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If you're an "entrepreneur"... you didn't build that. Your employees are the result of subsidized education. Your customers get to your location driving on subs

If you're an "entrepreneur"... you didn't build that. Your employees are the result of subsidized education. Your customers get to your location driving on subsidized roads. Your electricity, water, sewage, etc, is all subsidized infrastructure. You depend on subsidized legal infrastructure to mediate your interactions with other businesses and customers. If you're a tech business, then 90% of the theoretical foundations of your business are the product of subsidized research. This isn't an argument. It's rhetoric. If it were an argument, it would attempt to establish the criteria for deciding whether a particular set of government programs and the means for paying for them were ideal. Surely there must be some level of democratically ordained wealth redistribution that would qualify as "mooching", no?

rbanffy 14y ago
The reasoning is flawless. You need to spend less effort to train your employees because they enjoyed a certain level of schooling (which, chances are, you enjoyed too). If you don't need to build your own roads it's because everyone paid for a shared road system. You don't need to enforce laws yourself because your taxes support law enforcement. Of course, people who pay less taxes have (or should have) the same enforcement as you do but that's because of one other thing - that the law applies equally (or, again, should apply equally) to everyone. As it should, John Galt or not. "John Galt" is about self-entitlement. Is about ideas without regard who actually executes them. This community, I thought, understands the fact that ideas, without execution, are worthless. And execution, without employees out of a vastly interdependent society, is a whole lot harder.
- twoodfin 14y ago
  I also don't need to build and program my own computer because Apple has built one I like at a price I'm willing to pay. They're part of the "vastly interdependent society", too. If the scope and cost of government makes it more difficult or expensive for Apple to produce that computer, then my ideas become that much harder to execute as well. It's a tradeoff, and claiming "you wouldn't be able to do it without government!" doesn't provide any help in determining whether how we're making that tradeoff today is right. You wouldn't be able to do it without other entrepreneurs as well.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Nobody is arguing you can do it without other entrepreneurs. The objection is to the idea "I built that" (used in the same sense as a house I built myself with wood I cut from my own trees using a hatchet I made from sticks and rocks myself).
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      You are neglecting all the effort the trees put into growing big enough, since probably before you were born, so you could readily use them.
      - lupatus 14y ago
        Trees in a forest aren't considered subsidized infrastructure. They are natural resources. You're struggling now.
    - twoodfin 14y ago
      Nobody ever used "I built that" in that silly ex nihilo sense. It's sophistry to claim otherwise. They used "built" in the sense of being a primary, essential contributor. "Steve Jobs built (and then re-built) Apple" is a completely accurate thing to say. Do you really want to claim it's false?
      - rayiner 14y ago
        > They used "built" in the sense of being a primary, essential contributor. Do they really? What I hear is them complaining that every cent they are taxed is the government taking "their money". If they were willing to acknowledge that they are the primary, not sole, contributor, wouldn't they acknowledge that some part of their income is not an imposition by the government, but rather a collection of something the government is entitled to in the first place by virtue of its contribution?
rayiner 14y ago
> This isn't an argument. It's rhetoric. If it were an argument, it would attempt to establish the criteria for deciding whether a particular set of government programs and the means for paying for them was ideal. That doesn't logically follow. You can make an argument that a particular set of conditions exists without making the argument the particular set of conditions is the ideal balance of conditions. > Surely there must be some level of democratically ordained wealth redistribution that would qualify as "mooching", no? Sure. But "mooching" is a value-judgment that only makes sense in the context of some moral framework. There exist more sensible instantiations of that moral framework than I think the popular discourse is willing to admit to. For example, why should the rules of society not be structured so the wealth created by this joint work is distributed proportionally to the number of hours of our finite and more or less equal-length lives we dedicate to that work? Sure, some people are much smarter than others, and their contributions far more valuable per hour, but people are more or less born with the intelligence they have, so why should they get credit or be penalized for that? I'm not endorsing that particular distribution, but rather pointing out that it's a logically-defensible one. The point is that because of the structure of our society, it is impossible to precisely determine the value of each person's contribution to the net production (taking into account the whole spectrum of variables such as social stability, etc, over the infinite time horizon). Many people act as if the market equilibrium gives us a precise definition of that value, from which we can derive a definition of "mooching" but it gives us no such thing. And at the end of the day, once we have labored mightily to determine who is mooching and who is not, what does that buy us? How much more efficient would our society be if nobody was mooching? The conservative Heritage foundation estimates the value of federal welfare spending to be about $175 billion, or 1.3% of GDP. The net social value of that spending is almost certainly more than that (how much would you pay to not live in a society like my native Bangladesh where poor children beg for food in the streets?). "Mooching" is something that has far more value in justifying moral indignation amongst conservatives than it does in any quantifiable economic sense.
potatolicious 14y ago
> "Surely there must be some level of democratically ordained wealth redistribution that would qualify as "mooching", no?" You're trying to scientifically and objectively measure "mooching", which itself is entirely an unscientific and subjective concept. This doesn't work.
- chimi 14y ago
  It's not that hard. If you are able, but don't work and live off government subsidies for food, housing, and health care then you're definitely mooching off the system.
  - bryanlarsen 14y ago
    Are Olympic athletes mooches? Are students mooches? Are entrepreneurs who live off unemployment mooches? By your definition they are. There are lots of "artists" that live off of welfare. Some of theme are mooches, some of them are just developing their craft and will later make millions doing it. How do you tell one from the other? You can't.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    Define able. Define subsidies. I don't get food stamps, nor welfare, but I did enjoy substantial government subsidies on education (odds are, so did you). I also drive on government-subsidized roads, and enjoy government services such as the police and fire departments. My drinking water comes from a vast infrastructure built by government funds - not all of which was taxed locally. My electricity comes from similar government-subsidized infrastructure, and wouldn't even exist if the federal government hadn't poured enormous amounts of cash into the research of power generation and transmission technologies. In short, my life story is one gigantic government subsidy, and odds are, so is yours. So is everyone's, to various degrees - nobody is even close to "clean" in this respect, unless you grew up in a monastery on a mountain top. Also, it's funny that you mention health care, because by that definition every single person in Western Europe, Canada, and Japan is a moocher. Ability is also a tricky notion because it is hard to separate from potential. Are we strictly talking about productivity, period, or are we talking about productivity commensurate with one's potential? What is the morality of someone who, after receiving substantial government subsidization getting an education, who gets a dead end job? He's not on welfare or food stamps, but he sure as hell isn't the high-earning tax payer we hoped he would be, based on the considerable investment made. Is he a moocher of the system? After all, he failed to "pay us back" for the extra investment we made in him (sending him to college, say). What is the morality of someone who, possessing a substantial intelligence, chooses not to apply himself in school, and ends up in the lowest rung of tax payers? Has he mooched off of us for failing to live up to his potential, or does he get a free pass? Does he have the "ability" to do higher level work? What about people whose failure to realize their full potential is due to external factors? This issue is anything but simple. But let's simplify this grossly: you're referring to people who choose not to work (period) and whose existences require the constant intervention of government above and beyond what government does for "everyone else" (that itself is a tricky notion, but bear with me). It turns out, we actually track these people, and they are an extremely small part of our society. The vast majority of people in our society work. The ones who do not actively seek to work. The percentage of people in our society who can work but choose not to, and lean on the government as a result is a rounding error. It's amazing how much libertarians and conservatives are willing to magnify this demographic by a thousandfold just to make their point.
hythloday 14y ago
The criteria are usually based on the Veil of Ignorance - that is, if two people are attempting to determine how to distribute wealth, how would they each choose to do so if they did not know which one of them started off with the wealth? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance

