&gt; If we can determine the outcome, why is it not a successful betting strategy?<p>Because the bet is for what happens today but what the bet changes is what happens the next year or the next generation. It&#x27;s giving someone a car loan when you know they&#x27;re likely to default and then pay pennies on the dollar in collections. They will then have paid half the market price for their car and you will have paid the other half. That is clearly not profitable for you so doing it on purpose is charity.<p>&gt; For something to be charity, you need to determine that the receiver does not rightfully deserve it, and the giver does.<p>Gibberish. Charity means giving to the less fortunate. The robber barons were terrible but you can&#x27;t arbitrarily redefine words in order to claim they didn&#x27;t give to charity.<p>And you&#x27;re missing the point. I don&#x27;t care what you call it, if your goal is to have the government take from the rich and give to the poor then just <i>do that</i>. Collect simple taxes and then give the money away. Don&#x27;t come up with weird complicated economically distorting contortions with large and hard to predict negative externalities.<p>&gt; As what we do or don&#x27;t do determine the outcome, any decision is a political choice. Saying that we&#x27;re specifically trying to change something is no different from saying that we&#x27;re specifically trying to keep something the same.<p>Of course it&#x27;s a political choice, but that doesn&#x27;t tell you anything about what should be done or not done. And saying you&#x27;re specifically trying to change something tells people <i>what</i> you&#x27;re specifically trying to change.<p>&gt; Therefore, if we look at the racial or sexual makeup of a certain source of social power and we find a gross disparity, we want to balance it.<p>But your categories are arbitrary. Race is a thing idiots made up. It isn&#x27;t a real thing, it&#x27;s a social construct. What justifies groups to be defined as they are? Why don&#x27;t we also care about the economic disparities (which actually exist) between Irish Americans and English Americans? Or short and tall? Ugly and pretty? Consider whether the reason is because those lines don&#x27;t map with existing political coalitions.<p>Everyone who is not born rich is so because of some historical misfortune not shared by their rich-born contemporaries. That&#x27;s the line that sums up all the other lines. If you want to help the poor, help the poor. If you find a specific instance of racial discrimination (as in causation not correlation) then stamp it out. But Mercedes is not doing something wrong or obligated to do something different just because there is a racial disparity in who can afford their cars.