> I think left vs right means how much you care about people when it comes to their relative power and social status in society. If you don't like power inequality, then you're on the left. If you enjoy it or are indifferent to it, then you're on the right.

So, you not only think that there's a universal definition of left vs right in politics but also that it's all about one single problem?

> On the other hand, supporting flat tax is somewhat alluding to the idea that money do not influence power relationships in society.

I don't support flat tax, it would be an insane and idiotic idea.

I just think it's the most fair and just tax scheme. But I don't even remotely support it.

> So I think the question is, do you believe in that assumption, that income has no influence on political power (and it cannot, for instance, limit personal freedom of other people)?

You intertwined a lot of very complicated issues with your comment. First of all:

1) Power inequality is not good or bad; it's too broad of a definition. In order to attach moral value to it, you have to look at a concrete example in context, not an abstract concept.

For example, I think you would prefer for a few of leading climate scientist to have more power over environmental policy than of people who don't believe in evolution, right? But this is power inequality, too.

2) Taxes are, in theoretically just world, should be a form of payment for government services. Government is an entity that provides us with invaluable services like justice system and other perks, from certification of medication to protection from foreign threats. It's good stuff, worth paying for. But in theory, I don't see any moral reasons for some people to pay more for these services than others.

You, on the other hand, want to use taxes as a tool to solve power inequality, because you decided that it's a bad thing. Not only this decision is rather strange (as I already discussed in point 1), but you're using a hack to implement a unrelated requirement with the help of a feature that was implemented for completely different reason. Once again, _in theory_ this makes no sense at all.

3) And finally, when you involve terms like "personal freedom" into equation, I can almost guarantee that we will end up arguing about what "personal freedom" really is, where it starts and where it ends, and will not able to come to a conclusion.

However.

You might have guessed that I separate the political theory of what just and what is not from political reality. In political reality that we have, democracy did not appear because of theoretical considerations of what is the best form of government: it evolved as a compromise between different parties who would've otherwise kill each other to determine who's right. So were the taxes. And our discussions about what is good and bad, in theory, have very little dent on reality, which is shaped by power struggles of millions of people acting of their self-interest; all we can hope to achieve is to solve these conflicts in the most peaceful way possible. Trying to construct the perfect government system out of theoretical considerations is futile if you're lucky, and if you're not, you get North Korea or Pol Pot's Cambodia.