A rather ominous declaration. What if they resist? Are you going to murder them? Stalin tried that with the kulaks, and after piling up their corpses, the result of the redistribution was mass famine. — Thorongil
Yes, it's very easy for totalitarian regimes to do what they want. — Thorongil
No, they don't do what you're apparently suggesting, which is wealth confiscation across the board. Perhaps you only want to steal from Sri and Gopi Hinduja, though, I don't know. — Thorongil
In the world we live in, nobody will arrest you for making a million bucks when you sell your start up brownie making operation. That doesn't make your brownies as worth while as saved lives — Bitter Crank
Now maybe there is a middle ground between excessive wealth imbalance and equal but poor for everyone. One thing you don't want to do is cripple economic output by disentivizing people. You also don't want to the government to play the role of the market. That's been tried, and it doesn't work well. — Marchesk
Please cite it here.I did that in the other discussion: the discussion that you created, and which this discussion is responding to. You saw it with your own eyes. — Sapientia
"No, I need no analysis, screw that, I've already decided it's unfair" :-}I don't need no "value-quantity graph" to know right from wrong. — Sapientia
Wealth is a measure of your control over (1) value-creating mechanisms (production), and (2) distribution networks that can make them widely available. — Agustino
Well someone like the Hinduja family, they would help maybe 40-50 million or more people per year. — Agustino
Yeah, of course they own it, because they built the infrastructure of the value generation and distribution networks themselves from the ground up. Otherwise, they wouldn't get to own it.And how does the Hinduja family have control over production and distribution? They do it the old fashioned way. They own it. — Bitter Crank
Right - and without the Hinduja family, the 75,000 employees and millions of consumers wouldn't have access to the products and services they do today.It would be more accurate to say that 40-50 million people help the Hinduja family. Without their 75,000 employees and millions of consumers, the Hinduja family would be back in Karachi peddling used pots and pans from a small cart. — Bitter Crank
They are not opportunists and exploiters at all. That's where you have it wrong. You cannot eliminate the entrepreneur - even in communism, there would be people who CONTROL the value generation mechanisms and distribution networks. They are your capitalists, it doesn't matter that on paper it says that all the employees own the business. They may own it, but they surely can't all control it.I think everybody understands that successful businesses are run by talented, hard-working, more-or-less honest opportunists and exploiters. — Bitter Crank
It doesn't facilitate exploitation, at least not in this regard. If I, as Michael told you, make homemade brownies, start selling them making use of the internet say, and I'm doing this all alone, make my startup capital that way, and then I proceed to employ people to make them, while I'm busy growing my distribution network, getting more traffic to my website, etc. etc. until I have sold so many brownies, to so many willing customers, that I have become mega rich, what's the problem? And when I say I became "mega rich" all that means is that I own control of the (now big) production and distribution networks that I've created.The legal and political systems of the West, and some developed/developing countries is structured to disproportionately favor and facilitate opportunism and exploitation. — Bitter Crank
How is someone exploiting consumers? Consumers aren't forced to buy, they surrender the money to gain access to a product that they desire, to something valuable that can help them. So for example, say you have arthritis. I come to you, and I ask you, "Do you have stiff joints and frequent joint pain?" you say yes. So then I'm like "Why not try this XXXX natural supplement that I sell, here's the research on it, and if it makes you feel better we can set up a monthly recurring fee and it's delivered to your door on the very same day, you don't have to do anything. If you don't like it, then I'll give you a 100% money back guarantee". You say yes. What's the problem with that? That's how marketing works. Build awareness of pain/problem, show a potential solution, and the customer flips out the wallet and buys.Capitalism is based in that legal and political framework. Without it, opportunists and exploiters would have to resort to crude and primitive methods (a la mafia) to succeed. Capitalism avoids individual mafia operations by legalizing and enforcing exploitation of both workers and consumers by the opportunistic companies it spawns. At least it does now. In an earlier era of capitalism, there wasn't all that much difference between a crooked operation and a righteous one. — Bitter Crank
Right, that's how I currently am, pretty much, apart from accounting and some legal help.I don't know how big your operation is. I am guessing you are more like a hard-working farmer who works by himself. He has to do all the hard work of running the small farm--and it is a lot of hard work. His profit at the end of the year are his own. — Bitter Crank
To own many farms he has to set up the system, nobody will do it for him. Nobody comes to his house and tells him "wouldn't you like to own all these farms kind Sir?"If, however, he is a bright opportunist and owns many farms and employs many people, he will--of necessity, since he is a capitalist--exploit the people that work for him. He will get rich, they will not, though they are doing all the work and he merely cracks the whip. — Bitter Crank
Depends on what kind of business you want to run. You can certainly opt for the high employee turnover model, where you don't give a damn about the people who work in your business, and every chance you get to screw them over you use to the fullest. The problem with that, apart from the moral issues, is that it doesn't work very well, and it increases your costs. Furthermore, you never entrench yourself as a pillar of your community, and therefore are always disposable - you're always the object around which everyone's anger is likely to focus. People aren't going to go die with you in battle. The first opportunity they get, they will betray you. Now if that's the kind of business you want to build, up to you.He will pay them as little as possible. He will fire them if they start organizing a union to protect their own interests. He will probably fire them if he thinks they are not working hard enough. He might not offer any health insurance. He might not give them vacation time. If unemployment in his neck of the woods is high, he will feel very secure. There's always somebody else who wants a job. If unemployment is very low, he might be forced to pay more, or offer benefits. If things get too bad, his employees might organize a walkout, leaving crops unharvested and several thousand cows waiting for their twice daily milking. — Bitter Crank
If you're a democrat, then you realize that the democratic process is just that, a process. It takes time to implement policies. If the rich see that their wealth might be confiscated in the near future, they will simply move it elsewhere before the law is passed.
