So you're just objecting to the phrase. Okay.

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

Of course not. I see no need to jump to such drastic measures. How could they resist? The authorities could just seize funds or assets, couldn't they? They could just take over ownership. Or they could impose economic sanctions. Or resistance could even be met with a prison sentence before resorting to murder.

Yes, it's very easy for totalitarian regimes to do what they want.

What if they resist? — Thorongil

Resistance is futile. Their wealth will be distributed.

Yes, it's very easy for totalitarian regimes to do what they want. — Thorongil

If what I said is totalitarian, then I can't think of a government that is not totalitarian. Authorities do those things under the current system. Are you suggesting that these methods should not be employed by the state under any circumstance, because that would amount to totalitarianism? That'd be a bit of a stretch. It's not either Thorongil's brand of liberalism or totalitarianism. There's space in between.

Authorities do those things under the current system. — Sapientia

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.

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

I'm aware of that. They do it under different circumstances. But that could change. And no, that doesn't necessarily mean totalitarianism; and no, totalitarianism is not what I'm advocating. I'm a democrat.

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.

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

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.

Maybe Sapientia can, but I can't guarantee that wealth distribution would not decrease the standard of living. 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.

In one of my quoted passages, the economist noted that the present extremely disproportionate distribution of income was not always the case. The present imbalance has accumulated since the 1970s. Within the structure of this society, the best bet would be to squeeze the wealth out of the rich by a series of tax reforms which would aim at two things: Putting idle cash to work (like buying municipal bonds for infrastructure), and secondly, extracting the wealth through taxes. Tax law could make receiving an out-of-proportion income very disadvantageous.

It is my belief that putting the rich on a stringent diet and gradually spreading the wealth would be constructive. Giving people a huge windfall would probably result in tons of wasted money and inflation, as way too much money suddenly started chasing the normal supply of goods.

One of the changes I would like to see is a guaranteed minimum income. The economy has changed, and we are probably not going to see anything close to full, good employment again. Long-term unemployed and people who have left the workforce (because there was no work), need a minimum stable income both for social stability and for their own good. Everything paid to them will be spent back into the economy. It's really quite doable.

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 — Thorongil

It should be well within the capabilities of the G20, or G30, to bring an end to tax sheltering by pisspot countries.

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

I agree. I'm not sure why the question is being framed as total wealth redistribution versus no wealth redistribution, rather than how much.
If the government were to pursue all wealth, which seems unlikely considering how many of the wealthy are in government, it would remove any incentive for innovation or hard work. Taking a portion could alleviate many ills of society while still allowing for entrepreneurship to be adequately compensated.

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

Please cite it here.

I don't need no "value-quantity graph" to know right from wrong. — Sapientia

"No, I need no analysis, screw that, I've already decided it's unfair" :-}



You two, especially Sapientia, have some serious misunderstanding about what wealth is.

For example, in his very first post, Sapientia compares the yearly income of an individual paramedic with the total assets of the Hinduja family. Of course, that's like comparing apples and oranges, because the two are NOT the same.

Wealth is a measure of your control over (1) value-creating mechanisms (production), and (2) distribution networks that can make them widely available. Now when you two say something as idiotic as the "redistribution of wealth", you don't understand what you're talking about. What are you going to redistribute from the Hinduja family? :s You're going to shut down the factories, sell the land, buildings, inventory, etc. and then re-distribute the money or what? :s You're going to give each paramedic a piece of paper saying that he owns a teeny tiny part of the business and what will he do with it, use it as toilet paper? :s He has no time to check what the business is doing, nor is he capable to manage it to any extent.

Now you may think that the Hinduja family live very lavish lifestyles. Maybe, I don't know. You should check what their incomes are. Maybe their incomes are not fair, maybe they are. But I can tell you one thing for sure - they do deserve to take home many many many orders of magnitude more than a single paramedic. A single paramedic does not save lives alone. He saves lives by relying on instruments created by people like the Hinduja families, cars, oil, phones, etc.

Furthermore, the quantity of good done by a single paramedic is small. A single paramedic hasn't created a system of value-production and distribution of that value through society. Rather he participates in such a system. So he does a lot of good, but to how many people per year? 3000? And out of those 3000, only a teeny tiny percentage are actually "saved". Most people who call the paramedic are given a pat on their back and sent on their way.

https://emtlife.com/threads/how-often-do-paramedics-save-lives.30587/

Well someone like the Hinduja family, they would help maybe 40-50 million or more people per year. Even if they help each person less than the paramedic does, overall they do provide far more help to society than an individual paramedic, hence why they make more.

Let's say that the Hinduja family pockets $90 million per year in income (which seems quite excessive at first). That means they are equivalent to 3000 paramedics. That seems reasonable. They probably provide as much value as 3000 paramedics in a year.

Wealth is a measure of your control over (1) value-creating mechanisms (production), and (2) distribution networks that can make them widely available. — Agustino

And how does the Hinduja family have control over production and distribution? They do it the old fashioned way. They own it.

Well someone like the Hinduja family, they would help maybe 40-50 million or more people per year. — Agustino

Regular Mother Theresa's they are.

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.

Look: I think everybody understands that successful businesses are run by talented, hard-working, more-or-less honest opportunists and exploiters. The legal and political systems of the West, and some developed/developing countries is structured to disproportionately favor and facilitate opportunism and exploitation.

