The problem of Capitalism

Why and how are people (in the First World) being 'left behind'? There is no institutional or legal impediment to accessing opportunity, so what's going wrong?

 

1) You have access to all the money you want. All it takes is your determination to acquire it. NOTHING is preventing you.

2) Yes, for people who have zero determination to get ahead. Which just creates more determination NOT to get ahead.

3) NO, by their families/friends. Their VOLUNTARY COMMUNITY.

4) Caring for the old, young, and sick is the responsibility of family/friends. Family/friends IS voluntary community. Once again, I suspect you don't know what you mean when you say community. A nation is not a community.

 

Now here's the problem - coming from someone who loves Capitalism and liberal democracy
(more democracy than liberal, though) I DON'T WANT TO SEE CITIES BURNING.

 

People living under one government, having a common culture, history, language, and interests.

It could be a nation, especially if it's a small one. It's more like the classical city-state.

People who aren't there voluntarily aren't members of the community.

Friends and family members can certainly be a burden if they are chronically ill or disabled, especially mentally. That's just reality.

 

My rights do belong to me, as you know perfectly well, and if you claim you own them as your property, I have every right to take them from you by force, as you know perfectly well..

That is exactly what slave owners said to the abolitionists, as you know perfectly well. It was evil then, and it is evil now, as you also know perfectly well. You just seek to rationalize and justify any evil that you believe is in your own narrow financial interest.

Only if you came to own it rightfully, as you know perfectly well. There is no rightful way to become the owner of other people's rights without their voluntary consent or in return for just compensation, as you know perfectly well.

I know that it is a crucial insight that explains most of the evil in human history that is otherwise inexplicable. As I suspect you know perfectly well.

 

Appeasement of the mob delivers tyranny not liberty.

 

I have a right to my rights whether you think you own them or not, and WHETHER THE LAW SAYS YOU OWN THEM OR NOT.

I am aware that it is a key insight without which it is impossible to understand history, politics or economics.

 

The idea is to eliminate unjust and harmful taxes such as income tax, sales tax, profits tax, and the improvement value portion of property taxes. There are thousands of bad taxes that would best be abolished and replaced with a voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction. Moreover, justice in taxation and land tenure would greatly reduce or eliminate most of the social and economic problems that governments spend most of their revenue futilely trying to solve.

Yeah, yeah. "Meeza hatesa gubmint!" We know. Problem is, that's not a sentiment that could ever help solve real-world problems of governance.

 

I thought Europe invented slavery? The Slavs? Wasn’t Rome in Europe? Wasn’t Spartacus a Roman slave?

You’re like a crooked painting on the wall, looks nice, but a tad off. Your humanity doesn’t trump my right to acquire land without the permission of the Council of Habitats.

Property rights are the implementation of individual rights. They are not subject to anyone’s approval but buyer and seller.

Intellectuals who argue against Ayn Rand’s Objectivism are like those Geocentric scientists who mocked, ridiculed, and disagreed with Copernicus’s heliocentrism, and will gradually be forgotten.

Tribes don’t have rights. The State doesn’t have rights. Societies don’t have rights. Only individuals have rights.

 

No, child, that is just baldly false.

Nope. They can't. Google "incidence of taxation" and start reading. Taxes can only be shifted off the nominal taxpayer according to the relevant elasticities of supply and demand. As the supply of land is fixed -- i.e., its price elasticity of supply = 0 -- a tax on it up to its full rental value cannot, repeat, CANNOT be shifted onto anyone else. This is elementary economics that has been known for more than 200 years, and is not seriously disputed by any credible economist. It is merely economics that is not known to YOU, because you do not know any economics.

That depends on what is taxed, and how. Consider a tax on shoes. It could be levied in any number of ways: by price, by size, per pair, per pair owned, by value of shoes owned, by heel height, per pair manufactured, on shoe imports or exports, etc., etc. Each of those taxes will have different effects on the market for shoes, and be paid by different people in different proportions.

No, child. It's obvious you've never taken Finance 101, let alone Economics 101. I have, and have also edited an accounting textbook. You have not, and I will thank you to remember it. I have been spanking Internet economic know-nothings on this topic for more than 25 years, so please think twice before making an even bigger fool of yourself.

While actually revealing himself to be more of a kindergarten pupil in the realm of economics....

 

It might be YOUR city. Best to share, particularly when all jobs are gone.

 

I was able to learn more than Rand taught, and thus to surpass her understanding. You are not. Simple.

 

No, that's just absurd and disingenuous nonsense from you. I propose only a peaceful transition to justice in public revenue and land tenure -- and to STOP the ANNUAL killing of millions by landowners.

Nope. The current "owners" are the ones stealing it, from all who would otherwise be at liberty to use it. I just want them to pay the market price for what they are taking. You want them to be legally entitled to continue taking it without paying for it. You are the one advocating and justifying stealing, not me, and I will thank you to remember it.

You can't address my actual arguments, so you have to resort to puerile strawman fallacies. Simple.

