4 ms·

With out the community and the government those opportunities to get rich would not exist. If the perfect world the rational rich person might realize this and

by davorak 16y ago

With out the community and the government those opportunities to get rich would not exist. If the perfect world the rational rich person might realize this and protect and improve the system that allow people like himself to be possible.

javert 16y ago
The government only helps the rich to the degree that it provides courts, police, and military. Beyond that, it's looting them.
- dhugiaskmak 16y ago
  So true. Everyone knows that every businessman has completely bootstrapped from scratch all of the roads, utilities, schools, hospitals, scientific research, and a thousand other things that they took advantage of to make their fortunes. No one else made any contributions to their success and that's why it's only fair that we should be required to hand over a significant portion of our incomes to them.
  - javert 16y ago
    That's right, let's justify stealing from businessmen based on the fact that they grew up in a society that was already stealing from businessmen. None of the things you mentioned need to (or should) be funded by loot. In fact, utilities and hospitals didn't used to be in the U.S., and only partially are now. The US education system is a stagnant cesspool that still uses a model developed in the Middle Ages. And the government expropriates more wealth created from non-government funded scientific research, than it generates from funding scientific research. Look, nobody has a duty to serve as a sacrificial animal to anybody else. You do not have the right to demand that businessmen sacrifice for you or for society.
    - vannevar 16y ago
      I agree. I think the first thing we need to do to bring about your utopia is to bring back personal liability and eliminate the corporate entity (which after all is a construction of government). Then if a businessman's activities injured someone, we could be sure that a court could strip them of their personal assets in order to compensate the victims of their negligence.
      - javert 16y ago
        That's sort of unrelated to my point, but it's an interesting question. A corporation's rights and responsibilities just derive from the rights and responsibilities of those who own it. I think this is the premise behind "corporate personhood" and I think it works correctly almost all the time. (I'd be interested to see examples where that's not the case.) For example, a corporation can exercise free speech, because the people who own it can exercise free speech; so if you deny the corporation from exercising its free speech, you are denying those who own it their right to exercise free speech. I'd think that in the case of personal injury caused by a corporation, if the corporation's full assets are not enough to compensate the victims, then the owners could then be held responsible to cover the difference. (Whether that is actually legally the way it works now, I don't know.)
        vannevar 16y ago
        A corporation's rights and responsibilities just derive from the rights and responsibilities of those who own it. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately; if it did there would be no reason to have 'corporate personhood' since the owners could simply assert their own right of free speech. A corporation can assert its own right of free speech completely apart from its officers or owners. In theory a corporation with no living officers and only the estate of a deceased person as a shareholder could nonetheless legally assert a right of free speech based on computer generated messages. Not that it's ever been tested. Angry mobs, on the other hand, are not generally viewed as persons, nor are parades, crowded beaches, or book clubs. I'd think that in the case of personal injury caused by a corporation, if the corporation's full assets are not enough to compensate the victims, then the owners could then be held responsible to cover the difference. It doesn't work that way, either. In the case of big liability, a corporation's owners frequently try to shuffle as much of the corporation's assets as possible off the books and then declare bankruptcy in the face of the liability. The personal assets of the shareholders are generally untouchable. Turns out that when you tell people their only responsibility is to create shareholder value, they take it pretty seriously (particularly if they're the shareholders in question).
nickpp 16y ago
But those opportunities are available to everybody. Why should the reach be the ones paying more for them?
nitrogen 16y ago
Without the entrepreneurs and executives organizing companies and the engineers designing products, there'd be nothing for everyone else to work on but subsistence farming. Should providing something for the rest of us to do go unrewarded?
- vannevar 16y ago
  But those contributions don't go unrewarded. They are compensated highly, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. The problem here is that higher tax rates are being mistaken as punishment when they're just a reflection of reality. The rich leverage society's institutions more to acquire their wealth, consequently they pay a greater share of their income for them.

by davorak 16y ago

javert 16y ago

The government only helps the rich to the degree that it provides courts, police, and military. Beyond that, it's looting them.

dhugiaskmak 16y ago
So true. Everyone knows that every businessman has completely bootstrapped from scratch all of the roads, utilities, schools, hospitals, scientific research, and a thousand other things that they took advantage of to make their fortunes. No one else made any contributions to their success and that's why it's only fair that we should be required to hand over a significant portion of our incomes to them.
- javert 16y ago
  That's right, let's justify stealing from businessmen based on the fact that they grew up in a society that was already stealing from businessmen. None of the things you mentioned need to (or should) be funded by loot. In fact, utilities and hospitals didn't used to be in the U.S., and only partially are now. The US education system is a stagnant cesspool that still uses a model developed in the Middle Ages. And the government expropriates more wealth created from non-government funded scientific research, than it generates from funding scientific research. Look, nobody has a duty to serve as a sacrificial animal to anybody else. You do not have the right to demand that businessmen sacrifice for you or for society.
  - vannevar 16y ago
    I agree. I think the first thing we need to do to bring about your utopia is to bring back personal liability and eliminate the corporate entity (which after all is a construction of government). Then if a businessman's activities injured someone, we could be sure that a court could strip them of their personal assets in order to compensate the victims of their negligence.
    - javert 16y ago
      That's sort of unrelated to my point, but it's an interesting question. A corporation's rights and responsibilities just derive from the rights and responsibilities of those who own it. I think this is the premise behind "corporate personhood" and I think it works correctly almost all the time. (I'd be interested to see examples where that's not the case.) For example, a corporation can exercise free speech, because the people who own it can exercise free speech; so if you deny the corporation from exercising its free speech, you are denying those who own it their right to exercise free speech. I'd think that in the case of personal injury caused by a corporation, if the corporation's full assets are not enough to compensate the victims, then the owners could then be held responsible to cover the difference. (Whether that is actually legally the way it works now, I don't know.)
      - vannevar 16y ago
        A corporation's rights and responsibilities just derive from the rights and responsibilities of those who own it. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately; if it did there would be no reason to have 'corporate personhood' since the owners could simply assert their own right of free speech. A corporation can assert its own right of free speech completely apart from its officers or owners. In theory a corporation with no living officers and only the estate of a deceased person as a shareholder could nonetheless legally assert a right of free speech based on computer generated messages. Not that it's ever been tested. Angry mobs, on the other hand, are not generally viewed as persons, nor are parades, crowded beaches, or book clubs. I'd think that in the case of personal injury caused by a corporation, if the corporation's full assets are not enough to compensate the victims, then the owners could then be held responsible to cover the difference. It doesn't work that way, either. In the case of big liability, a corporation's owners frequently try to shuffle as much of the corporation's assets as possible off the books and then declare bankruptcy in the face of the liability. The personal assets of the shareholders are generally untouchable. Turns out that when you tell people their only responsibility is to create shareholder value, they take it pretty seriously (particularly if they're the shareholders in question).

nickpp 16y ago

But those opportunities are available to everybody. Why should the reach be the ones paying more for them?

nitrogen 16y ago

Without the entrepreneurs and executives organizing companies and the engineers designing products, there'd be nothing for everyone else to work on but subsistence farming. Should providing something for the rest of us to do go unrewarded?

vannevar 16y ago
But those contributions don't go unrewarded. They are compensated highly, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. The problem here is that higher tax rates are being mistaken as punishment when they're just a reflection of reality. The rich leverage society's institutions more to acquire their wealth, consequently they pay a greater share of their income for them.