8 ms·

It's Time for the 99% to Give Back to the 1%

• downrightmike 8y ago
  That guy needs to stop huffing glue.
• sharemywin 8y ago
  Most of the 1% is built on my penny is shinier than yours but I'll go ahead let you have it for 2 of your ugly pennies. Not sure I'd call that a win-win.
  • beaconstudios 8y ago
    your metaphor was lost on me. Do you mind clarifying?
    • sli 8y ago
      The metaphor there is trying to gouge/scam someone by pretending like the shininess of a penny is tied to its value. I can't read the article because of the paywall, but I'm a
      • craftyguy 8y ago
        > but I'm a Did you intentionally leave that to the HN comment reader to finish?
        • mywittyname 8y ago
          His comment is also behind a paywall.
    • sharemywin 8y ago
      I will but it will cost you a couple pennies.
• a-fried-egg 8y ago
  Lip service
• squozzer 8y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed some of Atlas Shrugged. >It's not the Henry Fords and Steve Jobs who exploit people. Problem is not all of the 1% is Steve Jobs, Henry Ford or Warren Buffett. It also includes, for example, royal families whose contribution is not intellectual. >When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: And something which Ms. Rand forgot to include in her statement, which is the desire of customers to buy the product the factory produces. >In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. Paying someone less than the value they provide is what makes capitalism work. Not even CEOs or founders are exempt from this law, though I'm sure more than one skates awfully close. >Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity." Not sure how deep GS was involved but here goes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80... >There is indeed a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity: the Internal Revenue Service. And, at a deeper level, it is the monstrous perversion of justice that makes the IRS possible: an envy-ridden moral code that damns success, profit, and earning money in voluntary exchange. Plus the need to finance the bodyguards for the New World Order (aka The War Machine.)
  • beaconstudios 8y ago
    > Paying someone less than the value they provide is what makes capitalism work. Not even CEOs or founders are exempt from this law, though I'm sure more than one skates awfully close. But who says what the value you provide as a worker is, if not the job market? The original complaint from Marx and pals as I understand it, is that the profit generated by the company represents the stolen labour value. So does that mean that as long as a company takes no profit (or presumably just doesn't pay dividends, given that carrying over profit is just a way to maintain cash reserves) that there is no exploitation? The whole labour value criticism just doesn't add up.
    • CryptoPunk 8y ago
• ddingus 8y ago
  Okie Dokie
• peatmoss 8y ago
  I applaud this evidently self-made man. I only wish I could tell him that there is a place in the world where his exceptionalism can soar and he can live his laissez-faire dream: Somalia. Let’s help this man emigrate.
  • s_m_t 8y ago
    A failed socialist state that actually saw many improvements during its collapse into anarchy doesn't seem to help your point.
    • peatmoss 8y ago
      Oh right, the author in the article isn’t advocating laissez-faire at all. He’s advocating that the underclasses pay the taxes for the state services (such as police) that would keep the state from descending into anarchy. He wants socialism for the rich.
      • s_m_t 8y ago
        So what does that have to do with Somalia
        • peatmoss 8y ago
          I’m saying that laissez-faire is what Somalia actually is. The author says he advocates laissez-faire, but I’d guess he wouldn’t be happy if he got it. Instead, the author is a hypocrite who just wants rich people left alone, but others very much not left alone. This worldview is typically accompanied by an astonishingly naive accounting of the benefits that one must enjoy from society to attain their position. Objectivism, as espoused by this article’s author and Ayn Rand alike, is a childish and cruel ideology.
  • CryptoPunk 8y ago
    I don't see him advocating anarchy, let alone one dominated by Al Capones. Somalia is not laissez faire..
• throw2016 8y ago
  The fantasists are back. If you can create so much value by yourself why even remain in society and crib for decades on end. Go create the value and enjoy it. Show us. No one will come to your wonderland to steal the fruits of your genius. If this anti-human ideology actually worked, these self appointed geniuses would have long left society and created value all by themselves, but currently its as petty as putting up a stall in a club and refusing to pay the fees. It takes a huge amount of time, generational effort and resources to build a functioning civilized society in which everyone is vested and thus peaceful. Nothing is free, and it appears its the 'makers' who want to be the takers while feigning a childish self serving ignorance of how civilization works. Even animal species that are social look out for one another in order to survive and thrive, human social instincts are far more sophisticated. To deny it altogether and seek to reduce human relations to economic interactions is to regress to barbarism.
