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Government is the least efficient allocator of resources? Says who? How many wealthy individuals are sitting on piles of money right now because they are unsur
by ballstothewalls 14y ago
Government is the least efficient allocator of resources? Says who? How many wealthy individuals are sitting on piles of money right now because they are unsure of the economic climate and therefore are not going to invest? Who better than the government to take it away from them and then invest it into public infrastructure and consequently stimulate the economy?
- nhangen 14y agoWhat gives the government the right to 'take it away from them?'
- mitchty 14y agoThey have the guns normally. Force tends to be its own right. That said, Californians complaining about government isn't surprising, they have the worst possible state government of the union. Their bias is understandable, but entirely their own doing.
- nhangen 14y ago"Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims."
- forensic 14y agoLike everything Ayn Rand, that's completely upside down, since government is also the only entity that has ever succeeded in guaranteeing people's rights. So government is the best friend of man's rights, while libertarianism is the biggest enemy. Libertarianism = corporate feudalism.
- charonn0 14y agothey have the worst possible state government of the union Must be all the rich people that live here; they ruin everything!
- swerling 14y agoThat would be the sixteenth amendment to The Constitution of the United States of America.
- hackinthebochs 14y agoWhat is "property" other than a state-enforced claim to ownership? If the state (read: society) decides to take some back it is well within its "right" to do so, as your only claim to property is based on decree of society.
- gwright 14y agoI'm guessing your not a big John Locke fan.
- hackinthebochs 14y agoI am a fan actually, and I don't think my views are incompatible with his. I do have reservations of the typical use of "natural law" arguments though. One can construct a natural law argument for just about any premise one wants.
- gwright 14y ago> I am a fan actually, and I don't think my views are incompatible with his. I'm unable to reconcile your comment with what I understand to be John Lock's theory regarding property rights. They seem incompatible to me.
- hackinthebochs 14y agoMy recollection of his work is nothing but vague memories at this point, so there's a good chance I'm completely off in my assessment.
- skibob1027 14y agoWealthy people don't "sit on piles of money". That money is either held in a bank or invested. If it's in a bank, it is able to be loaned out to others looking for access to capital now. If its invested, it's being used as capital in a business (assuming it's and equity investment).
- ams6110 14y agoNone of these things happen if the government takes it instead.
- rdl 14y agoBanks don't really loan out money these days, either -- they generally have been keeping it on deposit with the fed, or in government securities, rather than making commercial loans. And, banks are a lot less efficient at deploying capital than enterprises internally, or private investors, even in good times.
- tsotha 14y ago>How many wealthy individuals are sitting on piles of money right now because they are unsure of the economic climate and therefore are not going to invest? So what? It's their money.
- rpm4321 14y agoWhy do you think they are sitting on these piles of money rather than investing it? It's because of the incessant sabre-rattling from the left over the past six years about raising taxes and ramping up even more regulation. It has a chilling effect.
- forensic 14y agoyou know what's chilly? the blade of the guillotine. you can either share some of your money or lose all of it.
- hackinthebochs 14y agoIt's funny how quickly people forget. There is one inevitable end result of such severe disproportionate concentrations of wealth. I'm sure we're nowhere near that point yet, but those who argue against redistribution are guaranteeing we will get there at some point.
- brg 14y agoI take you to mean that people forget that this is the inevitable outcome, but is there proof of that? China and ancient egypt for extremely stable examples of societies with hugely disproproriate distribution of wealth. Is it possible that revolutionary France and Russia are the outliers of history?
- rpm4321 14y agoI really wish that I had joined HN more than a month ago, just so that I could downvote you. This belongs on Reddit or Huffpo, not HN. Ironically, it's this sort of OWS mullarkey that's helping to prolong the environment of economic uncertainty that's hurting us so badly today.
- forensic 14y agoI joined HN four years ago. How would YOU know what belongs on HN? Your comment is extremely shallow and false to boot. It belongs on Rush Limbaugh, not on HN.
- nugget 14y agoIt's very difficult to be "sitting on piles of money" in the way you imply unless you've literally perched yourself atop a chair constructed from stacks of US dollar bills. When a millionaire earns an extra million dollars, he or she puts it somewhere - into stocks, or bonds, or other investments, and sometimes, rarely, keeps it in a bank account for years on end where it sits and earns no interest. With the exception of the bank account, all of these are capital re-investments that stimulate the economy in some way.
- meric 14y agoMoney stored into bank accounts are re-invested into property and construction, which is a type of capital-reinvestment.
- prostoalex 14y agoOh right, investing in infrastructure == stimulus for the economy. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/2011/04/beijings_empty_bullet_trains.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/201...