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Am I only one who thinks it's absolutely insane to advocate stealing from someone because some people think they are too rich? That is mob rule. You don't have

Am I only one who thinks it's absolutely insane to advocate stealing from someone because some people think they are too rich? That is mob rule. You don't have a right to the wealth of the 1% anymore than they have the right to your wealth.

spork12 7y ago
I'd love to read the down voters defend why it is moral to redistribute wealth. But they can't because it's NOT moral, so they just anonymously downvote.
defterGoose 7y ago
Let me ask you this: do you consider democratic forms of government to be "mob rule"? Do you consider taxation theft?
frankbreetz 7y ago
I guess, you have to answer the question as to how the 1% earned it. If they started on a level playing field and just worked harder or were smarter than everyone else, I would say keep it. More likely though it was passed down for generations and they did nothing to deserve it, I find that situation absolutely insane. We found out in the great depression having an insanely wealthy class of people (Rockafellers,Gatsbys, Vanderbilts... )is not good for society.
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  Let's say you work hard and own a house. Assuming you have a family and they have a family that bit of land will be passed as well. At what point does the insanity occur and people start saying your offspring don't deserve it? I think the Marxists would say that it would occur when you for the land. Property is theft.
  - frankbreetz 7y ago
    As far as I know, The current rule in the US is inheritance tax doesn't apply to the first 5 million. This seems to be more than fair.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    It depends on which Marxists. Some would say that land that your family can cultivate (or otherwise productively use) on your own, without hiring labor, is your personal property, which is not theft. Land that you own, but can't extract wealth from it without hiring other people to do so (and collecting rent from what they extract from it) would be considered theft.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    I can't understand what you're trying to say in your penultimate sentence. 'Property is theft' was Proudhon, not Marx.
- village-idiot 7y ago
  Also, most of their ancestors got it via force. William the Conqueror wasn’t exactly a super civil dude.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  "More likely though it was passed down for generations and they did nothing to deserve it, I find that situation absolutely insane" It's not insane for people to pass their property from one person to another. Arbitrary definitions of 'earned it' are far, far scarier. Surely, it's important to consider issues such as private wealth, inheritance etc. but the OP is effectively correct, this issue turns into 'mob rule' very, very quickly. In 2019 we forget this, because we don't have any such topsy-turvy situations in living memory, but the 19th and 20th centuries were full of blood and fury over this kind of stuff. Everywhere East of Berlin does however have this in 'living memory'. Ask a Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Russian etc. immigrant over the age of 60 about it for an earful. Or someone Chinese over 60 as well. Or Cuban. 'Private Property' is a very, very careful issue.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    I think most would agree that property that was stolen or taken by force from somebody who produced it, is not earned. So it's not an arbitrary definition. And if that is so, why would passing it from generation to generation make any difference to that determination? I am a Russian immigrant, by the way, born in the USSR back when it was still a thing. I don't have much sympathy for the kind of wealth redistribution that was practiced there. But it's important to understand that the reason why it happened was because inequality was allowed to grow high enough that a sufficient number of people in the country could be motivated to revolt, because they felt the risks justified the potential rewards. And it doesn't even matter if they were right or wrong - the point is, if you are afraid of that history repeating, then you should support measures that prevent the conditions that caused it from happening again. And that involves acknowledging what the society deems fair and unfair, when it comes to property ownership.
