social responsibility
What all this pious talk amounts to is that when third parties want somebody else to pay for something, they simply call it a "social responsibility," an "obligation" or a "social contract."
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It would be devastating to the egos of the intelligentsia to realize, much less admit, that businesses have done more to reduce poverty than all the intellectuals put together. Ultimately it is only wealth that can reduce poverty and most of the intelligentsia have no interest whatever in finding out what actions and policies increase the national wealth.
They certainly don't feel any "obligation" to learn economics, out of a sense of "social responsibility," much less because of any "social contract" requiring them to know what they are talking about before spouting off with self-righteous rhetoric.
Thomas Sowell
"The latest liberal crusade"
May 12, 2005
2 Comments:
"they simply call it a "social responsibility," an "obligation" or a "social contract."
Don't forget the timeless classic, "civic duty"!
I think that it is important to distinguish between the situation in which someone calls for the coercive arm of the state to enforce a so-called civic obligation and where someone calls for voluntary compliance with a so-called civic obligation. I don't think Mr Sowell does this adequately, if at all, in this article.
If I force you by threat of violence to pay money to the poor, I am an imperious morally deficient jack***. If I make moral arguments to the effect that the rich have a Christian duty to the poor and decline to associate with folks who do not, then I am certainly within my rights.
I still have a bug up my *** about Mr Sowell's attacks on redneck culture.
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