This is a long response, but I'd appreciate some focus on my final comment.
This does not approach a coherent argument, even with extremely vague words like "capacity", "we", "others", "aid", and such. It experiences an immediate disconnect between "capacity to aid trumps feel" and the qualifier "if the need is via systemic favoritism", before jumping the rails entirely with "admit that the system we live in operates according to/thrives on (an opportunity gap)".
Assertion B is glaringly offered without any sort of evidence. In contrast, since it speaks in terms of opportunity, available evidence contradicts the assertion.
Why, thank you.
We come from different schools. You believe that capitalism constitutes a network of (mostly) logical and desirable processes.
I, on the other hand, see our current global condition as produced by the ideology of capitalism, and I see the "problems" (i.e. poverty, corruption, state tyranny, etc.) as merely symptoms of capitalism's inherent contradictions. You see them as corrupting influences on a traditionally "pure" notion of capitalism as free markets. I don't think you can extricate the problems from the market, since they can only ever be caused by the market. But this isn't the root of my problems with capitalism; my problem is that capitalism won't admit these problems to itself. It won't acknowledge that it is the cause of them; it won't admit the unethical core of its own existence.
Because my perspective centers on what I perceive as paradox at the heart of capitalism (which I identify as the "tautology" you criticize later in my post; i.e. that where vast wealth accumulates among a small amount of individuals, vast poverty spreads out among the rest), my argument necessarily will appear illogical to you. Furthermore, the kind of evidence that I would offer would be the kind that you would likely reject outright. The evidence, for me, lies in the simple reality of our modern culture. I can see evidence everywhere; but you don't see it as such. And I label it evidence because of the theories and philosophies that I've read.
The evidence isn't simply that large amounts of people are impoverished; and the evidence isn't simply that most of us ignore such poverty, and/or act as though it doesn't exist.
The evidence lies in the fact that there is widespread poverty and we are allowed to ignore it ideologically. We hear about the war on poverty and that our president is a socialist who wants to spread the wealth... but all of this is fodder that allows us to ignore the real problems. Combine ideology with the cold hard facts: we live in a world where capitalism reigns (and I don't agree with chewing out semantics over what constitutes "true" capitalism - as far as I'm concerned, market regulations and restrictions that exist today are created by capitalism, not in reaction to it), and the ideology that it purports -
The opportunity to act as you choose and provide for yourself, make your own way and enjoy your individual freedom -
is absolutely fake! The entire concept of "freedom," and of capitalism as empowering the cause of freedom is an ideological maneuver. It still confounds me that people can believe this.
WP: Economic mobility hasn't changed in half a century
Then, of course, there's the massive standard of living rise sweeping China.
So while there might be a widening range (at least at the moment), the ability to move up and down in those ranges is staying flat. In light of this, while it might be accurate to charge that the current system, at least in the US, isn't improving mobility, it isn't "thriving on widening the gap in opportunity".
Of course, I would insist on teasing out specific processes which transfer wealth via non-voluntary measures rather than just doing the "aggregate" approach.
Whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, there is a vast difference in the transfer process of Quantitative Easing and millions of people deciding whether to shop at Amazon or MaNPop.
Finally, most ethical frameworks (excluding maybe Egotism?) generally assert that people should help people, albeit via different arguments. I don't even see a specific appeal to utilitarianistic arguments, just "because inequality, unhappiness, pain and suffering". Well none of those things are necessarily problematic in themselves, even when "systemic".
The article you posted doesn't concern me. Economists love to quote statistics demonstrating either change, or no change; but none of it really changes the core of my argument, which is that widespread disenfranchisement (I know you hate this word, but to me it's as specific as can be) is necessary for capitalist production.
Disenfranchisement technically means the denial of the right to vote; in using it here, I mean that vast amounts of people are denied the opportunity to change their conditions of living. It doesn't matter if the statistics on living conditions change; what matters is that it is still widespread. And it is widespread because it is necessary.
Baudrillard said:
We will not destroy the system by a direct, dialectical revolution of the economic or political infrastructure. Everything produced by contradiction, by the relation of forces, or by energy in general, will only feed back into the mechanism and give it impetus, following a circular distortion similar to a Moebius strip. We will never defeat it by following its own logic of energy, calculation, reason and revolution, history and power, or some finality or counter-finality.
Baudrillard, of course, is not a Marxist.
There is no empirical evidence for this other than the fact that poverty exists widespread in our culture today. I'm not providing proof; what I'm doing is interpreting the conditions of modernity in a specific way.
First, I want to be clear I'm not categorically defending the current system. Secondly, I want to be clear that I find your word usage necessarily vague, your conceptualizations inaccurate even with the vague word usage, and the arguments completely disjointed. This is, of course, a direct result of the insistence on vagueries and generalizations that really meet the definition of "hasty", even for all the time and thought put into them by so many people. But I'm interpreting this portion as identifying the ethical problem (without support though), and then an attempt at offering the ethical alternative.
I think the disconnect I want to focus on here is the constant flipflopping between talking about opportunity and capital accumulation. You claim to be concerned about the inequality of opportunity, but instead of responding with "we need to increase equality of opportunity", you just fall into the "throw money at the problem" routine - capital transfer, "redistribution". This is at best an entrenchment of inequality, and at worse a catastrophic disaster for all. So it is neither coherent nor helpful.
Capital accumulation restricts opportunity in other spheres. This is undeniable. You perceive my terms as vague because you don't associate them as I do.
Even in the current system, that is categorically false; it is also a completely different argument from "inequality of opportunity".
I don't think so... and I won't say more here because I feel as though I've said enough above.
I thought you shied away from tautologies and "no true scotsman". I could respond two ways: That's an inaccurate description of Capitalism - or that market processes are divorced from the "truest form" of Capitalism.
The ideology of "pure capitalism" (i.e. free markets) is worthless, in my opinion. I disregard it.
If I'm exposing a tautology, then it's not a flaw in my argument, but an error in reality. As I already said, capitalism circles an absent center rife with paradoxes which I'm attempting to point out. Part of this involves seeing the situation differently; instead of free markets, contingent winners and losers, employers and employees, I see a system that, almost as soon as it's begun, engenders a systematic favoritism. Opportunity grows in certain areas, and decreases in others, and its growth gains momentum that continues to disenfranchise those in the outer wards. In today's global culture, capital = opportunity. This is almost so obvious to me that it justifies its own warrant as an axiom.
But then again, I'm skeptical of any and all axioms, so I'll just say that it's the overwhelming tendency of our historical moment.
Finally...
Let me be clear that communism is also grounded on an unethical core; the difference is that in our global history, communism has come to terms with its "necessary violence," which, of course, Western liberals scorn because they perceive any violence as horrid on an absolute moral level. This is, of course, not the case at all; violence isn't morally wrong. Violence is simply unethical.
Sometimes, unethical action is required. This may be the case for capitalism itself; but, if so, it should not ignore its unethical workings but should admit to them. If the torture of a single child is necessary for the rest of the system to function appropriately, and it is deemed that this is worth the pain and suffering of that single child, then don't conceal the fact of the child's pain. Admit that we succeed only because others are disallowed from success.