    - sonnyblarney 7y ago
      1) Applying notions of ownership to systems 1000 years ago - is totally arbitrary. 2) The Sovereign's holding are, and always have been something different than a regular person's holdings. They have always beens somewhat matters of State. 3) Today, the monarchies are constitutional. They do not 'own' the land as you and I would 'own' land. 4) Most wealthy people today did not inherit their land from people 100's of years ago who got it from plunder - this is ridiculous. About 1/2 of the wealthy people today are 'self made'. 5) Almost everyone in modern civilization has access to opportunity, and as you'll notice from this thread, 90% of Canadian land holding for example is by the government, i.e. commons - there is plenty of land and resources to go around. Everyone can participate. Inequality today is not even comparable to what is is even 100 years ago. People receive free healthcare, almost free banking services, cheap water, cheap transport, cheap entertainment, cheap clothing, cheap access to information, free social solidarity.
- crispinb 7y ago
  I did an economic history lit survey back in the '80s (lost now unfortunately) which showed that a very substantial portion of UK wealth at that time had a direct lineage back to slavery on sugar plantations. Even if you judge that meritocracy works justly within a generation, without appropriate taxation wealth accumulates over time, often consequent on terrible injustices. It takes some pretty heroic ethical gymnastics to justify that let alone consider it efficient or useful.
- gbacon 7y ago
  You did nothing to deserve winning multiple genetic lotteries, namely having sufficient intelligence to fall into the HN cohort and being born into a wealthy country and household with access to it and similar resources. You didn’t earn your spot in the global 1%, but it in no way follows that you should be expropriated to correct the alleged injustice. Ex post facto law has since the Enlightenment recognized as unjust and even tyrannical. Digging back across generations in search of some offense generations ago and punishing innocent parties today is at best a recipe for chaos. Lavrentiy Beria was head of Stalin’s secret police and famous for saying, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” Expropriating present people because of unfair advantages — a criterion never precisely defined and forever subject to political fads of the day, which is to say meaningless — allegedly enjoyed by past ancestors or owners of property is merely another form of the Beria method. By your own reasoning, neither did the state today do anything to deserve the property that they’d seize. Even if it were justly redistributed, you’re forgetting about the cut taken by the middlemen in charge of carrying it out — who also did nothing to deserve taking a share of the loot. No sound economic case can be made that the distribution of wealth was a cause for the Great Depression. Considering how many human abilities have normal and power-law distributions, e.g., attractiveness, musical ability, intelligence, vertical leap, height, programming skill, lifetime poker winnings, writing quality, golf handicap, typing speed, cooking skill, time to change a tire, ability to plan and manage complex tasks, future orientation, etc., etc., etc., income and wealth accumulation being anywhere remotely uniform would be amazing. Considering the math of power-law distributions, your approach would have a huge majority ganging up on a comparatively tiny minority but ironically in the name of fairness. “No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.”
  - frankbreetz 7y ago
    I feel like "people who won the genetic lottery" who become rich,by inventing something or creating something, deserve it because ideally these people made money by improving society and this behavior should be encouraged. I understand this is not how the world always works, but it should be the world we strive for. In my mind this would be the ideal role of government to encourage behavior that makes society better.
  - 7y ago
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  You do realize that Gatsby was fictional, don't you? Adding him to your list does not make your case stronger...
ZhuanXia 7y ago
They did not create the land. Read the Georgist critique of land ownership for the details.

