Lucas: Shame on the redistributionists
susupply
<< Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most
seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of
distribution. In this very minute, a child is being born to an American
family and another child, equally valued by God, is being born to a family
in India. The resources of all kinds that will be at the disposal of this
new American will be on the order of 15 times the resources available to his
Indian brother. This seems to us a terrible wrong, justifying direct
corrective action, and perhaps some actions of this kind can and should be
taken. But of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of
people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution
to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution
of resources from rich to poor. The potential for improving the lives of
poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is
nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing
production.>>
ro...@telus.net
wrote:
><< Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most
>seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of
>distribution.
Economists talk so much about distribution, Gini coefficients, etc. in
order to discourage anyone from thinking about exactly _how_ the
distribution got to be the way it is.
-- Roy L
Matt Timmermans
> Economists talk so much about distribution, Gini coefficients, etc. in
> order to discourage anyone from thinking about exactly _how_ the
> distribution got to be the way it is.
Determining the optimal distribution and how best to encourage movement in
that direction is far more practically important than worrying about _how_
it got to be the way it is.
Richard
Given the evident power that the law of unintended consequences
enjoys in economics, maybe that's not such a true statement.
--
Don't believe anything unless you have thought it through for
yourself. (Anna Pell Wheeler, 1883-1966)
sinister
"Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
news:uSvwc.56914$Hn.15...@news20.bellglobal.com...
Not when one of the most important factors behind the current distribution
is government forcing people to pay holders of titles to scarce natural
resources like land for the use of said resources.
>
>
>
Matt Timmermans
"sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:rNJwc.7944$QI2....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
in
> > that direction is far more practically important than worrying about
_how_
> > it got to be the way it is.
>
> Not when one of the most important factors behind the current distribution
> is government forcing people to pay holders of titles to scarce natural
> resources like land for the use of said resources.
If the most socially efficient distribution of wealth is highly skewed, and
I believe it is, and if it's better to have one's wealth determined by past
economic success than by lottery or decree, and I believe it is, then there
must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to make
it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay wealthy
even with their increased consumption.
Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.
Since any income produced by any such mechanism is economically classified
as rent, I have to confess that I think a little rent is a good thing.
There may be too much rent available today, and deciding how much is best is
part of the problem I referred to as important above, but the basic notion
of rent is not inherently evil when it is created and maintained by
consensus.
I, and most people, I think, want whatever wealth I leave to my children to
be of benefit to them, for example -- that's one of the primary reasons I
work for it. Since I can't expect a free society to allow special rent just
for my kids, I must concede it to everyone else. Similarly, I expect
whatever wealth I manage to accrue during my lifetime to be of benefit to
me, so I grant the same to everyone else as well. We should all have to
play the game by the same rules, and we pretty much do.
In short, while I accept Georgists' argument that rent taxes are
economically efficient, I don't accept their claim to the moral high ground.
I think that the benefits of wealth should exist, and I accept the
fundamental mechanism that produces them -- rent -- because it's better than
the alternatives, and so a lot of the hue and cry about the "evil landlords"
who currently have the wealth and get to collect these rents sounds like
petty jealousy to me.
--
Matt.
sinister
That's because you don't understand the moral force of the Georgist
position.
In the case of land, it's not just some abstract economic rent---it's
*scarcity* rent. The land you give your kids is a scarce resource---if your
kids have privileged claim to it, that means someone else is *not* allowed
any access to it. And that position is enforced by the threat of government
violence.
Your position, at least on that of land, is feudalistic. You're not
conceding rent to "everyone else"; you're conceding it to those that already
have title to scarce resources.
As for "We should all have to play the game by the same rules, and we pretty
much do," that's a meaningless statement from a moral perspective. The
institution of slavery was also built on a system of rules. The question is
whether the rules are *fair*.
>
> --
> Matt.
>
>
sinister
>
> "sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
> news:rNJwc.7944$QI2....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
> >
> > "Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
> > > Determining the optimal distribution and how best to encourage
movement
> in
> > > that direction is far more practically important than worrying about
> _how_
> > > it got to be the way it is.
> >
> > Not when one of the most important factors behind the current
distribution
> > is government forcing people to pay holders of titles to scarce natural
> > resources like land for the use of said resources.
>
> If the most socially efficient distribution of wealth is highly skewed,
and
I misread this the first time I saw it, probably because it's extremely odd.
Why would you ever think that the "most socially efficient distribution of
wealth is highly skewed"? What does that even mean?
> I believe it is, and if it's better to have one's wealth determined by
past
> economic success than by lottery or decree, and I believe it is, then
there
> must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to make
> it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay
wealthy
> even with their increased consumption.
Bizarre. You're taking the position that the wealthy should be able to
consume at higher levels and not work or take high risks to maintain their
wealth.
> Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.
And the problem with that is...?
> Since any income produced by any such mechanism is economically classified
> as rent, I have to confess that I think a little rent is a good thing.
Fine, except that your line of reasoning is morally repugnant.
> There may be too much rent available today, and deciding how much is best
is
> part of the problem I referred to as important above, but the basic notion
> of rent is not inherently evil when it is created and maintained by
> consensus.
No, it should be maintained by *informed consensus*.
> I, and most people, I think, want whatever wealth I leave to my children
to
> be of benefit to them, for example -- that's one of the primary reasons I
> work for it. Since I can't expect a free society to allow special rent
just
> for my kids, I must concede it to everyone else. Similarly, I expect
Bizarre and incoherent. Rent is zero-sum---when you collect rent, someone
else pays for it. So when your kids benefit by collecting rent, others'
kids lose. Not only that; the benefits are conferred by an enforcement
regime backed by the government's monopoly on violence.
> whatever wealth I manage to accrue during my lifetime to be of benefit to
> me, so I grant the same to everyone else as well. We should all have to
> play the game by the same rules, and we pretty much do.
>
> In short, while I accept Georgists' argument that rent taxes are
> economically efficient, I don't accept their claim to the moral high
ground.
> I think that the benefits of wealth should exist, and I accept the
> fundamental mechanism that produces them -- rent -- because it's better
than
> the alternatives, and so a lot of the hue and cry about the "evil
landlords"
> who currently have the wealth and get to collect these rents sounds like
> petty jealousy to me.
It's not petty jealousy---it's a position informed by a *coherent* theory of
social justice as well as theory and empirical results on economic
efficiency, as opposed to incoherent feudalistic rantings informed by a
sense of entitlement.
>
> --
> Matt.
>
>
ro...@telus.net
<mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>"sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
>news:rNJwc.7944$QI2....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
>>
>> "Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
>> > Determining the optimal distribution and how best to encourage movement
>in
>> > that direction is far more practically important than worrying about
>_how_
>> > it got to be the way it is.
>>
>> Not when one of the most important factors behind the current distribution
>> is government forcing people to pay holders of titles to scarce natural
>> resources like land for the use of said resources.
>
>If the most socially efficient distribution of wealth is highly skewed, and
>I believe it is,
Hmmm. What is "social efficiency"? Is it something like the degree
to which others are forcibly compelled to serve your ends?
>and if it's better to have one's wealth determined by past
>economic success than by lottery or decree, and I believe it is,
??? This simply assumes that "economic success" (whatever that is) is
not itself determined by lottery or decree.
>then there
>must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to make
>it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay wealthy
>even with their increased consumption.
?? Wait a minute. Nobody could actually believe anything that evil,
so you must be just trolling, right?
_Right_??
>Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.
Well, flatter than it is now with such mechanisms in place, anyway.
>Since any income produced by any such mechanism is economically classified
>as rent, I have to confess that I think a little rent is a good thing.
So you think it is a good thing that the productive poor are currently
robbed of the fruits of their labor, and the loot given to the
unproductive rich? Thank you for proving that you really are either
evil or trolling.
>There may be too much rent available today, and deciding how much is best is
>part of the problem I referred to as important above, but the basic notion
>of rent is not inherently evil when it is created and maintained by
>consensus.
Like the consensus that slave owners were entitled to collect the
rents their privilege created?
>I, and most people, I think, want whatever wealth I leave to my children to
>be of benefit to them, for example -- that's one of the primary reasons I
>work for it.
Just as long as you are clear that the degree to which your children's
inherited wealth will allow them to receive rent income they have not
earned will be inversely related to the degree to which other people's
children's labor will allow them to receive the income they _have_
earned.
At least you appear to understand the type of mechanism that will make
the children of the rich the beneficiaries of crimes committed against
working people's children.
>Since I can't expect a free society to allow special rent just
>for my kids, I must concede it to everyone else.
To be more accurate, you can't expect a _free_ society to allow
private capture and retention of rents at all.
>Similarly, I expect
>whatever wealth I manage to accrue during my lifetime to be of benefit to
>me, so I grant the same to everyone else as well.
The rent income your wealth brings you, which you do not earn, is
income that is forcibly taken from those who do earn it.
>We should all have to
>play the game by the same rules, and we pretty much do.
Having the same rules for everyone is not enough to guarantee the
rules will be fair. A rule that allocated income in strict proportion
to wealth would be the same for everyone, but hardly very fair to the
working poor.
>In short, while I accept Georgists' argument that rent taxes are
>economically efficient,
IOW, you think it is preferable for the rich be more privileged
relative to working people than for the whole society to be absolutely
wealthier in material terms. Well, that's clear enough.
>I don't accept their claim to the moral high ground.
Right. Because you are evil, you do not accept that freedom and
justice are more moral than tyranny and privilege.
>I think that the benefits of wealth should exist, and I accept the
>fundamental mechanism that produces them -- rent -- because it's better than
>the alternatives,
Better for the rentiers, that is....
>and so a lot of the hue and cry about the "evil landlords"
>who currently have the wealth and get to collect these rents sounds like
>petty jealousy to me.
Well, I think I have made it clear what your preference for tyranny
and privilege over freedom and justice sounds like to me: the
deliberate, vicious, unrepentant greed of a servant and beneficiary of
Evil.
-- Roy L
Matt Timmermans
> >If the most socially efficient distribution of wealth is highly skewed,
and
> >I believe it is,
>
> Hmmm. What is "social efficiency"? Is it something like the degree
> to which others are forcibly compelled to serve your ends?
Meaning the distribution that best promotes the kind of society we want.
Many of the products of our society that I most admire would not have
happenned without people with too much power and/or money to burn. It's
worth skimming a little wealth off across the top of the whole society so
that you can create a few concentrations of wealth that make those sorts of
endeavours possible.
> >then there
> >must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to
make
> >it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay
wealthy
> >even with their increased consumption.
>
> ?? Wait a minute. Nobody could actually believe anything that evil,
> so you must be just trolling, right?
No. It's only evil if its taken to the point of oppression. It may be past
that point today, or it may not be. My only hard assertion here is that
there should be a non-zero amount of inertia associated with wealth, i.e,
that it should be at least a bit easier for wealthy people to make money
than it is for poor people.
Such is inertia is important, because it is exactly that inertia that makes
wealth desirable and goal-worthy.
> So you think it is a good thing that the productive poor are currently
> robbed of the fruits of their labor, and the loot given to the
> unproductive rich? Thank you for proving that you really are either
> evil or trolling.
No, the poor need help. Everyone who doesn't need help gives up a portion
of their produce voluntarily, to create the prize that they compete for.
> >There may be too much rent available today, and deciding how much is best
is
> >part of the problem I referred to as important above, but the basic
notion
> >of rent is not inherently evil when it is created and maintained by
> >consensus.
>
> Like the consensus that slave owners were entitled to collect the
> rents their privilege created?
No, slavery is evil. There was rent involved with slavery, but slavery is
evil for reasons that have nothing to do with rent. Isn't there some form
of Godwin's law for mention of slavery in Usenet? There oughtta be.
> >I, and most people, I think, want whatever wealth I leave to my children
to
> >be of benefit to them, for example -- that's one of the primary reasons I
> >work for it.
>
> Just as long as you are clear that the degree to which your children's
> inherited wealth will allow them to receive rent income they have not
> earned will be inversely related to the degree to which other people's
> children's labor will allow them to receive the income they _have_
> earned.
Yes, or vice-versa. I am currently neither idle nor rich. If my
grandchildren are going to be collecting a lot of rent, my kids and I will
have to work to make that happen.
> At least you appear to understand the type of mechanism that will make
> the children of the rich the beneficiaries of crimes committed against
> working people's children.
We both understand the mechanism, yes, but we aren't talking about crimes by
any reasonable definition.
> >Since I can't expect a free society to allow special rent just
> >for my kids, I must concede it to everyone else.
>
> To be more accurate, you can't expect a _free_ society to allow
> private capture and retention of rents at all.
Sure I can. Every society creates positions of status and privilege. It
would appear to be a natural part of the human condition.
> The rent income your wealth brings you, which you do not earn, is
> income that is forcibly taken from those who do earn it.
There is no duress involved for the vast majority of people. The force
applied to the remainder is the just the rule of law, which reflects the
intent of the society as a whole. It is true that compliance with the low
is not always voluntary, but we accept this level of instituitionalized
oppression, because it is much less oppressive than the anarchy that would
exist without it.
> IOW, you think it is preferable for the rich be more privileged
> relative to working people than for the whole society to be absolutely
> wealthier in material terms. Well, that's clear enough.
I would prefer the rich to be less privileged relative to working people
than they are today, but still privileged. I believe that such priviledge,
properly controlled by law, is conducive to increasing absolute wealth
across the whole of society.
--
Matt
Matt Timmermans
"sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
> I misread this the first time I saw it, probably because it's extremely
odd.
I believe it's actually a pretty moderate position...
OK, yes, that is rather odd for sci.econ.
> Why would you ever think that the "most socially efficient distribution of
> wealth is highly skewed"? What does that even mean?
It means that there should be such a thing as rich people. Taken in
moderation, they can be of great benefit to society.
> Bizarre. You're taking the position that the wealthy should be able to
> consume at higher levels and not work or take high risks to maintain their
> wealth.
To some non-zero extent, yes, because we couldn't maintain any significant
number of rich people without such measures.
> > Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go
flat.
>
> And the problem with that is...?
Less variety and more mediocrity -- a world without pyramids or palaces of
any sort.
> > There may be too much rent available today, and deciding how much is
best
> is
> > part of the problem I referred to as important above, but the basic
notion
> > of rent is not inherently evil when it is created and maintained by
> > consensus.
>
> No, it should be maintained by *informed consensus*.
We could do with a more informed populous, but I think people are informed
enough that the privileges that accompany wealth are created by an informed
consensus. They just aren't adequately controlled.
After all, most people would like to be rich. Very few think we should fix
it so that being rich is no fun.
> Bizarre and incoherent. Rent is zero-sum---when you collect rent, someone
> else pays for it. So when your kids benefit by collecting rent, others'
> kids lose.
Yes, and when other people's kids win, my kids pay their share of that.
It's like a hockey pool.
> Not only that; the benefits are conferred by an enforcement
> regime backed by the government's monopoly on violence.
They are conferred by consensus. That they are backed by the "government's
monopoly on violence" is a good thing, because they would otherwise be
backed by private armies, vigilantes, and lynch mobs.
> It's not petty jealousy---it's a position informed by a *coherent* theory
of
> social justice as well as theory and empirical results on economic
> efficiency, as opposed to incoherent feudalistic rantings informed by a
> sense of entitlement.
Well, I'll grant that it's not just petty jealousy. I'll even grant that
your theory of social justice may be coherent and internally consistent, but
it is at odds with what most people want.
--
Matt
Albert
"Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
<snip>
> My only hard assertion
> here is that there should be a non-zero amount of inertia associated
> with wealth, i.e, that it should be at least a bit easier for wealthy
> people to make money than it is for poor people.
ROTFL. Simply having great wealth and the ability to spend it is simply
not enough incentive, huh?
You're a hoot, Matt.
<snip>
--
"Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and
further life; it is bad to damage and destroy life."
-- Albert Schweitzer
Les Cargill
> On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 00:27:19 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
> <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>
<snip>
>>then there
>>must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to make
>>it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay wealthy
>>even with their increased consumption.
>
>
> ?? Wait a minute. Nobody could actually believe anything that evil,
> so you must be just trolling, right?
>
> _Right_??
>
>
No, I see what he means, Roy.
The large accumulations of capital *might* serve a larger
good.
This goes to thnking of the economy as a "field", as in an
electric field, and with larger concentrations of "charge"
providing increased flow.
Considering the strength of both capital markets as well as
not-for-profit sectors of the economy, this does not seem
without observable effect. Some of the most politically
radical engines in the U.S. are the various foundations
of the scion of the old Robber Barons.
Considering how humans organized on a amsll scale,
with "big men" in tribes, it seems that the leadership
effect of wealth alone has considerable value on
an anthropological basis .
>>Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.
>
>
> Well, flatter than it is now with such mechanisms in place, anyway.
>
And that would be unconditionally a good thing? Sounds more ...
entropic to me.
<snip>
>
> -- Roy L
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 00:08:54 -0400
> "Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
> <snip>
>
>>My only hard assertion
>>here is that there should be a non-zero amount of inertia associated
>>with wealth, i.e, that it should be at least a bit easier for wealthy
>>people to make money than it is for poor people.
>
>
> ROTFL. Simply having great wealth and the ability to spend it is simply
> not enough incentive, huh?
>
No. Because the marginal utility of each additional dollar goes
down. Around the fourth Rolls, they get a bit the same.
> You're a hoot, Matt.
>
> <snip>
>
>
--
--
Les Cargill
Matt Timmermans
"Albert" <alwa...@tcac.net> wrote in message
news:20040608192...@lfs.mydomain.com...
>
> ROTFL. Simply having great wealth and the ability to spend it is simply
> not enough incentive, huh?
No, because without rent, wealth is just delayed consumption. Only ascetics
would save more than they need for retirement.
Albert
> ascetics would save more than they need for retirement.
Or seekers of power over others.
Albert
Les Cargill <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
<snip>
> No. Because the marginal utility of each additional dollar goes
> down. Around the fourth Rolls, they get a bit the same.
How very sad. Pity the poor Rich. Yet...there is still power over
others to buy.
Matt Timmermans
> On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 22:11:33 -0400
> "Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
> <snip>
> > No, because without rent, wealth is just delayed consumption. Only
> > ascetics would save more than they need for retirement.
>
> Or seekers of power over others.
>
I expect that when Roy gets around to calling me a wannabe slave master
again, he'll explain how the "power over others" that accompanies wealth,
i.e., the power over and above a simple comparative advantage in
productivity, actually derives from rent. I haven't decided whether or not
I will actually condescend to explain how it isn't equivalent to slavery at
all, when it's moderated by a representative government.
ro...@telus.net
<mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
><ro...@telus.net> wrote in message news:40c4bff4...@news.telus.net...
>> >If the most socially efficient distribution of wealth is highly skewed,
>and
>> >I believe it is,
>>
>> Hmmm. What is "social efficiency"? Is it something like the degree
>> to which others are forcibly compelled to serve your ends?
>
>Meaning the distribution that best promotes the kind of society we want.
I suppose that's the royal "we" is it....?
>Many of the products of our society that I most admire would not have
>happenned without people with too much power and/or money to burn.
Oh, you mean things like the epidemics of childhood obesity and
diabetes, government corruption, absentee parents, lousy public
schools, apathetic voters, President Dubya, etc., etc.?
And if those aren't what you mean, I want you to name one specific
thing you admire that you think would not have happened without people
with too much power and/or money.
I'm waiting.
>It's
>worth skimming a little wealth off across the top of the whole society so
>that you can create a few concentrations of wealth that make those sorts of
>endeavours possible.
Yeah, well, if only the wealth _were_ being skimmed off the top, and
not off those who not only earned it, but also need it the most.
>> >then there
>> >must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to
>make
>> >it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay
>wealthy
>> >even with their increased consumption.
>>
>> ?? Wait a minute. Nobody could actually believe anything that evil,
>> so you must be just trolling, right?
>
>No. It's only evil if its taken to the point of oppression.
No, it's evil root, branch and fruit.
"Love of money is the root of all evil" is an unfortunate
mistranslation of an ancient truism: "Greed is the root of all evil."
Self interest -- striving for more -- is not evil. Greed -- striving
for more _than_you_deserve_ -- _is_ evil. What you are advocating
here is the institutionalization and enshrinement of bald, outright
evil as a social and economic standard.
>It may be past
>that point today, or it may not be.
You know very well it is.
>My only hard assertion here is that
>there should be a non-zero amount of inertia associated with wealth, i.e,
>that it should be at least a bit easier for wealthy people to make money
>than it is for poor people.
I must say, it's quite refreshing to see an advocate of evil being so
open and honest about it. Thank you.
