"Maintaining ones money" isn't a thing. Sure, government takes a shit ton of your money if you are in a higher tax bracket, and for a country that isn't supposed to be taxed like that per Constitutional regulation, it is 100% understandable that people would want to change that. Other than that, the only way to "maintain you money" is to not spend it.
Well, no no no, at this level most of their money is in investments that must be 'maintained'. They aren't sitting on hard cash necessarily, or at least most of their wealth isn't in hard cash, but rather in capital who's value is entirely conditional. The value of stock in an oil company, for instance, is only worth as much as that company's ability to turn a profit.
One percenters refers to people in the top 1 percent of the tax bracket. It has nothing to do with who a person is politically affiliated with, nor does it have anything to do with how they spend or use their money.
I am aware what it means, i'm just saying that the term gets abused a bit. Saying that most politicians are 1 percenters doesn't mean much because, as you said, it is just a tax bracket and doesn't necessarily describe as strong a divide in society as, say, the difference between people who make their entire income off of owning capital and people who's livelihood is based on some sort of work or service.
Again, I am not saying that money can't be used in a negative way. I am saying money is an amoral thing. Just like a gun.
You can pick up a gun to rob a store, or you can use it to stop a woman from being raped.
You can use money to build a homeless shelter, or you can use it to fund drug runners.
Blaming it on the money, for the intent of the person who is using it, is naive and doesn't make sense. Government is something that, throughout the ages, has been highly corrosive. Government has the power to control masses in ways that make people like Stalin or Hitler fawn over and kill to keep. Pol Pot killed all the white people in his country when he took it over just so he could maintain economic power over then, and ended up destroying his entire counties economic system for it.
And American government is proving each day that its corrupt and flexing those muscles. Fmr General Portreaus was completely destroyed by his mistress handling classified materials inappropriately, but personal email using Hillary Clinton does the same thing (and so far according to the FBI, quite a bit of) with classified materials and she skates the system like its highschool.
You clearly are stuck in your position and it really might not be worth continuing this little debate. So, enjoy your Halloween and I'll see you around eventually.
Ok, a few things about your terms. Your first point negates the second; in the same way money is just a concept or tool, so is government. All a government is, when you break it down, is the term we use to to describe entities that can make and enforce laws. And these things happen completely naturally. If you were to get rid of our bureaucratic form of government, something else would inevitably take its place. If it were me, I'd place my bets on competent owners of important swaths of property enforcing a sort of proto-feudalistic system of strong-man law, but shit... this really hasn't happened enough times in the modern world to get a good handle on what would truly happen. The closestwe have actually gotten to this sort of scenario is third world governments in places like Somalia and Yemen where, when the government collapses, it is replaced by tribal affiliations and crime bosses. But that is there, we don't know what the righteous fuck would happen here, and I would hate to know.
The reality, as you accepted with money but denied with government, is that people are confusing and fickle things in which no single law can ever completely organize. The Libertarians commit the same mistake (I say this as a ex-libertarian. We all make mistakes when we are young) as the Communists in thinking that all you have to do is knock out one corrupt institution and history is over, we are done, we can all be happy.
Corruption is going to happen because everybody is generally out for their own good. No matter what institution you have, there will be problems. The nice thing about our government is that at the very least, we can fucking vote for government officials. In my opinion, that is the best tool we have available to us regardless of how imperfect the entire system is.
And as for the amorality of objects in general, I agree with the principle, but assuming we aren't worried about justice for inanimate objects, everybody across the board generally agrees we should police objects on some level. Like, no matter how right wing anybody is, I doubt you could find many people who would defend an average citizen's right to own a fully armed nuclear bomb. It is an object too, and a completely amoral one, but allowing just anybody to have one is irresponsible. Once we've all agreed that property rights have
some reasonable limitations, the goal for all of us is to find what degree of limitation is best for the common good.
Wilted Rose
