now this is going to get a bit of a convoluted journey because we need to build structures before we can determine what is wealth,how it is used, and what is that amount of it that tips good to bad.
My first concern is how we come to resolution of what is wealth since this is the lynch pin of the entire issue. For me anything planned from the top has to fail because it's view is likely to be from near the top of the wealth dimension. Such a view has to focus on material wealth rather than social wealth which is a shame. Social wealth can be invested in everybody whilst material wealth depends on external means for control and acquisition.
I prefer principles base in the person rather in any institution. The problem then is coming to some sort of understanding and consensus by most on what are the personal social principles and how they play into a governing mix.
Oops I just got ahead of myself by positing a governing mix. So lets consider that first. If the person is the focus then the person must be the instrument through which governing and change is decided meaning some sort of democratic governance. That established I'll get back to what I think are relevant personal social principles.
Responsibility for oneself and consideration of others is critical. With out responsibility there can be no governance since there is nothing to back decision. The degree of self responsibility, it seems to me, must include living and safety at least. The degree of personal consideration for things including others will fill the spaces between elements of personal social wealth. By that I mean when one understands what one means by self responsibility for life and safety.
Ones life in a society must start with persons taking responsibility for how and why they live and stay safe and for pursuing and caring for ones desires for life and safety. These operators,
protecting and
nourishing one's life and
securing one's life in the presence of others, become the basis for metrics of personal self responsibility. One can measure how one goes about protecting and nourishing oneself thereby constructing the first element of a wealth measurement system.
Rather that construct the entire model which will take way more than anyone has time to read,much less digest, I'm going to concentrate on measuring one's wealth in life responsibility only. Such takes into account things like trust of others, self assertion, respecting others, and integration of one's responsibility with others in one's society.
For me one's wealth is satisfactory if one needn't think about personal safety. This is so because one can trust that others will respect one's personal responsibilities and in turn they can respect their own personal responsibility will not be diminished. Something like my freedom to do as I please ends when I touch another. One can extend personal responsibility to sustenance, movement, accumulation of material wealth, power, etc.
Most of what governments and individuals do today in modern democracies routinely take away ones responsibility for oneself and intrudes one upon others. I find not allowing one to be responsible for oneself is a major flaw in these governments. This flaw reflects a lack of trust by others that one can make good decisions, that one has had a good education, or that one can make even the most limited decisions with respect to their commerce with others. I'm pushing back with responsibility demands against failure of groups to trust individuals to do the right thing.
Too much.
yeah.
