Comment by jonahx
8 days ago
It definitely answers why. You are asking for an appeal to some moral justification. But there isn't one, and it doesn't matter. That's the whole point of "might makes right".
8 days ago
It definitely answers why. You are asking for an appeal to some moral justification. But there isn't one, and it doesn't matter. That's the whole point of "might makes right".
CPF makes a moral justification by arguing it is a "savings and pension plan" under the auspices of a moral justification of helping citizens set aside their own money. The very first thing you are greeted with on their website is that it's savings and an overview represents it as "setting aside" your own funds.
The government makes a moral justification of a savings plan but then when we dig down to it it's all ether and really just a scheme for bond rate arbitrage for the government.
The point isn't that might makes right is false, it's that the moral justification is a facade.
When are moral justifications not facades?
When they benefit others more than you and your in-group.
In an attempt to steelman, you are saying:
"There is no moral justification for the government setting a retirement age, but they are able to. So it doesn't matter."
The government doesn’t set the retirement age. You can retire whenever you want. There are no laws against a 50 year old retiring and living off his own savings, nor against a 70 year old continuing to work.
There is a minimum age to collect old age benefits from the government. The justification for that should be obvious.
The choice between working and starving to death is not a choice. If your savings have been taken by the government, then you don't have a choice.
The justification is to force people to work until they are too old to do so. Then steal whatever they have left with medical bills and price hikes on necessities.
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But the CPF isn't represented as benefits from the government. It's represented and claimed to be your own savings that you have set aside. At gamed bond rates where the government skims off the top.
I'm just saying it is the answer.
To make an overly dramatic analogy, if you were kidnapped and asked why the kidnapper was able to hold you against your will, the answer is because they've chained you up and they have the gun, and so on. That's literally the answer to why. The fact that what they're doing is morally wrong is completely irrelevant.
I know why they are able, what I want people to think about is "Why." The kidnapper has a reason.