  • CryptoPunk 8y ago
    He didn't say people can create value by themselves. I recommend you read the article more closely and truly understand what he's saying. I would argue his argument is overly simplistic for two reasons: * many of those who engage in nonremunerative work contribute just as much as those who have accumulated millions. Saying the 99% owe the 1% is just as much of an over-generalization as the reverse * many institutions allow people to earn wealth from activity that is socially harmful, like politicians turned corporate lobbyists who earn millions getting subsidies and regulatory barriers to competition for their employers, or like public sector bureaucrats who sway public opinion in support of useless government work just to ensure their department budget continues to grow.
    • jonhendry18 8y ago
      many institutions allow people to earn wealth from activity that is socially harmful Like SCL/Cambridge Analytica.
• bendlas 8y ago
  Let's dispell another popular myth: Demand and Supply isn't nessecarily an indicator of value. It only follows value, if the power balance is close to equilibrium. Otherwise, Power picks and shapes the demand it wants. How much value has been lost to superior marketing?
  • beaconstudios 8y ago
    there are flaws in supply and demand sure, but it's mostly working. Is there a more effective model? The labour theory of value is clearly inferior given high levels of automation and serves much better as a yardstick in Marx' analyses of capitalism than as a fundamental basis of value.
    • bendlas 8y ago
      I'm certain, that there is a more effective model. It might or might not be known at this point in time and it might even be closer to social constructivism than to mechanistic pragmatism. Can you tell for sure? In any case, that's not the point I'm trying to litigate. What I'm trying to get at: Given the obvious flaws in pure capitalism (as there would be in any "pure" ideology), how can we reject the need for checks and balances?
      • beaconstudios 8y ago
        one of the benefits of supply and demand is that it encourages innovation via the creation of untapped demand for novel products. I don't know what your idea of a constructivist model of value would be, but in my eyes that's an important role that LToV is incapable of fulfilling. Of course pure capitalism is a silly idea, assuming everyone is homo economicus you'd end up looping back round to feudalistic stratification via the Matthew effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect). Of course everyone is not homo economicus so it'd likely be less bad than that, but there are still plenty of sociopaths who would achieve much more success when the restraints are lifted.
        • 8y ago
• squarefoot 8y ago
  I'd be interested to read his opinions on top managers getting huge leaves after bringing companies belly up, or those who happily decimate their workforce without thinking of the consequences. In the old times one could claim a piece of land then cultivate it, mine it or use it as he/she wanted; surely not easy at all, but bureaucracy was next to not existent. Today one needs to own a land, then get permits, etc. My point is that we shifted towards a society where you have to own something even to start. People losing their job today cannot count on the same opportunities jobless people had centuries ago, so they have to work for someone; if they lose their job they're essentially dead.
  • bendlas 8y ago
    If I had to guess, I'd say that he'd tell you, that those managers "managed" (haha, get it?) to prevent the worst of bad losses to shareholders and got paid accordingly, and/or that said payments were contractually agreed on. I can't bring myself to categorically disagree with either of those positions, because big business, fundamentally, is about setting common goals for absurdly large groups of people and to operate within even (much) larger groups of people in the real world. Complicated situations are bound to arise, and even if a manager failed to save a company, their contract entitles them to bonuses for whatever business goals they did achieve. If they managed to get that agreement signed beforehand, it needs to be honored, because binding contracts are a really fundamental building block of society, that needs to stay intact. It's legitimate, though, to question the payment amounts and business goals they were bound on, as well as whether payments were made, that they were not entitled to. That's where our taxes need to fund a strong justice system, that can bring corruption suits to such cases. Also, I'm sympathetic to situations and feelings of people being ground up in corrupt systems and I think we really need to understand how capitalism-apologists insulate themselves against those feelings by focussing on the guilt of weak people for not taking care of themselves. It's a coping mechanism, that helps when one has been of the receiving end of things before, but on the way up. It also protects from the guilt of not being able to help everybody, that one would like to.