>Such is inertia is important, because it is exactly that inertia that makes
>wealth desirable and goal-worthy.
So, your view is that everyone else believes as you do: that wealth is
only worth attaining to the extent that it makes you the beneficiary
of crimes committed against others. Check.
>> So you think it is a good thing that the productive poor are currently
>> robbed of the fruits of their labor, and the loot given to the
>> unproductive rich? Thank you for proving that you really are either
>> evil or trolling.
>
>No, the poor need help. Everyone who doesn't need help gives up a portion
>of their produce voluntarily, to create the prize that they compete for.
It's not voluntary, liar, and they aren't competing for any prize.
They are merely _paying_ for the prize the rich have already won, and
that payment is one of the ways the rich make sure the ablest of the
productive can never accumulate the assets needed to offer them any
real competition.
>> >There may be too much rent available today, and deciding how much is best
>is
>> >part of the problem I referred to as important above, but the basic
>notion
>> >of rent is not inherently evil when it is created and maintained by
>> >consensus.
>>
>> Like the consensus that slave owners were entitled to collect the
>> rents their privilege created?
>
>No, slavery is evil.
Why? Why is slavery evil? Is it because some are robbed for the
unearned benefit of others? That is exactly what you advocate. Is it
because some are denied their rights in order to bestow privileges on
others? That is exactly what you advocate. Is it because slavery
favors idle parasites at the expense of freedom and justice? That is
exactly what you advocate.
>There was rent involved with slavery, but slavery is
>evil for reasons that have nothing to do with rent.
Name them.
>Isn't there some form
>of Godwin's law for mention of slavery in Usenet? There oughtta be.
Yes, nobody should be allowed to identify the true, exact meaning of
what you advocate.
>> >I, and most people, I think, want whatever wealth I leave to my children
>to
>> >be of benefit to them, for example -- that's one of the primary reasons I
>> >work for it.
>>
>> Just as long as you are clear that the degree to which your children's
>> inherited wealth will allow them to receive rent income they have not
>> earned will be inversely related to the degree to which other people's
>> children's labor will allow them to receive the income they _have_
>> earned.
>
>Yes, or vice-versa. I am currently neither idle nor rich.
Yes, the real genius of institutionalized evil is that first it makes
its victims adapt themselves to it in sheer self-defense. Then it
gradually makes them dependent on it for unearned benefits. Finally,
it recruits them as its stoutest defenders.
Thus have you been recruited as a defender of institutionalized evil,
Matt.
How sad.
>If my
>grandchildren are going to be collecting a lot of rent, my kids and I will
>have to work to make that happen.
Uh-huh. And other people and their kids will, too....
>> At least you appear to understand the type of mechanism that will make
>> the children of the rich the beneficiaries of crimes committed against
>> working people's children.
>
>We both understand the mechanism, yes, but we aren't talking about crimes by
>any reasonable definition.
Yes, we are, by the _only_ reasonable definition: conscious,
deliberate, intentional violations of others' rights.
>> >Since I can't expect a free society to allow special rent just
>> >for my kids, I must concede it to everyone else.
>>
>> To be more accurate, you can't expect a _free_ society to allow
>> private capture and retention of rents at all.
>
>Sure I can.
No, you can't.
>Every society creates positions of status and privilege.
Only to the extent that it is not free.
>It would appear to be a natural part of the human condition.
So was slavery until the 19th C, and death by tooth decay until the
20th.
>> The rent income your wealth brings you, which you do not earn, is
>> income that is forcibly taken from those who do earn it.
>
>There is no duress involved for the vast majority of people.
?? Yes, of course there is. Your claim is just a flat-out lie.
>The force
>applied to the remainder is the just the rule of law, which reflects the
>intent of the society as a whole.
And it would be equally the intent of the society as a whole if that
force were not applied.
>It is true that compliance with the low
>is not always voluntary, but we accept this level of instituitionalized
>oppression, because it is much less oppressive than the anarchy that would
>exist without it.
That is an obvious false dichotomy. What evidence can you offer that
the only alternative to institutionalized oppression is anarchy?
I'm waiting.
>> IOW, you think it is preferable for the rich be more privileged
>> relative to working people than for the whole society to be absolutely
>> wealthier in material terms. Well, that's clear enough.
>
>I would prefer the rich to be less privileged relative to working people
>than they are today, but still privileged.
I don't think you have to worry about the rich becoming insufficiently
privileged in your lifetime, nor in the lifetimes of your children or
grandchildren. You would be much better advised to worry about the
possibility of societal collapse resulting from the already excessive
and still increasing privileges of the rich. It's not like they
haven't already destroyed dozens of great civilizations, you know.
>I believe that such priviledge,
>properly controlled by law, is conducive to increasing absolute wealth
>across the whole of society.
?? Yet you have already said you prefer privilege to justice, even
though justice would be more economically efficient -- i.e., even
though you recognize that such privilege is _not_ conducive to
increasing absolute wealth across the whole of society.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
Hmmm. So, the idea is that trying to get a dollar's worth of
productive work out of a rich guy by giving him $1000 for doing
nothing is preferable to trying to get $1 worth of productive work out
of a poor guy by giving him $1 for doing it.
Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that....
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>"Albert" <alwa...@tcac.net> wrote in message
>news:20040608192...@lfs.mydomain.com...
>>
>> ROTFL. Simply having great wealth and the ability to spend it is simply
>> not enough incentive, huh?
>
>No, because without rent, wealth is just delayed consumption.
Wrong. wealth can also buy real capital, philanthropic works, etc.
_That_ is the sort of thing society should be rewarding, not
unproductive rent seeking.
>Only ascetics
>would save more than they need for retirement.
Nonsense. Many people want to accumulate some wealth in order to be
able to create something, to make a contribution, to realize a dream,
etc. Or just to impress others.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 00:27:19 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
>> <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>>
><snip>
>>>then there
>>>must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to make
>>>it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay wealthy
>>>even with their increased consumption.
>>
>> ?? Wait a minute. Nobody could actually believe anything that evil,
>> so you must be just trolling, right?
>>
>> _Right_??
>
>No, I see what he means, Roy.
>
>The large accumulations of capital *might* serve a larger
>good.
So might any evil.
>This goes to thnking of the economy as a "field", as in an
>electric field, and with larger concentrations of "charge"
>providing increased flow.
Well, if you want increased concentrations of charge to provide
increased flow, you could also go at it from the other direction, and
confiscate the meager possessions of the poor to give them more
motivation to work.
Oh. Right. That one's been going for a while now, hasn't it?
>Considering the strength of both capital markets as well as
>not-for-profit sectors of the economy, this does not seem
>without observable effect. Some of the most politically
>radical engines in the U.S. are the various foundations
>of the scion of the old Robber Barons.
Nonsense. They just subsidize the loud but safely stupid types who
can be counted on to drown out the real voices for change.
>Considering how humans organized on a amsll scale,
>with "big men" in tribes, it seems that the leadership
>effect of wealth alone has considerable value on
>an anthropological basis .
Yeah. If only privilege for the rich didn't have that annoying habit
of destroying every civilization that embraces it...
>>>Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.
>>
>> Well, flatter than it is now with such mechanisms in place, anyway.
>
>And that would be unconditionally a good thing?
Deleting the mechanisms of plutism certainly would, cet. par.
>Sounds more ...
>entropic to me.
Well, doing work does increase entropy more than not doing it....
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>"Albert" <alwa...@tcac.net> wrote in message
>news:20040608205...@lfs.mydomain.com...
>> On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 22:11:33 -0400
>> "Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>> <snip>
>> > No, because without rent, wealth is just delayed consumption. Only
>> > ascetics would save more than they need for retirement.
>>
>> Or seekers of power over others.
>
>I expect that when Roy gets around to calling me a wannabe slave master
>again, he'll explain how the "power over others" that accompanies wealth,
>i.e., the power over and above a simple comparative advantage in
>productivity, actually derives from rent.
Wrong again.
>I haven't decided whether or not
>I will actually condescend to explain how it isn't equivalent to slavery at
>all, when it's moderated by a representative government.
<yawn> And the antebellum South wasn't "moderated" by a
representative government?
-- Roy L
The Trucker
>
> "sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
> news:rNJwc.7944$QI2....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
>>
>> "Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
>> > Determining the optimal distribution and how best to encourage movement
> in
>> > that direction is far more practically important than worrying about
> _how_
>> > it got to be the way it is.
>>
>> Not when one of the most important factors behind the current
>> distribution is government forcing people to pay holders of titles to
>> scarce natural resources like land for the use of said resources.
>
> If the most socially efficient distribution of wealth is highly skewed,
> and I believe it is,
Well.... At least you admit that this is a "belief" as opposed to going
off on a tangent using cherry picked "data" to supposedly "prove" your point
or screeching "look at the defunct Soviet Union".
> and if it's better to have one's wealth determined by
> past economic success than by lottery or decree, and I believe it is,
I tend to agree with this particular "belief" but reject the notion
that one's descendent's are to be included or that there needs to be
a _noble_ group that is supported forever because their "daddy" did
good.
> then
> there must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e.,
> to make it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can
> stay wealthy even with their increased consumption.
This conclusion is horse manure. Those that actually _earn_ wealth
will have no problems in consuming AND staying wealthy. There should
be a mechanism to provide short term protection to productions that
stem from actual creativity (patent and copyright), but that is all.
> Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.
More horse manure. Those that are able and willing and capable will
be more wealthy than those who are not so long as they employ their
talents to serve the greater community. Free markets make it that
way. Those that actually PRODUCE good stuff will be rewarded by
the rest of the people.
> Since any income produced by any such mechanism is economically classified
> as rent, I have to confess that I think a little rent is a good thing.
Agreement again! A _little_ rent is just fine. The problem with
the George Bush monopoly loving Repugnican form of government is that
it is a lot more than a _little_ rent.
> There may be too much rent available today, and deciding how much is best
> is part of the problem I referred to as important above, but the basic
> notion of rent is not inherently evil when it is created and maintained by
> consensus.
You would get a gold star on this one if the word "informed" appeared
between the words "by" and "consensus".
http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/The_Mob.php
> I, and most people, I think, want whatever wealth I leave to my children
> to be of benefit to them, for example -- that's one of the primary reasons
> I
> work for it. Since I can't expect a free society to allow special rent
> just
> for my kids, I must concede it to everyone else. Similarly, I expect
> whatever wealth I manage to accrue during my lifetime to be of benefit to
> me, so I grant the same to everyone else as well. We should all have to
> play the game by the same rules, and we pretty much do.
And now for the kicker: If your kids inherit your wealth then do they
have the right to give it to their kids? I say no. They did not earn
it and therefore do not have the same rights as you did in the deposition
of this wealth. Others will argue that your kids have already received
major benefit from your wealth while you are alive and that should be
the end of it. But if rent is heavily taxed, thus removing the millstone
of taxation from the producers in the economy, then the problem is
resolved without clumsy inheritance tax structures. Many proposals
have existed to institute land rent on a generational basis and I
believe this to be a good compromise. The current land owner would
not need to pay any of the land taxes (up to a certain value cap) but
the inheritors of the land WILL pay such taxes. Corporations would
be required to pay the tax immediately and always.
> In short, while I accept Georgists' argument that rent taxes are
> economically efficient, I don't accept their claim to the moral high
> ground.
That is a religious position. My _religion_ is Utilitarianism. I have
no problem with wealth concentration until such concentration deprives
the greater majority of a better life style and more FREEDOM. The
basis of "economic efficiency" being "good" is that it improves the
well being of the vast majority.
> I think that the benefits of wealth should exist, and I accept the
> fundamental mechanism that produces them -- rent -- because it's better
> than the alternatives, and so a lot of the hue and cry about the "evil
> landlords" who currently have the wealth and get to collect these rents
> sounds like petty jealousy to me.
Ah, yes.... The "Envy Pony". The Repugnican favorite.
--
http://GreaterVoice.org (a work in progress)
The Trucker
>
> "sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
> news:8uYwc.13105$QI2...@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
>> I misread this the first time I saw it, probably because it's extremely
> odd.
>
> I believe it's actually a pretty moderate position...
>
> OK, yes, that is rather odd for sci.econ.
No. It is not a "moderate" position.
>> Why would you ever think that the "most socially efficient distribution
>> of
>> wealth is highly skewed"? What does that even mean?
>
> It means that there should be such a thing as rich people. Taken in
> moderation, they can be of great benefit to society.
Rich people should be tolerated only if they become rich or stay
rich by virtue of their contribution to society. Their "benefit"
to society is what they did to _become_ rich. It is not what they
do after the fact. Their wealth is inconsequential but for the
distortions such wealth may bring to an otherwise the _free_ market.
Unless they CONTINUE to make a contribution by organizing and
promoting ventures that are of benefit to the community they
provide no beneficial service. To say that an
individual of inherited wealth is a superior judge of what
is to be done and how is a very bad mistake. The rich are not to
be protected by special privilege simply because THEY, and
apparently YOU, believe they are some superior "breed" of
humankind.
>> Bizarre. You're taking the position that the wealthy should be able to
>> consume at higher levels and not work or take high risks to maintain
>> their wealth.
>
> To some non-zero extent, yes, because we couldn't maintain any significant
> number of rich people without such measures.
I have NO desire to "maintain" some privileged caste of rich people:
http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/glossary/aristocracy.php
>> > Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go
> flat.
>>
>> And the problem with that is...?
>
> Less variety and more mediocrity -- a world without pyramids or palaces of
> any sort.
The advance of art and the advance of the human species will continue
without special protections for a nobility.
>> > There may be too much rent available today, and deciding how much is
> best
>> is
>> > part of the problem I referred to as important above, but the basic
> notion
>> > of rent is not inherently evil when it is created and maintained by
>> > consensus.
>>
>> No, it should be maintained by *informed consensus*.
>
> We could do with a more informed populous, but I think people are informed
> enough that the privileges that accompany wealth are created by an
> informed
> consensus.
What the hell is this supposed to mean?
> They just aren't adequately controlled.
And this?
> After all, most people would like to be rich. Very few think we should
> fix it so that being rich is no fun.
If rent is taxed then getting rich and being rich is still all that it
was before for those who actually make a contribution to society.
>> Bizarre and incoherent. Rent is zero-sum---when you collect rent,
>> someone
>> else pays for it. So when your kids benefit by collecting rent, others'
>> kids lose.
>
> Yes, and when other people's kids win, my kids pay their share of that.
> It's like a hockey pool.
Each generation should win or lose on its own merit. The sins of the
grandfather should not be visited on the grandkids.
>> Not only that; the benefits are conferred by an enforcement
>> regime backed by the government's monopoly on violence.
>
> They are conferred by consensus. That they are backed by the
> "government's monopoly on violence" is a good thing, because they would
> otherwise be backed by private armies, vigilantes, and lynch mobs.
http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/The_Mob.php
We DO NOT HAVE and INFORMED consensus.
>> It's not petty jealousy---it's a position informed by a *coherent* theory
> of
>> social justice as well as theory and empirical results on economic
>> efficiency, as opposed to incoherent feudalistic rantings informed by a
>> sense of entitlement.
>
> Well, I'll grant that it's not just petty jealousy. I'll even grant that
> your theory of social justice may be coherent and internally consistent,
> but it is at odds with what most people want.
ONLY BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE ARE PURPOSEFULLY MISINFORMED.
The Trucker
> On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 00:08:10 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
> <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>
deletia...
>
>>I haven't decided whether or not
>>I will actually condescend to explain how it isn't equivalent to slavery
>>at all, when it's moderated by a representative government.
>
> <yawn> And the antebellum South wasn't "moderated" by a
> representative government?
Nor is the USA currently being "moderated" by a representative
government. In the forthcoming election for "KING" we will not
have a choice but between utter aristocratic stupidity on steroids
and a somewhat less stupid aristocrat. (Not that it should actually
matter if our government was functioning as designed):
The (P)resident is to enforce the laws created by the congress and
to enforce the terms of the constitution. That is ALL the (P)resident
is to do unless the country is at war. We ARE NOT AT WAR, nor should
we ever have been at war.
http://www.greatervoice.org/econ/quotes/WarAndTheExecutive.php
Les Cargill
> On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 02:10:37 GMT
> Les Cargill <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> <snip>
>
>>No. Because the marginal utility of each additional dollar goes
>>down. Around the fourth Rolls, they get a bit the same.
>
>
> How very sad. Pity the poor Rich. Yet...there is still power over
> others to buy.
>
>
Obsession with power is a *pathology*. Most people who save
just wanna be comfortable.
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
Bosh. The marginal utility of the $1000 might be the same as
the $1. Would you like to deny that in public? My point
is that this tends to make investment attractive.
Preferrable in terms of *what*, Roy? If the rich
guy finds the river of money, more power to 'im.
Pop the cork.
If you are serious, I'll enumerate the questions:
1) Production is inherently preferrable to other things.
There's only an aesthetic, context-based reason to assume that.
Since production inevitably means consumption or worse, waste,
I find it hard to beleive that simply using resources because
we find it more attractive sufficient justification.
And production is *easiy* shown to be a solved problem. If
you can prove the dog'll eat the dog food, you can get money
everywhere to make it. There are much harder problems out there.
2) Assigning the wages of rent to "the community" will somehow
wave a magic wand and cease all inequity in the world.
Granted, I've hyperbolized, but I note the historical
tendency of these things to trade one class of opressor
for another. Death rates among blacks in Reconstruction
South rose a while, until the North began siphoning
off Negros for industrial work.
I really do like the idea of "no income tax", but the
income tax, at least in the U.S. is an unconstitutioanl
abortion to begin with. You don't have to do some
shadow abolition of property to attack it.
3) Somehow, land rents do not serve some unknown higher
purpose in the economy, and their absence would lead to
consequences we cannot now know.
I think this is the killer, right here.
But even beyond that, George was a Positivist just like
everybody else of his time and date. This is when
God was English and the sun never set. George sounds
to me like Russel and his program to reinvent mathematics
from first principes - because the Universe wants us to.
> Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that....
>
> -- Roy L
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 22:11:33 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
> <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>"Albert" <alwa...@tcac.net> wrote in message
>>news:20040608192...@lfs.mydomain.com...
>>
>>>ROTFL. Simply having great wealth and the ability to spend it is simply
>>>not enough incentive, huh?
>>
>>No, because without rent, wealth is just delayed consumption.
>
>
> Wrong. wealth can also buy real capital, philanthropic works, etc.
> _That_ is the sort of thing society should be rewarding, not
> unproductive rent seeking.
>
>
I can't argue with that. But society can't, or it would.
Isn't that a larger problem, ultimately?
>>Only ascetics
>>would save more than they need for retirement.
>
>
> Nonsense. Many people want to accumulate some wealth in order to be
> able to create something, to make a contribution, to realize a dream,
> etc. Or just to impress others.
>
> -- Roy L
--
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 01:15:29 GMT, Les Cargill
> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 00:27:19 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
>>><mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>>>then there
>>>>must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to make
>>>>it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay wealthy
>>>>even with their increased consumption.
>>>
>>>?? Wait a minute. Nobody could actually believe anything that evil,
>>>so you must be just trolling, right?
>>>
>>>_Right_??
>>
>>No, I see what he means, Roy.
>>
>>The large accumulations of capital *might* serve a larger
>>good.
>
>
> So might any evil.
>
>
I see large pockets of non-entropy which were largely made
possible by the accumlation of capital.
Capital has a catalytic effect on the value of labor.It
makes it worth more.
>>This goes to thnking of the economy as a "field", as in an
>>electric field, and with larger concentrations of "charge"
>>providing increased flow.
>
>
> Well, if you want increased concentrations of charge to provide
> increased flow, you could also go at it from the other direction, and
> confiscate the meager possessions of the poor to give them more
> motivation to work.
>
> Oh. Right. That one's been going for a while now, hasn't it?
>
No, I want more rail voltage to drive the whole blasted machine.
I see this huge correlation between inequity and "progress".
>
>>Considering the strength of both capital markets as well as
>>not-for-profit sectors of the economy, this does not seem
>>without observable effect. Some of the most politically
>>radical engines in the U.S. are the various foundations
>>of the scion of the old Robber Barons.
>
>
> Nonsense. They just subsidize the loud but safely stupid types who
> can be counted on to drown out the real voices for change.
>
>
Real voices for change are largely ignored because nobody really
cares what they say. And that's not directed at present company,
it's a generalism.
>>Considering how humans organized on a amsll scale,
>>with "big men" in tribes, it seems that the leadership
>>effect of wealth alone has considerable value on
>>an anthropological basis .
