QUORA *: ‘What makes someone a socialist?'

QUORA *: ‘What makes someone a socialist? Please don't provide tautological answers saying "they belong to the Socialist Party”. If you can't refrain, then explain what makes a party a "socialist" party.’

I posted this answer:

I think this question needs rephrasing. Nothing “makes” someone a socialist. People have free will, and choose their political principles according to their values. A more proper framing of the question would be something like “What draws someone to socialism?” or “Why do people choose socialism?” To answer that, we must first define socialism in its essentials.

Socialism is an outgrowth of collectivism. Collectivism is the doctrine that the good of the group is the standard of morality. Since socialism is a political manifestation of collectivism, socialism embodies the principle that the good of society takes precedence over the individual pursuing his own good. “Society,” however, is an abstraction. Society is not a conscious entity separate from the individuals that comprise it. It is not an entity capable of acting in its own interests, or even choosing its own interests. Only individuals are capable of acting and choosing. Individuals can collaborate voluntarily to cooperatively advance interests they have in common. But only individuals can act and choose. Society is comprised of individuals. Yet socialism claims that society has interests that supersede the interests of the individuals that comprise it. Since society cannot act on its own--that is, independent of individual thought and initiative--who, then, assumes the authority to represent society’s interests? A ruling political elite, acting through the mechanism of the state.

Since socialism holds that the interests of society morally supercede the interests of the individual, the socialist government, to fulfill its function as representative of society, must hold full power over all individuals’ lives—their property, their goals, the proceeds of their productive work, what they may say or write, and so on—which it can dispose of for whatever it deems to be “in the public interest” or to further “the good of society.” Therefore, socialism denies individual rights, including rights to property and free trade. Of necessity, the individual has no rights to his life, political liberty, earned property, or pursuit of personal happiness: He exists to serve society as determined by the state.

Socialism has many forms. It can be total, as with national socialism (fascist) or communism. It can be partial, as with the welfare state. But whatever its manifestation, the basics of socialism remain the same. Every socialist initiative begins with armed aggression by the state against private individuals, based on the premise that the individual’s life is not his own to live, but belongs to society.

What type of person does such a system appeal to? Since socialism forcibly redistributes wealth from those who earned it to those who don’t, it appeals to greed. Since socialism requires totalitarian powers for government officials, it appeals to powerlust. Since socialism systematically punishes and ultimately destroys productive individuals, it appeals to envy and hatred of achievement. Add to that a craving for unearned prestige; i.e., the desire to be seen as “caring about the welfare of others,” without actually having do do anything for the welfare of others--socialism is a cover to force others to pay for craver’s pseudo-compassion, with the government as his hired gun. So socialism has appeal to the phony. Greed, powerlust, envy, hatred, and phoniness, or some combination thereof, are what draws people to socialism. Why these vices and nothing better? Because virtuous motivations belong to the self-responsible people who simply want to live in peaceful coexistence with others, neither being controlled by others nor controlling others, and who respect the same rights of others to live by their own judgement. Self-responsible, respectful people who fully understand what socialism actually is simply are not attracted to socialism.**

There is, however, a more innocent (or less guilty) group of socialism supporters. As I observed at the outset, socialism is rooted in collectivism. Going deeper, collectivism is rooted in the morality of altruism. Altruism holds that self-sacrificial service to others is the standard of moral action. Because they accept the conventional altruist morality, they see socialism as altruistic because it subordinates individuals to live for others (the collective) rather than themselves. So they logically jump to the conclusion that socialism therefore must be good. This last group may not really understand socialism. Or they may rationalize away socialism’s horrific record as “socialism not done right.” For this group, the draw of socialism is their concept of the moral. In this regard, I’ll defer to Craig Biddle’s article, The Passion of Socialists, for his important observations on the moral motivation behind socialism’s draw, and to my Quora answer to Is Ayn Rand wrong about

altruism?

