All taxation involves redistribution, How people feel about it (except for the most extreme sorts of “Taxation is Theft” libertarians) depends on where it’s being redistributed to - but whether it goes to a defense contractor, a rural health clinic or to pay the emergency bill for the 20th emergency room visit for chronic alcoholic, it’s all still “redistribution” of your money to somebody else.

How much redistribution, and to whom, is a matter for the voters to decide. I don’t like a lot of the redistributive spending decisions made by our elected representatives, but as long as I want to live here I’ve got to pay my taxes along with everyone else, and my option if I want to change public policy is to do so by altering their behavior. And looking at the world’s present governments, it appears that the alternatives are authoritarian kleptocracy or economic and social anarchy.

However, the diner's decision not to tip the server and donate to the homeless person is not "redistribution" in this sense (see below), it's someting else.

For example, you can regard it as a decision about how to practice charity as he or she has no legal obligation to tip the server and/or drop a dollar in the beggars cup.

And for the diner to be making the point they (apparently) feel they are making in this anecdote this has to be the case: having no obligation to either party, neither the waiter or the homeless person has reason to be upset if the diner prefers the other, and the diner is solely responsible for making the choice and either choice is equally reasonable.

However, you can also regard tipping the server as a matter of an informal but widely recognized economic contract: I provide you with good service, you provide me with additional income.

Not everyone observes the contract, some servers believe a tip is their due for poor service, and some people who refuse to tip no matter how good the service.

And for the contract to be effective (that is to be a fair exchange) people have to be somewhat altruistic: I tip up for good service at a restaurant in a strange city which I will never return, and the server (hopefully) provides me with good service without knowing in advance whether or not I will tip, or not.

Nevertheless, the arrangement is advantageous enough so it is widely practiced with sufficient regularity so it works the mutual advantage of both parties.

So when the diner violates the terms of his informal contract with the server, he or she is not practicing “redistribution” in the sense of following a formal or informal set of agreed-upon rules, instead he or she is engaging in act of economic anarchy, subverting a system of agreed-upon rules to the detriment of both the informal parties to the contract.

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Michael Thomas
Paragon Property Services Inc., Chicago IL
http://paragoninspects.com