X-Message-Number: 28097
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:25:41 -0600
From: "Anthony ." <>
Subject: Re: economics & pies

> From: "John de Rivaz" <>
> References: <>
> Subject: economics
> Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:14:54 +0100

> > Please quote where I state that the super-rich should be killed off.
>
> You didn't, but you implied it by suggesting nothing

I implied it by suggesting nothing!?
Can one not launch into a critique about something without offering an
alternative?
Are we to assume that anyone writing a diatribe has murder in mind?

> except saying that you
> were concerned by the situation.

Yes, "concern" clearly means "to arms comrades!"

> The implication comes because this has
> been the only method that has been tried and failed in the past.

Here's 1 historical example of the cuff: the Glorious Revolution of
1688 where parliamentary rule was bloodlessly replaced by the monarchy
again. We might quibble over whether it was a Revolution or even
Glorious, but the balance of power and wealth shifted without a bloody
coup.

If you think that violence is the only way the rich-poor gap can be
closed, the only way monopolies broken, the only way massively
centralised wealth and power (I mean the very richest people, not the
government), then you are poorly lacking in imagination. And I know
that isn't true, so lets have less of the Red Terror please. I'm all
for steady, rational, and democratic reform of the kind which will
make life more tolerable for the impoverished and less degraded for
future generations. Need I explicitely state that I'm a pacifist?

> > 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.

That is because you're not a political scientist nor a maker of
policy. Neither am I, but we can still discuss ideas.

> people are already taxed at various rates.

Is it optimal? fair?

> But what are people in poor areas going to
> do with this education except feel dissatisfied and organise violent
> rebellions against everyone else?

Better they stay uneducated and docile. When oppressed people get
angry, the oppressers get scared, so I understand your caution. (Don't
worry, I recognise that I am also complicit in the oppression/wasting
of poor foreigners, but no-one likes to feel guilty, so lets pretend
it is out of our hands & carry on as normal.)

> 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).

So educating and improving the lives of impoverished groups is
impossible? If 1% of the income can educate all of the impoverished
children of the world, what would 2% do?
Again, I suppose we shouldn't even consider taking this money from the
deserving, hard-working, elite just to do this for so many others.
This kind of utilitarianism infringes on too many rich people's
rights. To hell with the right-to-life of the innumerable poor. They
were born in the wrong country at the wrong time.

> Also better education doesn't want to start with the concept that theft
> under certain circumstances is OK.

But the theft of wealth by the super-rich is? Let's not pretend they
gained all their wealth legitimately.

> > 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!

Consumption is a matter of making resources vanish, not actual cash.
Actual cash flows into the economy, as has been pointed out.

> > > 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.

Who knows? I disagree.

> > The only people breaking down their doors should be tax collectors.
>
> You said it!!!

I should have been more figurative & written "breaking down". If
richer people aren't taxed more than poorer people, poorer people get
less, richer people get more. Does this make sense? Only if you align
wealth with moral superiority.

> > I've offered different solutions to the ones you and Lenin came up
> > with when
>
> Tax collectors breaking down doors?

The "human marketplace".
As you have offered no alternatives to the status-quo, I will assume
that you have murderous intentions towards any dissident. (I don't
really, but you see how silly it is to imagine this due to silence on
a given issue.)

> > 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.

Credible is a matter of opinion. I find it incredible to be content to
carry on, hoping some super-AI will emerge from our efforts to then
guide us through the mess. Techno-Christianity at its most vacuous.

> > 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.

Would it given choice to the citizens of the USSR?

> 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.

Indeed. I guess those commies aren't so bad after all - they're just
like us! Greedy swine, some of whom are more equal than others.

> 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.

Try Lindows. Or a Mac.

> Unfortunately there are many people posting to Internet forums and
> review pages that disagree.

Disagreement, in this case, isn't unfortunate, it drives innovation.

> > 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?

You're right. The DVD is a triumph of free-market ideology. Thank God
we have the DVD, those commercials were right - I can own it to watch,
again and again, in crystal clarity in the comfort of my own castle.

> > 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.

Tax was only part of my proposed alternative, if you recall.
As for phrasing it in terms of a "final solution" - after all I've
said - is defamatory.

[Anthony again]
> > 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?

What people need does not require enforcement - it is as obvious as
shivering in the cold or rumbling in the belly.
Should someone be able to enforce their idea of what other people want
upon these other people? Well, they do, and clear examples of this are
found in advertising, peer-pressure (for kids) and "keeping up with
the Joneses" (for adults), the mind of the "shoppaholic" and the
phenomenon of "hard-sell". Plus, Presidents like to tell people to
shop after major terrorist attacks.
Without artifically stimulated desire, superflous wants, our
over-consumptive economy might be in trouble. Shame we have to destroy
so much to keep it chugging along.

> Maybe all these bright people in India and Africa should
> consider something similar instead of fighting with each other.

Why do you think they are fighting? Are they simply uncivilised?

> > 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

I won't help you split hairs over a metaphor.

> [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.

But you do have a choice regarding which party you vote for on the
basis of their tax policies.

> > 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.

But that is not my suggestion. I'm interested in a Free Society rather
than a Free Market. Poverty creates massive costs in poor mental and
physical health, crime, and violence. Super-wealth is the flip-side of
that coin.

The main thing I have been asking you to consider is the 1% deduction
and re-distribution of the combined income of the wealthiest 200
people for purposes of supporting primary educating for every child on
Earth. As I result I've been painted as a Soviet or a Nazi.

> Consider washing machines.

I won't bother, as you've built a strawman of my argument.

> > 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.

Here we go again. Shame I expected a thoughtful answer.

> > > 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.

Here's one: people see that the government are often scratching the
backs of big business and have turned away in disgust. Or perhaps they
are tired of being lied to. Or perhaps they don't care for politics
and prefer to shop. Just because you can't think of other reasons, it
doesn't mean they don't exist.

> > 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?

Does my question deserve nothing more than a brush-off? Do you find it
unimportant as to how one persons wealth affects others? You complain
about the tax man but you have no fear of the power interests of the
wealthy, nor of their overwhelming abilities to impliment them.

> > 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.

You mean Western governments have no accountability?

> Both are subject to some restraint.

Not in Johnny Eggplant's Free Market. The only restraint would be
poverty and other people's greater wealth.

> 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.

Indeed. Do you think these are good laws or bad laws?

> Governments can be restricted by public opinion and sometimes even other
> governments.

Your point is?
I was talking about the Free Market, not the current state of affairs.

> > 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.

I can't do anything about the negative consequences of their business.
Or are you saying there are no negative consequences?

> > 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.

No, the coporations were also essential to the Nazi state. Ideologues
can't do much without money. One of the reasons why the fledgling
Weimar democracy collapsed was because of right-wing businessmen
supplying the extremists. It's there in the history books.

But sure, I agree that a civilised government would quickly put a stop
to lunatic businessness. They do it now with regulations and
enforcement.

> > > 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.

You must realise that, say, the arms industry is clearly complicit in
these crimes against humanity, these wars and waste?

> > 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.

Work done or money made? Which do you think is the top priority?

> The focus of all this seems still to be on things, ie cars planes etc. When
> people are reanimated,

You mean "if".

> things are likely to be so abundant that this will be
> a non issue.

Not if we fuck it all up in the meantime.

Anthony

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