"The law, in its magnificent equality, forbids both the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges, begging in the street, and stealing bread." - Anatole France

Olly, 2016: "Should the rich help the poor?" Olly, 2019: "SMASH THE STATE, STOP THE N^ZIS, AND SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION FOR THE PEOPLE!" 😍

This is something I've been thinking on for a while: basically, we shouldn't try to simply help the poor, we should try to create a world where no one is poor. This is difficult because for most people it means giving up creature comforts that make them feel safe, all that disposable income. But if we succeed in creating this world, then everyone will be safe. This also reminds me of the argument for Guaranteed Basic Income. At the moment in most countries, right to food and shelter is not actually guaranteed, nor is it really seen as something everyone deserves, only people with money. I'm very lucky to live in a country where I get help from the state during periods of unemployment. However, in order to gain these benefits (not rights by definition) I have to prove that I am looking for paid work. If I fail to do this my right to food and shelter will be taken away. Therefore it is not really a right since it is conditional. I don't think that everyone should get paid even if they're not contributing to society, however, the terms we have at the moment force people to contribute to the economy first and not society. For example, if I work in a shop for 8 hours a day I'm contributing less to society than if I volunteered at a shelter or charity, but the first is contributing directly to the economy and that is deemed more important than the good of society, which we hope will benefit indirectly. Sorry to go on a bit, I'm procrastinating doing some voluntary data collation! Great video!

We're talking about this in school now, and I'm killing it :D

"It is immoral to use private property in order to get rid of the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property" - Wilde.

"They don't know dick" lol never heard that expression before until now....

oh god WHO IS THAT ohhh it's you, pre-facial hair

I just want to say something about that whole _"You cant use your rights if you are dead"_ So, Ergo Proxy is pretty cool right? So, in that show there is a character that says _"What the hell is the point of freedom if you have to die for it?",_ and I dont like aphorisms but... damn, that is a good phrase. That is all. Thank you.

i always found the question "should the rich help the poor" so frustrating and I didn't know why i did, but from this video i think i finally figured it out. yes, the question is problematic from the get go!

wish people would appreciate and look up to people like PhilosophyTube, Contrapoints, NonCompete and many others; instead of pseudo intellectual con-men like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro (or atleast worse off people like Lauren Southern etc).

Surely the more pertinent question is: should "rich" and "poor" exist? Should that dichotomy even be something that we allow to exist, let alone perpetuate either by design or accident? Hands up full-on anarchist, here. But I think that's a question that deserves an answer, instead of being taken as an assumption or an axiom of economic theory.

Olly I love you! every time I watch your videos (which is every time they come out) I end up confused and in doubt of everything I've thought of as "the right thing to do". But always in that good way that makes me think... A lot! And the philosophers you bring up (especially Sheth, but also Shue) have given me new arguments and new ways of explaining my views of the world! So in short: Thank you Olly! Thank you so much!

When he said "Pick an ordinary right" the first thing that come to mind is "the right to die". So yeah, it makes continuing the topic a bit harder, but yeah.

"In some states in the US, you technically have the right to an abortion." Oof, the one time he doesn't put in a *at time of recording.

Congratulations on 100K! This channel is great. It's one of my favorites and I'm always looking forward for new videos. I've found its topics a source of inspiration and it helped me to consolidate my liking of philosophy. Thank you so much.

Your videos are helpful, well worded, and engaging. Thank you and I hope you keep up the great work!

I think Oscar Wilde had some very interesting ideas on this subject in the beginning of "The Soul of man under socialism". Very short essay, I really recommend it to anyone interested.

I'm not sure I quite understand the distinction between formal and substantive access to rights. Clearly if exercising a right means I'll die then I don't have substantive access. But what if I'll just lose my job? What if I'll have to miss a day of work? What if I have to pay a steep fee, and the fee makes me uncomfortable but I can afford it? Like, no matter what we do, exercising a right will always require some sort of sacrifice. How low must that sacrifice be for access to a right to count as "substantive"?

