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how can we cure these poor people from this delusion that they have a right to possess what they have not earned? life is inequitable you have to fight to get

how can we cure these poor people from this delusion that they have a right to possess what they have not earned? life is inequitable you have to fight to get a higher station. substituting taking responsibility to create wealth for convincing yourself you're entitled to it just disempowers you. I'm not saying it's not hard. but that it is hard is not special and that it is hard is the motivation to overcome it. and when you get there that your hard earned achievement can be taken away by people who don't want to overcome is wrong. The fundamental point is this wealth is not some free right it's not some magical thing that just exists. wealth is precisely the value created by overcoming difficulties. wealth is made by work and the people who make it ought to be free to choose what they do with it rather than coerced into surrendering it in the name of equity, a false equity which is inequitable to the moral nature of wealth, responsibility and hard work. that kind of idea is a disease that will erode away the social foundation. I'm not saying wealth disparity is easy nor that it creates no problems. it creates a lot of problems but I don't believe the solution is by redistribution. at least not at this stage of human and economic evolution. while our species is still bounded by the amount of energy we can extract from our surroundings. taxes yes, State yes, a social welfare net yes, but not to an excessive degree, and not to cure inequality. if energy was free of course it should be distributed to all without cost. like air. but it's not. to do so would bankrupt our species in the name of compassion. the greater compassion is the realization of the poor state we're in, and the preservation of all. not the temporary satisfaction of some who convinced themselves that things should be easy. one day as a species we will get there. no crushing disparity. but we're not there yet. trying to live like we are already there is a toxic delusion that doesn't help us get to that more compassionate future.

dpc59 7y ago
most wealth wasn't earned but inherited, fuck out of here with your upper middle class delusions about wealth
int_19h 7y ago
Wealth is made by labor, yes. But it is not accumulated by it. It's accumulated by being in a position of power whereby you can extract rents from the laborers who make it. In older times, this was done by threat of physical force. These days, it's more often done by exploiting some economic advantage - for example, if you own any valuable resource, such as land or means of production, you can extract rent from people who use it. Whenever you see concentrated wealth with such extreme disparity that you have one person owning more than a million others, there are only two possible conclusions: either they really are a million times more productive, or it was actually produced by that million, and extracted from them via rents. You could argue that those rents are fair, since they stem from legitimate ownership. But what makes it legitimate? Most land was originally taken by force, for example, and the result enshrined in law (that was written by the people who did this) post factum. If that doesn't make economic advantages that stem from such ownership unfair, then surely the same standard holds today, and those people have no right to complain if society decides to take it away from them by force, and enshrine it into law, just because it can.
- mbrock 7y ago
  Exactly, and there’s in particular the very special kind of rent extracted by the hiring of people to work for you without profit-sharing, and using your negotiation power as a capital owner to get people to agree to the terms of your employment contract stipulating your appropriation of the whole work product. I’ve found the writings of David Ellerman to be very elucidating on this topic, and admirable for giving a deep critique of capitalism without any reliance on Marxism. He relies on a labor theory of property rather than a labor theory of value, and a Lockean liberal notion of inalienable rights. Two short texts that make a good introduction: https://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/human-rentals/the-great-debate/ https://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/human-rentals/the-great-... https://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/human-rentals/the-fundamental-myth/ https://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/human-rentals/the-fundam...
  - varjag 7y ago
    Land is finite natural resource and its ownership is a zero sum situation. Company ownership, however, is not. It is entirely possible to own your sweat and labor, which is demonstrated by millions of small business owners. The sentiment we hear often, however, is yearning for benefits of co-owning a (ideally mature and profitable) business while retaining the hired hands' rights. Not many are keen to give up their 8 hour workday, benefits, social welfare net for the upside of owning their share of corporate profits.
    - deepstream 7y ago
      Exactly, people are making choices, and then complaining about it, which make sense as a coping strategy, but not if you really want to own your own labor.
    - mbrock 7y ago
      Why should they give up those things? Why not have both?
      - varjag 7y ago
mbrock 7y ago
> wealth is made by work It’s also naturally abundant in the form of land, those cadastral game tiles on which life plays out, dominion of which are allocated by the state in a system of hereditary monopolies. Wealth is not allocated the same way it’s created. That’s why we have the concept of rent-seeking, behavior that increases one’s share of wealth without creating more wealth. Owning wealth lets you accumulate more wealth without working, because you can charge other people rent in exchange for using your wealth. Not only that; you can also hire people in an arrangement where you automatically own everything they produce using your capital goods. Rich people know that labor is a very inefficient and tedious way to increase one’s own share of wealth. That’s why they prefer rent, interest, and staying on the top of the employment hierarchy where they have a legal claim on the products of others’ labor. Yes, work is a true source of wealth, and so is capital and land and the other factors of production. There’s a long history of criticizing how most of the wealth created by working ends up owned by the owners of capital and land—that’s the essential critical point in the discussion of capitalism, whether Marxist or Georgist or Ellermanite. Or you could say the crucial question is how can we cure the rich people from the delusion that they have a right to appropriate what they have not produced?”
- vixen99 7y ago
  How do you extend this argument to, let's say, three of the richest people on the planet namely Bill G, Mark Z and Jeff B ? What cure do you suggest for them?
  - snidane 7y ago
    That's why the Marxist critique of capital is wrong. Was use of capital to extract rent from others ethical or not? Maybe yes, maybe not, who knows. It is impossible to decide. Georgist perspective doesn't blame the rich capitalist, but the rentier, no matter if rich or poor. Rentiers provably extract others people's and businesses' labor.
    - mbrock 7y ago
      Renting out capital is not an ethical problem, but renting labor is. Human actions are not a commodity, and treating persons as tools is wrong for the same reasons “voluntary slavery” is wrong—it violates inalienable rights. The problem with capitalism is that capital owners alienate persons from their own natural property rights through the injustice of employment contracts. (Land ownership is also a problem in our world but it’s sort of orthogonal to capitalism, although it depends on how you define capitalism. Georgists make a big distinction between capital and land; maybe we can talk about both capitalism and “landism” as different strands of the economic system?)

