Why is it unfair? — Agustino

I went on to explain that. At some point it's down to you. You either recognise it or you don't. If you don't recognise it, you don't recognise it.

Why is it an imbalance? Would it also be an imbalance if I work more than you? If I produce more than you? If I do something more valuable than you? If I do something at a much larger scale than you? Why or why not? — Agustino

It's an imbalance because of the excess, just like if you were to add weight to one side of a balanced set of scales. If you change the situation by altering factors such that the wealth is not excessive on one side, then we're talking about something else. I said that fairness means getting a proportionate slice of the pie, and I stand by that.

The slice of pie should be proportional to the kind of work that you do - with the exception of welfare, which should also factor in for those who need it - and the size of it should be determined based on a fair distribution of overall wealth. That means that the size of the slice can fluctuate along with the size of the pie.

Unfortunately, how it should be is not always how it is. In reality, you get greedy people who want a bigger slice of the pie than they're due, and who are powerful enough to cut it for themselves and to keep hold of much of it. Consequently, others do not get as much as they're due, and as they otherwise might have recieved. These greedy people who get the bigger slice might justify this to themselves by overestimating their merits or by asserting private ownership, but that doesn't cut the mustard. It should be redistributed. Raise tax, tighten regulation, close loopholes, nationalise... whatever it takes.

Placing caps on pay might help.

Who decides that and based on what criteria? — Agustino

It would be based on the market, but the market just wouldn't be as free. It would be regulated by some official body, whether it be governmental or independent. As long as it functions rightly and is kept in check, I don't mind so much about the finer details. Whatever works.

Someone with far greater knowledge than myself, but with the same sense of justice, should set the exact criteria. I could only give you a rough idea of how it might look.

No, you don't decide how to appropriate the money of other people by force, that is certainly not moral. — Agustino

Of course I don't. It's not up to me to decide. I do not govern these affairs. It's up to the relevant authority. That's just my opinion of how it ought to be. If I want to see this ideal put into practice, then it's down to me to advocate for it.

It's moral provided it's done right. Both the means and the ends are important.

I can simply reorganize my affairs and still operate legally. If you don't want me to do that, then pass appropriate laws which don't allow for loopholes. Otherwise, why complain? — Agustino

Unfortunately, I am not in a position to do so. Only a comparatively small number of people are in such a position, as you well know. So you're being unreasonable. I would much rather see that done than complain about it. In fact, if that was done, then I would have no reason to complain about the situation, and my complaints about it would cease.

Again, this can be at most a legal issue, not a moral one. — Agustino

No, it's both. It would be the right thing to do and it ought to be law.

I am keeping it real. You have no idea how deep corruption runs in the Eastern European countries. You literarily cannot even begin to imagine - it's totally NOT like UK.

Syria and North Korea aren't just corrupt - their problems there have to do with more serious forms of violent oppression. — Agustino

But I'm not talking about those places, precisely because they're so corrupt, and precisely because it is such a mess. They need to be overthrown, not merely reformed. That's the point - they're totally not like the U.K. It's a different can of worms.

@Agustino

Right, so we return to what I was saying from the beginning. Relative poverty is irrelevant, what is relevant is whether most people in the country have enough money, not whether 99% of the wealth is owned by 1% but the 99% still have enough.

That's the opposite conclusion from the one you should draw. What you should draw from the idea is that increasing the lowest of wages decreases inequality. Specifically because being payed a living minimum wage decreases both poverty and inequality. It's a way of decreasing inequality, and oh look, less crime, good education standards, great healthcare, the poorest citizens are exposed to much less risk and you get the highest happiness index in the world, shoutouts to Norway. This is noting and using the previously established correlations of inequality with various standard of living factors.

A lot of this wealth is generated by the state oil fund (Norway owns all its oil produce, in contrast to Britain), and funneled into state endeavors such as the healthcare system and social security. Also Norway has a ridiculously high GDP per capita, so it's easier to achieve less inequality because they have a mixed economy and a lot of money.