That said, there is a certain sense in which socialists are “made.” Ignorance plays a major role. The strongest support for socialism in America is among the young, who are in, or just left the grip of, an educational establishment that whitewashes socialism’s true inhumane nature and obliterates capitalism’s historic benevolence. Many, though by no means all, of these young people are thus unwitting accomplices in paving the road for a socialist America. I attribute this unwittingness to the collapse of education in America. Kids are simply not taught to think; to conceptualize and apply concepts to all related concretes. They do not think in principles, making them unable to “connect the dots”; that is, to understand the essentials of socialism so they can recognize socialism when they see it: No two socialist regimes are the same. But are all united by the same principles--the all-powerful state, the subordination of the individual to some vaguely defined collective good, and the sacrifice of productiveness to incompetence, wealth to need, justice to mob “might makes right” rule, and virtue to vice. This is why, in witnessing the collapse of yet another country under socialism--Venezuela--we once again hear that “That’s not real socialism!” with hordes of people gulled into giving the next socialist gang, the democratic socialists of America, the same power justified by the same principles that the Chavez-Maduro regime used to tyrannize Venezuela.

Socialism in whatever manifestation is akin to the criminal element rising up from the underworld to rule the nation. It is from start to finish a criminal enterprise. It is marked by theft, slavery, and murder--and nothing else. “What makes someone a socialist?” Greed, powerlust, envy, phoniness, and a false sense of moral righteousness, aided and abetted by the deliberate campaign of ignorance of the collectivists’ educational intelligencia, all of it camouflaged behind high-minded collectivist slogans like “social welfare” or “the common good.”


Related Reading:

QUORA: ‘Can you start a purely communist society in the US?’

QUORA *: ‘Why do people find communism so terrifying as an idea?’

A is A, and Socialism by any Other Name...

Sorry If You're Offended, but Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution: “Socialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery in human existence.”--David Harsanyi

* [Quora is a social media website founded by two former Facebook employees. According to Wikipedia:

Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.[3]Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.[4]

You can also reply to other users’ answers.]

** [Unfortunately, too many people are ignorant of socialism’s true nature, and are thus falling for its latest incarnation, democratic socialism--which simply replaces the socialist dictatorship-by-coup d’état, the communist version, with a socialist dictatorship created by constitutional/democratic means. Put bluntly, democratic socialism simply replaces the Stalin, Mao, or Castro with the Mussolini, the Hitler, or the Chavez.]

The Hijacking of the #MeToo Movement?

The article Millions of women understand Christine Blasey Ford’s decades of silence by Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak starts out with an intelligent overview of the difficulties faced by sexual assault victims and why they remain in silent suffering for years or decades. So I was disappointed and outraged to read Dvorak’s conclusion:

My friend who wrote her attacker’s obituary has an idea about this. And I love it.

“Should all victims of sexual assault who remained silent all these years/decades converge onto Washington to support Professor Ford and her testimony against Judge Kavanaugh?” she asked. “As a long silent victim, I say, ‘Hell, yes.’ Sometimes it takes decades to pronounce your truth. Stand tall and proud, Professor Ford. Legions of silent and traumatized women and men are with you. Let’s expose this dirty — not so little — secret.”

What do you say? What if we launch a #MeToo March on Washington for everyone who has kept silent all these years?

I bet it would be the biggest march in the capital’s history.

I believe the #MeToo movement was a healthy grassroots attempt to highlight and eradicate a serious injustice. But the movement is increasingly being taken over by collectivism, which means that the individual is subordinate to the moral supremacy of the group. Under collectivism, the innocence or guilt of any individual is to be judged not by objective facts but by his group affiliation.

#MeToo is collectivizing into a war on men--all men. Petula Dvorak of the WAPO calls for a “#MeToo March on Washington” this week in one-sided support for Ford ahead of any testimony and prior to the surfacing of relevant facts or proof. Jenna Wortham of the NYT wants “every single man put on notice, to know that they, too, were vulnerable because women were talking.”

