The Rich Get Richer While the Poor Get Poorer

[kib]

There's a difference between being outbid, and being forced. I get outbid on projects all the time. That doesn't mean the fellow who won is forcing me to do anything.

There is always free will. Was it Elie Wiezel who implied the only thing he owned in Auschwitz was the dignity of his soul, which no man could take from him? Even there, expression of free will over circumstance.

Nevertheless ... I doubt he'd argue that a little more ability to express free will would have been appreciated. That's a pretty straightforward definition of forced, but the question of when someone's life is debased by another and when they are simply outbid might not be as simple as it seems. If the bidding in question is on the property next to mine and the bidder wins by a landslide, I'm not forced to do anything. But ... what if he decides that the very thing for that property is a CAFO dairy farm? Let's say I live where I do because I'm poor and this place is not expensive, and part of that means it's not very regulated. So there's no law in place that says he can't. And there's no money in my bank account to hire a lawyer to change the law. Once Land O Lakes is installed in my back yard, the value of the property I have goes to hell. So I do have free will, no force, I can leave. And do what, go where, with my $3,000 house check? Or I can stay, no force, and live in a cesspool. Someone else has - with no force, mind you - horribly degraded the quality of my life and I had no control over it, because he had more money.