In ours and in every "civilized" society, it is against regulations (called laws) for a person to use physical attributes, such as size, strength, speed, power, fighting skill, etc., to acquire possessions or even to use them to gain an unfair advantage in an otherwise lawful transaction.

Yet, it is only called good business skills for a person to use greater mental abilities, skill and/or knowledge to their own advantage in acquiring the same possessions.

Why is taking advantage of someone using physical gifts different than using mental gifts? Is it because physical gifts are limited to use by people of a size, gender and age which is not possible for most of the population? And mental gifts are seen as more universal?

Does this mean it is OK to use an unfair advantage in acquiring things as long as that unfair advantage can be available to enough people? Does this make what is fair and unfair dependent upon how many people can do it?

It seems so to me. After all, why do you think the physical gifts were made unacceptable? Simple, once science made weapons more important than physical attributes, physical attributes were outlawed by the victors.

Does the fact that you can do something make it always right, as long as no other regulations are broken?

Where did we, as a society, lose the value of fairness? When did good business skills, as in taking advantage of someone, become valued more highly than doing what is just?

Let's understand one thing: As long as we value such behavior more highly than fairness, people will always spend the time and energy on finding a way to take advantage of the existing regulations for their own personal gain. Obviously, the less regulations there are, the easier it is for people to do this. The easier it is, the greater the number of people who can do it. The greater the number of people doing it, the more often it will happen. The more often it happens means it will become accepted behavior or moral outrage will rise against it. Which result occurs depends upon how many people believe they are being adversely affected by it. Once again, right and wrong seems to depend upon how many people think something is right or wrong and not upon whether it is actually right or wrong. Or perhaps it is really not that their thinking changes; but, that, they just can't be bothered with right or wrong until it affects them in some material way.

How anyone can think that a society that thinks and behaves like this is not ripe for the picking is way beyond me.

As for people who resent regulations, it seems to me that at least some of them resent any limitations being placed upon their ability to figure out how to get more than what is fair in a given situation.

One more question? This one concerns the capping of salaries of certain professions. If a professional athlete can make $1,000,000 per game or event based upon their use of their physical gifts, why is it not reasonable for a CEO or Wall Street type to make $100,000,000 in a whole year based upon his/her use of his/her mental gifts?

Is someone saying that the athlete has to train for many years to be worth that much? OK. If he/she gets injured and retires, will he get paid? No? What happened to the worth of all of those training years? Even worse, what if he just doesn't perform well enough? How long will he get paid for those training years?

The bottom line is that the people who get entertained by the athlete's performance would rather see him and get entertained with him receiving that salary than not see him if his salary was cut. No one has such a personal relationship with a CEO. I don't know of anyone who switched stocks because his favorite CEO switched companies. Yet, people routinely switch allegiance to sports teams when their favorite players move.

How about applying the fairness doctrine to medicine? As far as I am concerned, salaries in the medical profession are based upon what they can get out a situation which is inherently unfair to one of the parties. How can the patient ever be in a position to bargain? How can an insurance company ever be counted on to care more for the patient or the doctor than their bottom line?

How can we assume that market forces will keep the fees doctors charge morally acceptable? Does anyone want to be one of the patients who die while the market is adjusting itself?

IMHO, as long as their are people who try to obtain more than what is fair for a given transaction, there needs to be some kind of regulation to even the playing field. if not, let's be consistent and deregulate physical means of "winning." After all, I teach Martial Arts and stand to make a "Killing" in that kind of market.