July 8, 2023
EQUALITY NOT REQUIRED:
PODCAST: Michael Walzer on Liberalism and its Critics: Yascha Mounk and Michael Walzer discuss liberalism, communitarianism, and why some forms of inequality are more acceptable than others. (Persuasion, 7/06/23)
"It doesn't bother me if you can collect rare books and I can't, or if you can take a month's vacation and I just get two weeks. That doesn't bother me. It's when your wealth matters in every other sphere of activity--and right now, crucially, in politics. It's when your wealth can buy a senator or a judge, or a law, or an exemption from a law--all of that I want to rule out. I don't think it's crucial to a socialist or social democratic society, that someone who has an economic green thumb or some entrepreneur who invents some machine that people enjoy using, that they make more money than I make. It's what they can do with the money that matters."
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 8, 2023 7:09 AM