Revisited this video as I'm writing an essay on what the best justification of rights is....Definitely going to look into Shue, sounds like he's arguing exactly what I have been thinking the whole time. Cheers yet again Olly!

Even the question alone, "Should we help the poor?" benefits how we see the rich. Rather it being something essential, it's something rich people can do to appear good. For example, let's say Elon Musk donates 800.000 to charity. As an uncritical consumer, you wouldn't see a problem, rather think highly of him for being so generous. But as his worker, you can't stop yourself from wondering how come he couldn't raise your minimum wage. The question shouldn't be if we should help the poor, rather if the bourgeoisie should stop exploiting it's workers.

Glad to see this video right now. It seems particularly relevant to the situation here in the US right now.

That won't be necessary when the poor seize the means of production.

I really appreciate this. Though, if I'm being entirely honest with myself, it's probably because I'm a leftist living in a bubble constantly being reaffirmed of prior convictions, which is the fault of no one but myself. Anyway, I view extreme concentration of wealth as another method to introduce an enforceable hierarchy in place of overt, state led fascism. Through low wages and a high private prison population (I'm in the US) to effectively achieve slave labor, voter suppression to keep accessibility to government representation reserved for the already privileged, worship of arbitrary legality in regards to victimless and benign crimes being substantiation for murder, and being taught to normalize these transgressions through an ethically questionable school system, it's understandable to present the problems of inequality in a way becoming of the bourgeoisie. I really dig the video and I'm glad I subscribed.

Thank you! I recently wrote a current event paper on poverty that mirrors these views you covered. Which flys in the face of the overstated assumptions.Yet another reason why I love your channel and insights!

THE GOAL IS REACHED!!!! Congrats Olly, you deserve it!

I rather enjoyed this video (for the most part). I would be quite interested to know your thoughts on the subject of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), which has gained a surprising amount of traction in recent years as a potential solution to poverty. Under this system, the existing welfare bureaucracy is substantially reduced, and every person is unconditionally granted regular transfer payments from the state. There is a lot of debate about how this would be implemented (namely, how it could be funded), but several countries (including Finland and Canada) have voted to trial the system in some capacity. There are a few points raised in this video that I would like to respond to. Namely: 1. "Trade not aid" - While aid is an essential part of eliminating poverty, establishing effective economic ties with developing nations is also quite important. It creates an ongoing income stream, provides opportunities for locals to explore new skills and professions, and can potentially reduce the control of corrupt/dictatorial governments (if their economies come to rely on a broader range of industries and institutions). The fact that wealthier nations also profit from the exchange is not inherently a problem, as long as the system is regulated to ensure fair trade practices that benefit both sides (such as guaranteeing fair prices for goods and fair wages). 2. "Bourgeois philosophy" - I agree that ensuring formal systemic/institutional economic justice is important; however, I would contest the assertion that the rich "helping the poor" is an invalid way of thinking. Broad political and economic issues are fairly abstract, and difficult for most individuals to understand (let alone change) without a comprehensive education - this is the arena of governments and large institutions. Charity, however, is something that most people understand and, where affluent, can reasonably participate in. Many individuals have made great efforts to reduce poverty on a small scale using the resources that they have, and it could be dangerous to dismiss or invalidate these efforts. It would, of course, be better if there were no need for charity in the first place, but until we achieve such a system, I would prefer to view individual acts of goodwill in a positive light. They may not solve the more systemic problems, but if people are doing the best that they can within the system that they find themselves in, I feel that it would be unfair to fault them (or the philosophy behind their actions).

This might have been your best video up to date! Very well done, dear colleague. :)

This is an amazing video. As an 18 year old girl taking philosophy and going into a Great Books Program, this reminds me of why I need to take on the world and read philosophy.