What this highlights is the importance of reducing right skewness in income distributions, while at the same time having well funded public services... Skewness itself can be used as a way of measuring income inequality. If you give the lowest 10%tile of earnings a living wage, you dramatically decrease the skew and thus decrease inequality and likely its attendant problems.

I went on to explain that. At some point it's down to you. You either recognise it or you don't. If you don't recognise it, you don't recognise it. — Sapientia

So you're not able to provide a reason for why it is unfair? You're not able to put your finger on the harm that someone else having more than you does to you?

If you change the situation by altering factors such that the wealth is not excessive on one side, then we're talking about something else. I said that fairness means getting a proportionate slice of the pie, and I stand by that. — Sapientia

Right, but what is proportional isn't very clear to most people. So take the example I gave to BC:

Okay but go back to my previous point. So say I start a web development company. I will hire people, but I won't hire jack-of-all-trades like myself. I will hire, for example, an HTML/CSS expert, a javascript expert, a backend/PHP expert, a database expert, a Wordpress expert, a Node JS expert etc. etc. and put them to work. Now they will do the work a lot faster since they are experts at each individual component. They can probably do each individual component of the project much faster (and better) than I can.

So they are going to earn a fair amount for their individual work - but I will take for myself all the benefits that emerge from me having brought them together right? Any economies of scale, I will take for myself, since that was my work, to bring them together, and set the whole system up. So if they can finish projects faster than I can alone, then anything extra I will take. Isn't that fair? — Agustino

Consider another example taken from here.

In order to advance to large corporation, you have to collect the surplus value that employees have.
You start iff (by) buying $3 raw material per product and said product takes an hour to produce. Let's say your employees add $5 of value onto a $3 value product. You sell said product for its value: $8. You already sink $3 per product as the cost, so the max profit you can make is $5 if you pay your workers nothing. Obviously that isn't an option. If you give your workers the full value they add onto it ($5), then you have a cost of $8 and no profit to put back into the company to exoand. Let's say you set yourself up woth a modest profit margin: $1. That means you have to pay your workers $4 dollars when they made $5 worth of value. In a sense, you have to pay the workers less value than they create to be profitable. — Takarov

This Marxist framework doesn't portray the full complexities right. There was something that Karl Marx didn't realise, which represents the value of the entrepreneur, which isn't tied solely to owning the means of production. In other words, economies of scale do not result from the simple ownership of the means of production.

So say in my case, the product is a website, let's say a very simple one for now. It costs basically nothing in terms of raw material costs - people I employ would be people who own computers at home too, so they don't need me to access the means of production.

So all these people can basically produce and sell websites by themselves. I do not own the means of production as such - at least not in a way that they cannot individually access because of lack of capital.

Now the theory of surplus value has it that the worker is exploited because he doesn't have access to the means of production (the assembly line for example) himself. So he cannot, by himself, produce in as short a time as much as he can produce by working under the capitalist, having access to the capitalist's assembly line. So his labour under the capitalist produces a lot more value than he is given.

In my case, the advantage comes from specialization. The entrepreneur also creates something useful - he creates a system which employs specialised people and out of that individual specialization and the internal processes which ensure the smoothest flow possible, the time it takes to finish one website minimises. Let's say that this procedure minimizes the time it takes to finish one website individually by 70%.

The entrepreneur also ensures that there is continuous work. Now that production is 70% faster, there needs to be a bigger pipeline of willing buyers lined up outside. Who maintains that pipeline? Who works to bring the buyers in? The entrepreneur, of course. Without the pipleline, the other people have nobody to sell to (or at least not enough).

So suppose each person can produce 10 websites by himself in a month, and each website costs $200. So that means, if they were to work individually, they would make $2000 assuming they could source the work themselves.

