X-Message-Number: 28093 From: "John de Rivaz" <> References: <> Subject: economics Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:14:54 +0100 > > (lynching/scapegoating) seems to be the underlying supposition of your thesis. > > Please quote where I state that the super-rich should be killed off. You didn't, but you implied it by suggesting nothing except saying that you were concerned by the situation. The implication comes because this has been the only method that has been tried and failed in the past. confiscation (taxation) has been tried in the past with wealth taxes imposed where the annual tax take is more than the individuals' income. As far as I am aware the practise never worked for long. > > I do not see this as being the "underlying supposition of my thesis". > Please read my latest response to John K Eggplant regarding the "human > marketplace". I have read it and don't see how it can be implemented. > No need to delete them. Instead let's re-distribute some of that extra > fat - call it a diet. Would you be against a super-rich tax that people are already taxed at various rates. If the money was spent differently to the ways that present "super powerful" legislators chose to spend it maybe you would approve. But what are people in poor areas going to do with this education except feel dissatisfied and organise violent rebellions against everyone else? I am not saying that the idea of providing better education is wrong, just that it needs a lot more than that, until your 1% becomes 101% (ie impossible). Also better education doesn't want to start with the concept that theft under certain circumstances is OK. That is almost as bad as the outmoded lesson that used to be taught in schools "Do as I say as I am bigger than you and if you don't I can and will hit you with a piece of wood." (Pupils leave with the idea that when they are bigger they can behave in the same way. Now translate that to taking money by force to pay for the education.) > How would the money run out? It has simply been moved from 200 > individuals to, say, 2,000,000. Do the unclean masses just make it > vanish? Actually they do. Consider your own remarks about consumption! > > Eventually it gets down to millions of people who > > have slightly more than the rest, > > One need not slip down this slope. It gets too steep to avoid. > The only people breaking down their doors should be tax collectors. You said it!!! > I've offered different solutions to the ones you and Lenin came up > with when Tax collectors breaking down doors? > I appreciate you faith in progress and I share it. You think we need > super-rich people to move it along as fast as possible - You have not come up with a credible alternative. > Does that mean you would happily tolerate the USSR if it were still around? as long as it didn't threaten the rest of the world and people were allowed by both sides to move freely between it and the rest of the world, then yes, I would welcome it. It would give choice. Indeed such a scenario would provide the opportunity for different economic systems to be tested. Unfortunately as I understand it the USSR wasn't really very different, from the point of view we are discussing -- there were still people that acquired a lot for themselves within it. > > > People use Windows(R)(TM) because it is more effective than any other OS, > > despite the fact that it is never perfected and burden of periodic upgrades > > is very time consuming and costly. > > I know programmers who would laughingly disagree. Where are their operating systems? If you could advise of one that lets me run all my hardware I would gladly buy and install it. There are many versions of Linux around, each being claimed to do just that. Some, even come with emulators that purport to allow software designed for Windows to run. Unfortunately there are many people posting to Internet forums and review pages that disagree. Also I am sure that many businesses who have hundreds of PCs would be only too glad to install an open source OS when they only pay for one copy per business as opposed to one per PC. Imagine the fuss if the UK Government required every TV set in a house to have its own license! Also Linux is almost totally dependant on a programming language called C, whose scripts are far more abstruse than Basic or DOS, Therefore it appears easy to use only by programmers most of whom use a C variant in their work these days. Users of the later versions of Windows can get by without ever having to write a command line script, even in BASIC or DOS. > > The best products are not the most popular. This is the same > free-market bullshit which imagines only the best is bought. > Depends how you define best. Betamax may have been better for a while, but at a cost. Compare a betamax VCR with the latest VHS machines (not at the end of their product cycle). Or if you consider video recording generally, which is better betamax or DVD? > From: > The biggest owner class might plausibly be called the legislators and > regulators. These may or may not have visibly lavish life styles or large > personal incomes, but they have the bulk of the power and perks, which they can > almost uniquely wield without restraint other than their ability to con or > bribe some of the voters. It would appear that the tax "final solution to the problem of the rich" would introduce more of these. Those that think like Anthony would find themselves in an identical world except that a different set of elite individuals would be at the controls. Note that the British PM has just ordered two aeroplanes for the use of himself and his successors to be leased and paid for by his taxpayers. Money by itself is useless (think of someone shipwrecked on an uninhabited island with a pallet of gold bars recovered from the ship). It is the trappings (eg private jets) that is wealth, and some people will get it whatever the system, whether it is via money from customers or via power from taxpayers. They may be different individuals, but there will be individuals with these things all the same. I would urge anyone on cryonet agreeing with the need for a "final solution to the rich" to read Robert Ettinger's post very carefully and make quite sure that they understand what he is saying on every line. [Anthony again] > It should be clear that just because someone buys something, it does > not mean they need it - or even want it. > But need is what is > important, not desires created to sell a product or service. But should someone be able to enforce their idea of what other people need upon these other people? [educating people to spend wisely] > In agreeing > to this, many of my other points follow (i.e. super-rich aren't > necessarily doing us any favours, markets often create unnecessary > &/or harmful desires) no they don't follow, because alternatives may be just as "bad" or more likely worse. > > Microsoft's > > business methods could be removed by replacing their product. > > Current politics won't allow it. One might say the same about Betamax vs VHS, but current politics haven't stopped VHS being displaced by DVD. In view of the job losses caused by the demise