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.

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. 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.

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.

Enlarge the situation to the size of the Hinduja family, and that will explain how they got where they are.

I have to go now. I didn't get into the selling side of opportunism and exploitation.

And how does the Hinduja family have control over production and distribution? They do it the old fashioned way. They own it. — Bitter Crank

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.

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

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.

Both depend on each other.

I think everybody understands that successful businesses are run by talented, hard-working, more-or-less honest opportunists and exploiters. — 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.

That's what wealth and ownership ultimately is. It is control over the production and distribution networks. All workers together cannot control production and distribution, since they're busy working on actually producing the products.

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

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.

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

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.

Employees aren't exploited either so long as they get a fair share for the value that they produce. Most of the "heavy duty" work is carried by the SYSTEM that is created - that's what the entrepreneur works on - not by the individual worker. If you add all the workers together - all their salaries - you get probably what is the biggest single cost for all businesses. You add the raw material costs, and all other associated expenses, and you get the full costs. Where does the profit, the difference between revenue and costs come from? It comes from the system of automated production and the scale achieved by the distribution network setup by the entrepreneur.

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

Right, that's how I currently am, pretty much, apart from accounting and some legal help.

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

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?"

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

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.

But I think it's wiser to build a business where the people know they can trust you and you can trust them.

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

That's why internationalism is important. "Workers of the world, unite!"

The real question is why this needed a thread of its own.

No, the real question is "Which side are you on?"

Which side are you on?
They say in Harlan County there are no neutrals there.
You'll either be union man or thug for J. H. Blair.§
Which side are you on?

§ Harlan County Kentucky is coal country. J. H. Blair was a County Sheriff in the pocket of union-busting miner-killing coal companies.

Pete Seeger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iAIM02kv0g

Barry Bragg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbddqXib814

making the world safe for capitalism... The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-yRKfD2GIk

Here we are, seeking out the reds
Trying to keep the communists in order
Just remember when you're sleeping in your beds
They're only two days drive from the texas border

How can a country large as ours
Be scared of such a threat
Well if they won't work for us
They're against us you can bet
They may be sovereign countries
But you folks at home forget
That they all want what we've got
But they don't know it yet

We're making the world safe for capitalism

Here we come with our candy and our guns
And our corporate muscle marches in behind us
For freedom's just another world for nothing left to sell
And if you want narcotics we can get you those as well

We help the multi-nationals
When they cry out protect us
The locals scream and shout a bit
But we don't let that affect us
We're here to lend a helping hand
In case they don't elect us
How dare they buy our products
Yet still they don't respect us

We're making the world safe for capitalism

If you thought the army
Was here protecting people like yourself
I've some news for you
We're here to defend wealth
Away with nuns and bishops
The good lord will help those that help themselves
I've some news for you
We're here to defend wealth

We're making the world safe for capitalism

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

See? Bitter Crank gets it. Agustino, Thorongil, and Michael need to up their game.

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

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.

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

Good answer.

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

Maybe it will. Communism isn't off the table.

The talk of shares stemmed from you. I just went along with it. My main point was about forceful redistribution in a broader sense. There would be various ways to go about that. As I've stressed before, I too have no expertise in economics. I would go with what works without sacrificing too much.

I think that you're getting a bit too carried away with yourself here, and that you need to slow down and carefully go back over a few things.

What do you mean, "given that there's now no trading"? Why would that be a given? That wasn't something that I said, so are you suggesting that it's a consequence of something that I've said? I mentioned trade that would not be as free, but I didn't mention anything about no trade at all.

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

No, I can't guarantee that, and I am willing to consider the middle ground of which you speak.

I share your worry, and I have been reading about political history in the United Kingdom in recent years, so I have some understanding - albeit not enough of an understanding - of those last few sentences of yours. But I haven't given up hope yet, and if I am forced to make some compromises here and there along the way, then so be it. Certainly, I have not discarded the idea of government intervention, in some form or other.

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

If a more gradual approach would work better, then a more gradual approach is what I would favour. I'm reasonable like that.

And I'm not completely historically ignorant, either. I have read a bit about the so-called great leap forward, for example.

Better for the 1% to have £1,000,000 and the 99% to have £30,000 than for everyone to have £20,000. — Michael

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.

Nicely put. (Y)

See? Bitter Crank gets it. Agustino, Thorongil, and Michael need to up their game.

I get it too, I already knew. The trickle down can so easily be syphoned off into tax havens when money becomes digital.

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

Then as I said before, you should speak to the paramedic's employer. Me and my brownie business have nothing to do with how much he gets paid. And I might not actually have a high salary. I just own 50% of a business that owns a number of assets and makes enough of a profit that some investor has valued it at £2,000,000 and chosen to buy the other half of the company with that in mind.

I think it's ridiculous to then decide that because saving lives is more importing than making brownies that ownership of my company should be forcibly redistributed.

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

I was referring to Rawls' theory. There are other parts to it that include equal rights to vote and run for office, freedom of speech and assembly, etc.

The issue here seems to just be the unequal distribution of wealth. There's nothing in principle wrong with it. Given that in Sap's hypothetical scenario the government has the power and willingness to forcibly redistribute wealth, we're clearly not dealing with a plutocratic dystopia.