Redistribution of Income

I was watching a clip on YT (Bill O'reily Gets Owned by Cornel West & Tavis Smiley) in which a very popular catch phrase "redistribution of income" was being thrown at the interviewee in order to discredit him as promoting socialism (small "s" is intentional here).

Now, I am thinking, I should ask how that income that is targeted for "redistribution" is acquired in the first place. If it is acquired by exploitation, cheating, steeling, and other illegal or immoral means, sure enough, it should be redistributed. The question, of course, is what is "illegal" or "immoral."

Both illegality and immorality are human created notions (illegality other than in the sense of being against natural laws, laws of physics) As such they necessarily vary both in time and in space.

Among non-human animals, taking advantage of whatever circumstances one finds in order to better oneself is a perfectly normal, natural reaction to those circumstances and no one goes to jail. Among humans, that can be problematic. If I can take advantage of my physical strength and take away resources from another human by force, that is not acceptable in most human societies. How come? Because it is illegal and/or immoral.

This thing called morality is causing all sorts of problems for us humans as we can not universally agree on what is or isn't moral. And we are doomed to disagree forever on it, or at least for a foreseeable future. As a result, we still use natural means to prevail in serving our self-interests -- except we now label it exploitation or such. Or we enact laws and establish moral norms that make those means legal or moral.

The trick is that those laws and moral norms come into being not by consensus but by force of some sort. So, we are really no better off than non-human animals and I find myself back at square one in this thought exercise.