Generally speaking, I do think the rich should help the poor, but I think when you look at how most people became rich or poor in the world today, the problem goes deeper than what a simple handout could fix. Many businesses in the U.S., for example, both use and pollute the air, land, and water without having to pay for these resources or to clean them up. So they benefit from the harm they cause others and freely take what should be public property for their own benefit. The government allows this because they see it as an incentive for people to pursue forming and maintaining a business (and because the existing wealthy wield a lot of power and argue for it). If they had to pay what these resources were truly worth to the communities where they built their businesses, their wealth would naturally be distributed out to that community and there would be fewer poor people in a more natural and just "redistribution" of wealth to those whose rights were infringed. Beyond that, the wealthy often succeed by harnessing the working power of others while not paying them a living wage. If they paid their employees justly for the work they do for the company, this would also naturally "redistribute" the wealth to those who merit benefiting from it by virtue of their direct contribution to its formation. This is an argument going on in the U.S. now. Should businesses have to pay their employees a living wage? By failing to do so, it could be argued they turn their workforce into a serf class unable to break free of their situation. The poor can't leave their jobs for a substantially better paying one because the other companies out there also offer low wages in comparison to the level of work they gain in exchange, and the poor usually can't afford to start their own businesses or have the knowledge and skills necessary to do so successfully. Many people living in the U.S. cannot afford to pay for housing while working a 40-hour work week (or more). There is a whole class of people here now that fall under the term "working poor." They cannot afford to pay for their basic needs, their level of debt continues to grow, and they are trapped in a system designed to keep them impoverished. This shouldn't be the case, and changing how we approach pay structures in the U.S. could fix this problem. To move out into the world at large, many countries have poor people in the truest sense of the word. They live in huts, barely have food or clothes, and lack clean water or health resources of any kind outside of what is provided to them through charity. No one in this modern day should have to live that way. Richer countries should help poorer countries change and thrive. Of course, some can't become better due to their land being incapable of sustaining human life at a better level (deserts, mountainous areas, and frozen lands can't be farmed; many African countries will probably always fight pestilence, etc). As more people flee from these harsh conditions, richer countries close their borders and turn against immigration. I think richer societies should encourage this migration and welcome the poor into their countries, America included. We have the resources and land to do so without negatively impacting our own society, so we should do it. Will we? Unlikely with Trump as our next President, but maybe one day in the near future we'll open our borders again. I think we all have a responsibility to help others less fortunate than ourselves, but to what extent is always the question. How far do we take it?

"I started philosophy so that anyone...." wow I can't believe olly thorn invented philosophy good job man

“No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise.” ~ Marian Anderson

This blows my mind! You need a podcast!

The real question is should the majority of the poor help and work for the minority of the rich!?🤔

short answer: yes long answer: yeeeeeeeeeees

I get the feeling some people watch these videos & then immediately forget their contents. I see some claiming Olly didn't justify the views presented here. But then I'm like, did they just ignore things like the distinction between formal & substantive rights, between wealth redistribution viewed as justice & it viewed as charity (etc.)? Olly may well find these views compelling, but that doesn't entail that he just expressed his opinions in the video. RK's Bourgeoisie Philosophy blog is one of my favorites. I don't always agree (though I usually do), but it was nice to see it mentioned. Good video Olly. 😊

I liked how you spent the start of the video explaining formal V substantive rights.

Aaaaah!!! Olly! Congrats on 100k subs!

Thank you for your videos. I have as of yet, no money but I hope you'll get the sustenance you need to educate more people! :))

Basic outline of the difference between substantive and formal rights. Good job.

Finally, I can use what I discussed in my moral issues course at university to engage with one of your videos!

See, I'm a marxist-leninist, as I have pointed out on previous videos. So obviously I think it's a bourgeois way of thinking, that the rich should help the poor. The rich should stop being rich. Also, congratulations on reaching 100k subs! You deserve multiple millions, in my opinion. One of my favorite channels on here. I have to admit that you're one of my favorite because you cover the most leftist things, whereas every other youtubers I watch is a liberal and only covers liberal views, except for one, who's a socialist and only talks extensively about video games and why anti-feminists are bad at making good arguments. I'm not sure if you actually are a leftist, but you certainly talk about it more than most others.

Capitalism has no room for socio-economic equality...