This is pure hatred. This is racism. This is collectivism. If “every single man” should fear any woman “talking,” then any man can legitimately be accused of sexual harassment, whether he as an individual is guilty or not. Why not? He’s a man. He’s guilty no matter the actual facts of any individual case, because men as a group are guilty.

Sexual predators should be brought to account. That’s the original intent of #MeToo. But the rise of collectivism within the #MeToo movement indicates that the movement has lost its moral legitimacy. It appears to be turning into an old fashioned witch hunt. Couple that with the modern Democrats’ willingness to do or say anything or destroy anyone’s character to further their totalitarian socialist designs on America, and the trustworthiness of Ford’s (or anyone else’s) accusations against Kavanaugh becomes suspect. Ford could be a Democrat “plant” who is “talking” not to expose actual wrongdoing by Kavanaugh but to put “every single man put on notice, to know that they, too, were vulnerable,” which is exactly what collectivism says is the right thing to do. This fits neatly into Democrats’ desperate efforts to keep off the Supreme Court any justice who views the constitution as it should be viewed--as a check on legislative power and safeguard of the inalienable rights of the individual. You cannot have socialism and individual rights in the same place at the same time. The collectivist takeover of #MeToo also fits neatly into the Democrats’ smearing of all Republicans as racist homophobic women haters. Given these collectivist motivations, it is more than likely that Kavanaugh is a victim of politically motivated false accusations and character assassination.

Just as the Civil Rights Movement started out as a legitimate demand by an oppressed group that America live up to its creed of equal individual rights, but was hijacked by statists who turned it into a collectivist movement for totalitarian socialism, so it looks like the #MeToo movement is being hijacked by a predatory, collectivist, revenge-seeking gang that is on the hunt for innocent victims to condemn without evidence, without a hearing, and without the benefit of Innocent Until Proven Guilty.

This is a shame. Ford may be courageously telling the truth, but her credibility is being severely undercut by collectivist witch-hunting and political powerlust. Or she may be involved in a sleazy Democrat plot to derail Kavanaugh. The timing of her coming forward, and the way she came forward--going to Democrat Dianne Feinstein rather than Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley--indicates the latter. As Reason’s Shikha Dalmia correctly observes, “Taking down decent men on flimsy grounds will discredit #MeToo. Movements collapse when they become more interested in collecting heads than advancing their cause.”

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Collectivism is an insidious evil. In practice, collectivism is by far the greatest killer in human history. The collectivist worldview--identifying individuals only as members of groups--begins with the branding of entire groups for political advantage and ends with killing fields, gas chambers, and mass beheadings. The Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the German genocide, the Cambodian genocide, the Ukrainian genocide: You name the genocide, and it stems from branding of entire groups--whether groupings based on race, or gender, or nationality, or creed, or economic status, or political affiliation, or other category--as the object of moral concern, regardless of the actions or characters of the individuals that comprise the group.

Related Reading:

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

The Rise of Collectivism and the Fall of the Constitution

QUORA: My Scariest, Riskiest ‘Investment’ that Paid Off---and that I'll Never Do Again

QUORA *: Have you ever made a very risky investment that paid off big time?

QUORA *: What was the riskiest investment you made that paid off?

I posted the following answer to both questions (click here and here):

In 1980, I bought 100 shares of Sante Fe International, an oilfield services firm, for about $28 per share. Then I got greedy. I bought 400 more shares on margin. When the stock dropped to $24, I called my broker to buy more on margin. Though he tried to discourage me, I still bought 100 more shares, for a total margin loan of nearly $14,000. That was a LOT of money for us in those days.

As it turns out, 1980 was right at the peak of the 1970s oil boom. From a peak of near $40 per barrel ($121 in today’s dollars), the price of crude oil would drop to below $10 ($25) by 1986, on its way to about $6 ($15) by the late 1990s. We were about to lose our shirts. But one Friday in 1981, the stock didn’t trade. I called my broker, whose secretary said he didn’t know anything, but an announcement was pending for the following Monday.