of the chemical camera, one might have expected political action against digital cameras, but I have noticed none. Note that most digital cameras are made in China which until recently was forced to be poor by its administrators. Maybe all these bright people in India and Africa should consider something similar instead of fighting with each other. > Indeed, the > problems that impede progress now may well impede nanotech and the > levelling that it could bring (e.g. witness the counter-productive > effects of Digital Rights Management). [DRM] I suspect that more material will get produced without DRM, and if DRM is that counterproductive it will displace material produced with it. > If I eat most of the pies and keep the rest of the pies I don't eat, > and give pie-crumbs to my friends, but you have no pies, no crumbs, > and feel hungry, do you think I am still not a drag? What is the point of that? The pies will go bad or need to be refrigerated, and guess what - fresh ones are perceived to be better. Stockpiling other items such as computers cars or planes is equally futile as they go out of date and if you are super-rich you want the latest one don't you? I agree all the points made by "egg plant" <> [free market] > While it tells you what it wants you to buy. Tax Collectors don't give you a choice of what they will spend you taxes on, or indeed whether to pay them at all. > Should everyone be able to "vote" or is the Free Market only Free for > some and Slavery for others? If the world was run on the basis that nothing should be available if everyone can't have it, then we'd still be living naked in caves in the Rift Valley. Consider washing machines. On this basis when they were invented in the 1930s they would have been regarded as illegal because everyone can't afford one. Yet today in the UK those on state benefit can get grants to have one if they can't afford one. Go back in time and make the necessary adjustment to produce a government that had enough power to make washing machines forbidden then you have deprived people today of a state benefit. Oh, and you wouldn't be reading this list because cryonics certainly isn't available to everyone. > > > When I vote for the grab bag I may or may not get it. > > Is voting the only way you can participate in democracy? > No, you can stand for Parliament, become Chancellor, and say that you will "Tax the rich until they howl with anguish" amidst a standing ovation from your supporters raising their right arms with clenched fist in salute. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tonyparsons/tm_column_date=23062003-name_index.html This answers a lot of Anthony's points better than I can. > > People > > have figured out that the chance that their vote will influence things is so > > absurdly small that it's just not worth their time to study the issues very > > deeply, the result is that the politician with the best hairdo gets to make > > the decisions. > > There are many explanations for voter apathy - this is just one. I can't think of any other as being more likely to be the main one. > > >People do not spend their money very well. > > > > And government does? Maybe people spend their money foolishly, maybe they > > don't, the point is it's THEIR money NOT yours. > > But it is OUR environment, OUR society, OUR economy, OUR present and > future. How does YOUR loot and how you spend it going to influence ME? I have one penny. You have one penny. Give me yours and we will have two, won't I? > > And you think you have the right to make me spend money that I earned in a > > way that pleases you not me. And I think that is evil. > > I think it is evil for you to think you can buy whatever you please, > regardless of consequence. Governments spend money in whatever way they chose regardless of consequence in just the same way as individuals. Both are subject to some restraint. Individuals can't legally spend money in certain ways, eg buying the services of "hit men", buying certain services offered by the "sex industry", buying certain weapons (or even every day objects and carry them in a way that they could be used as weapons), or buying vehicles for which they are not qualified to use and keeping them in a way that suggests they are using them illegally. Governments can be restricted by public opinion and sometimes even other governments. > you can't > tell the corporations to go to hell. only when what they are doing is part of government. You can tell, for example, Microsoft to GTH and struggle with Linux. The choice is there. > Who do you think built the ovens for Nazi germany? They wouldn't have been built except for a government that became dominated by lunatic ideas. A corporation with the same lunatic ideas under an ordinary government would not have been able to use them. Government is an essential part of that equation, corporations are not. > > Big government has created a sea of blood and butchered hundreds of millions > > of people, often their own citizens. > > Do governments do this with no help or prompting from business interests? The use business because it is there and it is easier than starting from scratch. If it wasn't they could organise it all themselves. > Do businesses not "butcher" their citizens with back-breaking work & pollution? It is not the same as deliberately killing them, or organising them to kill each other (wars). The intent is not to kill, but get work done. Working employees so hard that they perish is not sensible because you have to train new ones. It is not good for morale. There are probably many more negatives before one gets to so called ethical considerations. The focus of all this seems still to be on things, ie cars planes etc. When people are reanimated, things are likely to be so abundant that this will be a non issue. But there will always be something that is hard to get. Services may be one. (But consider how many services are even now being replaced by machines. Within the last decade many people had to employ accountants to do tax returns at a cost of several hundred pounds per person, which costs were paid from taxed income and incurred sales taxes.). These days there are tax authority approved computer programs that do it. They will do six returns for 20 pounds. As the returns are filed electronically, you don't even have to pay postage! It is highly likely that many tasks now performed by lawyers will go the same way.) The other main worry is land, which is of limited supply. But again, space colonisation offers potential solution as does terraforming other solar system planets. The fact that it is ludicrously expensive to live in some prime sites today doesn't stop people having very nice homes in other areas. You don't have to live near Bill Gates, for example. The main barrier to progress is people who are willing to sacrifice all, rich and poor alike, to some ideals of premature equality for all. You did read http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tonyparsons/tm_column_date=23062003-name_index.html didn't you? -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and more Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=28093