This debate is all about balance.

If one single person owned all the land and controlled all the wealth then the idea of redistribution would be agreeable to everyone else. This is the 'single owner of everything' extreme.

And if everybody owned an equal share of the land and wealth then the idea of redistribution would be irrelevant. This is the 'equal ownership of everything' extreme.

Therefore if the current wealth distribution rests in the middle and allows for everyone to be healthy and safe in their lives, then we don't have any real problems. But if the wealth distribution is too far towards the 'single owner of everything' extreme, or too far towards the 'equal ownership of everything' extreme... look out.

"In my view the examples you provided seem to point to...." "your position."

So you are agreeing with me on my point? I'm only quoting what you have written remember.

"I think you are suggesting that stealing is wrong"

Is that your whole argument? Or is it just a segment of one sentence among many you used in making your argument?

It seems we both need to make sure every segment of every sentence encapsulates our entire positions. Pity neither of us is Shakespeare....

As long as steeling is qualified as taking something without permission.

But we could look at the idea of a man steeling another mans wife. The married man doesn't give his permission to the new man who takes his wife, but the new man isn't steeling because the wife doesn't belong to the married man in the first place, even tho the married man will refer to his wife as "my wife"...

There are also cases where I give my permission but you are still steeling from me through the use of dodgy contracts and misleading arguments...

I wasn't suggesting there are no laws in modern society, I was suggesting there are no moral laws.

You can take that statement many different ways. You could assert that I am saying all laws in today's society are immoral, or you could presume that I am saying morals have little or no influence in the modern law making process.

For example: steeling is morally wrong, but if someone is faced with the choice of 'steel or die' then we see an exception to the moral that is morally acceptable to most people... You are not allowed to steel; unless.........

So, you see, we can create a set of laws to combat steeling without consulting any moral fundamentals at all. Nobody wants there stuff being stolen, but if someone stole from me to save their life then that is OK by me..., unless there was some other means of this person saving their own life of course...

Moral fundamentals don't allow for any [unless] clauses... and are therefor, in all reality, brutal and horrid, even when they propose to be nice and friendly...

There are no moral laws in today's western societies, there are only moral guidelines. These moral guidelines are usually founded entirely in emotion and ignore logic completely; which I believe is the great problem with religion based laws...

If you can show me the moral law that you believe is the back bone of the modern marriage contract then I will show you the irrational/emotional nature of that moral law.

PS: It is true that emotions are important, but it is equally true that logic is just as important. Neither is better or worse than the other...

The word slavery implies the absence of choice for the worker. It is a condition where the slave is imprisoned by the landlord and cannot choose not to consent. If a free person consents to work for free then that person is not a slave at all.... because that free person also has the option of not working for free, whereas the slave doesn't....

I see individual success being good when it confers benefits to society at the same time. But when individual success brings about negative consequences to society then it is no good.

(For this argument we can exclude any forms of individual success that only bring negative effects for society, like being a con artist convincing elderly people to spend their retirement money buying stuff they will never use.)

So individual success will have a natural limit with regard to being a positive force in society and when that limit is breached negative effects will start to occur.

To say that some success will never lead to evil, no matter how great, is to say that a company can keep growing profits infinitely, and this clearly isn't the case.... When a company hits its "good for society" profit level then it can only make more money selling the same products through actions that are bad for society.... [Cutting wages, destroying competitors, pushing up prices etc etc...]

But, in saying that, companies can always work to increase their "good for society" profit limits by inventing new markets, like apple did so well back in the last decade (under Steve Jobs through the smart phone and the tablet...)

So in my opinion Microsoft's attempts to destroy competitors didn't lift their "good for society" profit limit at all, but many of their actions have been good as well so they have great potential to be good for us all...

OK I get all that. Very important indeed. Now I'm very interested to hear your envy theory...

If there weren't so many jobs out there that didn't require any form of higher education I might buy into your position... Driving a fork lift at a freight company is one such job. You drive the machine and become proficient, there's nothing more to it... Can you earn enough to buy your own house driving a fork lift. In many parts of the western world the answer is no.

Your answer is don't drive a fork lift for a job. But the world needs forklift drivers so in your world someone [has] to live the substandard life.