On Monday, the government of Kuwait announced that it was buying Sante Fe International for $52 per share. I paid off my loan, got back my initial $2800 cash investment, leaving a total profit of more than $14,000.

Phew! As it turned out, the oilfield services stocks dropped precipitously, losing most of their value in the subsequent few years. The Kuwaiti government was criticized for overpaying for Sante Fe. But they bailed us (actually, me) out of a very stupid ‘investment’ decision. That was the first and last time I ever bought stock on margin.

Related Reading:

Wall Street’s ‘Unfairness’ Shouldn’t Scare the ‘Little Guy’ Out of the Stock Market

* [Quora is a social media website founded by two former Facebook employees. According to Wikipedia:

Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.[3]Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.[4]

You can also reply to other users’ answers.]

Note to #FREEPRESS: A Free Press Derives from Freedom of Speech

The New Jersey Star-Ledger joined a coordinated global editorial campaign to defend freedom of the press “in light of President Trump’s frequent attacks on the media.” Led by The Boston Globe’s #FREEPRESS campaign, the global barrage aims to push back against Trump’s labeling of the mainstream press “the enemy of the people.” In Think your enemy is the press? So does every tyrant and corrupt politician, the Star-Ledger gives a spirited defense of a free press, saying:

Like Putin, or Stalin, Trump knows he doesn't need to convince his base that everything he says is true; just that everybody else is a liar, including the press that fact-checks him. Because when people believe that the real truth is unknowable, they grow cynical, and prefer to tune out and believe no one.

And so we have "the enemy of the people," a phrase straight out of George Orwell's dark imagination. But the real enemy of the people is never a free press, which holds the powerful accountable. It is a government that wants to be the sole arbiter of truth.

My emphasis. I left these comments:

A free press is a derivative of free speech, which belongs to everyone. Yet free speech is under attack, including by much of the press. The attack masquerades as fighting “fake news”--a term that came to us courtesy of the left after Trump’s win. The attack comes as “net neutrality,” “campaign finance reform,” calls to ban “hate speech,” fear mongering about so-called “dark money,” and other gimmicks. It comes in the form of political threats, such as when Senator Diane Feinstein told Facebook, Google, and Twitter that their platforms were being “misused,” "and you have to be the ones who do something about it—or we will”--which is censorship by proxy.

Much of the press, including the Star-Ledger, supports these free speech restrictions. That’s shocking. You can't have freedom of the press without freedom of speech, which makes freedom of speech the more fundamental right. Restrict freedom of speech for non-press individuals, and sooner or later the restrictions will be extended to the press. It is truly disingenuous to lecture us on the importance of press freedom while supporting free speech restrictions on everyone else.

Journalists are not some privileged elite. Their free speech rights are no more important than anyone else’s. Except in very narrow cases where speech is directly and imminently linked to violence or fraud—which are really not free speech issues—no one’s freedom of speech and expression should be restricted. All free speech is vital to individual liberty, to a free republic, and to truth-seeking.

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There’s no question that a free press is a vital means of holding the government accountable. But who holds the press accountable--especially a press that is complicit in supporting a statist political faction that seeks to roll back individual rights not just to speech but gun ownership, free association, and property? The rest of us--the non-press masses--through our rights to express ourselves at our own expense, that's who. Who the hell is the Star-Ledger to stop us from holding them accountable?

Note the precision of the Framers. The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” First speech, then freedom of the press. It’s obvious that speech is the broader principle. Press is a form of free speech, but not the only form. If this is not clear enough, observe that a journalist reporting on a President’s policy is practicing freedom of the press, but also necessarily practicing freedom of speech. But someone giving a speech in a lecture hall on that policy is necessarily expressing her freedom of speech, even though not press freedom.