>
>
> Yeah. If only privilege for the rich didn't have that annoying habit
> of destroying every civilization that embraces it...
>
Now *that* I can agree wit ya on, sor. But there are other
structural differences that affect that curve...
>
>>>>Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.
>>>
>>>Well, flatter than it is now with such mechanisms in place, anyway.
>>
>>And that would be unconditionally a good thing?
>
>
> Deleting the mechanisms of plutism certainly would, cet. par.
>
>
That'n, I have to take a pass on. I think we pay that out of
some sort of appeal to the idiot in us all, that needs plutism.
>>Sounds more ...
>>entropic to me.
>
>
> Well, doing work does increase entropy more than not doing it....
>
Not always. It depends. An oil change, for example...
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> Matt Timmermans wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> I tend to agree with this particular "belief" but reject the notion
> that one's descendent's are to be included or that there needs to be
> a _noble_ group that is supported forever because their "daddy" did
> good.
>
>
Yet some things take longer than a human lifespan. Trustees of
an inheritance are not its only beneficiary. Remember, we're
principally concerned with the producer/consumer
relationship as the primary.
Even with the present state of things, fortunes regress to the
mean in short order.
<snip>
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
<snip>
>
> Rich people should be tolerated only if they become rich or stay
> rich by virtue of their contribution to society. Their "benefit"
> to society is what they did to _become_ rich. It is not what they
> do after the fact. Their wealth is inconsequential but for the
> distortions such wealth may bring to an otherwise the _free_ market.
>
But the principle of revealed preferences says this is what
they do.
<snip>
--
Les Cargill
Matt Timmermans
<ro...@telus.net> wrote in message news:40c6a396...@news.telus.net...
> On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 00:08:54 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
> >happenned without people with too much power and/or money to burn.
>
>
> I want you to name one specific
> thing you admire that you think would not have happened without people
> with too much power and/or money.
>
> I'm waiting.
How about the pyramids of Giza?
> >It's
> >worth skimming a little wealth off across the top of the whole society so
> >that you can create a few concentrations of wealth that make those sorts
of
> >endeavours possible.
>
> Yeah, well, if only the wealth _were_ being skimmed off the top, and
> not off those who not only earned it, but also need it the most.
I'm glad you agree.
> Self interest -- striving for more -- is not evil. Greed -- striving
> for more _than_you_deserve_ -- _is_ evil. What you are advocating
> here is the institutionalization and enshrinement of bald, outright
> evil as a social and economic standard.
More than I deserve? If you mean to suggest that I have some sort of
material entitlement that I wasn't aware of, then I disagree. If you mean
to suggest that we have no other choice than to survive by sin, then I
disagree with that as well. I don't see any other way to interpret your
definition of evil -- it's merely an argumentative trap.
> >[rent seeking] may be past that point [of oppression] today, or it may
not be.
>
> You know very well it is.
Yes, but I don't want to bother defending that against the neocons in the
group.
> I must say, it's quite refreshing to see an advocate of evil being so
> open and honest about it. Thank you.
That refreshing smell is the absence of irrational political correctness,
and its accompanying stench of mental corruption.
> So, your view is that everyone else believes as you do: that wealth is
> only worth attaining to the extent that it makes you the beneficiary
> of crimes committed against others. Check.
Except without the misleadingly connotative language, i.e, what I actually
said. I advocate no crimes. Many people have aspirations beyond what can
be realistically accomplished alone or by consensus, and I simply don't
think they should be ashamed of it.
> >No, the poor need help. Everyone who doesn't need help gives up a
portion
> >of their produce voluntarily, to create the prize that they compete for.
>
> It's not voluntary, liar, and they aren't competing for any prize.
> They are merely _paying_ for the prize the rich have already won, and
> that payment is one of the ways the rich make sure the ablest of the
> productive can never accumulate the assets needed to offer them any
> real competition.
You don't believe in opportunity?
> >No, slavery is evil.
>
> Why? Why is slavery evil? Is it because some are robbed for the
> unearned benefit of others?
They were robbed, and thievery is wrong. You and I, however, are not being
robbed -- "thievery" legislated by a representative govenment is just tax.
> Is it because some are denied their rights in order to bestow privileges
on
> others?
They were denied their rights, and that is wrong. The rule of law under a
representative government, however, does not deny people their rights, even
though it *is* sufficient to sustain rent. Rent does not require a denial
of human rights.
> Is it because slavery favors idle parasites at the expense of freedom and
justice?
Slaves were denied freedom and justice, and that was evil, too. Rent,
however, is possible in a free and just society.
> >There was rent involved with slavery, but slavery is
> >evil for reasons that have nothing to do with rent.
>
> Name them.
I think we've done pretty well so far, but there are some more:
Slaves were captured, taken from their homes, and subjugated against their
will.
Slaves were denied representation in their government. You are, too, to
some degree, and that is also wrong, but it doesn't depend on rent.
Slaves were the victims of a terrible and pervasive racial predjudice, that
enabled people to think of them as property.
These are the horrible sorts of things you misleadingly recall when you
equate slavery and rent seeking.
> >We both understand the mechanism, yes, but we aren't talking about crimes
by
> >any reasonable definition.
>
> Yes, we are, by the _only_ reasonable definition: conscious,
> deliberate, intentional violations of others' rights.
What rights are those, exactly?
> >There is no duress involved for the vast majority of people.
>
> ?? Yes, of course there is. Your claim is just a flat-out lie.
No there isn't, liar. Does the Man need his billy club to make you a good
citizen? I thought not. Most people respect the property of others,
because they expect their own property rights to be respected and they
believe in the golden rule.
> >It is true that compliance with the law
> >is not always voluntary, but we accept this level of instituitionalized
> >oppression, because it is much less oppressive than the anarchy that
would
> >exist without it.
>
> That is an obvious false dichotomy. What evidence can you offer that
> the only alternative to institutionalized oppression is anarchy?
>
> I'm waiting.
Nothing you would find compelling, I'm afraid. I'm not familiar with any
significant societies that have existed without the rule of law for any
length of time. It's not an experiment I would want to try.
> I don't think you have to worry about the rich becoming insufficiently
> privileged in your lifetime, nor in the lifetimes of your children or
> grandchildren.
I don't think so either. What I *do* worry about is well-intentioned people
rendering themselves ineffectual by getting caught up in autistic rhetoric
and concocted morals, arguing amongst themselves about irrelevant notions,
and each focusing their efforts on their own unique red herring.
> >I believe that such priviledge,
> >properly controlled by law, is conducive to increasing absolute wealth
> >across the whole of society.
>
> ?? Yet you have already said you prefer privilege to justice, [...]
>, even though justice would be more economically efficient [...]
> i.e., even though you recognize that such privilege is _not_ conducive
> to increasing absolute wealth across the whole of society.
Oops. I take issue with the definition of "justice" you seem to be using
here, but you certainly did catch me misspeaking. I'm was applying a
non-economic aesthetic that I momentarily mistook for part of absolute
wealth.
--
Matt
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 22:11:33 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
>> <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>>
>>>"Albert" <alwa...@tcac.net> wrote in message
>>>news:20040608192...@lfs.mydomain.com...
>>>
>>>>ROTFL. Simply having great wealth and the ability to spend it is simply
>>>>not enough incentive, huh?
>>>
>>>No, because without rent, wealth is just delayed consumption.
>>
>> Wrong. wealth can also buy real capital, philanthropic works, etc.
>> _That_ is the sort of thing society should be rewarding, not
>> unproductive rent seeking.
>
>I can't argue with that. But society can't, or it would.
Garbage. The rich just don't let it, until it's too late.
>Isn't that a larger problem, ultimately?
Not believing freedom and justice are possible is certainly a larger
problem. How did you get to be that way? Weren't you a baby boomer
when you were young?
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 01:15:29 GMT, Les Cargill
>> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>>>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 00:27:19 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
>>>><mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>then there
>>>>>must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to make
>>>>>it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay wealthy
>>>>>even with their increased consumption.
>>>>
>>>>?? Wait a minute. Nobody could actually believe anything that evil,
>>>>so you must be just trolling, right?
>>>>
>>>>_Right_??
>>>
>>>No, I see what he means, Roy.
>>>
>>>The large accumulations of capital *might* serve a larger
>>>good.
>>
>> So might any evil.
>>
>I see large pockets of non-entropy which were largely made
>possible by the accumlation of capital.
>
>Capital has a catalytic effect on the value of labor.It
>makes it worth more.
Yes, but now you're equivocating. Matt was talking about wealth, not
capital. Now you've shifted the terms to capital in the economic
sense, which has little or nothinbg to do with wealth in the sense
Matt meant.
>>>This goes to thnking of the economy as a "field", as in an
>>>electric field, and with larger concentrations of "charge"
>>>providing increased flow.
>>
>> Well, if you want increased concentrations of charge to provide
>> increased flow, you could also go at it from the other direction, and
>> confiscate the meager possessions of the poor to give them more
>> motivation to work.
>>
>> Oh. Right. That one's been going for a while now, hasn't it?
>
>No, I want more rail voltage to drive the whole blasted machine.
How could the voltage be more than by conferring rewards exactly
commensurate with contributions? Any interference with that has to
_reduce_ the overall voltage.
>I see this huge correlation between inequity and "progress".
?? Where? The most uequal distributions of wealth are found in
stagnant Latin American dictatorships, and the most rapid progress is
typically found where distributions are most equal.
>>>Considering the strength of both capital markets as well as
>>>not-for-profit sectors of the economy, this does not seem
>>>without observable effect. Some of the most politically
>>>radical engines in the U.S. are the various foundations
>>>of the scion of the old Robber Barons.
>>
>> Nonsense. They just subsidize the loud but safely stupid types who
>> can be counted on to drown out the real voices for change.
>
>Real voices for change are largely ignored because nobody really
>cares what they say.
Until they get too angry to _listen_ to what they say...
>>>>>Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.
>>>>
>>>>Well, flatter than it is now with such mechanisms in place, anyway.
>>>
>>>And that would be unconditionally a good thing?
>>
>> Deleting the mechanisms of plutism certainly would, cet. par.
>
>That'n, I have to take a pass on. I think we pay that out of
>some sort of appeal to the idiot in us all, that needs plutism.
IMO that idiot has had to be carefully nurtured.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>The Trucker wrote:
>
>> Matt Timmermans wrote:
>>
><snip>
>>
>> I tend to agree with this particular "belief" but reject the notion
>> that one's descendent's are to be included or that there needs to be
>> a _noble_ group that is supported forever because their "daddy" did
>> good.
>
>Yet some things take longer than a human lifespan. Trustees of
>an inheritance are not its only beneficiary. Remember, we're
>principally concerned with the producer/consumer
>relationship as the primary.
the things that take longer than a human lifespan tend to be large
collective efforts, or accidents.
>Even with the present state of things, fortunes regress to the
>mean in short order.
That is most certainly false. The DuPont heirs now number some 1600,
with average net worth of $100M. There is no evidence whatever that
fortunes are regressing to the mean at all, let alone in short order.
-- Roy L
Matt Timmermans
"The Trucker" <mik...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:ca7ao...@news2.newsguy.com...
> > there must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e.,
> > to make it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can
> > stay wealthy even with their increased consumption.
>
> This conclusion is horse manure. Those that actually _earn_ wealth
Yes, but it's their kids I'm worried about. As you note:
> And now for the kicker: If your kids inherit your wealth then do they
> have the right to give it to their kids? I say no.
I say yes. I would even advocate primogeniture (including girls, though
;-). The tendency for things get out of hand could be controlled with a
carefully and continually adjusted rent tax.
> They did not earn
> it and therefore do not have the same rights as you did in the deposition
> of this wealth. Others will argue that your kids have already received
> major benefit from your wealth while you are alive and that should be
> the end of it.
I'm not particularly concerned with whether they earned it or not. Some
people being born beautiful or talented seems just as "unfair" to me as some
people being born rich. I don't resent any of them.
What I'm concerned about is a whole class of human endeavour. There is a
limit to how much a person can do in his lifetime, and there are types of
projects that won't be done by consensus among individuals, or by
corporations, because they are impractical or are the products of a personal
vision.
I prefer to have a few individuals free to implement grand visions without
much regard for practical concerns, than to have all of mankind's efforts
consumed in the production of basic requirements and popular gadgets. Grand
undertakings can lift all our sprits, because we recognize them as
accomplishments of mankind.
And yes, I know this is a religious view.
--
Matt
Matt Timmermans
> Matt Timmermans wrote:
> > We could do with a more informed populous, but I think people are
informed
> > enough that the privileges that accompany wealth are created by an
> > informed
> > consensus.
>
> What the hell is this supposed to mean?
Meaning that people appreciate the economic opportunities of our society,
they want the privileges that accompany wealth if they manage to become
wealthy, and they want to be able to leave a legacy to their children, so
that they might have a better life than they otherwise would.
> > They just aren't adequately controlled.
>
> And this?
That privileges of wealth can get out of hand, because the economics of rent
are naturally unstable, and voters are not informed enough to make such the
sophisticated demands necessary to keep them in check.
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 02:10:37 GMT, Les Cargill
>> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Albert wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 00:08:54 -0400
>>>>"Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>>>><snip>
>>>>
>>>>>My only hard assertion
>>>>>here is that there should be a non-zero amount of inertia associated
>>>>>with wealth, i.e, that it should be at least a bit easier for wealthy
>>>>>people to make money than it is for poor people.
>>>>
>>>>ROTFL. Simply having great wealth and the ability to spend it is simply
>>>>not enough incentive, huh?
>>>
>>>No. Because the marginal utility of each additional dollar goes
>>>down. Around the fourth Rolls, they get a bit the same.
>>
>> Hmmm. So, the idea is that trying to get a dollar's worth of
>> productive work out of a rich guy by giving him $1000 for doing
>> nothing is preferable to trying to get $1 worth of productive work out
>> of a poor guy by giving him $1 for doing it.
>
>Bosh. The marginal utility of the $1000 might be the same as
>the $1.
Nope. Flat wrong. Different people's utilities are not comensurable.
> Would you like to deny that in public?
Just did.
>My point
>is that this tends to make investment attractive.
But there is no reason whatever why we would _want_ to make
"investment" attractive, except to the extent that it results in
greater production. And if we want to encourage greater production,
we _cannot_ do better than reward it in exact proportion.
>Preferrable in terms of *what*, Roy?
That's what I'd like to know. I notice you supply no answer.
>If the rich
>guy finds the river of money, more power to 'im.
>Pop the cork.
Nope. That river didn't come from nowhere, and he is not the one who
created it. Why should he get to own it?
>If you are serious, I'll enumerate the questions:
>
>1) Production is inherently preferrable to other things.
It is preferable to rent seeking, anyway.
>There's only an aesthetic, context-based reason to assume that.
??? Production is what keeps you from starving, you fool!
>Since production inevitably means consumption or worse, waste,
??? Back to the caves, then, is it? Or maybe the swamps?
>I find it hard to beleive that simply using resources because
>we find it more attractive sufficient justification.
Incoherent gobbledegook. What use are resources if we _don't_ use
them?
>And production is *easiy* shown to be a solved problem.
Marxist claptrap.
>If
>you can prove the dog'll eat the dog food, you can get money
>everywhere to make it. There are much harder problems out there.
More garbage. The problem is not getting dogs to eat the food, but
getting people to buy it.
>2) Assigning the wages of rent to "the community" will somehow
>wave a magic wand and cease all inequity in the world.
Strawman. Nobody claims that.
>Granted, I've hyperbolized, but I note the historical
>tendency of these things to trade one class of opressor
>for another.
There is never a lack of willing oppressors; and it should not be
surprising that when oppression imposed by violence can only be thrown
off by violence, it is the violent who end up in charge either way.
>I really do like the idea of "no income tax", but the
>income tax, at least in the U.S. is an unconstitutioanl
>abortion to begin with.
Wrong. Taxation of earned income was consistently upheld by the
Supreme Court. It was only taxation of the _un_earned incomes of the
rich that needed a constitutional amendment, because that was
considered "direct" taxation.
>You don't have to do some
>shadow abolition of property to attack it.
I'm not proposing a shadow abolition of property. Just an open
abolition of privilege.
>3) Somehow, land rents do not serve some unknown higher
>purpose in the economy, and their absence would lead to
>consequences we cannot now know.
Nobody is proposing abolition of land rents (which is an economic
nonsense). Only abolition of their capture and retention by private
interests. Certainly the upside is incalculable, if that's what you
mean. Where would Japan be by now, if it hadn't gradually reduced and
then abolished its land tax?
>George sounds
>to me like Russel and his program to reinvent mathematics
>from first principes - because the Universe wants us to.
That may be true in an evolutionary sense: the first society to
combine free markets with thoroughgoing public recovery of economic
rents will certainly leave the rest in the dust. I suppose you could
think of that as the universe unfolding as it should.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
><ro...@telus.net> wrote in message news:40c6a396...@news.telus.net...
>> On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 00:08:54 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
>> >Many of the products of our society that I most admire would not have
>> >happenned without people with too much power and/or money to burn.
>>
>> [... snipped various examples of unrelated bad things ...]
>>
>> I want you to name one specific
>> thing you admire that you think would not have happened without people
>> with too much power and/or money.
>>
>> I'm waiting.
>
>How about the pyramids of Giza?
?? You really admire those monuments to stupidity, superstition and
servitude? And more to the point, do you imagine the cost of them --
human as well as material -- was somehow "worth it" because you can
now admire them? Those great heaps of stone represent a significant
fraction of the entire world's economic output for a year. What would
the world now be like if that output had been invested instead of
squandered?
>> Self interest -- striving for more -- is not evil. Greed -- striving
>> for more _than_you_deserve_ -- _is_ evil. What you are advocating
>> here is the institutionalization and enshrinement of bald, outright
>> evil as a social and economic standard.
>
>More than I deserve? If you mean to suggest that I have some sort of
>material entitlement that I wasn't aware of, then I disagree.
??? I guess English must not be your first language....
>If you mean
>to suggest that we have no other choice than to survive by sin, then I
>disagree with that as well.
??? I explicitly said the opposite.
>I don't see any other way to interpret your
>definition of evil -- it's merely an argumentative trap.
<yawn> I think others are perhaps more accurate readers than you...
>> So, your view is that everyone else believes as you do: that wealth is
>> only worth attaining to the extent that it makes you the beneficiary
>> of crimes committed against others. Check.
>
>Except without the misleadingly connotative language, i.e, what I actually
>said. I advocate no crimes.
Yes, you do. You advocate robbing working people of the fruits of
their labor in order to give welfare subsidies to the idle rich.
>Many people have aspirations beyond what can
>be realistically accomplished alone or by consensus, and I simply don't
>think they should be ashamed of it.
If people are trying to get more than they deserve, they are trying to
arrange for others to get less than they deserve. I'd call that
shameful.
>> >No, the poor need help. Everyone who doesn't need help gives up a
>portion
>> >of their produce voluntarily, to create the prize that they compete for.
>>
>> It's not voluntary, liar, and they aren't competing for any prize.
>> They are merely _paying_ for the prize the rich have already won, and
>> that payment is one of the ways the rich make sure the ablest of the
>> productive can never accumulate the assets needed to offer them any
>> real competition.
>
>You don't believe in opportunity?
Opportunity to do what? Profit from crimes committed against others?
No, I don't.
>> >No, slavery is evil.
>>
>> Why? Why is slavery evil? Is it because some are robbed for the
>> unearned benefit of others?
>
>They were robbed, and thievery is wrong.
Except when you advocate it for the unearned benefit of the idle rich,
perhaps...?
>You and I, however, are not being
>robbed -- "thievery" legislated by a representative govenment is just tax.
Wrong. A tax that varies directly with what one contributes to the
wealth of the community is robbery. Taxes that fall on production are
just part-time slavery.
>> Is it because some are denied their rights in order to bestow privileges
>on
>> others?
>
>They were denied their rights, and that is wrong.
Except when it is done for the unearned benefit of the rich, as you
advocate?
>The rule of law under a
>representative government, however, does not deny people their rights,
??? Yet that is exactly what supported slavery.
>even
>though it *is* sufficient to sustain rent. Rent does not require a denial
>of human rights.
Private capture and retention of it does.
>> Is it because slavery favors idle parasites at the expense of freedom and
>justice?
>
>Slaves were denied freedom and justice, and that was evil, too. Rent,
>however, is possible in a free and just society.
Private capture and retention of rent isn't. It is inherently unjust
and oppressive.
>> >There was rent involved with slavery, but slavery is
>> >evil for reasons that have nothing to do with rent.
>>
>> Name them.
