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The better analogy is you have 10 people in a room and only a few of them are producing anything yet they are forced to give a portion of their production to ev

The better analogy is you have 10 people in a room and only a few of them are producing anything yet they are forced to give a portion of their production to everyone else in the room.

ben_jones 11y ago
You're right. Thank god Mark Zuckerberg produced ~$40 billion dollars of value with his contributions to Facebook..
- Randgalt 11y ago
  Facebook wouldn't exist without Zuckerberg. He deserves every penny of it.
  - p4bl0 11y ago
    Facebook wouldn't exist without the loads of engineers developing it. If it was only for Zuckerberg it may never have left his dorm room.
    - twoodfin 11y ago
      And all of them got paid (often handsomely) for their contributions. Zuckerberg has "only" what he hasn't spent or sold of his creation.
- jcoffland 11y ago
  I wish he hadn't.
p4bl0 11y ago
You can't equate earnings and production. First, when you earn so much money as the top 1% richer do, it is largely because you rely on (or exploit) the work of others. Secondly, not all "production" finishes as income. Making art, raising kids, etc. are examples of productive work for the society that people are not necessarily paid for.
sp332 11y ago
In your model, unemployed people should starve to death in the streets? Or would they dig their own graves first?
entee 11y ago
The Randian view of this is just not very productive. Let's take a Randian hero, a self-made man (and it seems to always be men in her world) who is super creative, independent and gets shit done. Maybe he runs a construction company. He's the 1 guy in the room. Now, he could build one house with his bare hands but then he would have one house to sell. OR he could hire another 4 people, build 5 houses and sell them all. Clearly in the second scenario he'd make far more money and create more. But in the second scenario, who are the "makers" and the "takers"? Maybe our hero had the creative drive so he deserves some extra credit, but surely the workers also did some making. The idea of "makers" and "takers" that animates the Randian world view doesn't really make practical sense. To make something at scale, no matter your personal genius, you need lots of others to join you in that enterprise. And to have what you made be worth anything, you need a lot of people to buy it. Bottom line: everyone is a maker and everyone is a taker, thinking about taxation in those terms doesn't hold up to moral or practical scrutiny.
- sp332 11y ago
  Her name is Ayn Rand, not Raynd.
  - entee 11y ago
    Fixed, thanks!
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  Rand only used money as a scorecard and only when convenient. If you'll read "The Fountainhead", Howard Roark ran far and fast away from money. Rand was constructing ... essentially Russian novels against the concept of collectivism. It's not particularly complete work. It's essentially propaganda. And like it or not, her side in the debate mostly won. But that has nearly nothing to do with our present state of affairs - the headcount of Randians among SiVa is probably higher than in the economy at large.
nkrisc 11y ago
If that's what it takes to maintain society, yes. I don't know about you, but living in a world where only people deemed "useful" deserve to live is not a world I want to live in. I'm happy to contribute to the well-being of others.
aidenn0 11y ago
More like they pay the people who they order to produce things for their profit less than those people need for medical needs, education, and maintenance of the roads they commute on, then they are forced to give a portion of the profits they made by paying those people so little to the government to provide those things for them.
solipsism 11y ago
I'm sure most other people are just as tired of arguing against this kind of silly Randian nonsense as I am. I wish Thiel's braindead Seasteading Institute had succeeded in building their dream island in the middle of the ocean. Then we could all watch it collapse in utter failure and not have to have this tiresome conversation anymore -- we could just point at the seagull-shit-covered ruins and move onto different topics.
themagician 11y ago
You only have to produce if you are poor. If you are wealthy you merely need to convince others that society owes you something. Many wealthy people produce nothing, but society owes them by virtue of who they are.

The better analogy is you have 10 people in a room and only a few of them are producing anything yet they are forced to give a portion of their production to everyone else in the room.

ben_jones 11y ago

You're right. Thank god Mark Zuckerberg produced ~$40 billion dollars of value with his contributions to Facebook..

Randgalt 11y ago
Facebook wouldn't exist without Zuckerberg. He deserves every penny of it.
- p4bl0 11y ago
  Facebook wouldn't exist without the loads of engineers developing it. If it was only for Zuckerberg it may never have left his dorm room.
  - twoodfin 11y ago
    And all of them got paid (often handsomely) for their contributions. Zuckerberg has "only" what he hasn't spent or sold of his creation.
jcoffland 11y ago
I wish he hadn't.

p4bl0 11y ago

You can't equate earnings and production. First, when you earn so much money as the top 1% richer do, it is largely because you rely on (or exploit) the work of others. Secondly, not all "production" finishes as income. Making art, raising kids, etc. are examples of productive work for the society that people are not necessarily paid for.

sp332 11y ago

In your model, unemployed people should starve to death in the streets? Or would they dig their own graves first?

entee 11y ago

The Randian view of this is just not very productive. Let's take a Randian hero, a self-made man (and it seems to always be men in her world) who is super creative, independent and gets shit done. Maybe he runs a construction company. He's the 1 guy in the room. Now, he could build one house with his bare hands but then he would have one house to sell. OR he could hire another 4 people, build 5 houses and sell them all. Clearly in the second scenario he'd make far more money and create more. But in the second scenario, who are the "makers" and the "takers"? Maybe our hero had the creative drive so he deserves some extra credit, but surely the workers also did some making. The idea of "makers" and "takers" that animates the Randian world view doesn't really make practical sense. To make something at scale, no matter your personal genius, you need lots of others to join you in that enterprise. And to have what you made be worth anything, you need a lot of people to buy it. Bottom line: everyone is a maker and everyone is a taker, thinking about taxation in those terms doesn't hold up to moral or practical scrutiny.

sp332 11y ago
Her name is Ayn Rand, not Raynd.
- entee 11y ago
  Fixed, thanks!
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Rand only used money as a scorecard and only when convenient. If you'll read "The Fountainhead", Howard Roark ran far and fast away from money. Rand was constructing ... essentially Russian novels against the concept of collectivism. It's not particularly complete work. It's essentially propaganda. And like it or not, her side in the debate mostly won. But that has nearly nothing to do with our present state of affairs - the headcount of Randians among SiVa is probably higher than in the economy at large.

nkrisc 11y ago

If that's what it takes to maintain society, yes. I don't know about you, but living in a world where only people deemed "useful" deserve to live is not a world I want to live in. I'm happy to contribute to the well-being of others.

aidenn0 11y ago

More like they pay the people who they order to produce things for their profit less than those people need for medical needs, education, and maintenance of the roads they commute on, then they are forced to give a portion of the profits they made by paying those people so little to the government to provide those things for them.

solipsism 11y ago

I'm sure most other people are just as tired of arguing against this kind of silly Randian nonsense as I am. I wish Thiel's braindead Seasteading Institute had succeeded in building their dream island in the middle of the ocean. Then we could all watch it collapse in utter failure and not have to have this tiresome conversation anymore -- we could just point at the seagull-shit-covered ruins and move onto different topics.

themagician 11y ago

You only have to produce if you are poor. If you are wealthy you merely need to convince others that society owes you something. Many wealthy people produce nothing, but society owes them by virtue of who they are.