People are stupid

One of tenants of left is that "people are stupid". Which of course is why you pay the plumber, or electrician, or gardener, or mechanic, or carpenter, or whoever you think is stupid, money. Because those idiots don't know anything. In reality those people actually know more about something than you do, in a certain realm of knowledge. That is why you pay them. They offer a service that for the dollar amount you pay them is worth more to you than the time to learn such knowledge and the labor to carry it out.

We've created this whole hierarchy of knowledge. You learned it in school. Social science is above blue collar work, biology above that, chemistry above biology, physics above chemistry math above all. And then once we got to the top, or whatever part of that food chain we reached, we proclaimed we are smarter and more knowledgeable then anything below us. Until we needed our toilet fixed...

The fact is people with different knowledge, however mundane you might think that knowledge is, actually know something you don't, and that creates value for their knowledge/labor which you are willing to pay for.

The reality isn't that people are stupid, but more the sum total of their upbringing, education opportunities, family, personal experiences has led them to a certain place. Who are you to be the judge of what their actual IQ is? In many cases I bet its much higher than yours. IQ is not actually what matters in this world. Sure IQ brings value, but in the end knowledge and experience is what brings the real buckos.

People aren't really stupid, they just know different things. They know lots of things you don't know, and think you are stupid about those things. That is what makes the economy work. It's that everyone, has something to give. Yeah, its not fair, but there is a value, in dollars, placed on everything. This value factors in the time spent to gain such knowledge, how many people have such knowledge, how readily available this knowledge is, and the skill factor involved to apply such knowledge to real work.

You may think no one should earn over a X dollar/year, and its the right of the gov't to take from that person to give to the less fortunate. But by doing so you are devaluing the ability, upbringing, labor, risk, knowledge, and experience that brought that person into the value they are worth in the first place. In end you are giving the power to someone else (the gov't) to make decisions on what something is worth. If you are pissed about how someone values your knowledge, skill, ability, experience in this world, do you really want some omnipresent power, who is guaranteed to mess it up, making that decision. Sure screw that rich, able, privileged guy, but how much are you really screwing yourself?

The free market is an attempt to rate value through the summation of individual decisions (via personal economic transactions). Because the aggregation of those transactions, with all the personal knowledge of those that engage in those transactions, creates more knowledge, and a better assessment of true value, then any top down approach, which would be based on the limited knowledge of those who make those decisions.

The conservative viewpoint is this. The world is unfair, and always will be. We by our nature our always on the path toward barbarianism. In other words, the bigger stronger dude will always take the rabbit I just killed for myself. That is injustice, and barbarianism. The best we can do is create a society that protects ourselves from that, but there are always trade offs. Nothing the gov't does is a win/win. Someone loses, someone wins. Its a delicate balance of what do you get for those you decide to screw. But in the end if I killed the rabbit, I should get to reap the rewards.