this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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See you call that earning. I call it stealing. When something is earned, it would be wrong to take it from them.
Vikings earned their broadly spread genetics in much the same way, complete moral depravity and means. Just because something is stolen doesn’t make it unearned, and just because something is earned doesn’t entitle possession. Theft begets reprisal.
Labor theory of value as applied to all human activity.
Just examples to illustrate that earning, deserving, rightfully belonging, etc. aren’t necessarily the right words to use in this context, but I guess it could be seen as vaguely communist in the right light. More sociological than political, though. Tax the rich, jail the physically and sexually belligerent.
it's not a communist sentiment at all. labor theory of value is predicated on socially necessary labor not just doing any old thing.
what youre doing with those statements though is pretty disingenuous. the idea of earning comes from labor (it's literally the germanic to english word for a laborer and their pay) and has always meant that the subject of the verb deserves the object.
you could argue that the raiding parties believed they had earned their spoils, but in a human culture that generally doesn't hold that belief, saying it without that qualifier implies assent to the ancient raiding parties belief.
Judging historic people by today’s morals just produces the opinion that everyone born more than 100 years ago probably deserved to have been gutted like the swine they are, which is exhausting but entirely true to modern standards. It’s just easier to think of them as amoral animals- the gazelle deserves the cheetah and vice versa by pure mechanics alone. Abelard castrated himself obsessing about the moral line, which was lesson enough for me.
As I said, I was just being a pedant for funsies. To phrase it another way, billionaires deserve their fortune but deserve its forfeiture a hundred times over. Deserve wasn’t exactly the right word so I poked fun while agreeing with their sentiment in its entirety. It was entirely disingenuous, and I said as much at the get-go.
it really doesn't unless a person renders that judgement outside of consideration of their experiences, world and circumstances.
in which case you could say anything about anyone for any reason and have it be perfectly acceptable.