Now, when they work in my team, they will produce faster due to their individual specializations and the team I have formed as entrepreneur AND also because they no longer have to market and look for business by themselves - the entrepreneur takes care of that. We'll quantify this time as 20% decrease in working time compared to working by themselves (meaning they will produce 20% more assuming they will work all that time). So, let's say I am employing 5 people.

5*(1+0.7)*(1+0.2)*10*200 = $20,400/month in revenue or total value produced.

So I will pay them what they can earn individually which is $2,000/month. For 5 people that is $10,000. But the benefits from increased production is due to my work as entrepreneur - I brought them together, arranged them in a team, and setup the whole marketing pipeline to get sufficient work so that we can achieve those numbers. So I pocket the other $10,400.

I make $10,400 and they make $2,000. Is that unfair? You could argue no. I pay them exactly what they would earn working by themselves for the same time, and I pocket what is the difference from bringing them together, arranging them by specialization, and organising the sales and marketing required to sell all the production - since I myself am not actually producing the products sold (websites).

And this remains true even if it would be a worker's collective. There would still need to be someone who does the entrepreneur's job. How much should that someone be paid, since he doesn't actually produce any of the products himself, all he does is make production faster and more efficient through his work. That person would effectively be responsible for the growth in numbers that are achieved, so it's fair that he pockets all of it.

But, let's say now that I want them to love their job and prefer working for me than working for themselves. So then I will share some of what I earn with them, so that we're both better off.

So I pay them $2,600 each, and I pocket $7,400. Now they make 30% more than they would have made working by themselves, without the risk of bad months (not finding work, etc.). It's a fixed wage, which wasn't the case if they would work for themselves. You think that's fair?

Unfortunately, I am not in a position to do so. Only a comparatively small number of people are in such a position, as you well know. So you're being unreasonable. I would much rather see that done than complain about it. In fact, if that was done, then I would have no reason to complain about the situation, and my complaints about it would cease. — Sapientia

I agree, but politicians want it to be like that, because they need the loopholes to launder money too. Why do you think tax codes, etc. aren't fixed? :s It's because the people in government are corrupt. If they were paragons of virtue, they would fix them, it's not super complicated.

are not the self-made billionaires generating wealth and jobs as well? — Marchesk

Not necessarily. Once a technical brand becomes established it tends to focus on features that increase revenue, rather than efficiency for the user. Think web browser!

It's because the people in government are corrupt. If they were paragons of virtue, they would fix them, it's not super complicated. — Agustino

Good point. Don't forget though that politicians work hard to keep on lots of others in the club wealthy and low tax paying...

Yes, well, organized crime needs to be ummm organized ;)

Why do you consider money to be wealth? Money is a fictive commodity, that's useful just to facilitate trade. It has no use in and of itself. — Agustino

Please send me all of your fictive commodity (bank transfers are convenient) as it uselessly accumulates at AguCorp.

the 1% — Agustino

The problem with a small number of people owning the bulk of wealth (in the United States, in any economic group, or the world) is that they monopolize capital. They tend to sit on it. Consider Apple's $250 billion dollar savings account. It's been growing steadily over the last several years. What good is it doing?

The absurdly rich population can't put their extraordinary large share of wealth to productive use at the level where it would really make a huge difference (among the entrepreneurs at the bottom third of the economic distribution, give or take a billion people). They can't because the task of investing in a billion small entrepreneurs would exhaust their time-and-organizational resources.

Piketty's insight--that wealth grows faster than economic output, thus concentrating capital (and the income it produces) in ever-fewer hands--is at the root of problem. As you know wealth isn't like air -- it doesn't distribute itself to find equilibrium. It's more like cat hair -- it tends to stick to people. So, a relative handful of people -- say, 10,000 -- are sitting on more wealth than 60% of the world's population.

They can't distribute their trillions of dollars. Andrew Carnegie found that giving money away was very time consuming; he established foundations to help manage this task -- they are still giving his money away. He built libraries across the country, for instance -- quite handsome, well built, and enduring. I had the benefit of one of his libraries in the town of 1,800 people I grew up in. It's still going strong.