dpc59 7y ago

most wealth wasn't earned but inherited, fuck out of here with your upper middle class delusions about wealth

int_19h 7y ago

Wealth is made by labor, yes. But it is not accumulated by it. It's accumulated by being in a position of power whereby you can extract rents from the laborers who make it. In older times, this was done by threat of physical force. These days, it's more often done by exploiting some economic advantage - for example, if you own any valuable resource, such as land or means of production, you can extract rent from people who use it. Whenever you see concentrated wealth with such extreme disparity that you have one person owning more than a million others, there are only two possible conclusions: either they really are a million times more productive, or it was actually produced by that million, and extracted from them via rents. You could argue that those rents are fair, since they stem from legitimate ownership. But what makes it legitimate? Most land was originally taken by force, for example, and the result enshrined in law (that was written by the people who did this) post factum. If that doesn't make economic advantages that stem from such ownership unfair, then surely the same standard holds today, and those people have no right to complain if society decides to take it away from them by force, and enshrine it into law, just because it can.

mbrock 7y ago
Exactly, and there’s in particular the very special kind of rent extracted by the hiring of people to work for you without profit-sharing, and using your negotiation power as a capital owner to get people to agree to the terms of your employment contract stipulating your appropriation of the whole work product. I’ve found the writings of David Ellerman to be very elucidating on this topic, and admirable for giving a deep critique of capitalism without any reliance on Marxism. He relies on a labor theory of property rather than a labor theory of value, and a Lockean liberal notion of inalienable rights. Two short texts that make a good introduction: https://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/human-rentals/the-great-debate/ https://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/human-rentals/the-great-... https://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/human-rentals/the-fundamental-myth/ https://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/human-rentals/the-fundam...
- varjag 7y ago
  Land is finite natural resource and its ownership is a zero sum situation. Company ownership, however, is not. It is entirely possible to own your sweat and labor, which is demonstrated by millions of small business owners. The sentiment we hear often, however, is yearning for benefits of co-owning a (ideally mature and profitable) business while retaining the hired hands' rights. Not many are keen to give up their 8 hour workday, benefits, social welfare net for the upside of owning their share of corporate profits.
  - deepstream 7y ago
    Exactly, people are making choices, and then complaining about it, which make sense as a coping strategy, but not if you really want to own your own labor.
  - mbrock 7y ago
    Why should they give up those things? Why not have both?
    - varjag 7y ago

mbrock 7y ago

> wealth is made by work It’s also naturally abundant in the form of land, those cadastral game tiles on which life plays out, dominion of which are allocated by the state in a system of hereditary monopolies. Wealth is not allocated the same way it’s created. That’s why we have the concept of rent-seeking, behavior that increases one’s share of wealth without creating more wealth. Owning wealth lets you accumulate more wealth without working, because you can charge other people rent in exchange for using your wealth. Not only that; you can also hire people in an arrangement where you automatically own everything they produce using your capital goods. Rich people know that labor is a very inefficient and tedious way to increase one’s own share of wealth. That’s why they prefer rent, interest, and staying on the top of the employment hierarchy where they have a legal claim on the products of others’ labor. Yes, work is a true source of wealth, and so is capital and land and the other factors of production. There’s a long history of criticizing how most of the wealth created by working ends up owned by the owners of capital and land—that’s the essential critical point in the discussion of capitalism, whether Marxist or Georgist or Ellermanite. Or you could say the crucial question is how can we cure the rich people from the delusion that they have a right to appropriate what they have not produced?”

vixen99 7y ago
How do you extend this argument to, let's say, three of the richest people on the planet namely Bill G, Mark Z and Jeff B ? What cure do you suggest for them?
- snidane 7y ago
  That's why the Marxist critique of capital is wrong. Was use of capital to extract rent from others ethical or not? Maybe yes, maybe not, who knows. It is impossible to decide. Georgist perspective doesn't blame the rich capitalist, but the rentier, no matter if rich or poor. Rentiers provably extract others people's and businesses' labor.
  - mbrock 7y ago
    Renting out capital is not an ethical problem, but renting labor is. Human actions are not a commodity, and treating persons as tools is wrong for the same reasons “voluntary slavery” is wrong—it violates inalienable rights. The problem with capitalism is that capital owners alienate persons from their own natural property rights through the injustice of employment contracts. (Land ownership is also a problem in our world but it’s sort of orthogonal to capitalism, although it depends on how you define capitalism. Georgists make a big distinction between capital and land; maybe we can talk about both capitalism and “landism” as different strands of the economic system?)