>
>I think we've done pretty well so far, but there are some more:
>
>Slaves were captured, taken from their homes, and subjugated against their
>will.
In order that their captors could collect rent. Next?
>Slaves were denied representation in their government. You are, too, to
>some degree, and that is also wrong, but it doesn't depend on rent.
Right. It's the other way around.
>Slaves were the victims of a terrible and pervasive racial predjudice, that
>enabled people to think of them as property.
Irrelevant. Many societies have taken and kept slaves from among
their own people. We are all the descendants of slaves. It's just
that in the USA, the experience is historically recent, and pretty
much confined to those of African extraction.
>These are the horrible sorts of things you misleadingly recall when you
>equate slavery and rent seeking.
See above. I see nothing misleading in it at all.
>> >We both understand the mechanism, yes, but we aren't talking about crimes
>by
>> >any reasonable definition.
>>
>> Yes, we are, by the _only_ reasonable definition: conscious,
>> deliberate, intentional violations of others' rights.
>
>What rights are those, exactly?
The right to own what one produces by one's labor, and the equal right
to use the resources tht nature provided to all.
>> >There is no duress involved for the vast majority of people.
>>
>> ?? Yes, of course there is. Your claim is just a flat-out lie.
>
>No there isn't, liar.
Yes, lying filth, there is.
>Does the Man need his billy club to make you a good
>citizen? I thought not.
No, but he needs it to rob me of the fruits of my labor.
>Most people respect the property of others,
>because they expect their own property rights to be respected and they
>believe in the golden rule.
Income tax enforcers excluded, of course....
>> >It is true that compliance with the law
>> >is not always voluntary, but we accept this level of instituitionalized
>> >oppression, because it is much less oppressive than the anarchy that
>would
>> >exist without it.
>>
>> That is an obvious false dichotomy. What evidence can you offer that
>> the only alternative to institutionalized oppression is anarchy?
>>
>> I'm waiting.
>
>Nothing you would find compelling, I'm afraid.
And nothing anyone else would find the least bit plausible, either.
Thought not.
>I'm not familiar with any
>significant societies that have existed without the rule of law for any
>length of time. It's not an experiment I would want to try.
You are just repeating the same fallacy, equating the rule of law with
oppression. Too bad you have nothing to offer in support of your
claims.
>> I don't think you have to worry about the rich becoming insufficiently
>> privileged in your lifetime, nor in the lifetimes of your children or
>> grandchildren.
>
>I don't think so either. What I *do* worry about is well-intentioned people
>rendering themselves ineffectual by getting caught up in autistic rhetoric
>and concocted morals, arguing amongst themselves about irrelevant notions,
>and each focusing their efforts on their own unique red herring.
Yes, well, we do seem to have our share of ignorant but well-meaning
people trying to ride their hobbyhorses even after they have been
reduced to splinters. But progress always depends on a happy few
being willing to endure scoffing and derision like yours.
>> >I believe that such priviledge,
>> >properly controlled by law, is conducive to increasing absolute wealth
>> >across the whole of society.
>>
>> ?? Yet you have already said you prefer privilege to justice, [...]
>>, even though justice would be more economically efficient [...]
>> i.e., even though you recognize that such privilege is _not_ conducive
>> to increasing absolute wealth across the whole of society.
>
>Oops. I take issue with the definition of "justice" you seem to be using
>here, but you certainly did catch me misspeaking. I'm was applying a
>non-economic aesthetic that I momentarily mistook for part of absolute
>wealth.
Ah. Just your personal preference, then. Thought so.
-- Roy L
Robert J. Kolker
Les Cargill wrote:
> off Negros for industrial work.
>
> I really do like the idea of "no income tax", but the
> income tax, at least in the U.S. is an unconstitutioanl
> abortion to begin with. You don't have to do some
> shadow abolition of property to attack it.
Yoo Hoo. Thirteenth Amendment?
And please don't tell me that wages are not income. The courts have
demolished that canard many years ago.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
> That is most certainly false. The DuPont heirs now number some 1600,
> with average net worth of $100M. There is no evidence whatever that
> fortunes are regressing to the mean at all, let alone in short order.
Monsanto has eaten some of their lunch. In any case their investments
have help to creat new businesses.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
Matt Timmermans wrote:
>
> I prefer to have a few individuals free to implement grand visions without
> much regard for practical concerns, than to have all of mankind's efforts
> consumed in the production of basic requirements and popular gadgets.
As long as the people implementing Grand Visions are not using stolen
tax money, that is perfectly fine. Taxation is Theft.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
ro...@telus.net wrote:
> interests. Certainly the upside is incalculable, if that's what you
> mean. Where would Japan be by now, if it hadn't gradually reduced and
> then abolished its land tax?
In the toilet where it is now. Their economy is no longer the dynamo it
once was.
Bob Kolker
ro...@telus.net
<robert...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>>
>> That is most certainly false. The DuPont heirs now number some 1600,
>> with average net worth of $100M. There is no evidence whatever that
>> fortunes are regressing to the mean at all, let alone in short order.
>
>Monsanto has eaten some of their lunch.
Who do you think owns Monsanto, etc.?
>In any case their investments
>have help to creat new businesses.
That is utter garbage. That money would have created _more_ new
businesses in the hands of the productive than of rich, idle rent
seekers.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<robert...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>> interests. Certainly the upside is incalculable, if that's what you
>> mean. Where would Japan be by now, if it hadn't gradually reduced and
>> then abolished its land tax?
>
>In the toilet where it is now.
Oh, don't be so stupid. Japan has seen two separate decades-long eras
of spectacular growth. Both of them occurred when a large fraction of
land rent was being recovered for public purposes.
>Their economy is no longer the dynamo it
>once was.
??? Uh, maybe because they shifted their burden of taxation off land
rents and onto production?
Duh.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
>"The Trucker" <mik...@verizon.net> wrote in message
>news:ca7c9...@news1.newsguy.com...
>> Matt Timmermans wrote:
>> > We could do with a more informed populous, but I think people are
>informed
>> > enough that the privileges that accompany wealth are created by an
>> > informed
>> > consensus.
>>
>> What the hell is this supposed to mean?
>
>Meaning that people appreciate the economic opportunities of our society,
>they want the privileges that accompany wealth if they manage to become
>wealthy, and they want to be able to leave a legacy to their children, so
>that they might have a better life than they otherwise would.
Well, having no choice but to be either the victim or the beneficiary
of crime, they prefer having a chance, no matter how remote, at the
latter.
>> > They just aren't adequately controlled.
>>
>> And this?
>
>That privileges of wealth can get out of hand, because the economics of rent
>are naturally unstable, and voters are not informed enough to make such the
>sophisticated demands necessary to keep them in check.
And you're part of that problem.
-- Rly L
Ron Peterson
> As long as the people implementing Grand Visions are not using stolen
> tax money, that is perfectly fine. Taxation is Theft.
Is theft bad? If so, why?
--
Ron
Les Cargill
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 02:28:57 GMT, Les Cargill
> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>>
>>
>>I can't argue with that. But society can't, or it would.
>
>
> Garbage. The rich just don't let it, until it's too late.
>
I think you overestimate the power of the merely rich. The
superrich, I cannot really speak to. I simply don't know
how their world works, beynd the standard issue PR and
lobbying machinery.
>
>>Isn't that a larger problem, ultimately?
>
>
> Not believing freedom and justice are possible is certainly a larger
> problem.
When people have the preferences they have, you get what
*we* have. Whether I beleive in it or not means
absolutely nothing. Integrated over the whole, it means
something, but not one datum.
> How did you get to be that way? Weren't you a baby boomer
> when you were young?
>
Nope. Early Post-boomer, pre GenX. MOre Pistols
than Beatles. Saw the '80s half from the McJob
point of view, half from an office. At least...
two old acquaintances worked ( and prospered, as
extraordinarily productive people ) in
Junque Bond funded companies. Both Milliken
startups, I beleive.
One worked in a technical capacity for Enron,
later. Overseas infrastructure, the real core
business of Enron as opposed to all the hoohah
with trading. The part that actually made money
for 'em - until the Tigers crashed.
We don't get the whole story in various media.
I've urged him to write a book, but he's in
another startup. He's told me stories of Ken
Lay and how far above and beyond the guy would
go for his people.
Let us just say that I have a great
respect for people who keep their head on straight
when the stakes are high. *Most* people get somewhat
psychotic over it.
Les Cargill
<snip>
>
> What I'm concerned about is a whole class of human endeavour. There is a
> limit to how much a person can do in his lifetime, and there are types of
> projects that won't be done by consensus among individuals, or by
> corporations, because they are impractical or are the products of a personal
> vision.
>
I had ( and still maintain some ) hope for the "open source" model
of capital development, but it's gonna take a long time to get the
kinks out. Maybe our grandkids....
> I prefer to have a few individuals free to implement grand visions without
> much regard for practical concerns, than to have all of mankind's efforts
> consumed in the production of basic requirements and popular gadgets. Grand
> undertakings can lift all our sprits, because we recognize them as
> accomplishments of mankind.
>
Yeah buddy.
> And yes, I know this is a religious view.
>
I think it's a historical view, and I constantly have
to fight the bias towards it. Historians want to tell stories
of great men.
> --
> Matt
>
>
--
--
Les Cargill
Les Cargill
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 02:37:18 GMT, Les Cargill
> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
<snip>
>>I see large pockets of non-entropy which were largely made
>>possible by the accumlation of capital.
>>
>>Capital has a catalytic effect on the value of labor.It
>>makes it worth more.
>
>
> Yes, but now you're equivocating. Matt was talking about wealth, not
> capital. Now you've shifted the terms to capital in the economic
> sense, which has little or nothinbg to do with wealth in the sense
> Matt meant.
>
>
Well, I sensed that Matt was implying that the wealth will
probably become capital - which is why I was blathering of
marginal utility.
Noted, agreed - but I think it's a short step to capital
from big wealth. *Most* normal people wanna see the money
work.
<snip>
>>No, I want more rail voltage to drive the whole blasted machine.
>
>
> How could the voltage be more than by conferring rewards exactly
> commensurate with contributions? Any interference with that has to
> _reduce_ the overall voltage.
>
>
>>I see this huge correlation between inequity and "progress".
>
>
> ?? Where?
19th century America and England. 20th century, too.
The most uequal distributions of wealth are found in
> stagnant Latin American dictatorships, and the most rapid progress is
> typically found where distributions are most equal.
>
Latin Americ inherits cultural artifacts from climate,
Spain and the Church that lead it to be less dynamic
than it could be.
And I'm referring to material/industrial progress, not
social progress per se.
>
>>>>Considering the strength of both capital markets as well as
>>>>not-for-profit sectors of the economy, this does not seem
>>>>without observable effect. Some of the most politically
>>>>radical engines in the U.S. are the various foundations
>>>>of the scion of the old Robber Barons.
>>>
>>>Nonsense. They just subsidize the loud but safely stupid types who
>>>can be counted on to drown out the real voices for change.
>>
>>Real voices for change are largely ignored because nobody really
>>cares what they say.
>
>
> Until they get too angry to _listen_ to what they say...
>
>
Who's really angry? I'm serious - I really don't see it. We
have McVeigh type outliers, but those are relatively few.
I know lotsa former l00sers, now with ladders on their
trucks and mortgages. Outta all my reprobate formers, only a
handful are *really* on the edge, and they had hard drug
problems, or were just generally incompetent.
I've argued this with a half dozen well educated Europeans,
and a few Canadians, and I do not see a serious problem.
Even Mexico is more prosperous than in many years - with
lots of hard problems ahead . But geez, there's even an emerging
consumer class in China.
I think you had to be there in 1980 to get perspective. It
was pretty bad. THen it got worse...
>>>>>>Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.
>>>>>
>>>>>Well, flatter than it is now with such mechanisms in place, anyway.
>>>>
>>>>And that would be unconditionally a good thing?
>>>
>>>
>>>Deleting the mechanisms of plutism certainly would, cet. par.
>>
>>That'n, I have to take a pass on. I think we pay that out of
>>some sort of appeal to the idiot in us all, that needs plutism.
>
>
> IMO that idiot has had to be carefully nurtured.
>
Perhaps he's headed for the scrap heap. But for now...
Les Cargill
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 02:27:07 GMT, Les Cargill
> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
<snip>
>>Bosh. The marginal utility of the $1000 might be the same as
>>the $1.
>
>
> Nope. Flat wrong. Different people's utilities are not comensurable.
>
>
>>Would you like to deny that in public?
>
>
> Just did.
>
In terms of the differential equations, the *rates*
are known, and the constants not known. All I am saying
is that these two lines will converge *at some point*,
for an abstract class of samplings.
>
>>My point
>>is that this tends to make investment attractive.
>
>
> But there is no reason whatever why we would _want_ to make
> "investment" attractive, except to the extent that it results in
> greater production. And if we want to encourage greater production,
> we _cannot_ do better than reward it in exact proportion.
>
>
What is so critical about "exact proportions"? My own
experience with engineers who get large stock grants is that
they tend to keep it at about the same rate as the rich are to the
general public. About, anyway.
I concede the point that it makes sense, but in practical terms,
if the income distribution changes, prices change to accommodate
and the result can make people worse off.
>>Preferrable in terms of *what*, Roy?
>
>
> That's what I'd like to know. I notice you supply no answer.
>
>
I'm not making the claim here.
>>If the rich
>>guy finds the river of money, more power to 'im.
>>Pop the cork.
>
>
> Nope. That river didn't come from nowhere, and he is not the one who
> created it. Why should he get to own it?
>
>
Because this is the present interpretation of how
property works.
>>If you are serious, I'll enumerate the questions:
>>
>>1) Production is inherently preferrable to other things.
>
>
> It is preferable to rent seeking, anyway.
>
>
>>There's only an aesthetic, context-based reason to assume that.
>
>
> ??? Production is what keeps you from starving, you fool!
>
>
Production is only good *to a point*. I do not see limits
on production as a practical problem in today's world.
>>Since production inevitably means consumption or worse, waste,
>
>
> ??? Back to the caves, then, is it? Or maybe the swamps?
>
>
>>I find it hard to beleive that simply using resources because
>>we find it more attractive sufficient justification.
>
>
> Incoherent gobbledegook. What use are resources if we _don't_ use
> them?
>
Resources which can be used for something else. Production without
demand is wasteful.
>
>>And production is *easiy* shown to be a solved problem.
>
>
> Marxist claptrap.
>
Huh? Go to WalMart and look around. How many factories have you
worked in? People be making stuff like nobody's business - it's
the distribution that is the hard part.
>
>>If
>>you can prove the dog'll eat the dog food, you can get money
>>everywhere to make it. There are much harder problems out there.
>
>
> More garbage. The problem is not getting dogs to eat the food, but
> getting people to buy it.
>
>
In the dog food metaphor, that is the same thing.
>>2) Assigning the wages of rent to "the community" will somehow
>>wave a magic wand and cease all inequity in the world.
>
>
> Strawman. Nobody claims that.
>
>
>>Granted, I've hyperbolized, but I note the historical
>>tendency of these things to trade one class of opressor
>>for another.
>
>
> There is never a lack of willing oppressors; and it should not be
> surprising that when oppression imposed by violence can only be thrown
> off by violence, it is the violent who end up in charge either way.
>
>
See, we go from imagined ( under the present system of property )
opression directly to Revolutiung. *Shrug*?
>>I really do like the idea of "no income tax", but the
>>income tax, at least in the U.S. is an unconstitutioanl
>>abortion to begin with.
>
>
> Wrong. Taxation of earned income was consistently upheld by the
> Supreme Court. It was only taxation of the _un_earned incomes of the
> rich that needed a constitutional amendment, because that was
> considered "direct" taxation.
>
THat contradicts my sources, which are presently unavailable. I
really thought there was a heated battle over the constitutionality
in the Senate when proposed. It was resolved by FDR's guys
pulling power politics. Wish I had the cite for that - I beleive
it was in Slate, about ifve years ago.
And I think this is the sort of judicial activism under those
courts (Marshall? ) which inspired many a spittle flecked
diatribe among the old school ( what we now refer to
as strict constructionist ) oartisans. It did not go
gentle into the dark night.
>
>>You don't have to do some
>>shadow abolition of property to attack it.
>
>
> I'm not proposing a shadow abolition of property. Just an open
> abolition of privilege.
>
>
Which is ambitious.
>>3) Somehow, land rents do not serve some unknown higher
>>purpose in the economy, and their absence would lead to
>>consequences we cannot now know.
>
>
> Nobody is proposing abolition of land rents (which is an economic
> nonsense). Only abolition of their capture and retention by private
> interests. Certainly the upside is incalculable, if that's what you
> mean. Where would Japan be by now, if it hadn't gradually reduced and
> then abolished its land tax?
>
Agreed.
>
>>George sounds
>>to me like Russel and his program to reinvent mathematics
>
>>from first principes - because the Universe wants us to.
>
> That may be true in an evolutionary sense: the first society to
> combine free markets with thoroughgoing public recovery of economic
> rents will certainly leave the rest in the dust. I suppose you could
> think of that as the universe unfolding as it should.
>
You know, if that is the case, great. I'd be very pleasantly
surprised. If it passes in the GReat Lab out there, then
we all know.
Matt Timmermans
<ro...@telus.net> wrote in message news:40c7fb34...@news.telus.net...
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
>
> ?? You really admire those monuments to stupidity, superstition and
> servitude?
Oh yes.
> What would
> the world now be like if that output had been invested instead of
> squandered?
Pretty much the same, less some pyramids. We would have had to find another
wonder of the world for the list. The people who built them would still be
dust, but fewer people would care.
> >More than I deserve? If you mean to suggest that I have some sort of
> >material entitlement that I wasn't aware of, then I disagree.
>
> ??? I guess English must not be your first language....
Nice try, but you let it slip out here:
> >> Yes, we are, by the _only_ reasonable definition: conscious,
> >> deliberate, intentional violations of others' rights.
> >
> >What rights are those, exactly?
>
> [...] the equal right
> to use the resources tht nature provided to all.
So you *do* believe in entitlement, lying filth. You think I deserve an
equal share, just because my parents got frisky. That's infantile!
(I'll address the one I snipped below)
> >The rule of law under a
> >representative government, however, does not deny people their rights,
>
> ??? Yet that is exactly what supported slavery.
Uhm, the slaves weren't represented by that government. They didn't get to
vote, remember?
> >Slaves were denied representation in their government. You are, too, to
> >some degree, and that is also wrong, but it doesn't depend on rent.
>
> Right. It's the other way around.
It's easy enough to prove you wrong there: I vote, my government represents
me, and I pay my taxes. Even when I was paying rent directly, I voted, and
my government represented me. Heck, the have been occasions when I've been
happy with my government for *years* at a time!
> >Does the Man need his billy club to make you a good
> >citizen? I thought not.
>
> No, but he needs it to rob me of the fruits of my labor.
Your society can rightly consider the entire benefit you derive from your
membership in that society as a basis for taxation. If you think you could
do better on a deserted island, or even somewhere else, then I'm sure you
can find the way.
> >I'm was applying a non-economic aesthetic that I momentarily mistook
> >for part of absolute wealth.
>
> Ah. Just your personal preference, then. Thought so.
Yeah, same as you, Roy, 'cept I don't dress it up like Gospel.
> -- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 02:28:57 GMT, Les Cargill
>> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>> Not believing freedom and justice are possible is certainly a larger
>> problem.
>
>When people have the preferences they have, you get what
>*we* have.
Nonsense. What we have is also the product of historical accident,
political interventions by wealthy interests, etc.
Look at what they did to Turgot. He might have been able to prevent
the French Revolution, with incalculable effects on European and world
history. But the landowners and grain monopolists saw he was
threatening their privileges, so they got together and had him
removed. I wonder if any of them thought of Turgot as they were
hauled up the steps to the guillotine....
>We don't get the whole story in various media.
No kidding.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
><ro...@telus.net> wrote in message news:40c7fb34...@news.telus.net...
>> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
>> >How about the pyramids of Giza?
>>
>> ?? You really admire those monuments to stupidity, superstition and
>> servitude?
>
>Oh yes.
Well, that fits. For my part, while the scale and durability of those
monuments are impressive, I can't imagine admiring such a waste of
lives and treasure.
>> What would
>> the world now be like if that output had been invested instead of
>> squandered?
>
>Pretty much the same, less some pyramids.
Maybe, but maybe not. That amount of wealth (call it 1M man-years'
worth, just for the Great Pyramid alone) invested at just 1% would now
be worth a very large multiple of all the wealth in the world.
>We would have had to find another
>wonder of the world for the list. The people who built them would still be
>dust, but fewer people would care.
