Some forms of wealth redistribution may seem a bit like your analogy, but others do not. The clearest flaw in the analogy is that in the academic arena, some are admitted and others are not. Your proposal suggests selling credits earned by those who have entered the arena to those outside it. In wealth redistribution, all are in the arena by virtue of being members of a common society.

Actually, wealth redistribution occurs in all societies, whether it is done by the more able feeding and clothing the less able, or the powerful finding ways to establish rules that help them gather the crown jewels for themselves and the those of whom they are most fond.

Policies and regulations and the enforcement or lack of enforcement of these work to redistribute wealth from the masses to wealthy few as much as or more than social welfare programs redistribute wealth from the wealthy to the poor. Lack of enforcement of financial investment regulations permitted Madoff to redistribute wealth from investors from across the financial spectrum, including charities that sought to benefit the poor. Concurrently, policies of deregulation of financial practices in the housing market and investment of derivatives facilitated redistribution of wealth from the masses to a small number of corporate executives and some investors.

The largest wealth redistribution programs in our country seems to be those that benefit powerful. When a major corporation underperforms in the USA, tens of thousands of blue collar and low level white collar employees are laid off and the top executives, who laid off these workers, receive bonuses for saving the corporation from the financial costs of maintaining its workforce.

Corporate wellfare has frequently been greater than welfare for the poor. Corporate welfare includes using taxpayers money to support building of sports arenas, tax exemptions for corporate investment in a certain location, and use of imminent domain to force property owners to sell said property to corporations, as well as the ongoing federal “bail outs” of major banks and manufacturing corporations.

I appreciate you for taking the time to post your blog. You do a nice job of suggesting a variation on the concept of corporations that pollute the environment being able to buy “green” credits from corporations that emit no or very few pollutants. Your proposal, which i take to be tongue-in-cheek, that those not performing college work could buy credits from college students who have earned more credits than they need is ludicrous and is not directly parallel to the concept of polluting corporations buying “green credits.” However, I will admit that the latter proposal is a bit ludicrous, as well.

The earning of college credit is based upon an individual gaining certain knowledge, skills and competencies. The idea that someone buying college credits without gaining the knowledge, skills and competencies is rediculous, and we refer to perpetrators of scams that sell degrees in this manner as diploma mills.

The selling of “green credits”, while not analogous to the selling of college credits, has very limited value to the environment. The idea is that a corporation could be rewarded for attaining high standards of performance in protecting the environment by selling “green credits” to corporations that are failing to attain minimum standards of performance has merit only in that it is a mechanism for rewarding the overachieving corporations. It certainly does not benefit the enviroment that the corporation that underperforms continues to pollute above the minimum standard for performance.