Ethics, Sustainability and Culture - Coursework Example

Ethics, Sustainability and Culture Name Institution Date OPTION A Poverty represents an unjust distribution of wealth Introduction Poverty and wealth are relative terms that are very subjective. Distribution of wealth may determine how rich one can get or poor one can become. The systems enacted in the society are meant to provide equal opportunities to members of the society to pursue what makes up desirable life in their own description (Alcock, 1993). The notion that poverty represents an unjust distribution of wealth cannot be entirely be untrue. This debate can be understood by looking at the principles of a just and welfare state. The basic question concerning poverty has always been what or causes it. Western perspective has placed the responsibility of poverty on the poor themselves and the conditions are beyond an individual. According to Unitarianism, society is meant to extent institutions and laws that promote the greatest average or overall happiness of the members (Blank, 2003). Social justice means creation of institution or society that is founded on the principle of solidarity and equality, which values and understands human rights, and acknowledges the dignity of every human being (Forster, 1985). The notion that poverty is an unjust distribution of wealth has a lot of meaning. Why should it be that in one economy of a state there are people who are extremely wealthy to the degree of buying the property owned by the state with ease; in the same economy there are people who are extremely poor that they cannot afford a meal. The principles of a welfare state were meant to intervene and ensure that people enjoy and get access to basic needs of life. Poverty indicates that there are people who are holding too much to use and other having too little to barely survive. Most of the wealthy people in the society have acquired their wealth through unscrupulous means. There are wealthy businessmen who make millions in terms of profits but stash the loot in save havens to avoid taxation. Most rich people avoid taxation (Guillermo, 2001). Taxation was invented in economics as one of the means which was used to distribute wealth in the society. Taxation was done progressively which meant that those who earned highest paid the highest taxes and vice versa. A school or a dispensary could be built from proceeds of taxes. The people who opposed capitalism were mostly from the socialist class or Marxists. The injustice of capitalism made the rich richer and the poor poorer. There are channels which have been created to increase the gap between the wealthy and the poor. Capitalism was viewed to be inherently exploitative. The capitalists used cheap to make huge profits in production. Child labour was also applied since it was cheaply available (Marx & Engels, 1958). The arrangement of social institutions can determine how far individual efforts can result into success financially or materially. Karl Marx observed that owing to economic inequality, labour purchase cannot occur in free conditions. Capitalists took control of means of production, that is, businesses, factories, and machines, and workers only had control over their labour. Workers were consequently coerced into permitting their labour to be exploited. The workers permitted their labour to be exploited since they feared facing starvation in the absence of proceeds they received from their work (Campbell & Wright, 2005). Exploitation during the Marx time has been extended into present era. Exploitation of the girl child is witnessed everyday especially in poor families. There are people who like to take advantage of girls from poor families. A girl child from poor families experiences many hardships before she makes it in life. This is very prevalent in third world countries where people are still trapped in archaic traditions like female circumcision. The girl child encounters hostility even from his family. Some of these traditions are a road map to poverty. If the wealth of a country is allowed to be controlled by a few people, poverty will abound. In many developing nations there are many people who do not own land while a few own thousands of acres of land. In spite of their hard work, these poor people are imprisoned to be workers of the rich who own vast land and control the means of production. The rich will not want the poor to be rich since they will lack the cheap labour which they depend on so much for production (Duncan & Brooks-gunn, 2000). So long as the means of production are controlled by the rich, the poor have got no chance at all. They will remain the servants of the rich. Poverty traps people in situations where they cannot disentangle themselves. There are people born in places where the land is barren and they cannot access other means of making a living. The only option is to move away from this place. The Maasai in northern Kenya and the Fulani in Northern Nigeria are all pastoralists due to the environmental conditions of where they live. There are desert areas which experience little rainfall. They cannot practice any other means of living rather than rearing huge herds of cattle and goats. The poor can also be rescued where the government comes in to distribute resources. Taxation is one means of distribution of wealth (Forster, 1985). Although it is meant to distribute wealth, taxation only reduces the wealth of the rich but more often than not does not add to the possessions of the poor. Most taxes are used to fund the budget of the government and the bulk of it is allocated to things like defense, infrastructure and education. Education funding by the government can be said to be a means of making its citizen access education. A child from a poor family needs to work harder as compared to a child from a wealthy family. If there were structures to distribute wealth justly in the society then the level of poverty will be low. Poverty represents unjust distribution of wealth. Unionism came as a means of workers to bargain for their conditions in the work place. They were being oppressed and exploited. Despite the existence of unions, workers in many parts of the world are being subjected to pathetic conditions (Campbell & Wright, 2005). A recent feature in the CNN showed poor children from Thailand being used to make electronic gadgets in Singapore. The poor mothers back in Thailand had to sell their daughters to unscrupulous agents who took them to Singapore. Most of these industries are owned by the rich and they use or exploit the poor to remain rich. Human trafficking shows the impact of poverty in the world. Poor families sell off their daughters and sons to become slaves in unknown parts of the world. Most of these poor people are turned into sex slaves or used to act pornographic movies. A son or a daughter of a rich man cannot be trafficked. The rich buy justice and get away with (Alcock, 1993). The rich interfere with the just distribution of wealth to benefit themselves. In many countries it will be found that the greatest wealth is held by the rich. The combined earnings of the poor cannot even surpass half the wealth of the rich (Guillermo, 2001). Unjust distribution of resources, education, security, and capital make the poor to continue being poor while the wealthy continue amassing wealth. Security threats for the poor are not taken seriously as it would have been the case for the rich. The poor die for so many reasons including poor feeding. Many rich people die of old age and they suffer from depression and fatigue. Most civilized countries experience unequal distribution of wealth which persists each day. Land ownership provides greater power to distribute the wealth resulting from capital and labour. If the government does not intervene to ensure proper apportionment of labour and capital through taxes, there will unjust distribution of wealth. Some people have attributed poverty to be as a result of inappropriate distribution of the tax burden (Blank, 2003). The tax burden is not being directed where it is supposed to be. Other people are being tax highly when there taxes need to be reduced and vice versa. In a survey carried out in America years back, 85% of the wealth in America was owned by 20% of the rich population while the remaining 15% of the wealth was owned by 20% of the population. The government needs to put in place structures and restrictions that will allow the same opportunity to a poor child and a rich child. A school uniform in some schools is a good example of the restrictions to be put in place. The rich child does not have to come with expensive clothes to school to make the poor child feel intimidated. Children also eat the food in the school and avoid parents bringing the food to their children (Duncan & Brooks-gunn, 2000). Inequalities cannot be eradicated completely, but their level can be brought down significantly. Equal opportunity has to be created in accessing basic services like healthcare and education. The rich can afford expensive hospitals, but let the poor be able to access some treatment whenever they feel like (Alcock, 1993). Poverty levels vary from one setting to another. Being rich in New York may not be the same as being rich in Rwanda. The standard of wealth is described in comparison with the standard of the poor. The Utilitarianism holds that in a society that is just institutions, laws and the economy should be organized in such a manner that majority of the people have the opportunity and the means to pursue their chosen perspective of desirable life (Campbell & Wright, 2005). Acts of nature like floods and droughts are beyond the control of man. The government can only provide support to those caught up in bad situations in order to make their life easy. Consequently unjust distribution of wealth cannot be the sole reason for wealth inequality. There are people in the world who were born in extremely wealthy families but they ended up poor. Personal character and the choice of life that one wants to lead determine how hard she or he works in life. There are people who despite all the optimal conditions existing, they were not able to grow out of poverty. The level of intelligence also matters. There are cases of siblings who have benefitted from their fathers inheritance and they squandered it in less than a year. Lack of creativity and the sheer act of being lazy can also be mentioned as a cause of poverty (Forster, 1985). Most of the rich are creative and hardworking; and a majority of them were not born rich. They worked hard to be where they are in society. Just distribution of wealth in society cannot make one rich or poor. Individual effort will determine how far one will get. There children from rich families who refused to go to school and got involved in drugs. There are also children from the poor families who also refused to go to school and opted to get employment at an early age (Duncan & Brooks-gunn, 2000). Systems cannot be entirely blamed for propagating poverty. The individual has a role to play when it comes to achievement in life. Socialism has been tried in some parts of the world like Tanzania in East Africa; it failed terribly. There are people in society who are appallingly lazy. They spent more than they can make. Socialism advocated for collective ownership of property and working together. In the end more people became lazy as they were lost in the excitement of working in a crowd. Individual effort and individual accountability makes one to work knowing that he is responsible for his actions. Socialism advocated for collective responsibility which made those individual who were hard working to become lazy like the rest of the group (Fukuda-Parr, 2003) Just distribution of wealth in terms of access to markets, systems of productions, means of production, infrastructure, education and security; creates an environment that is conducive for creation of wealth but does not make one rich or poor automatically. Individual effort and intelligence is needed for one to grow rich. One has to know the right investment to make, the right stocks to buy and the right employees to employ. Some people have run down their fathers’ factories or firms due to poor or bad management. One can be a capitalist in his own character and not necessarily as a creation of systems enacted by the government (Alcock, 1993). The setting determines how far an individual can rise. We have had people who had to migrate and move to new locations because where they were was not encouraging. The environment gives support to individual effort. If the economic conditions are good, one is able to carry out a profitable business. Consider a trader who works so hard to be successful. He wakes up early every morning and opens up her wholesale shop till late in the night. If this trader is attacked by robbers every month, she will eventually give up and close down the shop. Wealth comes from different ventures. There are wealthy traders, wealthy farmers, wealthy investors, and wealthy entrepreneurs. This shows that there is no elaborate channel that has been drawn for one to follow in order to grow wealthy. There are people who abandon farming for business; there are others who abandon business for farming. There is no road map that can be drawn to make one rich. Being rich or poor is a condition that is relative and not permanent (Campbell & Wright, 2005). Temporality and permanence will be determined by individual effort. If the rich do not work hard to remain rich they will soon be poor after squandering their wealth. If the poor work hard and gets the right channel of support; he can grow to be wealthy. Poverty is a presentation of unjust distribution of wealth to some extent, but it cannot hold in all settings (Alcock, 1993). There are people who have vast lands but they do not practice any commercial farming. They sell a portion of it and spent the money. Systems of distribution of national resources as described by Karl Max will determine how successful one can aspire to be in individual life. Exploitation of the rich makes other people poor and consequently it would be right to say poverty is a representation of unjust distribution of wealth (Blank, 2003). In some circumstances, even if economic condition were equal to everyone, there would be the presence of the rich and the poor; and poverty cannot mean unjust distribution of wealth. Conclusion The notion that poverty represents unjust distribution of wealth is true in some circumstances while in others it is not. Accumulation of wealth is not defined by means of distributions. In most circumstances it depicts the effort that individual invest in order to make their lives comfortable. However, there are circumstances where laid down systems have denied equal chances for individuals to prosper. There are people who have remained poor for being caught up in settings where the rich controlled everything including access to education. Systems and type of governments are not entirely to blame for unjust distribution of wealth. There are people who are lazy and not smart enough to take advantage of opportunities in life. Unjust distribution of wealth can result into other people being poor and also individual effort will determine the desirable life of an individual as described by utilitarianisms. There are many theories attributed for emergence of poverty and unjust distribution of wealth is just one of them. References Alcock, P. (1993). Understanding Poverty. Melbourne: Macmillan. Campbell, D., & Wright, J. (2005). Rethinking welfare school attendance policies. Social service review, 79 (1), 2-28 Blank, R.M. (2003). Selecting among Anti-Poverty policies: Can an economics be both critical and caring? Review of social economy, 61 (4), 447-471. Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-gunn, J. (2000). Family poverty, welfare reform, and child development. Child Development , 71 (1):188–196. Forster, C. (1985). Unemployment and Minimum Wages in Australia, 1900–1930. Journal of Economic History 45 (2), 383–391. Fukuda-Parr, S. (2003). The Human Development Paradigm: Operationalizing Sen’s Ideas on Capabilities.” Feminist Economics 9(2/3): 301–17. Guillermo, G. (2001). The “New Global Culture”, The Drama Review, 45 (1): 7. Marx, K & Engels, F, 1958, The Communist Manifestos, in their Selected Works in Two Volumes, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Read More