Awesome video. Will need to think on this for awhile. Thank you!

Always happy to see Williams cited

Another great talk on an important subject for our time. Thanks, Olly!

8:19 it might just sound like clever political framing for that question, but.. indeed, we could go further. What is property but not 'theft' from nature + some labor, and when (structural) natural resources get inherited or sold, we double down on accpeting that 'theft' as legitimate, as well as all the social inequalities that flow from this 'theft' of nature (like the gradient between the super rich and super poor).

The difference between formal and substantive rights is very similar to the difference between positive and negative freedoms. I've watched most of your videos and I don't think you've ever addressed the two types of freedoms, so I'd love to see you make a video about it! Given our current political state with the Supreme Court rolling back protected rights, I think it would be an especially relevant video to make and illustrating the distinction between the two could help a lot of people understand freedom better as a concept.

Honestly Olly, you're such a top bloke!

I think a better question to ask is whether there should be rich and poor people. If poverty is injustice then so is wealth, and economies the corruption at their heart.

We should keep helping each other meanwhile

Formal vs substantive is key. You explained that perfectly, clearer than I’ve ever heard it. Related digression: Das Kapital should be required reading. Karl Marx was a philosopher before he was an economist. Anyway, nice job here.

Could you make a video on Derek Parfit's reasons and persons? I already know the stuff he says about identity, I'm more interested in his arguments against self-interest, hedonism, etc. Thanks.

“[I do this] so that anybody in the world can learn about philosophy, without accruing even one penny of debt.” Thank you, Olly. I needed to see an example of someone out there understanding others, caring about someone else, and helping them out, in a real way, today. It’s inspiring, and refuels my tank a little

The way this matter is presented in this video, it sounds like poverty is literally an effect of excessive wealth. This seems reasonable to me, and the idea of the rich giving to the poor seems just like a more roundabout and less efficient way of the rich not making as much money in the first place, thus leaving more resources or wealth down the line. As an engineering student though, thinking about this logistically, how could you correct the issue? If we assert that poverty is a product of extreme wealth, do we say that people are only allowed to earn up to a limit, and then anything extra gets re-distributed? This just seems like a harder and less-complicated version of taxes, and I suppose on a more global scale. The other problem is that I'd say the average person in a wealthy country is just as powerless to change the economic imbalance as a person in an extremely poor country. At this point, it is simply not practical to any of our lives, to buy clothes that are made ethically, at least for the most part. Nowhere really sells things that aren't made in some third-world country where the workers are paid a pittance. I suppose you could make all your own stuff, and then risk losing your job and becoming poor yourself. As far as I can see, whatever view we take on poverty, it's only the super-rich that can change the situation. But since in the US, almost unbounded power comes with money, the rich really have no incentive to change, except those with a strong moral compass (a la Bill and Melinda Gates, perhaps). Any time the government tries to even out the field with regulation, people just get very pissy, so there's going to have to be some immense new paradigm of wealth and moral obligations if we're ever to even start closing the gap between very rich and very poor.

great vid. will share.

Luv this channel! Thanks, man!

Full Communism? Full Communism.

"The Rich" could best help anyone else by just paying their share, like everyone else. Remember, the Hamptons is not a defendable position.

great video. keep up the good work!

Super piece. Thank you.

As a communist I'd obviously say yes.

Yes everyone should have access to the basics of life period. There's no reason for people to be living in squalor while others own countries and have billions of dollars

The conversation of what constitutes a human right and how it relates to economic disparities is an interesting one to me. My perspective is as follows: Using the example of an economic transaction (abortion, food, medicine etc) is that if you have a right to a transaction, then nobody can justify taking it from you, but you are not entitled to the product of that agreement. I will put it this way: access (undisrupted) to goods is a right, but the goods themselves are not rights.

The converse of this is that "punishable with a fine" means "legal for rich people" On paper, you don't have the right to do illegal things. But if a heavy fine feels like nothing, you might as well have that right.

