Simon notes that that would be economically disastrous, but there’s nothing unethical with taxing more heavily those who can most afford to pay.

If this guy won the Nobel prize and said *that* – well…my chances aren’t that bad. Deep Thought: Supporting an action that one knows will cause economic disaster is unethical — people suffer. It is worse than negligence. It is in fact malicious. Certainly from a utilitarian stand-point any economic action based off of anything less than the maximum number of people — is unethical. So, yes, obviously, even the most Randian corporate libertarians will recognize “social capital” (another word for civilization) is key. Bill Gates can’t dominate the caveman. But to say, it is ethical to take successful peoples money because they “could” have been born in Bangladesh is driveling nonsensical tripe. Sean, I think you might be successful in this dressed up & repackaged marxism — hell, just call it “centrist”. That was also a nice little stab at those Christian hypocrits, but you wussed out with the qualifiers there.