spork12 7y ago

I'd love to read the down voters defend why it is moral to redistribute wealth. But they can't because it's NOT moral, so they just anonymously downvote.

defterGoose 7y ago

Let me ask you this: do you consider democratic forms of government to be "mob rule"? Do you consider taxation theft?

frankbreetz 7y ago

I guess, you have to answer the question as to how the 1% earned it. If they started on a level playing field and just worked harder or were smarter than everyone else, I would say keep it. More likely though it was passed down for generations and they did nothing to deserve it, I find that situation absolutely insane. We found out in the great depression having an insanely wealthy class of people (Rockafellers,Gatsbys, Vanderbilts... )is not good for society.

thinkingemote 7y ago
Let's say you work hard and own a house. Assuming you have a family and they have a family that bit of land will be passed as well. At what point does the insanity occur and people start saying your offspring don't deserve it? I think the Marxists would say that it would occur when you for the land. Property is theft.
- frankbreetz 7y ago
  As far as I know, The current rule in the US is inheritance tax doesn't apply to the first 5 million. This seems to be more than fair.
- int_19h 7y ago
  It depends on which Marxists. Some would say that land that your family can cultivate (or otherwise productively use) on your own, without hiring labor, is your personal property, which is not theft. Land that you own, but can't extract wealth from it without hiring other people to do so (and collecting rent from what they extract from it) would be considered theft.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  I can't understand what you're trying to say in your penultimate sentence. 'Property is theft' was Proudhon, not Marx.
village-idiot 7y ago
Also, most of their ancestors got it via force. William the Conqueror wasn’t exactly a super civil dude.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
"More likely though it was passed down for generations and they did nothing to deserve it, I find that situation absolutely insane" It's not insane for people to pass their property from one person to another. Arbitrary definitions of 'earned it' are far, far scarier. Surely, it's important to consider issues such as private wealth, inheritance etc. but the OP is effectively correct, this issue turns into 'mob rule' very, very quickly. In 2019 we forget this, because we don't have any such topsy-turvy situations in living memory, but the 19th and 20th centuries were full of blood and fury over this kind of stuff. Everywhere East of Berlin does however have this in 'living memory'. Ask a Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Russian etc. immigrant over the age of 60 about it for an earful. Or someone Chinese over 60 as well. Or Cuban. 'Private Property' is a very, very careful issue.
- int_19h 7y ago
  I think most would agree that property that was stolen or taken by force from somebody who produced it, is not earned. So it's not an arbitrary definition. And if that is so, why would passing it from generation to generation make any difference to that determination? I am a Russian immigrant, by the way, born in the USSR back when it was still a thing. I don't have much sympathy for the kind of wealth redistribution that was practiced there. But it's important to understand that the reason why it happened was because inequality was allowed to grow high enough that a sufficient number of people in the country could be motivated to revolt, because they felt the risks justified the potential rewards. And it doesn't even matter if they were right or wrong - the point is, if you are afraid of that history repeating, then you should support measures that prevent the conditions that caused it from happening again. And that involves acknowledging what the society deems fair and unfair, when it comes to property ownership.
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    1) Applying notions of ownership to systems 1000 years ago - is totally arbitrary. 2) The Sovereign's holding are, and always have been something different than a regular person's holdings. They have always beens somewhat matters of State. 3) Today, the monarchies are constitutional. They do not 'own' the land as you and I would 'own' land. 4) Most wealthy people today did not inherit their land from people 100's of years ago who got it from plunder - this is ridiculous. About 1/2 of the wealthy people today are 'self made'. 5) Almost everyone in modern civilization has access to opportunity, and as you'll notice from this thread, 90% of Canadian land holding for example is by the government, i.e. commons - there is plenty of land and resources to go around. Everyone can participate. Inequality today is not even comparable to what is is even 100 years ago. People receive free healthcare, almost free banking services, cheap water, cheap transport, cheap entertainment, cheap clothing, cheap access to information, free social solidarity.
crispinb 7y ago
I did an economic history lit survey back in the '80s (lost now unfortunately) which showed that a very substantial portion of UK wealth at that time had a direct lineage back to slavery on sugar plantations. Even if you judge that meritocracy works justly within a generation, without appropriate taxation wealth accumulates over time, often consequent on terrible injustices. It takes some pretty heroic ethical gymnastics to justify that let alone consider it efficient or useful.
gbacon 7y ago
You did nothing to deserve winning multiple genetic lotteries, namely having sufficient intelligence to fall into the HN cohort and being born into a wealthy country and household with access to it and similar resources. You didn’t earn your spot in the global 1%, but it in no way follows that you should be expropriated to correct the alleged injustice. Ex post facto law has since the Enlightenment recognized as unjust and even tyrannical. Digging back across generations in search of some offense generations ago and punishing innocent parties today is at best a recipe for chaos. Lavrentiy Beria was head of Stalin’s secret police and famous for saying, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” Expropriating present people because of unfair advantages — a criterion never precisely defined and forever subject to political fads of the day, which is to say meaningless — allegedly enjoyed by past ancestors or owners of property is merely another form of the Beria method. By your own reasoning, neither did the state today do anything to deserve the property that they’d seize. Even if it were justly redistributed, you’re forgetting about the cut taken by the middlemen in charge of carrying it out — who also did nothing to deserve taking a share of the loot. No sound economic case can be made that the distribution of wealth was a cause for the Great Depression. Considering how many human abilities have normal and power-law distributions, e.g., attractiveness, musical ability, intelligence, vertical leap, height, programming skill, lifetime poker winnings, writing quality, golf handicap, typing speed, cooking skill, time to change a tire, ability to plan and manage complex tasks, future orientation, etc., etc., etc., income and wealth accumulation being anywhere remotely uniform would be amazing. Considering the math of power-law distributions, your approach would have a huge majority ganging up on a comparatively tiny minority but ironically in the name of fairness. “No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.”
- frankbreetz 7y ago
  I feel like "people who won the genetic lottery" who become rich,by inventing something or creating something, deserve it because ideally these people made money by improving society and this behavior should be encouraged. I understand this is not how the world always works, but it should be the world we strive for. In my mind this would be the ideal role of government to encourage behavior that makes society better.
- 7y ago
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
You do realize that Gatsby was fictional, don't you? Adding him to your list does not make your case stronger...

ZhuanXia 7y ago

They did not create the land. Read the Georgist critique of land ownership for the details.