Suppose you are terrifically successful at your business and accumulate $1,000,000,000. Suppose you decide you want to give it to promising but starved-for-capital entrepreneurs around the world. Just how long do you think it would take you? You would, like Carnegie and others, run out of time pretty quickly.

So we have trillions of dollars accumulating, which are not benefitting anyone. Meanwhile, a couple billion small entrepreneurs need capital and can't get it.

So you're not able to provide a reason for why it is unfair? You're not able to put your finger on the harm that someone else having more than you does to you? — Agustino

No, that's not a fair assessment. Come on, Agustino, I think you know that that's not what I was getting at. I have already explained why it is unfair. I was pointing out to you the fact that explanation can only go so far, and that understanding is what is required. If you don't understand it the way that I do, despite explanation, then we might be at an impasse.

As for the rest of your essay, I will make my way through it in time.

What would the 1% do if the bottom 99% didn't work for them, purchase their products or services, pay their portion of taxes to help perpetuate the system which disproportionately benefits the wealthy, etc.? — Erik

That's a very good question. I'd quite like to see a lot more class consciousness. Given enough people, it might even lead to a revolution of sorts.

No, that's not a fair assessment. Come on, Agustino, I think you know that that's not what I was getting at. I have already explained why it is unfair. I was pointing out to you the fact that explanation can only go so far, and that understanding is what is required. If you don't understand it the way that I do, despite explanation, then we might be at an impasse. — Sapientia

No, but I actually don't understand any possible reason for it :s . So far you have told me that it's unfair because:

It's a problem if it's excessive. That would be a problem because it's unfair and creates an imbalance. And an imbalance impacts people like me. That would be money in excess of what you've earned, which you do not deserve, could go to those who need it more than you do, and therefore ought to be redistributed.

So it's unfair because it's unfair. And it's unfair because it's excessive (what's the link between excessive and unfair?). And it's unfair because it's unbalanced :s - why is unbalanced unfair necessarily? It impacts people like you - how? Just because there are people who need the money more than me doesn't necessarily mean that it should be redistributed by force.

Please send me all of your fictive commodity (bank transfers are convenient) as it uselessly accumulates at AguCorp. — Bitter Crank

>:O

The problem with a small number of people owning the bulk of wealth (in the United States, in any economic group, or the world) is that they monopolize capital. They tend to sit on it. Consider Apple's $250 billion dollar savings account. It's been growing steadily over the last several years. What good is it doing? — Bitter Crank

Right, okay, now I see what you mean. Yes, that is a problem. What do you think can be done to motivate these people to invest that money in the economy and not just hoard it and sit on it?

The absurdly rich population can't put their extraordinary large share of wealth to productive use at the level where it would really make a huge difference (among the entrepreneurs at the bottom third of the economic distribution, give or take a billion people). They can't because the task of investing in a billion small entrepreneurs would exhaust their time-and-organizational resources. — Bitter Crank

I agree, so perhaps above a certain level it makes no sense to permit the accumulation of wealth since the person cannot put it to use anymore without basically employing an army of people.

So we have trillions of dollars accumulating, which are not benefitting anyone. Meanwhile, a couple billion small entrepreneurs need capital and can't get it. — Bitter Crank

Yeah, I agree with this. So what solution would you propose for the stagnation of capital, because it seems that that is the real problem, not only its concentration in a few hands?

One solution would be to compel holders of huge wealth to invest their capital in productive activities (and not in currency or like trading) or have it fall to a heavy tax on very big idle money. A percentage could be allocated to municipal bonds for infrastructure (cities, counties, states); another percentage could be allocated to very small entrepreneurs through vehicles similar to the Grameen Banks. Percentages could be allocated to large projects in developing countries (water works in India, Africa; resettling island nations facing inundation by rising seas; flood protection, resettling in Bangladesh and other low-lying countries; reforestation of tropical and northern rain forests, and the like. 25 billion allocated to NGO activities in birth control, vaccination drives in polio, DPT, measles, etc. would be very helpful.