rbanffy 14y ago

The reasoning is flawless. You need to spend less effort to train your employees because they enjoyed a certain level of schooling (which, chances are, you enjoyed too). If you don't need to build your own roads it's because everyone paid for a shared road system. You don't need to enforce laws yourself because your taxes support law enforcement. Of course, people who pay less taxes have (or should have) the same enforcement as you do but that's because of one other thing - that the law applies equally (or, again, should apply equally) to everyone. As it should, John Galt or not. "John Galt" is about self-entitlement. Is about ideas without regard who actually executes them. This community, I thought, understands the fact that ideas, without execution, are worthless. And execution, without employees out of a vastly interdependent society, is a whole lot harder.

twoodfin 14y ago
I also don't need to build and program my own computer because Apple has built one I like at a price I'm willing to pay. They're part of the "vastly interdependent society", too. If the scope and cost of government makes it more difficult or expensive for Apple to produce that computer, then my ideas become that much harder to execute as well. It's a tradeoff, and claiming "you wouldn't be able to do it without government!" doesn't provide any help in determining whether how we're making that tradeoff today is right. You wouldn't be able to do it without other entrepreneurs as well.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Nobody is arguing you can do it without other entrepreneurs. The objection is to the idea "I built that" (used in the same sense as a house I built myself with wood I cut from my own trees using a hatchet I made from sticks and rocks myself).
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    You are neglecting all the effort the trees put into growing big enough, since probably before you were born, so you could readily use them.
    - lupatus 14y ago
      Trees in a forest aren't considered subsidized infrastructure. They are natural resources. You're struggling now.
  - twoodfin 14y ago
    Nobody ever used "I built that" in that silly ex nihilo sense. It's sophistry to claim otherwise. They used "built" in the sense of being a primary, essential contributor. "Steve Jobs built (and then re-built) Apple" is a completely accurate thing to say. Do you really want to claim it's false?
    - rayiner 14y ago
      > They used "built" in the sense of being a primary, essential contributor. Do they really? What I hear is them complaining that every cent they are taxed is the government taking "their money". If they were willing to acknowledge that they are the primary, not sole, contributor, wouldn't they acknowledge that some part of their income is not an imposition by the government, but rather a collection of something the government is entitled to in the first place by virtue of its contribution?

