[The One and Only...]

Originally Posted by mburbank

Your initial statement about pleasure and money is reasonably solid, though pedestrian. After that it all falls apart. Your 'obvious' conclusion is full of holes. Economic equality wouldn't 'lead' to ineqal pleasure a state that already exists. Not solving a problem isn't the same thing as creating it.

Ok, but that is a technicality that remains irrelevant to the point.

You then state that we can't make people equally happy and bizarely conclude that this means capitalism is the best system. That's like saying you can't make an apple pie with oranges so thebest thing to do is play golf.

Capitalism is the system which comes closest to making people as happy as possible by giving them free choice.

your final statement 'capitalism, which modifies pleasure ratios according to merit within the market system.' is supported in no way by any part of your argument. In addition, as far as I know there is no reliable system by which 'pleasure ratios' can be measured.

You don't need to measure the ratios, you just need to use logic. Capitalism rewards those who function better in the market with higher salaries, which helps both the person who enjoys lots of cash and the one who wants more family time. One gets richer, one can work less. Thus, capitalism modifies the amount of pleasure received correspondant to level of function in the market. Utimately, this leads to greater pleasure for all, but we are escaping the point, which was that economic equality does not lead to equality of pleasure. That said, surely you can recognize that capitalism lowers the inequality of pleasure among persons when compared to systems like socialism?