I think there is an assumption in the "should rich give to the poor" that the infrastructure favors the rich so much that without this infrastructure to take advantage of the poor the "rich" would not be rich, and that all "poor" are at the receiving end of this system. This generalization is dangerous because it excludes the rich who have amassed wealth through ethical means (yes, they exist), AND the poor who are deservingly so (those idiots who refuse to work and still live at their parents' house at 30+). From these points, I agree the arguments are quite bourgeois: to enforce redistribution of wealth in such generalized manner is a direct contradiction to the right to pursuit of happiness... namely, the right to be happy through honest wealth. Rather than trying to redistribute wealth in general, we should seek to reform the "infrastructure" that cause the supposed injustice in the first place, and/or increase enforcement of existing legal systems where their breaches are the source of these injustices.

I like how you started to touch on the global aspect of wealth in this video. While inequality within First World countries such as the US might seem extreme, we need to keep in mind that almost everyone living in "developed" (read: exploiter) nations fall into the top 15% of income earners globally-worldwide income inequality is even worse. The average income for a human being today is around $12,000 per person, while the median is less than a shocking $1500 (see globalrich list.com). On the whole, the entirety of the First World benefits from the exploitation of the vast majority of humanity that lives in the Third, siphoning away wealth through imperialist economic arrangements, puppet states and wars. As people living in the First World, we have the collective obligation to help secure the substantive rights of all people, especially those who are harmed by imperialism overseas every single day.

I'd suggest taking a look on Paulo Freire's material, he extensively talks about how this kind of philosophy in fact supports the maintenance of the Status Quo. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a quite good start.

Thankyou, your exposition/definition of the difference between formal and substantive rights is very clear. You did not get into how rights are established in the first place, but there was probably not time. I was pleased that you did manage to mention that the word "charity" should be replaced with the word "justice" (but, without giving a reference). Unfortunately communism has failed in every state where it has been tried. Economic elites were simply replaced with brutal political elites who distributed resources their own way and created new underclasses. The political elites then became the new economic elites. For example , in communist Eastern Europe, medicines (a basic need) were often of poor quality, not particularly cheap (due to supply issues brought about by the "managed" economy) and were distributed first to those who had "connections". A workable system will fall somewhere in between the extremes of political "ideals". Incidentally, Jefferson's right to the "pursuit of happiness" entailed the right to accumulation of considerable wealth, (and perhaps the right to give it away).

considering most of them got rich through inheritance (so they didn't actually 'earn' their wealth in the first place) or through the brutal and systemic exploitation of the lower classes, I say 'no' - their ill-gotten wealth should be taken and given to the people who really deserve it: the working class

