I don't think you CAN get rid of equality of outcome, people do have differing abilities and desires.

I don't think everyone should have an identical toothbrush and have the same hobbies. That's absurd. But everyone could get paid the same wage, regardless of their occupation.

I think if you give everyone a foundation, and yet an ability to achieve rewards if they succeed, they neither have to fear losing everything, nor lose the incentive to achieve something.

See my post to Cuchulain about merit vs. luck and other factors which influence success. Anyway, I've said we should pay everyone the same wage. That still provides incentive. You want more money? Work more hours.

I believe that inequality of political power can be at least mostly eliminated via making democracy direct or almost direct. The accumulation of capital is a problem, but if you took away money, people would just find something else--jellybeans, maybe. Or balls of rubber bands.

I think you are way off base here. It is simply impossible to have direct democracy in a country of 300 millions souls. Impractical. And even if you could achieve it somehow, money could still assert a corrupting influence. You can buy advertisements, pay for speaking tours, etc. You could certainly still have plenty of undue influence if you had access to a lot of cash.

And as for jelly bean replacing money...is that a joke? I mean really, I don't see it. Taking away inequality of wealth and income really does level the playing field in a fundamental way.

I'm sure there will be other forms of inequality - in respect, prestige, etc. I don't have a problem with that. But inequality of wealth and income should be disallowed.

Sorry for the delayed response - too bad Glenn hasn't moved to a thread based comment section yet. Hopefully you'll see this anyway.

IMO, forced equal results are not sustainable. But more important, they would require enormous coercion. Violent coercion. People are too different in their abilities, talents, intellects, etc. to accept sameness of result.

Regardless of the sustainability question, you are advocating for forced results yourself! Do you expect the high income earners to voluntarily give up a big percentage of their take? What if they failed to fork over their taxes?

I don't mind if you have a different opinion on what's best, but jeez, at least be consistent. There would be plenty of force/coercion in your system too. Why wouldn't that be a problem? How would your proposal be sustainable but mine wouldn't be?

I think people would accept this kind of arrangement voluntarily, if they could see the results.

Now I think you are the one being naive. We saw a great leveling in the US after WWII, and it's clear that the wealthy didn't take to it voluntarily. The election of Reagan brought a host of inequality generating policies, like lower tax rates on the wealthy, turning a blind eye to illegal union busting activities, etc. The rich worked very hard to keep as much of their loot as possible, and to make it easier to get more, at the expense of the poor and middle classes.

I don't think people will ever accept forced equality of results voluntarily. Though "human nature" is very complex, and very hard to pin down, forced equality of results would not sit well with much of what we know about it.j

Equality of outcome used to be the norm in every human society on earth, before civilization got going. History has already undermined this argument.

Direct democracy is the only way that I can see to end that undue influence.

I'm sympathetic to your impulse. The more direct democracy the better. But there is just no way that 100,000 people can debate and negotiate over what the new health care bill should look like, let alone 100 million. The complexity is too great. And there simply isn't enough time in the day to let everyone express their views. Representation of some kind is the only way to solve this otherwise intractable problem.

Certainly there could be more space for direct democracy - votes on simpler issues, etc. And your point about technology making more of this possible is well taken.

But our country is much too large to be run strictly by direct democratic processes. Representation of some sort is required.

All you can do with influence is try to mitigate it with numbers and dilute it.

No - that isn't all you can do, and I gave you a counterexample. You can pay everyone the same so that there are not great concentrations of wealth and income to skew the system.

We've been breathing the air of a corporate-dominated, right-wing media for what--three generations? And yet, look at poll numbers--people think large corporations are the devil incarnate. They literally cannot buy all of us.

Unfortunately, they don't have to buy us all - they only have to buy our representatives. And, sadly, they've been largely successful in this endeavor.

I'd love to see the hypocrites hoisted on their own petards as much as anyone, but the pleasant irony of the ACORN bill being theoretically applied generally will not translate into anything different happening in the real world.

The defense contractors will not be fired. Perhaps ACORN will get federal funding again when this blows over, perhaps not, although I'd guess their funding will not be restored.

New legislation will be enacted if necessary in order to ensure the desired result.