They might not care, but only because they would be unaware that their
lives were radically better and richer for it.
>> >More than I deserve? If you mean to suggest that I have some sort of
>> >material entitlement that I wasn't aware of, then I disagree.
>>
>> ??? I guess English must not be your first language....
>
>Nice try, but you let it slip out here:
>
>> >> Yes, we are, by the _only_ reasonable definition: conscious,
>> >> deliberate, intentional violations of others' rights.
>> >
>> >What rights are those, exactly?
>>
>> [...] the equal right
>> to use the resources tht nature provided to all.
>
>So you *do* believe in entitlement, lying filth.
No, putrid, despicable, lying garbage. An entitlement has to be
provided by others (i.e., as you advocate for the rich). A right can
only be _violated_ by others. Access to natural resources _cannot_ be
an entitlement, because the resources were already there, with no help
from anyone else. All others can do is _deny_ you your right to
access them. That is what makes it rent seeking, not trading.
>You think I deserve an
>equal share, just because my parents got frisky.
See? You _don't_ know how to read. A right to access is not a
"share."
>That's infantile!
<yawn> Mirror time, pal...
>> >The rule of law under a
>> >representative government, however, does not deny people their rights,
>>
>> ??? Yet that is exactly what supported slavery.
>
>Uhm, the slaves weren't represented by that government.
Neither were the women....
>They didn't get to
>vote, remember?
It was still rule of law under a representative government, as
understood by the people of the time. At one time only male
landowners got to vote. So? Women have only been allowed to vote for
about 100 years. So? Children _still_ can't vote. So?
Anyone with the slightest acquaintance with history knows that getting
to vote for representatives does not in any way guarantee that
government will not deny people their rights.
Your claim is just flat false.
>> >Slaves were denied representation in their government. You are, too, to
>> >some degree, and that is also wrong, but it doesn't depend on rent.
>>
>> Right. It's the other way around.
>
>It's easy enough to prove you wrong there:
No, of course it isn't. It is not only not easy, it is impossible,
because I am right.
>I vote, my government represents
>me, and I pay my taxes. Even when I was paying rent directly, I voted, and
>my government represented me. Heck, the have been occasions when I've been
>happy with my government for *years* at a time!
See? All you had for "proof" was a load of off-topic banalities. You
provided no counter-argument, let alone a disproof, for my statement
that rent depends (though not entirely, of course) on denial of
representation for tenants. Nor even anything relevant to that
statement.
>> >Does the Man need his billy club to make you a good
>> >citizen? I thought not.
>>
>> No, but he needs it to rob me of the fruits of my labor.
>
>Your society can rightly consider the entire benefit you derive from your
>membership in that society as a basis for taxation.
More of the same evil, despicable garbage. In fact society cannot
_rightly_ consider as a basis for taxation the benefit I derive from
my membership in it, when and to the extent that such benefit is
requited by commensurate benefits _society_ derives from my membership
in it.
Or, to put it more plainly, society can rightly consider the economic
rents that _it_ contributes to the recipients thereof in return for no
contribution from them as a basis for taxation, but not what the
productive receive in return for what they contribute to society.
>If you think you could
>do better on a deserted island, or even somewhere else, then I'm sure you
>can find the way.
The productive benefit by society, but society benefits as much or
more by the productive. There is no basis for your claim that the
benefits the productive obtain from their participation in society are
a rightful basis of taxation, given that they are in no position to
tax society in return in respect of the benefits society gets from
them. On the contrary, it is the _un_requited benefits that the
_un_productive obtain from society in return for no contribution from
themselves that are the true rightful basis for taxation.
>> >I'm was applying a non-economic aesthetic that I momentarily mistook
>> >for part of absolute wealth.
>>
>> Ah. Just your personal preference, then. Thought so.
>
>Yeah, same as you, Roy,
No; unlike you I also deal in matters of _fact_.
>'cept I don't dress it up like Gospel.
Economics is a science. It is a science poisoned, twisted and
corrupted by the self-seeking of wealthy interests, but that is a
temporary condition. No science can persist in such gross and
destructive error indefinitely. The superior results obtained by
taxing economic rents rather than production cannot be ignored,
obscured and concealed forever.
-- Roy L
Les Cargill
Assuming Turgot didn't get to drink the Kool-Aid, too....
There are always various Cassandras out there... but
human identity requires rejecting sufficiently threatening
new things. It's hard to get people to trade what they
have for what's behind Door Number Three...
>
>>We don't get the whole story in various media.
>
>
> No kidding.
>
Part of the problem is that real capitalists don't
get to talk much. Or shouldn't.
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 02:37:18 GMT, Les Cargill
>> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
><snip>
>>>I see large pockets of non-entropy which were largely made
>>>possible by the accumlation of capital.
>>>
>>>Capital has a catalytic effect on the value of labor.It
>>>makes it worth more.
>>
>> Yes, but now you're equivocating. Matt was talking about wealth, not
>> capital. Now you've shifted the terms to capital in the economic
>> sense, which has little or nothinbg to do with wealth in the sense
>> Matt meant.
>
>Well, I sensed that Matt was implying that the wealth will
>probably become capital - which is why I was blathering of
>marginal utility.
But it will only become capital if production is rewarded more than
rent seeking -- which is where we came in.
>Noted, agreed - but I think it's a short step to capital
>from big wealth. *Most* normal people wanna see the money
>work.
Nope. Those who have it just want it to yield as much unearned income
at as little risk as possible. In the current environment, they would
far rather just collect economic rents than go to the risk, effort and
inconvenience of investing their wealth in productive capital.
><snip>
>>>No, I want more rail voltage to drive the whole blasted machine.
>>
>> How could the voltage be more than by conferring rewards exactly
>> commensurate with contributions? Any interference with that has to
>> _reduce_ the overall voltage.
>>
>>>I see this huge correlation between inequity and "progress".
>>
>> ?? Where?
>
>19th century America and England. 20th century, too.
Nope. Flat wrong. Leaving aside the slavery issue in the USA, their
eras of greatest progress were eras of relatively fair and egalitarian
distribution of wealth and after-tax income -- and of public recovery
of economic rents.
Before WW I, most government spending in the USA was funded by taxes
that bore on land rents; and even today, local and state property
taxes in the USA recover a larger fraction of land rent than in most
other countries (which is all that keeps it from following so many
other elitist, privilege-ridden societies off a cliff).
The famed British Income Tax introduced to fund the fight against
Napoleon, the exemplary success of which is so often cited as a
justification for taxing earned income, in fact fell almost entirely
on _un_earned income, especially land rents: the word "income" in
Britain at that time meant passive _investment_ income, especially
land rent, not earned income, which was called "wages," nor profits,
which were called "profits." Among the well-to-do, there was a sharp
distinction between those who had "income" (primarily the nobility and
landed gentry) and those who were "in trade" (i.e., operating
productive enterprises).
As a general rule, unnaturally great inequity is _inversely_ related
to material progress, as seen in countless historical examples like
France's Ancien Regime, Tsarist Russia, Edo-period Japan, the hidalgo
culture of colonial Spain and Latin America, or China and India almost
any time before the mid 20th C. You are perhaps allowing yourself to
be distracted and deceived by the 20th C experiments with socialism,
which dove into poverty and stagnation by dint of public
appropriations of privately created value and other Procrustean
measures of forced leveling. There is a happy medium of inequality:
too much is just as destructive as too little.
> The most uequal distributions of wealth are found in
>> stagnant Latin American dictatorships, and the most rapid progress is
>> typically found where distributions are most equal.
>
>Latin Americ inherits cultural artifacts from climate,
>Spain and the Church that lead it to be less dynamic
>than it could be.
Nope. It is a continent steeped in landowner privilege, and it shows.
Public recovery of land and natural resource rents is minimal to
non-existent in virtually every country from Guatemala to Argentina,
and the few exceptions like Venezuela and Costa Rica, while they do
still have problems of their own, nevertheless stand out as
conspicuous successes next to their less equitable neighbors.
>And I'm referring to material/industrial progress, not
>social progress per se.
So am I.
>>>>>Considering the strength of both capital markets as well as
>>>>>not-for-profit sectors of the economy, this does not seem
>>>>>without observable effect. Some of the most politically
>>>>>radical engines in the U.S. are the various foundations
>>>>>of the scion of the old Robber Barons.
>>>>
>>>>Nonsense. They just subsidize the loud but safely stupid types who
>>>>can be counted on to drown out the real voices for change.
>>>
>>>Real voices for change are largely ignored because nobody really
>>>cares what they say.
>>
>> Until they get too angry to _listen_ to what they say...
>
>Who's really angry? I'm serious - I really don't see it. We
>have McVeigh type outliers, but those are relatively few.
I agree. People tend not to get angry until things get really
egregious, and by then it's too late for patient, rational debate or
non-violent solutions. We've seen it over and over again throughout
history.
>I've argued this with a half dozen well educated Europeans,
>and a few Canadians, and I do not see a serious problem.
>
>Even Mexico is more prosperous than in many years - with
>lots of hard problems ahead.
??? Mexico is prospering now because now it gets a lot of public
revenue from _oil_ rents, relieving the tax burden on earned income.
Hello?
>But geez, there's even an emerging
>consumer class in China.
And an emerging landlord class, unfortunately...
-- Roy L
Albert
ro...@telus.net wrote:
<snip>
> Economics is a science. It is a science poisoned, twisted and
> corrupted by the self-seeking of wealthy interests, but that is a
> temporary condition. No science can persist in such gross and
> destructive error indefinitely. The superior results obtained by
> taxing economic rents rather than production cannot be ignored,
> obscured and concealed forever.
Thank you. As always, I enjoy and learn from your posts. But every now
and then you exceed yourself with little gems such as above. May I use
that for a sig?
--
"Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and
further life; it is bad to damage and destroy life."
-- Albert Schweitzer
ro...@telus.net
>On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 08:30:40 GMT
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
><snip>
>> Economics is a science. It is a science poisoned, twisted and
>> corrupted by the self-seeking of wealthy interests, but that is a
>> temporary condition. No science can persist in such gross and
>> destructive error indefinitely. The superior results obtained by
>> taxing economic rents rather than production cannot be ignored,
>> obscured and concealed forever.
>
>Thank you. As always, I enjoy and learn from your posts. But every now
>and then you exceed yourself with little gems such as above. May I use
>that for a sig?
Be my guest.
-- Roy L
Eric Atkinson
> taxing economic rents rather than production cannot be ignored,
> obscured and concealed forever.
Roy, would you mind passing me link, perhaps, which provides some
numerical and example-based logic explaining rent vs production
taxation. This debate, and your views, are very interesting, but I'd
like to read some technical papers on it if possible. Thank you.
The Trucker
> The Trucker wrote:
>
>> Matt Timmermans wrote:
>>
> <snip>
>>
>> I tend to agree with this particular "belief" but reject the notion
>> that one's descendent's are to be included or that there needs to be
>> a _noble_ group that is supported forever because their "daddy" did
>> good.
>>
>>
>
> Yet some things take longer than a human lifespan. Trustees of
> an inheritance are not its only beneficiary. Remember, we're
> principally concerned with the producer/consumer
> relationship as the primary.
But these things that take a very long time should be done by all
of us and I think that does (or did) happen. And why do you think
I am concerned with the producer/consumer relationship as a
primary? My primary concern is simple JUSTICE and at least a
modicum of equal opportunity. The offspring of a well off parent
have all sorts of advantage while the parent(s) are/is alive and
will doubtless receive large advantages regardless of inheritance
taxes/laws. There simply is no good reason for the creation and
preservation of a nobility.
Inheritance taxation is not the best answer but until we tax
rent income or land holdings much more heavily it is the best
we can do.
> Even with the present state of things, fortunes regress to the
> mean in short order.
This CLAIM is horse manure. There was some truth to it prior
to 1980 when a progressive income tax was applied to UNEARNED
income over what would now be about $1M per year. Now it is
very difficult to get unrich unless one is supremely stupid.
And when we have a leader that is a caricature in noble
stupidity the rent seekers will be piling up gains over and
over.
--
http://GreaterVoice.org (a work in progress)
The Trucker
> The Trucker wrote:
>
> <snip>
>>
>> Rich people should be tolerated only if they become rich or stay
>> rich by virtue of their contribution to society. Their "benefit"
>> to society is what they did to _become_ rich. It is not what they
>> do after the fact. Their wealth is inconsequential but for the
>> distortions such wealth may bring to an otherwise the _free_ market.
>>
>
> But the principle of revealed preferences says this is what
> they do.
The "principle of revealed preferences" tells us that the very rich
want to stay rich and get richer in the safest way possible. One
must remember that wealth is the power to command or to forgo labor.
It is a lot safer and simpler to destroy the economy so as to force
everyone else to clean your toilet than it is to invest in a
self cleaning toilet.
Robert J. Kolker
The Trucker wrote:
> It is a lot safer and simpler to destroy the economy so as to force
> everyone else to clean your toilet than it is to invest in a
> self cleaning toilet.
So why are there self-cleaning toilets?
No group of rich people by themselves without armed might can destroy
the economy. Only a government can do that.
Now if you want to advocate keeping the rich folk of the land from
buying the government outright, I can go along with that.
Bob Kolker
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 01:50:24 GMT, Les Cargill
>> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>>>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 02:28:57 GMT, Les Cargill
>>>><lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Not believing freedom and justice are possible is certainly a larger
>>>>problem.
>>>
>>>When people have the preferences they have, you get what
>>>*we* have.
>>
>> Nonsense. What we have is also the product of historical accident,
>> political interventions by wealthy interests, etc.
>>
>> Look at what they did to Turgot. He might have been able to prevent
>> the French Revolution, with incalculable effects on European and world
>> history. But the landowners and grain monopolists saw he was
>> threatening their privileges, so they got together and had him
>> removed. I wonder if any of them thought of Turgot as they were
>> hauled up the steps to the guillotine....
>
>Assuming Turgot didn't get to drink the Kool-Aid, too....
Wasn't going to happen. Turgot knew what was wrong, he knew how to
reverse it (he'd done it in Limoges), and he was even in a _position_
to reverse it. But the rent seekers reversed him first, plain and
simple. They _knew_ he would work the same miracle for France that he
had for Limoges, and that's why they stopped him: it was not enough
that they would stay rich and even get richer, as the rich of Limoges
had done; they wanted the people to be kept poor.
>There are always various Cassandras out there...
Turgot was no Cassandra. He was not only a great theoretician, but
also an administrator of exceptional ability and unquestioned
integrity, with a record of brilliant success under very difficult
conditions -- which certainly described France's finances when Louis
XVI appointed him minister of finance in 1774.
>but
>human identity requires rejecting sufficiently threatening
>new things.
Every increment of human progress to date has threatened _some_
interest. We didn't get this far by letting those threatened
interests advance their interests at the expense of the general
interest.
>It's hard to get people to trade what they
>have for what's behind Door Number Three...
Especially while lying about what's behind Door #3...
-- Roy L
Les Cargill
> Les Cargill wrote:
>
>
>>The Trucker wrote:
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>>Rich people should be tolerated only if they become rich or stay
>>>rich by virtue of their contribution to society. Their "benefit"
>>>to society is what they did to _become_ rich. It is not what they
>>>do after the fact. Their wealth is inconsequential but for the
>>>distortions such wealth may bring to an otherwise the _free_ market.
>>>
>>
>>But the principle of revealed preferences says this is what
>>they do.
>
>
> The "principle of revealed preferences" tells us that the very rich
> want to stay rich and get richer in the safest way possible.
No. It tells us that people make things the way they are
because they want them to be that way.
This is not some Candide "best of all possible worlds"
hypothesis; it's just a simple statement that any
deviation from the status quo would have been only
possible had people behaved differently.
Surely this is is obvious? This expresses something? How
I understand this is from the informaiton-theoretic
perspective, and the math behind that is pretty
established.
I do not mean to imply that improvement isn't possible, just
that it's not the present exhibited situation. And that the
number of potential states is much heavier with
*dis*improvement than with improvement.
You guys seem unaware that the mobility ladder cuts both ways.
I cannot possibly accept that some Mandarin class is suddenly
emerging; the statistical evidence is too strong
the other way. I don't *care* about the top %0.01 ; they
are not as significant as the other %99.9 . And the
information on mobility is out there.
> One
> must remember that wealth is the power to command or to forgo labor.
> It is a lot safer and simpler to destroy the economy so as to force
> everyone else to clean your toilet than it is to invest in a
> self cleaning toilet.
Yet examples of readily available "self cleaning toilets" abound.
If the breakdown is that its cheaper to hire people to clean them,
then the self cleaning toilet makes no sense. I do not buy that
there are people actively desiring to have "slaves" out there. It's
too far from existing cultural norms. But there are a
lot of people who desire to create employment.
>
>
--
Les Cargill
Matt Timmermans
<ro...@telus.net> wrote in message news:40c95bed...@news.telus.net...
> >So you *do* believe in entitlement, lying filth.
>
> No, putrid, despicable, lying garbage. An entitlement has to be
> provided by others (i.e., as you advocate for the rich). A right can
> only be _violated_ by others. Access to natural resources _cannot_ be
> an entitlement, because the resources were already there, with no help
> from anyone else. All others can do is _deny_ you your right to
> access them. That is what makes it rent seeking, not trading.
Your lips are getting a little foamy, Roy, and this is just crap.
> See? All you had for "proof" was a load of off-topic banalities. You
> provided no counter-argument, let alone a disproof, for my statement
> that rent depends (though not entirely, of course) on denial of
> representation for tenants.
I provided a banal counter-example, which is sufficient to disprove your
unqualified general assertion. It's not my favourite mode of argument, but
you use it a lot, so I think you should buy it. Let me repeat it more
slowly: I paid rent, and I wasn't denied representation, therefore your
statement is false.
> The productive benefit by society, but society benefits as much or
> more by the productive.
The productive *are* the major part of our society!
> There is no basis for your claim that the
> benefits the productive obtain from their participation in society are
> a rightful basis of taxation.
The basis is simply that most of the value in we produce derives from the
activities, and mere presence of the productive as a group, and isn't
assignable to individuals. The productive, as a group, can therefore claim
the right to redistribute it however they see fit -- even if they want to
divert some of it towards rent.
> >> Ah. Just your personal preference, then. Thought so.
> >
> >Yeah, same as you, Roy,
>
> No; unlike you I also deal in matters of _fact_.
>
> >'cept I don't dress it up like Gospel.
>
> Economics is a science. [...]
Econmics might be a science, but our dispute is philosophical.
--
Matt
Les Cargill
> Les Cargill wrote:
>
>
>>The Trucker wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Matt Timmermans wrote:
>>>
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>>I tend to agree with this particular "belief" but reject the notion
>>>that one's descendent's are to be included or that there needs to be
>>>a _noble_ group that is supported forever because their "daddy" did
>>>good.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Yet some things take longer than a human lifespan. Trustees of
>>an inheritance are not its only beneficiary. Remember, we're
>>principally concerned with the producer/consumer
>>relationship as the primary.
>
>
> But these things that take a very long time should be done by all
> of us and I think that does (or did) happen. And why do you think
> I am concerned with the producer/consumer relationship as a
> primary?
I'm not. But that is the primary. That flow is the critical one.
> My primary concern is simple JUSTICE and at least a
> modicum of equal opportunity. The offspring of a well off parent
> have all sorts of advantage while the parent(s) are/is alive and
> will doubtless receive large advantages regardless of inheritance
> taxes/laws. There simply is no good reason for the creation and
> preservation of a nobility.
>
The nobility is the permanent political class, not the owner
class.
> Inheritance taxation is not the best answer but until we tax
> rent income or land holdings much more heavily it is the best
> we can do.
>
>
>>Even with the present state of things, fortunes regress to the
>>mean in short order.
>
>
> This CLAIM is horse manure. There was some truth to it prior
> to 1980 when a progressive income tax was applied to UNEARNED
> income over what would now be about $1M per year. Now it is
> very difficult to get unrich unless one is supremely stupid.
> And when we have a leader that is a caricature in noble
> stupidity the rent seekers will be piling up gains over and
> over.
>
>
--
--
Les Cargill
ro...@telus.net
wrote:
>> The superior results obtained by
>> taxing economic rents rather than production cannot be ignored,
>> obscured and concealed forever.
>
>Roy, would you mind passing me link, perhaps, which provides some
>numerical and example-based logic explaining rent vs production
>taxation.