Everyone should watch this! But not everyone would listen

I love emtymology: Labour, Momentum, gravitational relativity, anxiety and the 1987 film 'Predator' (I just came up with this today) - "Depression” from “Press”; “Depression” also referred to as “Inertia”; “Inertia” being the “Rest Mass” of a body in Einstein’s theory of relativity, which increases if moving nearer to the speed of light or under the influence of the gravity of a massive object - the effect of which is to contract the fabric of space and slow the rate of time for that body; the opposite of “Inert” is “Nert” - meaning “Power” or “Strength”; “Labour” is an act of “Nert” from a state that was formally “Inert”… or more correctly “Pregnant” or “Expecting” - as in “There was a pregnant pause from her lips before she spoke”; “Labour” during which a female pushes a baby (with great effort causing a lot a pain - typically making her very vocal) from her Womb, through her Vagina, and out through her Vulva (or Labia) - giving Birth; also “Pregnant” in Spanish is “Embarazada” which is the route of the word “Embarrassed”; “Inertia” is also the state of a body at rest or in uniform motion; An object with mass undergoing uniform motion has “Momentum”; “Momentum” - shortened from “Move-Mentum”; “Mentum” is Latin for the fused mandible bones of the human chin; “Mentum” is also the name for fused “Labium” of insect mouths; “Labia” meaning “Lips” and the inner and outer folds of the Vulva either side of the Vagina ( “Vagina” from the Latin word for “Scabbard” or “Sheath” for a sword - sword being used to cut open or cleave… cleavage, like the cleavage in the middle of the human buttocks or between a woman’s breasts); “Dutch” - slang for a joint of Marajuana (a green intoxicating substance derived from cannabis) which can be purchased legally from the Dutch city of Amsterdam, from which someone can get high, which can releave someone from a depressive state of mind, but can cause someone to be “stoned” or “monged” if they consume to much; “stoned” - hit by a stone as punishment…. “Stoned to Death”; ‘Dutch’ - about to crush (or “depress”) the Predator’s head with a stone - has a pregnant pause… “What the hell are you?” says Dutch from his lips to the ‘Predator’ as he sees what looks to be a mortality wounded foe coughing up green blood after Dutch rendered him immobile (or ‘”Inert”) under the weight of a large heavy tree trunk, in the 1987 film “Predator”, before the ‘Predator’ (also known as ‘Yautja’ or ‘Hish-Qu-Ten’) repeats Dutch’s words - “What the hell are you?” and then sets off a self-destruction device - laughing manically (“Manic” being the opposite state to “Depression”) - causing Dutch to flee for his life once he realises a bomb is about to go off… which it does - leaving a mushroom cloud after a giant ball of energy rises from the ‘Predator’ and explodes to release blinding light (due to matter being converted into pure energy - as stated in Einstein’s mass-energy equivelance equation E = mc^2) ….Before the conflict that ended in the ‘Predators’ death, he examined Dutch by lifting him up off the ground with his hand gripped around his jaw (or “Mentum”), which is clearly different to the ‘Predators’ split “Mandibles” (or “Labium”). Afterwards - rescued from the scene of destruction - Dutch sits in the helicopter inert with exhaustion… Covered in ash, with a blank expression as though actually “stoned” or “Monged” - so Dutch, there unable to process what had happened… from which he will later no doubt have “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome” leading to feelings of depression and anxiety; “Anxiety” produced from contextualization of memories from the Hippocampus due to fear responses generated by the Amygdala, which get connected in the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis (BNST). The Predator sees in infra-red... ...visible light can be red-shifted into infra red light by gravity. The Predator wears a fishnet... ...maybe the Predator also lays frog spawn? The Jungle is society... "When I was little, we found a man. He looked like - like, butchered. The old woman in the village crossed themselves... and whispered crazy things, strange things. "El Diablo cazador de hombres." Only in the hottest years this happens. And this year, it grows hot. We begin finding our men. We found them sometimes without their skins... and sometimes much, much worse. "El cazador trofeo de los hombres" means the demon who makes trophies of men."

it depends where you invest the money if you follow short term determinism or use a longterm perspective

There're too many interconnected factors and valid points in play here that make any single sweeping claim problematic one way or the other.

the rich and poor shouldnt exist. i want a classless society

I know a person who has this sincerest willingness to help the poor even if she does not consider herself to be rich. The sad thing is that these poor people she has been helping through the years do not care about truly helping themselves in order to get away from poverty. As much as it is generally useful reminding the rich of their social responsibility, I hope there is more effort on trying to educate the poor tooregarding how to live their lives according to their means so that the people who are willing to help get more motivation on what they believe has to be done for a better world.

genuinely cannot get over how young abi is in this and how smart she is

In other words: We need socialism to ensure "substantive access to rights".

As a Leninist i agree with helping everyone who needs it. If the worker does not require assistance they do not receive any.

This made me think back to Taurek's very individualist view of survival. If we applied his method to this, wouldn't it be that any individual rich person only needs to "save" as many poor people as are valuable to that rich individual? I know that runs right into the argument that looking at this in an individualistic way is too bourgeois. But since we're talking about life and death, shouldn't we utilize theories that deal in that sort of thing? What would happen if we applied Timmerman's individualist lottery? How would that even work? I suppose at the very least it turn inequality into a true "natural disaster" kind of situation.

lol @ the band of anarchists you seem to have accumulated in your comments I liked the linking to bourgeois philosophy in this video. I think it would be good to see you highlight more contemporaneous and more accessible sources in your videos I feel like this video may lend some debt of gratitude to JoesephKay76 on twitter and would be nice to have these resources and those like him highlighted more in future. Maybe a list of favourite tweeters or youtubers in a future comment video?