It’s shocking that so much of the press, especially on the Left, so strongly fights to restrict freedom of speech for the rest of us, when a few moments of thought should tell them that there is no way to restrict others’ speech and claim that such restrictions shouldn’t be applied to the press, as well.
Related Reading:

The First Amendment

Freedom of Speech and Press are Linked

Obama Urges Amendment to Overturn the First Amendment

Anti-First Amendment Democracy for All Amendment Introduced in Senate

Citizens United and the Battle for Free Speech in America—Steve Simpson

Steve Simpson on Continuing Threats to Corporate Free Speech—TOS interview

16 Year Old Voters? How About 21?

There is a movement to lower the voting age to 16. In a New Jersey Star-Ledger guest column, We see the power of mobilized youth. Now lower the voting age, Rutgers-Camden professor Dan Hart argues the case. “Sixteen- and 17-year-olds,” Hart argues, “have the capabilities necessary to vote effectively.”

I left these comments:

Lower the voting age to 16? Aren’t the schools mediocre enough already?

You’ll get uneducated teenagers who haven’t learned to articulate their own viewpoints--in fact, likely haven’t even developed their own viewpoints--being sent out to vote. That’s completely backward. Far more important to a free society than the vote is freedom of speech. Foundational to free speech is the ability to think objectively and independently, so one can use one’s intellectual freedom most effectively. From what I’ve observed, schools don’t educate. They indoctrinate--especially on politically charged issues.

Given that America’s schools are dominated by a political action group, the so-called Teachers Union, this is not surprising. Giving 16 year olds the vote is in effect giving the teachers extra votes. Unless, of course, the parents de-program their kids, in which case the parents most likely get an extra vote.

Even politicized schools aside, politics has no place in the schools. On what basis do children form opinions that are actually their own? Informed political opinions begin with a firm and BALANCED foundation in political philosophy, not just civics. And in economics. Where do they get that? Most of what kids learn, especially about current political events, comes after the high school years, in their adult years when they begin to get real life experience. The schools should be focussed on training young minds how to think and analyze, and gain a love of learning. Schools shouldn’t be corrupted by politicization. If anything, it’d be better to raise the voting age to 21.

Related Reading:

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right

Why It’s Time To Raise The Voting Age Back To 21—Robert Tracinski

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

230 years ago, on September 17, 1787, the Constitutional Convention ended and the Constitution of the United States of America was signed. This day is officially known as Constitution Day.

It was also an occasion for one columnist to declare that the US Constitution is "broken." The New Jersey Star-Ledger's Tom Moran wrote five years ago:

Kids in America are taught to venerate the Constitution, almost as if it were the word of God.

And that’s exactly what Thomas Jefferson feared. He believed it was flawed, that experience would teach each generation new lessons and that it should be redone every 19 years.

But Jefferson lost the argument. And so the Founders signed a Constitution 225 [230] years ago tomorrow that is an impregnable fortress, firmly set against the forces of change that Jefferson welcomed and almost impossible to amend.

Does that make sense? Haven’t we learned valuable lessons over the past few centuries about how democracies thrive, and how they stagnate? In a day when our federal government is so dysfunctional, shouldn't we at least consider fundamental changes?

University of Texas Professor Sanford Levinson is advocating a series of such fundamental changes to the US Constitution, which Moran discusses in his column. Levinson's proposals include instituting a direct popular vote for president and measures to greatly weaken the checks and balances that limit the power of any one branch of government. In essence, Levinson's purpose, according to Moran, is to expand the power of majority rule and break Washington's political "gridlock," which has made our federal government "dysfunctional."

Moran approvingly cites Thomas Jefferson who, as Moran strongly implies, would welcome these constitutional changes, or any changes suited to any generation.

Before we discuss ways to expand the power of electoral majority rule so as to enable the government to get more done, we need to have a conversation about what the government's proper job it is to do.