Dictatorships don't have to wait, however. — Thorongil
Sure. But what has that go to do with money? — Michael
The point Sapientia is making (and I agree with his view) is that jobs that involve saving lives, or enhancing minds (teachers, for instance) are worth more than making money, and that those worthwhile jobs should be paid more. — Bitter Crank
What kind of economy would allow for that? How can the millions of paramedics and teachers ever be richer than the man who owns 10% of a business with annual profits of a £1 billion? — Michael
They won't be richer than your plutocrat, and after forced redistribution, your plutocrat won't be rich and will have to get a real job. He might want to be something useful like a sanitation worker. And because of the redistribution of wealth, he will be better paid than sanitation workers were before the redistribution.
He gets a real job doing something useful, and gets paid a decent wage. Win win. — Bitter Crank
And do what with them? Owning shares doesn't help put food on the table. They can't sell them because there's nobody to buy them any more. I suppose if every company was forced to pay out dividends, but only enough to amount to a supplementary income else all these paramedics and teachers will just quit and live of these payments. But dividends reduce share value, and given that there's now no trading the shares won't really increase (especially given that the company now has less money to invest and grow). Rinse and repeat, until the shares aren't worth much (although I'm no expert in economics, so maybe I'm missing something). And of course no new businesses will be started as there's now no incentive.
Again, I think your idealistic scenario makes no economic sense. Or maybe this will just end up as communism? — Michael
Agreed, but can you and Sapientia guarantee that your wealth distribution doesn't lower the standard of living for everyone? Because although fairness is a good principle, I would rather live in an unequal world where most people have a higher standard of living, than one where most people struggle to make ends meet.
In other words, I would worry that in attempt to be fair, you would ruin the economy by ignoring sound economic principles.
Now maybe there is a middle ground between excessive wealth imbalance and equal but poor for everyone. One thing you don't want to do is cripple economic output by disentivizing people. You also don't want to the government to play the role of the market. That's been tried, and it doesn't work well. — Marchesk
Taking all the wealth of the rich and dividing it up evenly among the population would almost certainly not work out well. A better approach is to bring about change in the distribution of wealth more gradually. — Bitter Crank
Better for the 1% to have £1,000,000 and the 99% to have £30,000 than for everyone to have £20,000. — Michael
I get it too, I already knew. The trickle down can so easily be syphoned off into tax havens when money becomes digital.
See? Bitter Crank gets it. Agustino, Thorongil, and Michael need to up their game.
I am not necessarily arguing that they should be paid more than that man, just that they should be paid more than they currently are, and that that man should be paid less than he currently is. What kind of economy would allow for that? A fairer economy. — Sapientia
No, not necessarily. It's not even remotely that simple. There's more to quality of life than the gross amount of money we have at our disposal even if we specify that money has exactly the same purchasing power. For example, how are the rich using their money in Sapientia's 1%/99% scenario? Suppose they're using it to create a society of blind consumers just able enough to work and buy their crap? Suppose they have absolute control over the media and politics (which they would considering they own 99% of the wealth) and that they use this to unfairly entrench their power and privilege? Suppose their ultimate aim is to deindividualise the 99% to the point where no-one but them and their progeny are even able to think beyond their current circumstances? It's not impossible to have a dystopia with a solid median income but where the disparities in material wealth are so great that the relative power of those with the lesser share becomes essentially negligible. And as technology advances the means to create such a dystopia become much more accessible to those at the top of the wealth pyramid. To give the 1%, 99% of the wealth would be to give them virtually 100% of the power over which direction society goes in and that would be social and (for the majority) personal suicide.
So, we're not just talking about decontextualised amounts of money here, we're talking about social reality and our place in it. I'd much rather live in a less materialistic, more creative and more democratic society where everyone has a lower average amount of money and doesn't care because they're not blind materially-obsessed consumers than a run-away plutocracy where we have a bit more but that's likely to become intolerably oppressive if not outright dystopian. — Baden
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