Daniel,

When you say, ‘Individuals have no collective duty of responsibility’ I can see that we have a fundamentally different philosophical view on what moral responsibility individuals have, and fundamentally different moral framework.

I think you may be misunderstanding my position on governments. You see that I am against government intervention, but then say I am implying that we should take other peoples money by government taxation. I am against any government doing either, because I am against government existing at all. I believe all associations with others should be voluntary, without coercion or exploitation. That is why I am against Capitalism.

Confusingly to me, you seem to accept the idea of common objectives but not common action or common progress. You speak of ‘structures and systems’ lifting ‘people out of poverty’, but then say that everything is done by individuals and that we have progressed beyond tribes.

I’m not convinced that all of these people have been lifted out of poverty just because more people are now earning two dollars a day (which is the world bank metric and applies mostly to China, however if we used the UN metric of seven dollars then poverty hasn’t gotten better). In many cases Capitalism has increased peoples access to money, and at the same time decreased their security and access to housing, food, and community support.

If we judge poverty solely by income then a person who lives in a village in which food is farmed and shared freely, whose neighbours help build their home and sees that no-one is homeless, who look after their infirm and elderly is considered to be greatly impoverished. However, they are considered by Capitalism to be more successful when they are thrown off that land (or taxed off of it), so that they have to work long hours in a factory, and when they can barely afford shelter and food, but now earn two dollars a day. So I find the way Capitalism measures such progress as highly dubious.

You stated that ‘Individuals are no longer members of tribes. This is a great development, if for no other reason than to avoid genocide and rape.’ But I think that you are imagining an old view of pre-history being savage and brutal which more evidence has dispelled the myth of. Many anthropologists now see that period as a largely co-operative and communal one, not without the difficulties of more rudimentary living, but with good varied diets, shared rewards, relatively long lives (into the 70s once you take out higher infant mortality), and community care for the disabled and elderly. I would encourage you to read, The Dawn Of Everything, which gives a very different perspective on this period.

As you admire Adam Smith I wonder if you also accept his belief in different economic classes, about the coercive and exploitative nature of the worker owner relationship, his views against the hoarding of wealth, and his pro-regulation (including banking), pro-union and anti-landlord views. We know what he would have thoughts of Sam Walton, to him such people were ‘an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.’

The one thing Smith felt was morally reprehensible was the adoration of the rich - ‘This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.’

Wise words!