The American constitution's basic function is to limit government's power to the protection of individual rights. This is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, the philosophical blueprint for the constitution. Any discussion about the constitution has to begin with the Declaration--which, incidentally, was written by Thomas Jefferson:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

In its essentials, this 55 word statement of proper government says:

• Rights are held equally and at all times by all people.
• Rights belong inextricably to the individual by virtue of his nature as a human being.
• Rights are guarantees to freedom of action; to the pursuit of happiness, not to happiness guaranteed by the labor or wealth of others.
• Rights precede government.
• Government is created exclusively to “secure”—i.e., protect—rights.
• Government’s “just powers” being authorized by the people, through a popular vote.
• “Just powers” being only those powers required for government to fulfill the purpose for which it was created to begin with—to legally protect the people’s unalienable individual rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Of course, this is not the "Word of God," to be accepted uncritically. Each of these points requires extensive philosophical backup. None of these "truths" are in fact "self-evident." They must be learned and validated scientifically; i.e., morally and philosophically, as determined by the observable facts of reality concerning man and his requirements for survival and flourishing. But these are the essentials, as I see it.

The Founders did not intend to create a democracy, despite Moran's devious attempt to smuggle in that premise. They created a constitutionally limited republic protective of the liberty and rights of the individual, under which the constitution "carefully limits the power of the majority by drawing a legal boundry around it" (P. 113)—a boundry that stops majority and elected officials' power where individual rights begin. The Founders understood that government presupposes individual rights. So the constitutional discussion must begin with the questions: What are rights, and what is the proper function of government?

As the Declaration states, every individual is "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Since productive work is the only means of sustaining one's life and achieving happiness, it's obvious that the Founders understood--including in Jefferson's own words--that property rights are among those rights. The Declaration then states "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men." Rights—which in fact are not endowments by either nature or God but moral principles derived from observations and facts about human nature—are sanctions to freedom of action in a social context, not a claim on the lives and property of others or a government guarantee of material well-being and happiness. Notice that the constitution does not authorize government to redistribute private wealth.

Moran is wrong. America hasn't stagnated. It has "progressed" from what was a largely free country a century ago to a burgeoning regulatory welfare state—a dangerous regressionary trend. Why? Because the fundamental principles upon which the constitution rests have been largely abandoned, opening the door to the piecemeal progression toward unlimited majoritarian rule, a manifestation of totalitarianism. Consequently, our best short-term protection against further encroachments on individual rights--and it's a weak protection--is political gridlock. I can't think of anything more dangerous to America's future than to begin tampering with the basics of the constitution in today's cultural environment. Before we consider unshackling majority rule, we must rediscover our Founding principles, roll back the regulatory welfare state, and provide ironclad guarantees that no one's rights be alienated by majority vote; i.e., respect the original intent of the constitution.

The Founders did not intend to replace absolute monarchy with absolute majority rule unconstrained by the principle of individual rights. As Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) asked during a debate over the propriety of the Revolutionary War in the movie "The Patriot", "Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can."

The answer: We shouldn't. As Jefferson said, "the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." The Founders were not primarily concerned with giving the people the right to vote. They intended to liberate the people from predatory government, whether monarchistic, theocratic, or democratic.

There are those who would invert the original concept of Americanism—that the individual is sovereign and his life belongs to him—and replace it with the idea that the collective—i.e., the state—is sovereign over the individual. It is an attempted transition from republican constitutionalism to democracy; from individualism to collectivism. We cannot let the reactionaries succeed. The fight to defeat the reactionaries and restore and renew Americanism can start with this: As we celebrate Constitution Day, remember what I call the Constitution’s philosophic blueprint, or what has also been called the Conscience of the Constitution—the Declaration of Independence.

Related Reading:

America the Undemocratic

On a Revisionist's Proposal to Upend the Declaration of Independence

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence—Onkar Ghate

The Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Constitutional Ignorance Led to a Tyranny of the Majority—Gary M. Galles

QUORA: ‘How do capitalists justify the inequality/high disparity part of a capitalistic society that a socialistic system tends to stop?’

QUORA *: ‘How do capitalists justify the inequality/high disparity part of a capitalistic society that a socialistic system tends to stop?’