 

Oh, go for it, Mr. Geocentric, but assertions aren’t accomplishments—and your having a logically difficult time proving your assertions are an accomplishment.

As I said. Write a novel, publish your thesis. Who knows, in this Post Modern world you might become the new Scientology; but in the real world, you’ll never refute Ayn Rand’s Objectivism anymore than the Geocentrics could disprove Copernicus’ Heliocentricism.

 

What absurd, disingenuous nonsense. There has never been a private land title anywhere on earth that was based on any such fairy-tale, and you know it. All private ownership of land has always been based on nothing but forcible dispossession of all who would otherwise be at liberty to use it. You KNOW this. Of course you do. You just have to contrive some way of not knowing it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

 

So, who owns Mars when the first man steps on it? In the novel Shane, who was right, the cattle ranchers or the sud busters? In the movie Open Range, who acted morally and served justice, the landowners or the the open range cattle men?

 

No, they are not. That's just utter ignorance on your part.

Lots of people DO, for lots of reasons.

<yawn> Do you think the return to bonds is equal to the return to stocks? Are you aware that people and institutions do buy and own bonds?

They prove you wrong. That's not interesting because pretty much everything in the world proves you wrong.

Yes: you just admitted that you are wrong and I am right.

 

No one. Duh. Are you so remote from reality that you think Neil Armstrong's heirs own the moon??? REALLYYYYY????

Neither, but the sodbusters had more right on their side than the ranchers because they had the more productive use for the land.

Neither: they were both trying to get something for nothing by depriving others of their rights to liberty.

 

Open Range: Just who rights were they violating? The Ranchers wanted their land protected, the Open Ranger’s wanted to move their cattle through without paying tribute to the community of ranchers?

According to your theory, the ranchers did because they were acting in the interest of the community as a whole; while the individuals moving their cattle to market only wanted to make a buck. So, other than these two sides, who else’s rights were in jeopardy?

First Man on Mars: The man, let’s call him D’nar Blaze, lands on Mars and starts terra farming. Does he need permission? If so, whose?

Shane: The sod busters—the cattle ranchers had no right to claim land based on the principle of “as far as the eye can see.” They had the right to that wich they staked out, used and developed, same rights as the Sod busters.

I still think you’re a scam at worst, a hidden devil’s advocate wearing a jokers smile at best.

 

Garbage. It's reality.

And genetics, and luck. I know a man who witnessed his mother's shotgun suicide at the age of five. Sheer bad luck. Family and community did their best to help him, but he was almost catatonic for years, and never recovered enough to have a normal life. Who is responsible for him? If I were his little brother, his only surviving family, would it be me?

Give your head a shake.

Sometimes. And sometimes all those things aren't enough, and sometimes even without those things, someone becomes a responsible adult. You can't predict how things are going to work out. Sometimes you think you are doing the right thing, and you are actually screwing up. A challenge that one person overcomes and is strengthened by will break someone who isn't that strong. You can't tell.

I've already stipulated that it is the community that has to be responsible, and I've explained why.

?? Huh? And you call my views appalling?? What about the little guy who watched his mom's brains sprayed on the ceiling, hmmmmmm? He's just supposed to man up?

You are making me ill.

You obviously know nothing of the relevant science, sorry. There are many ways the brain can malfunction with no detectable injury, while in other cases, it seems to function normally despite catastrophic trauma. It is an inconceivably complex system, and while there is a lot of redundancy in it, its behavior remains unpredictable.

 

Not if you know motivation.

 

Haven't seen it. But I read, many years ago, almost everything Rand ever wrote, and still own a complete set of The Objectivist. So you need to consider whether I am as uninformed on the subject as you believe.

"Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever." -- Ayn Rand

That's the rule that ultimately persuaded me to get past her.

 

We live under one govt now, since we don't have two party rule.

If you want 'common language, culture, interests' etc, you'll need to move to North Korea. multicultural democracies will NEVER have that.

A 'small' nation? How does that work for America?

So what are you going to do about all those people who don't want to volunteer for your Glorious Nation?

Friends and family are no more burdens to you, than you are to them. MUTUAL SUPPORT via COMMUNITY (you know .. the very thing you claim to be striving for?) is just that - mutual. As for 'mentally' disabled, they're not part of the equation. Just as addicts and gamblers are not. We're only talking about the young, the aged, and the (physically) sick.

 

So you are saying: fairly good is better than bloody awful, and therefore fairly good is good enough.

Philip Lowe who knows something about economics (but not enough, as I expect the coming year will show) -
certainly knows that fairly good is not always good enough...as flat wages growth are lurching Australians
toward recession

 

Eliminate social welfare and see what happens.

[That's why I promote MMT's Job Guarantee].

Everyone wants to "get ahead". Get back to me when your nation has above poverty employment for everyone who wants a job.

Nation (def.):

a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.

ie a community.... whether voluntary or not.

As bringiton would say, you are making s@?# up.