No one ever has the right to the product of someone else's labor.

The rich should help the poor. Wether or not that's a Bourgeois question doesn't matter to the correctness of the statement

Sure, some rich people might have inherited their wealth from oppressive practices but some have genuinely made it by offering goods and services. That money was given to them by customers, and definitely does make it theirs.

I wish I had found this when I was writing an essay about the Benin bronzes and colonialism. Great video!

No, the world must seek to have less poor people, not to be more equal.

The rich are only rich on the backs of the poor. The question isn't whether the rich should help the poor, it's whether the rich should exist at all.

Curious about the conflict between the formal/substantive and negative/positive distinctions. If we say that a right must be substantive, then it (almost) always becomes positive. Is it possible to reconcile a distaste for positive rights with a recognition of the importance that rights be substantive? A different but related question: Would the right to free speech be substantive if the speaker isn't provided with a platform to speak?

Great video :D keep it up!

As a Marxist, my answer is a huge "No!". The workers and the poor should liberate themselves and expropriate the expropriators. They should dismantle the system, which has put them in poverty in the first place.

Poverty is lower than it has ever been. Only in the last 30 years more than 400 million people left the poverty status. The average american citizen today has more things than a monarch had in the middle ages. All of this was caused by capitalism and free markets. So please, we don't need more governmet programs and taxes, we need more entrepreneurs, more jobs, more technology and more freedom.

Hella late to this party (congrats to queen Abby, btw!), but imo, the rich not only have a moral obligation to help the poor, but a utilitarian REQUIREMENT to help the poor. Take Sainsbury's, for example. The rely on farmers, delivery drivers, retail and shop floor workers, and other links in the chain between produce and shelved product sales. Yet the CEO is paid an extortionate amount compared to workers on the bottom. If those workers can't afford things like food, bills, shelter, entertainment (mental health is arguably more important than physical health), and healthcare, what happens if they get sick/can't eat etc.? Imagine if we didn't have the NHS, the second the workers get sick, they cease to be of use to Sainsbury's. Now imagine... oh, I dunno, a global pandemic occurs (frivolous as that may seem LEL), and MANY workers get sick, seriously so... The business ceases to function. The business is like a body - too many segments not working and the entire thing ceases to function. Now, if Sainsbury's contributes to the lives of the poor (whether through much higher wages or by increasing its taxes to contribute to state-funded healthcare etc.), then it would be the same as the 'body' creating its own 'self-repair' system. Essentially, what I'm saying is - businesses, look after your poor people! You'd be fecked without them! Also, it's the decent thing to do, have a heart, and stop being so neoliberal.

I can't wait to have money to donate to what is literally one of my favorite, and one of the best channels on philosophy or youtube. I'm a little under the influence, forgive my grammar.

Should the rich BE rich? No.

I am not sure that it follows that if you believe helping the poor is a matter of justice that the resources of the wealthy are not theirs in the first place. Imagine a wealthy doctor driving through a very rural area runs over someone in a car because the doctor was driving carelessly. He finds the bleeding, injured man who needs blood immediately to survive. The injured man is wearing a medical alert bracelet that indicates his blood type, which is identical to the doctor. Assuming the doctor has the equipment to give blood, and given that it would be unjust for the doctor to allow this man to die, I am still not certain one can clearly say that the doctor's blood is no longer his own. Imagine that the doctor is also a Jehova's Witness, and therefore has religious objections to blood transfusion. What then? I am also unclear on how one determines when it's permissible to stop giving resources. If a wealthy family helps the poor, obviously any one wealthy family could exhaust it's wealth entirely aiding the poor, because no one wealthy family is rich enough to cure poverty. So, given that they are willing to help in the first place, would we really argue that they should give until they themselves are poor? I mean, sure, if we compelled every wealthy person to help that might not be needed, but since we're not what advice do we give to the people who want to help? Should our advice be "Thanks, but that's not good enough. Keep giving, because your wealth doesn't belong to you."? Does the actual source of the wealth matter? If a man is wealthy because he invented a cure for a certain type of cancer is that wealth "more his" than the wealth of a man who owns apartment blocks in the inner city?