I posted this answer:

First of all, let’s define “inequality/high disparity.” Political inequality is unequivocally bad: It means the absence of equal protection of the law. Capitalism is the system of political equality—that is, the inalienable individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness and its corollary, the equal protection thereof under the law.

Second, let’s be clear that we are talking about when we say “capitalists.” I am answering as a capitalist in the broad philosophical sense, not in the narrower sense as a businessperson or investor.

Economic inequality/high disparity is a sign of a healthy and highly moral society where each individual is free to rise economically as far as his own personal attributes—his rationality, ability, ambition, values, goals, interests, temperaments, natural potentialities, personal circumstances, moral character, et al—will productively carry him. How high any productive individual’s attributes will carry him is determined not by central state planners (physical coercion) but by the market—that is, the cumulative voluntary choices of the individuals the producer trades with.            

Why “highly moral?” Because in a capitalist society, where force is banned from human relationships and government protects individual rights equally and at all times, the only way to advance economically is to earn (make) money is through voluntary trade; that is, to produce a value that others, by their own judgment, willingly pay you for.** Trade is the win-win exchange of value for value. To make money is to create value for others. Those who make a lot of money are those who produce a lot of value for a lot of people. Those who make mega-fortunes improve the lives for millions. I love my Dell computer, which I’m typing on right now. It’s made my life better. Should I resent Michael Dell his fortune, just because there are tens of millions of other similar individual Dell owners? But it doesn’t end there. Michael Dell benefits once—my payment--and in an incalculably small way. I benefit every time I turn on my Dell computer, for as long as I have it. It’s more than five years worth of benefit, and counting. Inequality? You bet. I benefit vastly more from my one Dell computer than Michael Dell does. Dell’s fortune results from the fact that there are tens of millions of beneficiaries just like me. What great humanitarians the Michael Dells of the world are!

Capitalist economic inequality is not bad. It is capitalism’s virtue. What can be more virtuous than a social system whereby the rich build their fortunes by lifting everyone they deal with.

Socialism is immoral precisely because it seeks to equalize people in direct contradiction to the rich diversity across the individual spectrum of society. Socialism is thoroughly utopian--that is, contrary to human nature--by philosophical design. By design, socialism—in the name of stopping inequality—forcibly prevents people from expressing their personal desires and attributes through economic activity, impoverishing everyone. Stop someone from making money, and you stop his would-have-been customers from improving their lives. Perhaps the worst part of socialism is not that it prevents the best and brightest from flourishing and making the world a better place. The worst part of socialism that it kills aspiration and hope of ever flourishing and prospering, sacrificing upward mobility on the altar of economic equality.

Capitalism—of which I mean laissez-faire, not today’s cronyistic, mixed economy regulatory welfare states—naturally results from freedom, which means the right of each individual to pursue his own happiness, for his own sake, by his own effort, so long as he respects the same rights of others, dealing with others by voluntary consent to mutual advantage, in a free market, without government favors. Such human interaction results in economic inequality. Capitalists do not have to “justify”  economic inequality/high disparity, because it is not a flaw. Inequality/high disparity should be celebrated. It is the economic justification of capitalism. The only way to kill inequality is to cripple individual achievement by force, which is why socialism always leads to economic paralysis and collapse, and ultimately to totalitarianism of one form or another (e.g., communism, national socialism, etc.). Political equality and economic inequality are corollary, mutually reinforcing hallmarks of capitalism, which is why capitalism is the only moral social system. Socialism is capitalism’s antipode.

Related Reading:

QUORA: How do investment bankers justify earning 7 figures?

Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality—Don Watkins and Yaron Brook

* [Quora is a social media website founded by two former Facebook employees. According to Wikipedia:

Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.[3]Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.[4]

You can also reply to other users’ answers.]

** [NOTE: money “earned” through fraud is not truly earned, and laws against fraud are vital to capitalism. Also, I am leaving aside the issue of gifting or inheritance, which is irrelevant to the current discussion.]