The result is true by definition. As economic rent is _defined_ as a
factor payment in excess of that required to place the factor in its
most productive use, recovery of rent by taxation cannot displace the
factor from its most productive use. Indeed, all the evidence is that
rent taxation _increases_ productivity of use, because in order to
avoid losing money to the tax, a factor owner must either place the
factor in its most productive use, or sell it to someone who will
(this is a contingent result that depends on the fact that people are
not economically "rational," and do not treat cash costs the same as
opportunity costs).
However, a tax that exceeds a factor's economic rent can force the
factor out of productive use altogether, so it is important to make
sure rent taxation does not exceed the rent. Some easy ways to do
that would be to auction off the right to use the factor, much as
landowners currently do, or to tax such factors at a fraction or
multiple of their market value (if the tax became excessive, the
factor's market value, and thus the tax, would drop to zero).
>This debate, and your views, are very interesting, but I'd
>like to read some technical papers on it if possible.
The principles behind taxing the economic rent of land go back well
over 200 years, and the generalized result with respect to other
economic rents has been an accepted part of the furniture of economics
for many decades. As such, it is not the subject of recent technical
papers, any more than Maxwell's equations are the subject of recent
technical papers in physics. If you want to read up on the subject,
Googling "economic rent" along with such terms as taxation,
efficiency, tax burden, etc. will certainly get you started.
-- Roy L
The Trucker
> The Trucker wrote:
>> Les Cargill wrote:
>>
>>
>>>The Trucker wrote:
>>>
>>><snip>
>>>
>>>>Rich people should be tolerated only if they become rich or stay
>>>>rich by virtue of their contribution to society. Their "benefit"
>>>>to society is what they did to _become_ rich. It is not what they
>>>>do after the fact. Their wealth is inconsequential but for the
>>>>distortions such wealth may bring to an otherwise the _free_ market.
>>>>
>>>
>>>But the principle of revealed preferences says this is what
>>>they do.
>>
>>
>> The "principle of revealed preferences" tells us that the very rich
>> want to stay rich and get richer in the safest way possible.
>
> No. It tells us that people make things the way they are
> because they want them to be that way.
There's an echo in here. That's what I just said.
> This is not some Candide "best of all possible worlds"
> hypothesis; it's just a simple statement that any
> deviation from the status quo would have been only
> possible had people behaved differently.
snore....
> Surely this is is obvious? This expresses something? How
> I understand this is from the informaiton-theoretic
> perspective, and the math behind that is pretty
> established.
>
> I do not mean to imply that improvement isn't possible, just
> that it's not the present exhibited situation. And that the
> number of potential states is much heavier with
> *dis*improvement than with improvement.
>
> You guys seem unaware that the mobility ladder cuts both ways.
> I cannot possibly accept that some Mandarin class is suddenly
> emerging; the statistical evidence is too strong
> the other way.
Statistics in the hands of Republicans are only a tool to excuse
greed and to hide any form of truth.
> I don't *care* about the top %0.01 ; they
> are not as significant as the other %99.9 . And the
> information on mobility is out there.
Statistics on wealth not spun by Republicans indicate a much
taller and thiner top to
the pyramid and a much broader base. And the truly rich stay that
way for the most part. Every now and then you see a Gates come
along but it is extremely rare. The middle class of the USA was
once quite prosperous and now is not. They have "mobilitied"
downward.
> > One
>> must remember that wealth is the power to command or to forgo labor.
>> It is a lot safer and simpler to destroy the economy so as to force
>> everyone else to clean your toilet than it is to invest in a
>> self cleaning toilet.
>
> Yet examples of readily available "self cleaning toilets" abound.
But the super rich don't want them. They want to have a servant
do the job. Wealth is the power to forego or to command labor.
Power is a form of wealth that IS zero sum. It is the enforced
subservience of others that makes the Republican feel good, feel
safe, feel powerful.
> If the breakdown is that its cheaper to hire people to clean them,
> then the self cleaning toilet makes no sense. I do not buy that
> there are people actively desiring to have "slaves" out there. It's
> too far from existing cultural norms. But there are a
> lot of people who desire to create employment.
You are simply WRONG. Today's Republicanism is a search for pure power.
It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
a ruling class economically.
http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/glossary/aristocracy.php
Les Cargill
> Les Cargill wrote:
>
<snip>
>>I don't *care* about the top %0.01 ; they
>>are not as significant as the other %99.9 . And the
>>information on mobility is out there.
>
>
> Statistics on wealth not spun by Republicans indicate a much
> taller and thiner top to
> the pyramid and a much broader base. And the truly rich stay that
> way for the most part. Every now and then you see a Gates come
> along but it is extremely rare. The middle class of the USA was
> once quite prosperous and now is not. They have "mobilitied"
> downward.
>
>
Yet there is no, none, nada, zip empirical evidence to
support that hypothesis. All I see is an overheating
real estate market, a sure sign of increased purchasing
power. We see emplopyment finally jumping up, in the fastest
recovery since 1980 ( and even it felt slow ).
The booms of recent were financial crack pipe dreams, and
I was saying that in 1997. Getting washed out
on Enron is not the same thing as downward mobility.
*Right now*, you can get VC in a half a hearbeat - so long
as you have your ducks in a row. You just have to spend
considerable time in waterfowl alignment, and you won't keep as
much of it as ten years ago. WHat you'll have to do
will be technically shallower, but that's one of those
things.
<snip>
>>Yet examples of readily available "self cleaning toilets" abound.
>
>
> But the super rich don't want them. They want to have a servant
> do the job. Wealth is the power to forego or to command labor.
> Power is a form of wealth that IS zero sum. It is the enforced
> subservience of others that makes the Republican feel good, feel
> safe, feel powerful.
>
People say this, and I see no evidence of it. Nobody ( and I
do know a few relatively well-off people ) has servants.
Again, some people might hire a cleaning service periodically
to help if both parents have kids and work, but that is *not*
the same thing. Contracting with even a franchise cleaning
service is not domestic servant labor.
>
>>If the breakdown is that its cheaper to hire people to clean them,
>>then the self cleaning toilet makes no sense. I do not buy that
>>there are people actively desiring to have "slaves" out there. It's
>>too far from existing cultural norms. But there are a
>>lot of people who desire to create employment.
>
>
> You are simply WRONG. Today's Republicanism is a search for pure power.
Nonsense. It's populism. You think a rent-seeking class could swing
popular votes and would use footage of the president clearing
brush on his land?
> It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
> what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
> god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
> a ruling class economically.
>
Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
*think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
emerging Mandarin class?
If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
is WalMart. They are extraordinarily good at what they
do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
> http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/glossary/aristocracy.php
>
--
Les Cargill
Robert J. Kolker
Les Cargill wrote:
>
> AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
Bingo! Bottom line.
I am sure the folks who run Wal Mart favor policies that put money in
the pockets of people so they can come and buy good stuff cheap at Wal Mart.
Bob Kolker
The Trucker
> The Trucker wrote:
>
>> Les Cargill wrote:
>>
> <snip>
>>>I don't *care* about the top %0.01 ; they
>>>are not as significant as the other %99.9 . And the
>>>information on mobility is out there.
>>
>>
>> Statistics on wealth not spun by Republicans indicate a much
>> taller and thiner top to
>> the pyramid and a much broader base. And the truly rich stay that
>> way for the most part. Every now and then you see a Gates come
>> along but it is extremely rare. The middle class of the USA was
>> once quite prosperous and now is not. They have "mobilitied"
>> downward.
>>
>>
>
> Yet there is no, none, nada, zip empirical evidence to
> support that hypothesis.
http://Greatervoice.org/econ/glossary/economic_decline.php
> All I see is an overheating
> real estate market, a sure sign of increased purchasing
> power.
What you see is increased debt. The people that the Pugs want to
refer to as "home owners" are actually just renters because they
refinance the house once a year to pay off the credit cards. They
will never own the house. The rentier has simply found a way
to get the renters to pay maintenance and insurance and taxes
more directly. And as Mr. Green Jeans now raises the interst
rates, the rentier Pugs will be taking possession at greatly
reduced prices.
> We see emplopyment finally jumping up, in the fastest
> recovery since 1980 ( and even it felt slow ).
We see bullshit data from the Bush bought and paid for
Bureau of Lying Sadistics (BLS). This data tells absolutely
nothing about real unemployment and nothing about the millions
of people that now have jobs paying considerable less than the
jobs they were forced out of by H1B visas and the like.
> The booms of recent were financial crack pipe dreams, and
> I was saying that in 1997. Getting washed out
> on Enron is not the same thing as downward mobility.
When the Gingrich Republican congress overrides a presidential veto
of the legislation that allowed Aurthur Anderson to be both consultant
and auditor of Enron you get exactly what you see. And Enron was
just the one that got caught for going too far. The overstated
earnings CAUSED a bubble and greenspan then engineered a crash to
coincide with the election. It was a Carter Volcker Reagan replay.
We see GreenJeans talking about hiking rates now, knowing that the
effect will be delayed. But he started ACTUALLY jacking the rates
a full 12 - 18 months prior to the previous presidential election
while Bush and Cheney sold the "false economy" scenario on the
campaign trial.
> *Right now*, you can get VC in a half a hearbeat - so long
> as you have your ducks in a row.
Is that anything like VD?
The "rent seeking class" will do whatever they believe necessary to
suck more rent out of the economy and subjugate the renters. If that
was to include airing pictures Howdy Doody having sex with a bullfrog
then that is what we would get on Faux news and in other campaign ads.
>> It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
>> what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
>> god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
>> a ruling class economically.
>>
>
> Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
> *think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
> emerging Mandarin class?
George Bush wants a constitutional amendment to prevent gay marriage,
wants to give money to the religious orders, wants to detain people
without council, is accountable for torture of prisoners, and on, and
on and on. Its the friggin crusades. But it puts the rich, a la
Cheney and Co. above the law. It puts the Bush people above the
law, and it will, before all is said and done, put Ken Lay above
the law. Those that have power now operate with impunity as they hide
behind whatever MORAL issues they can drum up. Of course the favorite
is FEAR of those Moslems.
> If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
> is WalMart. They are extraordinarily good at what they
> do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>
> AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
>
>> http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/glossary/aristocracy.php
>>
>
>
> --
> Les Cargill
--
Grinch
wrote:
<snip>
>
>Bizarre and incoherent. Rent is zero-sum---when you collect rent, someone
>else pays for it. So when your kids benefit by collecting rent, others'
>kids lose.
The same is true for the sale of a cheeseburger -- when you collect
for the cheeseburger, someone else pays for it. So when your kids
benefit from your collecting that payment the other guy's kids lose.
Well ... only to the extent that we think only of the money side of
the transaction, and not what is received for the money. Which would
be rather bizarre.
Of course, a normal human being wouldn't pay $X for a cheeseburger
unless the cheeseburger was worth *more* than $X to him -- if it was
worth less he'd just keep his money in his pocket. (And if the
cheeseburger is worth more than $X to him then his kids probably
benefit from daddy increasing his welfare). Of course, the seller of
the cheeseburger increases his welfare via his profit from the sale.
This is *not* a zero sum transaction, this is a win-win positive sum
transaction in terms of human welfare.
Just the same way, a normal human being isn't going to pay $X in rent
for a plot of land unless the land is worth more than $X to him for
the rental period -- else, obviously, he'd just keep his money in his
pocket, say "not such nice land", and move on.
If he rents the land for $X because it is worth more than $X to him he
increases his welfare, while the landlord also increases his welfare
from receiving the rent.
Again, this obviously is a positive sum transaction -- to think of it
as "zero sum" seems rather bizarre and incoherent.
>Not only that; the benefits are conferred by an enforcement
>regime backed by the government's monopoly on violence.
Yes, well, if you walk out of a restaurant without paying for your
cheeseburger the cheeseburger seller will have the cops cart you away
for that too.
So cheeseburger sellers have their benefits "conferred by an
enforcement regime backed by the government's monopoly on violence" as
well.
I mean, if you want to resort to such rhetoric.
<snip>
Les Cargill
> Les Cargill wrote:
>
>
>>The Trucker wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Les Cargill wrote:
>>>
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>>>I don't *care* about the top %0.01 ; they
>>>>are not as significant as the other %99.9 . And the
>>>>information on mobility is out there.
>>>
>>>
>>>Statistics on wealth not spun by Republicans indicate a much
>>>taller and thiner top to
>>>the pyramid and a much broader base. And the truly rich stay that
>>>way for the most part. Every now and then you see a Gates come
>>>along but it is extremely rare. The middle class of the USA was
>>>once quite prosperous and now is not. They have "mobilitied"
>>>downward.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Yet there is no, none, nada, zip empirical evidence to
>>support that hypothesis.
>
>
> http://Greatervoice.org/econ/glossary/economic_decline.php
>
>
Lemme boil this for ya. "Houses cost too much". No kidding.
Know why? People *spend* that much on housing for lifestyle
reasons, and are led by a real estate industry which still
thinks "you'll grow into it".
It's nucking futs. But "we deserve it". Yeesh.
>>All I see is an overheating
>>real estate market, a sure sign of increased purchasing
>>power.
>
>
> What you see is increased debt.
You got it. It's because people are not careful about it.
If you use the standards of my grandparents, people are
*FAR* too profligate in spending. But I know of nobody
who can sucessfully argue against an improved general
standard of living in the U.S. since 1980.
> The people that the Pugs want to
> refer to as "home owners" are actually just renters because they
> refinance the house once a year to pay off the credit cards.
They're nuts. I can't muster any sympathy for people who do
that.
> They
> will never own the house. The rentier has simply found a way
> to get the renters to pay maintenance and insurance and taxes
> more directly.
I'd agree - and it points to the fact that it is behavior that
causes some people to accumulate wealth and some not to.
> And as Mr. Green Jeans now raises the interst
> rates, the rentier Pugs will be taking possession at greatly
> reduced prices.
>
Doubtfully. Prices only seem to go up, so far.
>
>>We see emplopyment finally jumping up, in the fastest
>>recovery since 1980 ( and even it felt slow ).
>
>
> We see bullshit data from the Bush bought and paid for
> Bureau of Lying Sadistics (BLS). This data tells absolutely
> nothing about real unemployment and nothing about the millions
> of people that now have jobs paying considerable less than the
> jobs they were forced out of by H1B visas and the like.
>
I don't do Konspiracy Theories. This is not wag the dog; these
are the statistics we have, by the standards we have them by.
>
>>The booms of recent were financial crack pipe dreams, and
>>I was saying that in 1997. Getting washed out
>>on Enron is not the same thing as downward mobility.
>
>
> When the Gingrich Republican congress overrides a presidential veto
> of the legislation that allowed Aurthur Anderson to be both consultant
> and auditor of Enron you get exactly what you see.
Dang skippy. I had discussed this with a guy who is a
Big Eigth alum at the time. But there's also the factor of 401k
money, the dmeocratizaiton of control over those things and
the general "rock and roll" feel of the financial press.
Having been thru the '80s, I knew better. But every generation
gets to reinvent this, apparently :)
> And Enron was
> just the one that got caught for going too far. The overstated
> earnings CAUSED a bubble and greenspan then engineered a crash to
> coincide with the election.
Yeeeaugh. Wasn't engineered. Greenspan was paying out ( lowering )
rates dizzyingly.
The sheep stampeded out of the markets, and the old
pros all got caught in the downdraft because they
couldn't project 40% ROI.
BTW - guess what's driving the housing prices? Refugee
stock equity from the downturn. Wait'll that turns around
and the Boomers start retiring in easrnest.
> It was a Carter Volcker Reagan replay.
Hardly. Volcker was dealing with the 'Nam war debt.
> We see GreenJeans talking about hiking rates now, knowing that the
> effect will be delayed. But he started ACTUALLY jacking the rates
> a full 12 - 18 months prior to the previous presidential election
> while Bush and Cheney sold the "false economy" scenario on the
> campaign trial.
>
>
>>*Right now*, you can get VC in a half a hearbeat - so long
>>as you have your ducks in a row.
>
>
> Is that anything like VD?
>
Trip trap...
Faux news is the ENGINE of this populism. People. Like. This.
Stuff. And NASCAR is the biggest spectator sport. Don't
you detect a pattern here?
It's DUmbness. It's the cult of Dumbness, of Know-Nothingism, and
it's absolutely, totally grass roots.
>>>It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
>>>what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
>>>god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
>>>a ruling class economically.
>>>
>>
>>Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
>>*think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
>>emerging Mandarin class?
>
>
> George Bush wants a constitutional amendment to prevent gay marriage,
Who gives a flying instance of fornicaiton? Being strongly one way
or the other is utterly ridiculous. It's a goofy thing to even
discuss. If you'd never seen it before, it'd be great on the
cover of "Weekly World News". Or "The Onion". Which did a thing
recently on it - "gay couple feels pressure to marry".
> wants to give money to the religious orders,
That is simply not true. He wants to do what the church
communities in distressed areas have done, and try to get
leverege from existing politicial institutions to
support these community institutions.
I think it's kinda naieve, but it seems to have *some* merit.
And I'm radically in favor of Seperation. This is Different.
It's not that great a variant on existing not-for-profit
stuff. It's also pragmatism of a very concrete type.
> wants to detain people
> without council,
That's clearly unconstitutional, and this is emerging
doctrine.
> is accountable for torture of prisoners,
Maybe. Let's let the facts out with that little
abomination.
I doubt even George Bush would state that he wanted
that sort of torture used on any prisoners.
It does shine a clear light on some problems with
the administration's approach.
> and on, and
> on and on. Its the friggin crusades.
It has aspects of that, but it's different. I don't know
why people are offended by this. The nature of the conflict
directs this towards that. This is, by the way,
more than likely a design goal of the terrorists.
The administration should recognize this, and avoid this
perception, but ... so it goes. *Shrug*.
> But it puts the rich, a la
> Cheney and Co. above the law.
Cheney isn't some kinda billionaire. He's just a simple
millionaire. And he is not above any law, although anybody
in any administration has certain priveleges about that sort of
thing while in office.
> It puts the Bush people above the
> law, and it will, before all is said and done, put Ken Lay above
> the law.
We will see. Ken Lay has not, IMO, been given a very fair
shake in the press, either. From the CSPAN coverage, it looks very
much like he was out of the loop, at least on the real ugly stuff.
He shouldn't have been, but he was. The whole thing smells like
Ponzi's story. But the press has to have a Good Guy, and a
Bad Guy, and all the various contextual detail gets lost in
translation. This company was "The Most Admired" and made a lot
of top 100 lists in the trade press.
Enron was a bizarro company to begin with, and I feel for those
who got hosed, but YOU HAD TO WATCH YOURSELF in those days - there
was madness in the air. 40% ROI per annum? Suuure. Sign right
here... but that was driven by the day trader mentality, *not*
by some Evil Konspiracy. Hubris.
> Those that have power now operate with impunity as they hide
> behind whatever MORAL issues they can drum up. Of course the favorite
> is FEAR of those Moslems.
>
>
That just means that terrorism works. And it does.
>>If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
>>is WalMart. They are extraordinarily good at what they
>>do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>>
>>AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
>>
>>
>>>http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/glossary/aristocracy.php
Now this is a peice of work. Real aristocrats really are
the moral leadership. They won't survive otherwise.
What you describe is closer to plutocracy. Aristocrats are
the soldier-statesman class, with possible brilliance in
other areas subbing in for soldiering.
>>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>Les Cargill
>
>
--
--
Les Cargill
Grinch
wrote:
>
>"Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
>news:uSvwc.56914$Hn.15...@news20.bellglobal.com...
>> <ro...@telus.net> wrote in message
>news:40c22d6b...@news.telus.net...
>> > Economists talk so much about distribution, Gini coefficients, etc. in
>> > order to discourage anyone from thinking about exactly _how_ the
>> > distribution got to be the way it is.
>>
>> Determining the optimal distribution and how best to encourage movement in
>> that direction is far more practically important than worrying about _how_
>> it got to be the way it is.
>
>Not when one of the most important factors behind the current distribution
>is government forcing people to pay holders of titles to scarce natural
>resources like land for the use of said resources.
I'm still waiting for the data showing that land produces higher-than-
rest-of-the-market risk-adjusted investment returns -- and the
explanation for this truly extraordinary example of never-ending
market failure that somehow the entire investment world and economics
profession have both missed forever -- even though they can read all
about it on usenet.
Or, absent any claim that land systematically provides such
above-market returns, an explanation of how investing in it has any
more distortionate effect on the income and wealth distributions than
does investing in bonds, pork bellies, McDonald's franchises, or
anything else that also doesn't systematically provide such
above-market returns.