rayiner 14y ago

> This isn't an argument. It's rhetoric. If it were an argument, it would attempt to establish the criteria for deciding whether a particular set of government programs and the means for paying for them was ideal. That doesn't logically follow. You can make an argument that a particular set of conditions exists without making the argument the particular set of conditions is the ideal balance of conditions. > Surely there must be some level of democratically ordained wealth redistribution that would qualify as "mooching", no? Sure. But "mooching" is a value-judgment that only makes sense in the context of some moral framework. There exist more sensible instantiations of that moral framework than I think the popular discourse is willing to admit to. For example, why should the rules of society not be structured so the wealth created by this joint work is distributed proportionally to the number of hours of our finite and more or less equal-length lives we dedicate to that work? Sure, some people are much smarter than others, and their contributions far more valuable per hour, but people are more or less born with the intelligence they have, so why should they get credit or be penalized for that? I'm not endorsing that particular distribution, but rather pointing out that it's a logically-defensible one. The point is that because of the structure of our society, it is impossible to precisely determine the value of each person's contribution to the net production (taking into account the whole spectrum of variables such as social stability, etc, over the infinite time horizon). Many people act as if the market equilibrium gives us a precise definition of that value, from which we can derive a definition of "mooching" but it gives us no such thing. And at the end of the day, once we have labored mightily to determine who is mooching and who is not, what does that buy us? How much more efficient would our society be if nobody was mooching? The conservative Heritage foundation estimates the value of federal welfare spending to be about $175 billion, or 1.3% of GDP. The net social value of that spending is almost certainly more than that (how much would you pay to not live in a society like my native Bangladesh where poor children beg for food in the streets?). "Mooching" is something that has far more value in justifying moral indignation amongst conservatives than it does in any quantifiable economic sense.

potatolicious 14y ago

> "Surely there must be some level of democratically ordained wealth redistribution that would qualify as "mooching", no?" You're trying to scientifically and objectively measure "mooching", which itself is entirely an unscientific and subjective concept. This doesn't work.

chimi 14y ago
It's not that hard. If you are able, but don't work and live off government subsidies for food, housing, and health care then you're definitely mooching off the system.
- bryanlarsen 14y ago
  Are Olympic athletes mooches? Are students mooches? Are entrepreneurs who live off unemployment mooches? By your definition they are. There are lots of "artists" that live off of welfare. Some of theme are mooches, some of them are just developing their craft and will later make millions doing it. How do you tell one from the other? You can't.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Define able. Define subsidies. I don't get food stamps, nor welfare, but I did enjoy substantial government subsidies on education (odds are, so did you). I also drive on government-subsidized roads, and enjoy government services such as the police and fire departments. My drinking water comes from a vast infrastructure built by government funds - not all of which was taxed locally. My electricity comes from similar government-subsidized infrastructure, and wouldn't even exist if the federal government hadn't poured enormous amounts of cash into the research of power generation and transmission technologies. In short, my life story is one gigantic government subsidy, and odds are, so is yours. So is everyone's, to various degrees - nobody is even close to "clean" in this respect, unless you grew up in a monastery on a mountain top. Also, it's funny that you mention health care, because by that definition every single person in Western Europe, Canada, and Japan is a moocher. Ability is also a tricky notion because it is hard to separate from potential. Are we strictly talking about productivity, period, or are we talking about productivity commensurate with one's potential? What is the morality of someone who, after receiving substantial government subsidization getting an education, who gets a dead end job? He's not on welfare or food stamps, but he sure as hell isn't the high-earning tax payer we hoped he would be, based on the considerable investment made. Is he a moocher of the system? After all, he failed to "pay us back" for the extra investment we made in him (sending him to college, say). What is the morality of someone who, possessing a substantial intelligence, chooses not to apply himself in school, and ends up in the lowest rung of tax payers? Has he mooched off of us for failing to live up to his potential, or does he get a free pass? Does he have the "ability" to do higher level work? What about people whose failure to realize their full potential is due to external factors? This issue is anything but simple. But let's simplify this grossly: you're referring to people who choose not to work (period) and whose existences require the constant intervention of government above and beyond what government does for "everyone else" (that itself is a tricky notion, but bear with me). It turns out, we actually track these people, and they are an extremely small part of our society. The vast majority of people in our society work. The ones who do not actively seek to work. The percentage of people in our society who can work but choose not to, and lean on the government as a result is a rounding error. It's amazing how much libertarians and conservatives are willing to magnify this demographic by a thousandfold just to make their point.

hythloday 14y ago

The criteria are usually based on the Veil of Ignorance - that is, if two people are attempting to determine how to distribute wealth, how would they each choose to do so if they did not know which one of them started off with the wealth? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance