On the Successful Owe a Debt to Society

Hi folks,

Recently I start to watch a series of videos on Justice courses through Youtube. The Justice course  , a general course and philosophy course, is given by Harvard University. It is said that the course is so popular that Harvard decides to share the lectures with public, and that's why we can watch them through Youtube. This series is so insightful that my thought kept being challenged whenever watching them.

Here's the link: Harvard University Justice Series

Just now I finished the 3rd episode: Free to choose. In the video, the professor Michael Sandel talks about utilitarianism and libertarianism. He talked about one of the four common objections to libertarianism that he discovered from his online course is "the successful owe a debt to society." This actually reminded me what James (maybe) and I discussed weeks ago on big companies have to take the so-called social responsibility. From libertarian's perspective, taxation, especially for redistributing wealth, is coercion, labor force, theft in fundamental, and violation of self possession. A student (Victoria, 48min) who kinda objected libertarianism argued that we lose our self possession once we live in the society.

I think this series is really informative and thus recommend to you now. If you have free time, I highly recommend you watching them :)



Best,
Angela