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I have started a total of one thread in the Politics forum. I have idiosyncratic political views, and I read voraciously because I generally try to challenge my preconceptions and see where I might have failed to consider something. So I posted an OP that asked why economic inequality is such a cause celebre for so many people, even though in this country poor people generally have enough food, have shelter and clothing. This is something I have been trying to understand for a while, because I can't believe good intelligent people would find other people's success or good fortune reprehensible. I also don't understand why economic inequality is somehow different from other inequalities, some of which can severely affect people's life happiness more than money.
I'm still trying to get answers. But what really threw me was when I got lectured for being immoral even for asking the question, as if it was self-evidently obvious that no one should ever have more than anyone else, irrespective of effort, inspiration, insight or talent - and I got bludgeoned with long irrelevant quotes about why economic disparities are immoral and rich people are evil. To me that was off-topic and I said so.
I welcome the input and discussion on the question I posed, precisely because I am interested in seeing if there is something I'm missing in my thinking on this issue. Because I wrote the OP, I felt some responsibility to keep the discussion on topic and to prevent it from veering off into other less useful directions. Maybe each OP author can take charge of his or her thread? Some will care about policing the thread and others won't, but we're all adults and should be left to conduct ourselves as adults.
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