• BLKNSLVR 8y ago
  Jesus. Hasn't the Randian philosophy been deconstructed enough? No income tax for someone that earns $1m+, but taxes on those who earn less? In what entirely silver-spoon-born-and-bred entitled mind does this possibly make sense? Taxes create the infrastructure that makes society possible and the bigger the business / industry, the more it requires basic infrastructure in order to grow or maintain itself. What more do people earning $1m+ want? Can they not sustain themselves and their families on $1m per year? Do they want to create enough value that their children no longer need to work? If so, then what of their value of hard work? What about the natural instinct of bequeathing their role as "boss" to one of their children? That doesn't feel earnt to me? What of the large financial institutions role in money laundering and sub-prime mortgage disasters and where that has left the 99%? Look at some of the findings of the banking royal commission in Australia to see the kinds of things large financial institutions do as run-of-the-mill if they're not regulated. These institutions are run by people earning significant coin and take advantage of those who are already struggling financially - the very reason they seek advice / help on financial matters. I'm making assumptions above and targeting financial institutions above others, but the article name-dropped Goldman Sachs, and the golden parachutes and massive salaries that the kinds of people he's talking about already get make it sound as if he's complaining about how the silver spoon tastes. The author of the article is a member of the Ayn Rand Institute. Which likely means he was converted as a teenager and hasn't been able to question these beliefs as that gets more difficult and depressing as one ages. Also: Harry Binswanger was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He is an heir to the Binswanger Glass Company, founded in 1872 by Samuel Binswanger In that context, this article sounds like "waaaaah, I'm hard-done-by, taxes are holding me back, government help me - by intervening as a government that doesn't believe in intervening"
  • mywittyname 8y ago
    > Which likely means he was converted as a teenager and hasn't been able to question these beliefs as that gets more difficult and depressing as one ages. That explains why I'm having a hard time gauging whether or not this article is satire.
    • peatmoss 8y ago
• nitwit005 8y ago
  Same old story. People rail against taxes, but want the things taxes pay for. I'm sure you could find someone making the same rant 150 years ago.
  • mywittyname 8y ago
    This is way worse than that -- he's literally saying that paying laborers is an "inhuman draining of the productive." > But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. > The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. That's an enormously toxic view of the bulk of humanity. Maybe he should head out to Trump Country and say to all those blue collar types that he feels they are hopelessly inept and contribute nothing to society and would starve without men like himself.
• asiognionio 8y ago
  I've always enjoyed reading Objectivist writing. There's something gleefully iconoclastic about it that I appreciate. I would find it much more appealing if I didn't find the ideas so repulsive.
• dmfdmf 8y ago
  The vast majority of people who have opinions on Ayn Rand or her philosophy of Objectivism haven't read a word of what she wrote and are repeating what they heard or have read it and failed to comprehend her ideas. Whether such failure is due to ability or dishonesty doesn't really matter. Note the ad hom comments in this thread dismissing the content of this article because Binswanger inherited his money. Nobody has "deconstructed" Rand's ideas because they are true and because modern intellectuals are unable to rebut her arguments they are reduced to smears and gross misrepresentations of an important intellectual achievement. My advice; read Rand's work firsthand and judge her ideas for yourself.
  • specialist 8y ago
    That's true of every cult's membership. It's a mistake to confuse proclaimations with beliefs. What sounds like gibberish to outsiders is just ways for members to find each other, validate their shared identity, reinforce their superiority.
    • dmfdmf 8y ago
      Have you read Philosophy Who Needs It?, Have you read the Virtue of Selfishness? Have you read Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal? Have you read The New Left:The Anti-Industrial Revolution? Have you read The Voice of Reason? Have you read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology? Pick one and refute it instead of spreading the old and tired "cult" smear. You would be the first.
      • specialist 8y ago
        Do Christians read the bible? Do randians read her works? Do capitalists read Adam Smith? Do Marxists read his Manifesto? No. And neither do their critics. Settle down. I was supporting your point. And yes, I was once in highschool, read my share of Ayn Rand. Then I grew up.
        • dmfdmf 8y ago
          You have plenty of company.
• danzig13 8y ago
  Solyndra was not some one off government boondoggle. It was the recipient of government loan guarantees from the Department of Energy intended to inject investment into the monopoly run, risk averse energy sector. The same program financed and incubated fracking. Despite this comment, I’m not sure if this is satire or not.
• carlsborg 8y ago
  The people of North Korea are encouraged to be grateful to their dear leader. He is a man of many superior talents talents clearly - it’s in a North Korean newspaper and many posters too - and is responsible for improving the life of his citizens who have not created anything of value like Steve jobs or Henry Ford. Of course western civilisation is not a dictatorship. For example we would never tolerate a leaders son or wife taking control of a countries executive powers.