Comment on When Americans Fly Economy, They're Actually Paying for Someone Else to Fly Private
ronigami@lemmy.world 1 week ago
How is this fundamentally different from the “my kids don’t go to school so I shouldn’t have to pay property taxes” people? Relax it’s a public good, the FAA. Everyone benefits from a public good.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The fundamental difference is the direction of the redistribution.
The capitalist system inherently distributes from poor to rich. With no state involved, a capitalist system strictly and always devolves into one person (or a very small group) owning everything and everyone else being owned by them. That’s why we have states that do have redistribution systems that try to counteract that: We have progressive tax systems that tax the rich more than the poor to fund free (or at least subsidized) public good systems.
To get back to your example: The rich don’t need free schools. Even without free public education, they would still be able to afford to send their kids to expensive private schools. A free school program is there to mostly benefit the poor.
Redistribution systems that redistribute from poor to rich on the other hand are inherently broken. The base economic system already does that redistribution from poor to rich, so allowing the rich to mooch even more off the system is not a good idea.
ronigami@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Keep in mind that as soon as the FAA becomes funded by billionaires their primary responsibility is to the billionaire instead of the flying public. Much in the way that the police are employed by the rich and could give fuck-all about ordinary citizens.