[ And yes, yes, as to getting the above market returns I remember how
Roy explained that landlords are such dimwits that they always
underprice their properties when they sell them, which always sets up
the buyer to get above-market return on what he pays until he equally
dimwittedly undersells, and the landlords never learn, forever -- at
the same time as they are so smart, powerful and organized as to be
able to suppress all mention of their successful looting of the nation
out of all the investment and economics texts.
That was so lame I figured he must have been having a bad day and
didn't even hold it against him.
But seriously, suppose some fellow from misc.invest stumbles in
here by accident, reads how land provides above market returns, goes
"Holy crap, what great conspiracy has kept this from us all?", then
rushes back to his own ng and tells all about it. What's then to
keep the folks over there rushing out and grabbing those above market
returns for themselves by *bidding them out of the market*, pronto?
And why has this not ever happened in hundreds of years? Or at
least since usenet dawned to break the conspiracy of dunce landlords
and spread the word?]
.
Grinch
wrote:
>
>"Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
>news:x8Swc.4741$8k4.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
>>........
>>
>> In short, while I accept Georgists' argument that rent taxes are
>> economically efficient, I don't accept their claim to the moral high ground.
>> I think that the benefits of wealth should exist, and I accept the
>> fundamental mechanism that produces them -- rent -- because it's better than
>> the alternatives, and so a lot of the hue and cry about the "evil landlords"
>> who currently have the wealth and get to collect these rents sounds like
>> petty jealousy to me.
>
>That's because you don't understand the moral force of the Georgist
>position.
>
>In the case of land, it's not just some abstract economic rent---it's
>*scarcity* rent.
Can you name *any* rent that isn't scarcity rent?
>The land you give your kids is a scarce resource
And it is just like everything else that isn't free in that regard.
>---if your kids have privileged claim to it,
"Privileged" meaning you paid for it, so if you die they get to
inherit it. Or you can just make a gift of it to them
Just as is the case with your house on your land, your car in your
driveway, your bonds in the vault, your stamp collection in the back
drawer...
(And, yes, I know the purportedly "moral" if rather strange argument
that since land was never created by anyone [overlooking all that was]
it can't morally be owned by anyone, and so initially must have come
under ownership in some immoral way, and thus must be removed from
private ownership and returned to the government for administration.
QED.
Although, being that the "someone" that indeed obtained it highly
immorally by killing off the Indians (and killing off a lot of
Mexicans who had already killed off the Indians) was the US
government, the "moral" argument for returning land *from* honest
people who never killed anyone but simply and honesty paid full market
value for it, *to* the murderous, property-stealing wrongdoing source
of this evil, seems rather bizarre to me.
Anyhow, however the US government and its predecessors got the land in
the first place, through the great chain of title since then it has
been bought and sold in fair market transactions at full market prices
repeatedly -- just like government bonds, houses, stamp collections,
and every other scarce item purchased for a full fair-market price.
So the *moral* argument for discriminating against such fair market
purchasers of land alone does indeed remain elusive to some.]
> that means someone else is *not* allowed
>any access to it.
Just the same as with your house, driveway, car, bonds, stamp
collection ....
> And that position is enforced by the threat of government
>violence.
You bet!
If anybody ponders interloping in your house or driveway or helping
himself to use of your bonds or stamp collection or any other such
scarce item to which you have the privileged claim of exclusive
ownership and use, the government shall threaten that person sternly.
As well it should!
>Your position, at least on that of land, is feudalistic.
Feudal land was purchased and sold continuously in a free market open
to all by a democratic citizenry at full fair market prices? With
mortgage financing and all?
I don't think so. Perhaps you should refresh your memory about the
nature of feudal property (and personal) rights and relationships.
> You're not
>conceding rent to "everyone else"; you're conceding it to those that already
>have title to scarce resources.
>
>As for "We should all have to play the game by the same rules, and we pretty
>much do," that's a meaningless statement from a moral perspective. The
>institution of slavery was also built on a system of rules.
Geeze, they way you guys keep invoking "slavery" and comparing others
to slave owners ... it's too amusing.
It's just like the dimwits who in political arguments can't help
comparing the other side to Nazis. Godwin's Law II.
And you can't see it. ;-)
But here's a bit of helpful clarification:
The morally noxious thing about slavery was that it involved buying
and owning and selling people *against their human will.*
Land is not bought and owned and sold *against its human will*.
Is that too difficult?
And voluntarily negotiating a fair market rent for a scarce item --
and *all* rented and purchased items are scarce -- is *nothing* like
slavery, in which the slave got to voluntarily negotiate *nothing*
about being owned.
Even if you really, really, really would rather pay a lower rent than
you can voluntarily negotiate.
Frankly, you morally demean the real tragic victims of slavery with
such sophomoric rhetorical shots -- the way 'artists' who claim they
are censored and suppressed when they don't get a government subsidy
demean the tragedy of artists who died in the gulag.
So if you were really so concerned about morality as you claim, I'd
think you'd drop such cheap and dubious rhetoric and look for
substantive economic reasoning that might support your case.
Like, maybe, proof and explanation of a market failure that causes
land to produce systematically above-market risk-adjusted returns --
so that voluntary investments in it at fair market prices have a more
deleterious effect on the income and wealth distribution than
investments in T-bills.
Something like that.
>The question is
>whether the rules are *fair*.
>
>>
>> --
>> Matt.
>>
>>
>
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>All I see is an overheating
>real estate market, a sure sign of increased purchasing
>power.
Garbage. It's merely a sure sign of historically low interest rates
and general recognition of how extravagant the subsidies to idle
landowning are.
>>>Yet examples of readily available "self cleaning toilets" abound.
>>
>> But the super rich don't want them. They want to have a servant
>> do the job. Wealth is the power to forego or to command labor.
>> Power is a form of wealth that IS zero sum. It is the enforced
>> subservience of others that makes the Republican feel good, feel
>> safe, feel powerful.
>
>People say this, and I see no evidence of it. Nobody ( and I
>do know a few relatively well-off people ) has servants.
You just don't know any really rich people, then.
>Again, some people might hire a cleaning service periodically
>to help if both parents have kids and work, but that is *not*
>the same thing. Contracting with even a franchise cleaning
>service is not domestic servant labor.
Agreed. A servant is only a servant to one family.
>>>If the breakdown is that its cheaper to hire people to clean them,
>>>then the self cleaning toilet makes no sense. I do not buy that
>>>there are people actively desiring to have "slaves" out there. It's
>>>too far from existing cultural norms. But there are a
>>>lot of people who desire to create employment.
>>
>> You are simply WRONG. Today's Republicanism is a search for pure power.
>
>Nonsense. It's populism.
Wrong. There is a difference between populism and Wag-the-Dog
demagoguery.
>You think a rent-seeking class could swing
>popular votes and would use footage of the president clearing
>brush on his land?
In a heartbeat.
>> It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
>> what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
>> god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
>> a ruling class economically.
>
>Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
>*think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
>emerging Mandarin class?
Everywhere: the growing predominance and egregiousness of
government-created and -enforced IP monopolies in business; the
increasing concentrations of wealth and land ownership; the increasing
inequality of the distribution of (especially after-tax) income.
Open your eyes.
>If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
>is WalMart.
Micro$oft. Pure rent seeking.
>They are extraordinarily good at what they
>do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>
>AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
And they are the recipients of tens of billions of dollars worth of
publicly created land rent.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
wrote:
>On Mon, 07 Jun 2004 11:39:48 GMT, "sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid>
>wrote:
>
>>Bizarre and incoherent. Rent is zero-sum---when you collect rent, someone
>>else pays for it. So when your kids benefit by collecting rent, others'
>>kids lose.
>
>The same is true for the sale of a cheeseburger -- when you collect
>for the cheeseburger, someone else pays for it. So when your kids
>benefit from your collecting that payment the other guy's kids lose.
??? No, moron. The cheeseburger has been _added_to_ the sum of all
wealth. Economic rents _do_not_ add to the sum of all wealth. They
are merely a way to _transfer_ wealth from those who create it to
those who do not.
>Well ... only to the extent that we think only of the money side of
>the transaction, and not what is received for the money. Which would
>be rather bizarre.
Do you or do you not understand that the maker of a cheeseburger
charges for what _he_ brought into existence, while the landowner
charges for what _already_ existed with no help from him nor from any
previous owner he may have paid for the privilege?
>Of course, a normal human being wouldn't pay $X for a cheeseburger
>unless the cheeseburger was worth *more* than $X to him -- if it was
>worth less he'd just keep his money in his pocket. (And if the
>cheeseburger is worth more than $X to him then his kids probably
>benefit from daddy increasing his welfare). Of course, the seller of
>the cheeseburger increases his welfare via his profit from the sale.
>This is *not* a zero sum transaction, this is a win-win positive sum
>transaction in terms of human welfare.
Right. Because the cheeseburger is an _addition_ to the total sum of
all wealth. Rent is not.
>Just the same way, a normal human being isn't going to pay $X in rent
>for a plot of land unless the land is worth more than $X to him for
>the rental period -- else, obviously, he'd just keep his money in his
>pocket, say "not such nice land", and move on.
What a load of crap. Just the same way, if somebody built a giant
machine that sucked in air and stored it, and charged others for
bottles of it to breathe, they wouldn't pay his price unless not
suffocating was worth more to them than the money.
_Get_it_??
>If he rents the land for $X because it is worth more than $X to him he
>increases his welfare, while the landlord also increases his welfare
>from receiving the rent.
The difference is, the landowner is not _contributing_ anything in
return for the increase in his welfare: the land would have been
there, just the same, even had he never existed. We've been through
all this before, Grinch. Why do you refuse to know the facts?
Never mind. I know why.
>Again, this obviously is a positive sum transaction -- to think of it
>as "zero sum" seems rather bizarre and incoherent.
Lie. It's not a positive sum transaction. Everything the landowner
gets comes out of the user's pocket, and the user is
_not_better_off_than_if_the_landowner_had_never_existed_. He is
_worse_ off. _Un_like the case of the cheeseburger.
When are you going to tire of seeing your evil views on this issue
demolished and exposed, and yourself humiliated, Grinch?
>>Not only that; the benefits are conferred by an enforcement
>>regime backed by the government's monopoly on violence.
>
>Yes, well, if you walk out of a restaurant without paying for your
>cheeseburger the cheeseburger seller will have the cops cart you away
>for that too.
The difference: the cheeseburger would not have existed but for its
maker. The land existed without any help from the landowner. His
title is a pure rent-seeking privilege granted and enforced by
government.
It's not like I haven't informed you of this fact of objective reality
on multiple previous occasions, Grinch. Why (and perhaps more to the
point, _how_) do you continue to refuse to know it?
>So cheeseburger sellers have their benefits "conferred by an
>enforcement regime backed by the government's monopoly on violence" as
>well.
Lie. The cheeseburger maker is paid in return for a benefit
_he_contributes_. If he wasn't getting paid, the cheeseburgers would
not exist. OTOH, the landowner qua landowner contributes exactly
nothing. Everything he gets is a pure welfare subsidy, a privilege
bestowed on him by government, in return for no contribution whatever
from him.
>I mean, if you want to resort to such rhetoric.
The difference: his "rhetoric" was the simple truth. Yours is lies.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
wrote:
>On Mon, 07 Jun 2004 10:57:56 GMT, "sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid>
>wrote:
>
>>In the case of land, it's not just some abstract economic rent---it's
>>*scarcity* rent.
>
>Can you name *any* rent that isn't scarcity rent?
Yes, well, rent does arise from scarcity, in the sense that it is
obtained by denying others access to what would otherwise be
accessible.
>>The land you give your kids is a scarce resource
>
>And it is just like everything else that isn't free in that regard.
>
>>---if your kids have privileged claim to it,
>
>"Privileged" meaning you paid for it,
No, "privileged" meaning artificially unequal.
>(And, yes, I know the purportedly "moral" if rather strange argument
>that since land was never created by anyone [overlooking all that was]
None was, liar. I have exposed and refuted your lies on this topic
before.
>it can't morally be owned by anyone, and so initially must have come
>under ownership in some immoral way, and thus must be removed from
>private ownership and returned to the government for administration.
Government administers possession and use of the land within its
borders in any case. That's what government _is_. The only question
is, will it do so in the general interest, or only in the interests of
landowners?
>Although, being that the "someone" that indeed obtained it highly
>immorally by killing off the Indians (and killing off a lot of
>Mexicans who had already killed off the Indians) was the US
>government,
Yes, it is unfortunate that the aboriginal Americans did not
understand what was happening (their culture being too different from
the European culture then overwhelming them); but the US government
was perhaps scarcely more conscious of the underlying facts of the
matter: government administers possession and use of the land within
its borders by force. The normal way governments establish and extend
those borders is also by force. There is no other way possession and
use of land can be administered. The aboriginal communities
themselves competed for access to land by application of military
force against competing communities. The fact that the US government
was a far stronger competitor than any of its predecessors in North
America in no sense makes its victories any less moral or legitimate
than those of its predecessors (though it is easy to see why people
might regard the competition as having been too unequal to be "fair"
or "moral").
>the "moral" argument for returning land *from* honest
>people who never killed anyone but simply and honesty paid full market
>value for it, *to* the murderous, property-stealing
Wrong. The land was never the "property" of the aboriginal people,
and they knew it full well.
>wrongdoing source
>of this evil, seems rather bizarre to me.
<yawn> Why is the US government only "wrongdoing" when its actions
prove you wrong?
>Anyhow, however the US government and its predecessors got the land in
>the first place, through the great chain of title since then it has
>been bought and sold in fair market transactions at full market prices
>repeatedly -- just like government bonds, houses, stamp collections,
>and every other scarce item purchased for a full fair-market price.
Government bonds that do not finance spending that will generate
sufficient revenue to pay their principal and interest are also
privileges. Houses and stamps are made by labor. Land is not.
>So the *moral* argument for discriminating against such fair market
>purchasers of land alone does indeed remain elusive to some.]
As it does to all those who refuse to know that natural resources by
definition cannot be produced by labor.
>> that means someone else is *not* allowed
>>any access to it.
>
>Just the same as with your house, driveway, car, bonds, stamp
>collection ....
Houses, etc. can be made. Land cannot.
>>Your position, at least on that of land, is feudalistic.
>
>Feudal land was purchased and sold continuously in a free market open
>to all by a democratic citizenry at full fair market prices? With
>mortgage financing and all?
That's more or less what David Friedman has argued (except the
democratic part)....
>> You're not
>>conceding rent to "everyone else"; you're conceding it to those that already
>>have title to scarce resources.
>>
>>As for "We should all have to play the game by the same rules, and we pretty
>>much do," that's a meaningless statement from a moral perspective. The
>>institution of slavery was also built on a system of rules.
>
>Geeze, they way you guys keep invoking "slavery" and comparing others
>to slave owners ... it's too amusing.
It's too accurate, you mean.
>It's just like the dimwits who in political arguments can't help
>comparing the other side to Nazis. Godwin's Law II.
Well sometimes, people _are_ like Nazis. The Nazis were not a unique
historical phenomenon, totally unrelated to everything that went
before and after. Godwin's Law is amusing enough, but if overapplied,
it could be used to stop people understanding the nature of political
events. Would Saddam's Iraq have been possible if the Iraqi people
had been more aware of the Nazis' history? Should drawing comparisons
between the Baathists and Nazis, Saddam and Hitler have been banned
from the Iraqi media out of respect for Godwin's Law?
>And you can't see it. ;-)
It's _you_ who can't -- or more accurately, won't -- see it.
>But here's a bit of helpful clarification:
>
>The morally noxious thing about slavery was that it involved buying
>and owning and selling people *against their human will.*
Wrong. More clearly (and accurately), the morally noxious thing about
slavery was that it made into property what could never rightly be
property. You will note that people cannot even _voluntarily_ give or
sell themselves as property: the state will not recognize them as
such, no matter what.
I trust you don't mind my pointing out why your putative
"clarification" was actually neither helpful nor accurate, but merely
an attempt to obscure and deceive.
>Land is not bought and owned and sold *against its human will*.
>Is that too difficult?
Land is made the property of some against the human will of others who
want to use it, and who also, _against_their_human_will_, are
compelled to pay taxes that pay for the government services and
infrastructure that allow the landowner to charge more for use of the
land, which neither he nor any previous owner created.
Is that too difficult? Never mind. I already know it is.
>And voluntarily negotiating a fair market rent for a scarce item --
>and *all* rented and purchased items are scarce -- is *nothing* like
>slavery, in which the slave got to voluntarily negotiate *nothing*
>about being owned.
More deception. The state does not recognize property in human beings
even if they _do_ get to voluntarily negotiate fair market terms,
prices, etc. about being owned, because the state recognizes that
human beings _cannot_rightly_be_property_.
>Frankly, you morally demean the real tragic victims of slavery with
>such sophomoric rhetorical shots
Does comparing Saddam to Hitler morally demean the real tragic victims
of Naziism? IMO it would be far more morally demeaning to them to
forget the lesson their victimization teaches, and try to pretend that
their story cannot be relevant to any other people's victimization.
While the individual victims of slavery lost far more, on average,
than the individual victims of landowner privilege, the latter
outnumber the former by at least as great a multiple. The really
morally demeaning and sophomoric rhetoric is that which pretends the
billions of innocent human beings robbed, oppressed, starved, tortured
and killed by the institution of landowner privilege were just willing
participants in a free market.
>-- the way 'artists' who claim they
>are censored and suppressed when they don't get a government subsidy
>demean the tragedy of artists who died in the gulag.
The fact that there are invalid comparisons does not mean there are no
valid ones.
>So if you were really so concerned about morality as you claim, I'd
>think you'd drop such cheap and dubious rhetoric and look for
>substantive economic reasoning that might support your case.
??? Been there, done that, 200 years ago and more. It's not our
fault that you refuse to know the relevant facts, even after they have
been explained for you multiple times.
I _know_ you have seen these quotes before, Grinch:
"Pure ground rent is in the nature of a 'surplus,' which can be taxed
heavily without distorting production incentives or reducing
efficiency."
-- Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate in Economics
"In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved
value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."
-- Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in Economics
"It is important that the rent of land be retained as a source of
government revenue."
-- Franco Modigliani, Nobel laureate in Economics
"For efficiency, for adequate revenue, and for justice, every user of
land should be required to make an annual payment to the local
government equal to the current rental value of the land he or she
prevents others from using."
-- Robert Solow, Nobel laureate in Economics
"While the governments of developed nations with market economies
collect some of the rent of land, they do not collect nearly as much
as they could, and they therefore make unnecessarily great use of
taxes that impede their economies -- taxes on such things as incomes,
sales, and the value of capital goods."
-- William Vickrey, Nobel laureate in Economics and past
president of the American Economics Association
What makes you think five (count 'em, _five_) Nobel laureates in
economics could come to the same conclusion _without_ having any
substantive economic reasoning to back it up?
>Like, maybe, proof and explanation of a market failure that causes
>land to produce systematically above-market risk-adjusted returns --
Though I don't know that I would consider it a "market failure," I
have provided both proof and explanation of this phenomenon to you
multiple times already.
>so that voluntary investments in it at fair market prices have a more
>deleterious effect on the income and wealth distribution than
>investments in T-bills.
It's not the "investments" that have the deleterious effect. It's the
welfare subsidy privilege giveaway to landowners that makes the
investments such profitable (even while totally unproductive) ones.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
wrote:
>On Sun, 06 Jun 2004 18:56:23 GMT, "sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid>
>wrote:
>
>>"Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
>>news:uSvwc.56914$Hn.15...@news20.bellglobal.com...
>>> <ro...@telus.net> wrote in message
>>news:40c22d6b...@news.telus.net...
>>> > Economists talk so much about distribution, Gini coefficients, etc. in
>>> > order to discourage anyone from thinking about exactly _how_ the
>>> > distribution got to be the way it is.
>>>
>>> Determining the optimal distribution and how best to encourage movement in
>>> that direction is far more practically important than worrying about _how_
>>> it got to be the way it is.
>>
>>Not when one of the most important factors behind the current distribution
>>is government forcing people to pay holders of titles to scarce natural
>>resources like land for the use of said resources.
>
>I'm still waiting for the data showing that land produces higher-than-
>rest-of-the-market risk-adjusted investment returns
And I am still waiting for you to twig that the absence of data
showing just what the return to land is is a big fat clue -- except to
the clueless, that is...
>-- and the
>explanation for this truly extraordinary example of never-ending
>market failure that somehow the entire investment world and economics
>profession have both missed forever -- even though they can read all
>about it on usenet.
?? I have already explained that to you, Grinch. Investors are
mortal. Land is eternal. Because people tend to steeply discount
returns that will happen after they are dead, both sellers and buyers
of land undervalue them. But the buyer (or a subsequent buyer -- at
any rate the land _holder_) is the one who has to end up getting them.