The thing would be to lose a big chunk of it to taxation or lose a big chunk through useful investment and outright donation. A lot of activities in South America, Africa, and south Asia especially need funding. The middle east needs to address water shortages, for instance, as well as food production and environmental problems.

Whatever the adjustments are needed for global warming are and will be expensive. That's another area where money can be donated or invested.

Money obtained by nations by taxing these huge cash and asset stores should likewise be used for things like paying down national debt--not for defense, not for tax rebates, and the like. These windfalls of tax or forced spending may not be repeated, so they should be used for exceptional purposes.

I would agree with all those suggestions I think.

I don't think this is relevant to inequality. — fdrake

No, but it was dealing with your mistaken notion that the 99% don't have access to wealth generation mechanisms. — Agustino

Really? What access to them do the 99% have? Besides their jobs. — fdrake

Starting a business? — Agustino

No, that's a potential wealth generating mechanism. An important distinction.

Are you suggesting that those included in the 99% should each take a gamble with a 90% chance of failure by starting a business? That doesn't sound like good advice to me.

Are you suggesting that those included in the 99% should each take a gamble with a 90% chance of failure by starting a business? That doesn't sound like good advice to me. — Sapientia

That's nonsense. It's not a gamble since the result depends on you and your skills to quite a large extent. I advocate that you educate yourself before doing that.

The indication that 9/10 businesses fail on average says nothing about you and your potential. Your chances may be worse or better than that. Starting a business isn't playing the lottery.

But at what point do you set this limit? — Marchesk

I don't set the limit. I don't have the expertise of a politician or an economist. But I can point to examples of excessive pay. One example would be a Premier League footballer with a salary per week of £260,000.

If someone starts a software business today that becomes very successful and is used by millions of people, then they might become a billionaire at a fairly young age. Some of that will also be the result of investing their money, or funding other startups that turn out to be successful. — Marchesk

Their reward should be proportional. That ought to be satisfying enough. Anything beyond that would be greedy and ungrateful. It would be a bit like winning a race, but then complaining about not being awarded the silver medal and the bronze medal in addition to the gold medal. That's not being a good sport.

Do you penalize them for their company's success and returns on investment because it's excessive? — Marchesk

Yes.

What if it's an entertainer or athlete who becomes widely popular and makes a similar amount of money, partly by starting another business and investing. Do you redistribute some of their wealth as well? — Marchesk

If it's excessive, then yes.

I understand that extreme wealth imbalance is a problem, but then again, are not the self-made billionaires generating wealth and jobs as well? Aren't they growing the economic pie? Should we penalize them for being more successful than most? — Marchesk

They should be rewarded proportionately, and penalised for transgressions.

I think the main issue is a debt to your fellow man. As a unit, humanity has the potential to accomplish a level of Utopianism. Of course perfection does not exist but wealth cannot exist with out people to view you wealthy.

That's nonsense. It's not a gamble since the result depends on you and your skills to quite a large extent. I advocate that you educate yourself before doing that.

The indication that 9/10 businesses fail on average says nothing about you and your potential. Your chances may be worse or better than that. Starting a business isn't playing the lottery. — Agustino

Individualistic aspirational nonsense. It's not sensible to disregard the data that 9/10 businesses fail on average. There's a fine line between being confident and being foolhardy.

Please send me all of your fictive commodity (bank transfers are convenient) as it uselessly accumulates at AguCorp. — Bitter Crank

:D

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

PS your graph is a fiction in any event.

This is a game which plays into your hand. Any answer I give, you can just respond by questioning how or why that is fair. We clearly have different conceptions of fairness. If you refuse to recognise anything that doesn't accord with your own conception of fairness as fair, then what use is it for me to try to explain to you how it is fair? We might agree insofar as it is unfair that things are not as they ought to be, but we obviously disagree over how things ought to be.