I agree with the argument of Substantive vs. Formal rights and that we need to guarantee anything we want to declare as a "human right" not just in law but also in terms of access. I support the idea of a universal basic income (caveat: an income you can actually live off) and generally am in favour of higher taxation to that end. With regard to even wealth distribution though : consider the Day of the Triffids. Spoiler alert: plot for part of the day of the triffids follows. In the two TV versions I've seen (have not read the book) the plight of the overwhelming majority of people who have been blinded comes up. There are relatively few who can still see and some nobly choose to help some of those who are blind. This however is a drop in the ocean and others choose to capture seeing people to force them to help out this cause. In the case of the former, it seems futile, in the case of the latter it feels like people who could be doing more good (dealing with the Triffids) are being distracted by a seemingly noble but impossible-to-satisfy cause. Where am I going with this? There are benefits to having an abundance of wealth, there's a freedom to not having to worry too much about budgeting that lets some of our best minds flourish. Through this we get philosophical advancements, art and literature exploring the human condition, inventions that improve crop yields and *maybe* abundant energy etc. etc. and while we have enough resources to guarantee a basic income and substantive access to basic rights (I think?) we do not currently have the resources to guarantee the income needed for everyone to flourish in this way (again, I think? Happy for corrections). The parallel I'd like to draw is with the fortunate "seeing" people. They're privileged, they're fortunate (it's an utter fluke they are in the position they are) and they have a responsibility to help those less privileged than themselves *as much as they can* and the mistake is, I think, made in forcing them down a certain path to the exclusion of others. Perhaps more specifically in forcing them down a path prematurely while other forces will make the task harder / impossible based on what is currently to hand. Complete equality of wealth seems to be similarly premature. When we have enough resources to allow everyone to flourish in this way, sure, go ahead and that'd be fantastic. In the meantime I favour us seeking to substantively guarantee as many rights as we can afford and I oppose full redistribution of wealth so that some of us have the freedom to push humanity forward and hopefully one day make it easier and more practical to get rid of the barriers that hold the rest of us back. I recognise that unfortunately, due in part to the random nature of inherited wealth and major financial success but also due to various cognitive biases, only a fraction of the fortunate people free to do this flourishing actually do for the betterment of humanity. I can't see how to fix that without artificially biasing the system but believe (probably a lot of hope in there) that we'll get there eventually this way but won't if we stop the process now and spread all wealth perfectly evenly.

Bit of a tangent, but I wonder about the implied distinction at around 5:54 between issues of justice and natural disasters. Natural disasters disproportionately effect the poorest and most marginalised because they are more likely to be forced to live in dangerous places by economic necessity, more likely to lack the resources to protect themselves and less likely to have the resources available to deal with the aftermath. See the disparity between the number of deaths caused by Hurricane Matthew in Haiti and the US for a particularly extreme example. Natural disasters (in terms of the extreme events themselves) might not be preventable and or predictable, but the huge disparities in how much different social groups is entirely predictable and is an issue of poverty and social justice just as much as sweatshops are.

We should break down the systems that create rich and poor. That would be social justice.

Better question, should you force someone at gun point to give to charity.

It will take a restructuring of the economy at it's most fundamental level.... Economics is only viable because we've said it is ( the consensus ) it all can change but we'll all have to come together and come to a consensus that's right and benefits everyone not just a handful

Not sure where the video falls in relationship to your video on prisoner's right to vote but I find it interesting on the two topics dove tail. In this, your rights are real or imagined based on social/financial access and in the prison the lack of your right to vote is more or less effective based on how likely you would be able to use that right on the outside. Or am I overthinking it?