Samstarrett: I have a very simple moral question for you. Do you think that human lives (our very well being) should be determined by the arbitrary laws of supply and demand? Is human life itself just another commodity?
That question is not simple at all, but I'll try to answer it. The trouble is that it is a moral question that does not address what an individual should or should not do, but rather how things should be. In an ideal world, of course, everyone's needs would be provided for and nobody would have to pay for anything and little white children and little black children would walk down the street hand in hand and politicians would all be honest blokes who could be trusted with absolute power and...
But we don't live in an ideal world. So, to answer your question, no, of course people's well-being "should" be universally provided for, at least for those who work or are, for a reason that is no fault of their own, unable to work. But the real question here is how this should be accomplished. You claim that the State should use force to guarantee that everyone is paid what you consider a decent wage. The problem arises when you realize that this takes people who would have had horrible jobs and leaves them with no job at all, which is even worse. Moreover, it violates the human right to liberty to tell me I may not work simply because you don't like the amount I'm going to be paid.
Instead, I think we should take seriously the Divine admonition to succor the poor, and do it out of our own resources, not those of others. Do you have the right to take what belongs to someone else if it's for a good cause? I don't think so. Does the State have that right? That's a little iffier, but I still think it should be avoided where possible, particularly where it interferes with the right of consenting adults to enter into voluntary, mutually beneficial economic relations.