Individualistic aspirational nonsense. It's not sensible to disregard the data that 9/10 businesses fail on average. There's a fine line between being confident and being foolhardy. — Sapientia

Statistics don't work like this in this case. Events - such as business success - are not random. Statistics must be considered differently with regards to business success than you would treat them when applied to radioactive decay for example. The phenomenon underneath radioactive decay is truly random, with specific outcomes being impossible to predict in individual cases. That's not the case in business.

Now take something like health. The chance of getting lung cancer is an average calculated for the average person. Now I hope you realise that if you never smoked, if you have an active lifestyle, if you never drink, if you've never been exposed to dangerous smokes/chemicals or radioactive elements (such as radon gas) etc. then your chances of getting lung cancer are significantly lower than that average. Why? Because you're not average, you're an outlier.

Average life expectancy in the UK may be 82 years, but that is irrelevant for you as an individual. If you live a healthy lifestyle, you have grandparents who lived up to 100, etc. then, granted that no accident occurs to you and you don't commit suicide, you can expect to live well into your 90s.

Statistics do not apply to individuals. You have to understand the underlying causes. Statistics in these things, which are actually determined, blind you from gaining an understanding of what actually leads to failure and what leads to success. Statistics just show what happens to the average. Are you average? Maybe you're not. Maybe you have more knowledge than most people in that business. Maybe you've studied it for a very long time. Maybe you have the right connections. Etc. Etc.

There's a fine line between being confident and being foolhardy. — Sapientia

Understanding that statistics don't apply to individuals and that you need to gain a deeper, bottom-up and causal understanding of success and failure in business before starting out isn't being foolhardy. It's just being rational. If you are rational, then you always minimise your risks.

This is the difference between judging based on "that's what always happens" (convention, statistics) and judging based on a bottom-up causal analysis of the factors that play into success. You need to think for yourself and understand the phenomenon. Understanding is key. If you always let others think for you, you can never do anything innovative or new.

A very good source explaining what I've said above is this blog. The article is quite old (and very long - not all of it is relevant), but it's interesting. You don't have to buy the book to read this particular chapter, it's all available for free here.

Any answer I give, you can just respond by questioning how or why that is fair. — Sapientia

No, I can't respond in that manner if you arrive at a basic truth that is unfair. What is unfairness? Unfairness is not giving to each what they deserve. So, first of all, we must understand what each person deserves. I would say that we all deserve access to the basic necessities of life - healthy food, clean water, access to education, access to healthcare, and shelter. Other things apart from those, must, to one extent or another, be earned by participation in society. It's okay if we provide these basic necessities for all, but no more. Providing more would be unjust, since we don't deserve more by default.

What is wrong with 1% owning 99% is that it simply is bad for the economy, if it means that a lot of people don't have much wealth.

Rich people and especially the very rich have one hugely important role in any economy: they save, they spend far less than they get in income. Now this is important, but so is spending also.

Now that is all and well, but when it means that the 99% aren't prosperous, that means that the aggregate demand takes a hit. One billionaire in the end doesn't spend so much as 1 000 millionaires. Above all, this is a question of absolute povetry: if you have a small wealthy community and in comes a billionaire, the people aren't at all less well off even if then 1% would own 99% and earlier it was 1% owning 50%. Unfortunately povetry is never measured in an absolute scale, which would be so utterly important to this.

In many Third World countries this is the Basic problem: even if there is a huge population, that population is to poor to be consumers and hence there isn't a domestic demand goods other than the basic necessities. Couple of hugely rich people who at worst move their income out of the country don't help.

The Basic point is that this isn't a moral issue, but an economic one. How wealth transfers are done is another matter, which is a political question.

Why is it a problem? If I have, say, x1000 what you have, how does that negatively impact you? What impacts you is how much you have, not how much others have relative to you. — Agustino

You can't approach a social problem by looking at individual cases so this is a bit of a red herring. Inequality in itself isn't the issue, it is how it arises on a widespread scale. We live in societies that predominantly favour capital over labour, allows capital as an expression and means of exercising political power and does not adequately deal with the lack of opportunity for large groups of people as a result of bad luck or socio-economic factors.

Inequality in a society where upward mobility is the rule rather than the exception would be much more likely to be acceptable than the situation we find ourselves in now, where it is reversed.

So that's the opportunity side.

It is also questionable that theory of value we apply now is fair. Take corporations that have limited liability and therefore externalise costs to society at large yet protects capital who also pay lower taxes. So they get the biggest rewards but their losses are limited. The idea that capital risks more is also something I reject. A labourer loses his livelihood, which is worse than losing part of your savings. The exercise of political power by means of capital creates an uneven playing field and this has become increasingly more uneven as power consolidates. It's basically class warfare and the rich are winning.

Inequality in a society where upward mobility is the rule rather than the exception would be much more likely to be acceptable than the situation we find ourselves in now, where it is reversed. — Benkei

I agree with you on this.

Take corporations that have limited liability and therefore externalise costs to society at large yet protects capital who also pay lower taxes. — Benkei

Well, it makes sense for a corporation to have limited liability. I mean if I start a business, and something goes wrong and my company is taken to court, do you think I should pay with all of my personal assets too? Limited liability is the only way to make sense of it, and say that the company is only liable to pay up to whatever its working capital happens to be.

I currently work as self-employed and an individual contractor, so I don't have limited liability, but that's one thing I'm interested in acquiring.

The idea that capital risks more is also something I reject. A labourer loses his livelihood, which is worse than losing part of your savings. — Benkei

If the labourer cannot find employment elsewhere that is true.

The exercise of political power by means of capital creates an uneven playing field and this has become increasingly more uneven as power consolidates — Benkei

I agree with this. That's the problem of corruption and big government getting in bed with big business.

Well, it makes sense for a corporation to have limited liability. I mean if I start a business, and something goes wrong and my company is taken to court, do you think I should pay with all of my personal assets too? — Agustino

Yes, I actually think that would be better. We had an industrial revolution without limited liability so why not? For a nice historical overview about how the benefits of corporations increased over time, you might be able to find the following article : THE CORPORATION AT ISSUE, PART I: THE CLASH WITH CLASSICAL LIBERAL VALUES AND THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR CAPITALIST PRACTICE. If you can't find it I can email them.

I got it, thanks!

Interesting, I never knew the industrial revolution happened without limited liability. But I can tell you that without limited liability things look quite scary, especially on a large scale where you can't really control what's happening in 100% of the cases.

No, I can't respond in that manner if you arrive at a basic truth that is unfair. What is unfairness? Unfairness is not giving to each what they deserve. So, first of all, we must understand what each person deserves. I would say that we all deserve access to the basic necessities of life - healthy food, clean water, access to education, access to healthcare, and shelter. Other things apart from those, must, to one extent or another, be earned by participation in society. It's okay if we provide these basic necessities for all, but no more. Providing more would be unjust, since we don't deserve more by default. — Agustino

That doesn't get the heart of our disagreement. That's preaching to the choir.

Our disagreement relates to the breaking down of what the various kinds of participation in society entitles one to. The way I see it, there are limits. No one is entitled to a grossly excessive share of overall wealth, like 99%. No one could have participated in society to such a great extent that that should be their reward. No one could have truly earned that much. And if you disagree, then I think that you're due a reevaluation.

Interesting, I never knew the industrial revolution happened without limited liability. But I can tell you that without limited liability things look quite scary, especially on a large scale where you can't really control what's happening in 100% of the cases. — Agustino

True. It would be unlikely we'd have such large corporations as we do now and progress would likely be slower. I suspect though the benefits could outweigh these.