Also, sellers of land are very often estates, which are not
particularly motivated to sell high (the executor does not get to keep
the dough, after all), and often have to sell quickly, at a
substantial discount, in order to comply with laws regarding
liquidation of estate assets. Land sellers are also very often
elderly people who may not be very motivated to hold out for the best
price, or may have failing faculties, and be unaware of what the
property is really worth.
>Or, absent any claim that land systematically provides such
>above-market returns, an explanation of how investing in it has any
>more distortionate effect on the income and wealth distributions than
>does investing in bonds, pork bellies, McDonald's franchises, or
>anything else that also doesn't systematically provide such
>above-market returns.
It's not the investment per se that distorts, but the exorbitant
subsidy system that makes land investment so profitable, though
totally unproductive.
>[ And yes, yes, as to getting the above market returns I remember how
>Roy explained that landlords are such dimwits that they always
>underprice their properties when they sell them,
<sigh> I did not say "always," lying filth.
>which always sets up
>the buyer to get above-market return on what he pays until he equally
>dimwittedly undersells, and the landlords never learn, forever
<sigh> It seems you need periodic reminding of a certain fact: they
don't _live_ forever. By the time they figure out that land has
outperformed every other major class of investment over their
lifetimes, it's too late for them to do anything about it.
>-- at
>the same time as they are so smart, powerful and organized
They are indeed powerful. Very. So they don't have to be very smart
or organized.
>as to be
>able to suppress all mention of their successful looting of the nation
>out of all the investment and economics texts.
Problem is, investment guides, especially real estate investment
guides, _do_ tell their readers to check estate sales, obituaries,
etc. for real estate bargains. Estate assets are _hugely_ weighted to
land.
> That was so lame I figured he must have been having a bad day and
>didn't even hold it against him.
<yawn> IOW, you refused to know the facts I identified for you.
> But seriously, suppose some fellow from misc.invest stumbles in
>here by accident, reads how land provides above market returns, goes
>"Holy crap, what great conspiracy has kept this from us all?", then
>rushes back to his own ng and tells all about it.
Now _that_ would be stupid. When understanding dawns that you have an
opportunity to take above-market profits for the rest of your life, at
very little risk, you don't go around _telling_ everyone about it.
Not if you want the opportunity to stick around, anyway. It's like
the corporate insiders dumping their stock: they disclose as little of
what they are doing and why as possible, even at the risk of going to
jail over it.
>What's then to
>keep the folks over there rushing out and grabbing those above market
>returns for themselves by *bidding them out of the market*, pronto?
The finite money supply, for one.
> And why has this not ever happened in hundreds of years?
It has. In Japan in the 1980s, for one.
>Or at
>least since usenet dawned to break the conspiracy of dunce landlords
>and spread the word?
What do you think _has_ been happening, hmmm? Others are not as
ineducable as you.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:
><ro...@telus.net> wrote in message news:40c95bed...@news.telus.net...
>> >So you *do* believe in entitlement, lying filth.
>>
>> No, putrid, despicable, lying garbage. An entitlement has to be
>> provided by others (i.e., as you advocate for the rich). A right can
>> only be _violated_ by others. Access to natural resources _cannot_ be
>> an entitlement, because the resources were already there, with no help
>> from anyone else. All others can do is _deny_ you your right to
>> access them. That is what makes it rent seeking, not trading.
>
>Your lips are getting a little foamy, Roy, and this is just crap.
Your eyes are getting a little shifty, Matt, and it is fact.
>> See? All you had for "proof" was a load of off-topic banalities. You
>> provided no counter-argument, let alone a disproof, for my statement
>> that rent depends (though not entirely, of course) on denial of
>> representation for tenants.
>
>I provided a banal counter-example, which is sufficient to disprove your
>unqualified general assertion.
Nope. Wrong. All your all-too-banal counterexample showed was that
_some_ rent is compatible with _some_ representation.
>It's not my favourite mode of argument, but
>you use it a lot, so I think you should buy it. Let me repeat it more
>slowly: I paid rent, and I wasn't denied representation, therefore your
>statement is false.
You paid _some_ rent, and were not _completely_ denied representation.
But that in no way proves my statement false.
>> The productive benefit by society, but society benefits as much or
>> more by the productive.
>
>The productive *are* the major part of our society!
Which sort of disproves your whole argument, doesn't it?
>> There is no basis for your claim that the
>> benefits the productive obtain from their participation in society are
>> a rightful basis of taxation.
>
>The basis is simply that most of the value in we produce derives from the
>activities, and mere presence of the productive as a group, and isn't
>assignable to individuals.
Wrong. The value of the products of labor is rightly and accurately
assignable to the individuals who produce them.
>The productive, as a group, can therefore claim
>the right to redistribute it however they see fit
Sounds like Marxism.
>-- even if they want to
>divert some of it towards rent.
And why would they, unless they are idiots like a certain
pyramid-worshipper of my acquaintance?
-- Roy L
Les Cargill
> On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 22:27:41 GMT, Les Cargill
> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>>All I see is an overheating
>>real estate market, a sure sign of increased purchasing
>>power.
>
>
> Garbage. It's merely a sure sign of historically low interest rates
> and general recognition of how extravagant the subsidies to idle
> landowning are.
>
>
Low interest rates are apprently what passes for
purchasing power these days.
Frankly, it looks a lot to me like refugee equity from
the dot-bomb bust. But that's just IMO.
>>>>Yet examples of readily available "self cleaning toilets" abound.
>>>
>>>But the super rich don't want them. They want to have a servant
>>>do the job. Wealth is the power to forego or to command labor.
>>>Power is a form of wealth that IS zero sum. It is the enforced
>>>subservience of others that makes the Republican feel good, feel
>>>safe, feel powerful.
>>
>>People say this, and I see no evidence of it. Nobody ( and I
>>do know a few relatively well-off people ) has servants.
>
>
> You just don't know any really rich people, then.
>
>
I would not be surprised at that.
<snip>
>>Nonsense. It's populism.
>
>
> Wrong. There is a difference between populism and Wag-the-Dog
> demagoguery.
>
>
It's not significantly different from Teddy Roosevelt's
little stunts. Just saying - this is not without
precedent.
But the grass roots of this *is* a form of
populism. Has been for sure since Reagan.
>>You think a rent-seeking class could swing
>>popular votes and would use footage of the president clearing
>>brush on his land?
>
>
> In a heartbeat.
>
I don't see it. Yacht owners don't clear brush. Even if
they are Machievellian enough to design such an
image, there'd have to be some measure of balance to it.
Bush II doing it is just an echo of Reagan having
done it, and it was a legitimate recreation activity
of Reagan's.
I just think that the top .1% may have reources enough
to manipulate, but not to *buy* the thing outright.
The support base for the NeoCons is *much* broader than the
top 1%, and it's extremely organically constructed.
Bush43 and his father were neither all that wealthy.
>
>>>It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
>>>what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
>>>god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
>>>a ruling class economically.
>>
>>Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
>>*think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
>>emerging Mandarin class?
>
>
> Everywhere: the growing predominance and egregiousness of
> government-created and -enforced IP monopolies in business;
Nothing new there. That's "bayonneting the wounded" in
the tech business. It's cultural self destruction
that's destroying that. The techies were tolerated
until the Cold War was over.
There's been a strong anti-intellectual bias in America
since the 18th century. deToqueville wrote extensively
on it.
You *could* be right here, but I don't see the scope
and scale of the culture eating itself as explainable
even by horrendous inequities in wealth. I see this
is extremely grass roots - "boy, you think yer
smarter'n me" Americanism.
> the
> increasing concentrations of wealth and land ownership; the increasing
> inequality of the distribution of (especially after-tax) income.
>
> Open your eyes.
>
>
>>If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
>>is WalMart.
>
>
> Micro$oft. Pure rent seeking.
>
Microsoft is a thing of the recent past. It won't
survive sucession of Gates and Ballmer. The remains of
the company will drown in all that cash.
If defending software source code as IP is rent seeking,
make the most of it. M$'s main cash pig was available
for free download until about win2k, when they scrapped
the beta program.
M$ has conquered territory, now it's time to
squeeze the peasants. Last go round, when IBM
tried this ( OS3*0 cost more'n the
iron it ran on ), an entire industry was
spawned.
>
>>They are extraordinarily good at what they
>>do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>>
>>AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
>
>
> And they are the recipients of tens of billions of dollars worth of
> publicly created land rent.
>
But they run trillions ( I don't even know how much )
in merchandise yearly. I would not be surprised of the
dollar investment in their IT infrastructure exceeded
the real estate value, fully burdened.
> -- Roy L
--
Les Cargill
sinister
<ro...@telus.net> wrote in message news:40cc9534...@news.telus.net...
[snip]
> When are you going to tire of seeing your evil views on this issue
> demolished and exposed, and yourself humiliated, Grinch?
Aside: if you want to see an amusing example of Grinch's mathematics, check
out my post with subject line "Grinch's math: the termite model, revisited"
on Sun, 02 May 2004 21:46:44 GMT.
[snip]
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 22:27:41 GMT, Les Cargill
>> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>>>All I see is an overheating
>>>real estate market, a sure sign of increased purchasing
>>>power.
>>
>> Garbage. It's merely a sure sign of historically low interest rates
>> and general recognition of how extravagant the subsidies to idle
>> landowning are.
>
>Low interest rates are apprently what passes for
>purchasing power these days.
>
>Frankly, it looks a lot to me like refugee equity from
>the dot-bomb bust. But that's just IMO.
Is there really enough of it left out there?
>>>Nonsense. It's populism.
>>
>> Wrong. There is a difference between populism and Wag-the-Dog
>> demagoguery.
>
>It's not significantly different from Teddy Roosevelt's
>little stunts. Just saying - this is not without
>precedent.
Sure. And a lot of it was remarkably crass, by modern standards.
>But the grass roots of this *is* a form of
>populism. Has been for sure since Reagan.
Maybe I'm not close enough to the relevant populace to see it.
>>>You think a rent-seeking class could swing
>>>popular votes and would use footage of the president clearing
>>>brush on his land?
>>
>> In a heartbeat.
>
>I don't see it. Yacht owners don't clear brush.
They can for the camera.
>Even if
>they are Machievellian enough to design such an
>image, there'd have to be some measure of balance to it.
>
>Bush II doing it is just an echo of Reagan having
>done it, and it was a legitimate recreation activity
>of Reagan's.
>
>I just think that the top .1% may have reources enough
>to manipulate, but not to *buy* the thing outright.
Ever see Wag the Dog?
>The support base for the NeoCons is *much* broader than the
>top 1%, and it's extremely organically constructed.
Yes, I read an article in Harper's a few months back on the neocons'
support base among the very people who are worst served by them.
Pathetic, when you think about it.
>Bush43 and his father were neither all that wealthy.
I agree. But they are servants of the really wealthy.
>>>>It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
>>>>what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
>>>>god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
>>>>a ruling class economically.
>>>
>>>Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
>>>*think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
>>>emerging Mandarin class?
>>
>> Everywhere: the growing predominance and egregiousness of
>> government-created and -enforced IP monopolies in business;
>
>Nothing new there.
It is most definitely new, on a historical timescale.
>That's "bayonneting the wounded" in
>the tech business. It's cultural self destruction
>that's destroying that. The techies were tolerated
>until the Cold War was over.
Right. It's owners who get the IP rents (especially the egregious
ones for prior art, obvious developments, naturally occurring
substances and organisms, etc.), not the guys who actually do the
innovating.
>There's been a strong anti-intellectual bias in America
>since the 18th century. deToqueville wrote extensively
>on it.
No argument.
>>>If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
>>>is WalMart.
>>
>> Micro$oft. Pure rent seeking.
>
>Microsoft is a thing of the recent past. It won't
>survive sucession of Gates and Ballmer. The remains of
>the company will drown in all that cash.
Don't you believe it. I have a gut feeling that Gates is not actually
a bad guy, but Ballmer is the Antichrist.
>>>They are extraordinarily good at what they
>>>do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>>>
>>>AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
>>
>> And they are the recipients of tens of billions of dollars worth of
>> publicly created land rent.
>
>But they run trillions ( I don't even know how much )
>in merchandise yearly.
It's not that much, and anyway it's rrelevant. Trading and retail
companies do big volume because that's what they do.
>I would not be surprised of the
>dollar investment in their IT infrastructure exceeded
>the real estate value, fully burdened.
Not a chance. The software can be copied at virtually no cost. The
land can't.
-- Roy L
Mark Monson
Grinch the winking lawyer <oldn...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:75lnc01lca8883i25...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 06 Jun 2004 18:56:23 GMT, "sinister" <sini...@nospam.invalid>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Matt Timmermans" <mt0...@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
> >news:uSvwc.56914$Hn.15...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> >> <ro...@telus.net> wrote in message
> >news:40c22d6b...@news.telus.net...
> >> > Economists talk so much about distribution, Gini coefficients, etc. in
> >> > order to discourage anyone from thinking about exactly _how_ the
> >> > distribution got to be the way it is.
> >>
> >> Determining the optimal distribution and how best to encourage movement in
> >> that direction is far more practically important than worrying about _how_
> >> it got to be the way it is.
> >
> >Not when one of the most important factors behind the current distribution
> >is government forcing people to pay holders of titles to scarce natural
> >resources like land for the use of said resources.
>
> I'm still waiting for the data showing that land produces higher-than-
> rest-of-the-market risk-adjusted investment returns -- and the
> explanation for this truly extraordinary example of never-ending
> market failure that somehow the entire investment world and economics
> profession have both missed forever -- even though they can read all
> about it on usenet.
Everybody can't be a big-time land investor because great locations can't be
produced to meet increased demand.
(silly hyperbole snipped)
MM
Les Cargill
> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 23:37:21 GMT, Les Cargill
> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
>>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 22:27:41 GMT, Les Cargill
>>><lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>All I see is an overheating
>>>>real estate market, a sure sign of increased purchasing
>>>>power.
>>>
>>>Garbage. It's merely a sure sign of historically low interest rates
>>>and general recognition of how extravagant the subsidies to idle
>>>landowning are.
>>
>>Low interest rates are apprently what passes for
>>purchasing power these days.
>>
>>Frankly, it looks a lot to me like refugee equity from
>>the dot-bomb bust. But that's just IMO.
>
>
> Is there really enough of it left out there?
>
Scads. Phenomenal quantities.
>
>>>>Nonsense. It's populism.
>>>
>>>Wrong. There is a difference between populism and Wag-the-Dog
>>>demagoguery.
>>
>>It's not significantly different from Teddy Roosevelt's
>>little stunts. Just saying - this is not without
>>precedent.
>
>
> Sure. And a lot of it was remarkably crass, by modern standards.
>
>
Arguably, TR is modern. US foreign policy is not all
that different from his day.
>>But the grass roots of this *is* a form of
>>populism. Has been for sure since Reagan.
>
>
> Maybe I'm not close enough to the relevant populace to see it.
>
It's just my opinion, but I certainly see it.
Bush still has, and will have massive popular support.
>
>>>>You think a rent-seeking class could swing
>>>>popular votes and would use footage of the president clearing
>>>>brush on his land?
>>>
>>>In a heartbeat.
>>
>>I don't see it. Yacht owners don't clear brush.
>
>
> They can for the camera.
>
SFAIKL, Bush owned the ranch before he was
Governor of Texas.
>
>>Even if
>>they are Machievellian enough to design such an
>>image, there'd have to be some measure of balance to it.
>>
>>Bush II doing it is just an echo of Reagan having
>>done it, and it was a legitimate recreation activity
>>of Reagan's.
>>
>>I just think that the top .1% may have reources enough
>>to manipulate, but not to *buy* the thing outright.
>
>
> Ever see Wag the Dog?
>
Yes. I'm quite familiar with Mamet's work in general.
Mamet tends to work in hyperbole, brilliantly. But it's
applied surrealism, truth-through-fiction, not
reportage.
In fact, the phrase "wag the dog" is precisely *the*
hallmark for a conversation leaving reason and heading
for The Land Of All Things Konspiratorial.
>
>>The support base for the NeoCons is *much* broader than the
>>top 1%, and it's extremely organically constructed.
>
>
> Yes, I read an article in Harper's a few months back on the neocons'
> support base among the very people who are worst served by them.
> Pathetic, when you think about it.
>
I'm not convinced these people aren't served by them. They
think they are, and that's probably enough.
>
>>Bush43 and his father were neither all that wealthy.
>
>
> I agree. But they are servants of the really wealthy.
>
To the extent that campaigns need to be finianced. No
further. We're talking about the size of a middling
IPO. And the donors generally don't get much more'n
a photo op .
It's the political equivalent of winning a backstage
pass to the Stones concert, and nothing more.
>
>>>>>It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
>>>>>what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
>>>>>god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
>>>>>a ruling class economically.
>>>>
>>>>Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
>>>>*think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
>>>>emerging Mandarin class?
>>>
>>>Everywhere: the growing predominance and egregiousness of
>>>government-created and -enforced IP monopolies in business;
>>
>>Nothing new there.
>
>
> It is most definitely new, on a historical timescale.
>
It's only new in scale. It means little - if the patents
are too expensive, people evolve the technologies around them.
I've personally seen it dozens of time. And IP means nothing
in China, and other emerging markets.
>
>>That's "bayonneting the wounded" in
>>the tech business. It's cultural self destruction
>>that's destroying that. The techies were tolerated
>>until the Cold War was over.
>
>
> Right. It's owners who get the IP rents (especially the egregious
> ones for prior art, obvious developments, naturally occurring
> substances and organisms, etc.), not the guys who actually do the
> innovating.
>
I'd love to see the system overhauled, but it probably
can't be done. Ultimately, the patents are only tested
in court, and not all of them stand.
>
>>There's been a strong anti-intellectual bias in America
>>since the 18th century. deToqueville wrote extensively
>>on it.
>
>
> No argument.
>
>
>>>>If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
>>>>is WalMart.
>>>
>>>Micro$oft. Pure rent seeking.
>>
>>Microsoft is a thing of the recent past. It won't
>>survive sucession of Gates and Ballmer. The remains of
>>the company will drown in all that cash.
>
>
> Don't you believe it. I have a gut feeling that Gates is not actually
> a bad guy, but Ballmer is the Antichrist.
>
It doesn't matter. They cannot maintain market position for
long. Their practices show they are not making
the inroads they once made.
>
>>>>They are extraordinarily good at what they
>>>>do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>>>>
>>>>AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
>>>
>>>And they are the recipients of tens of billions of dollars worth of
>>>publicly created land rent.
>>
>>But they run trillions ( I don't even know how much )
>>in merchandise yearly.
>
>
> It's not that much, and anyway it's rrelevant. Trading and retail
> companies do big volume because that's what they do.
>
Point being: it overwhelms all real estate owned.
>
>>I would not be surprised of the
>>dollar investment in their IT infrastructure exceeded
>>the real estate value, fully burdened.
>
>
> Not a chance. The software can be copied at virtually no cost. The
> land can't.
>
Not all IT infrastructure is software. Most of it's integration
labor. And WalMart ws the most wired company for about a decade
before anybody else caught on - they derive more business value
from the IT stuff than the land.
By way of example, when my wife worked at a C-store years ago,
the place *paid* for itself in about 30-60 days form opening.
Land, stock, fixtures, everything.
> -- Roy L
--
--
Les Cargill
Matt Timmermans
"Mark Monson" <m_mo...@ztech.com> wrote in message
news:zPMzc.15422$I%4.1...@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
> Everybody can't be a big-time land investor because great locations can't
be
> produced to meet increased demand.
ro...@telus.net
REITs invest in real estate, not land (i.e., they invest in
improvements that depreciate as well as land that appreciates -- some
even invest in mortgages), and have all the weaknesses of stock mutual
funds: largely wasted management costs, slavish pursuit of short-term
performance, worship of fads and trends, etc. Their performance will
never match that of a diverse portfolio of rentable land properties.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 23:37:21 GMT, Les Cargill
>> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>>>ro...@telus.net wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 22:27:41 GMT, Les Cargill
>>>><lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>Even if
>>>they are Machievellian enough to design such an
>>>image, there'd have to be some measure of balance to it.
>>>
>>>Bush II doing it is just an echo of Reagan having
>>>done it, and it was a legitimate recreation activity
>>>of Reagan's.
>>>
>>>I just think that the top .1% may have reources enough
>>>to manipulate, but not to *buy* the thing outright.
>>
>> Ever see Wag the Dog?
>
>Yes. I'm quite familiar with Mamet's work in general.
>
>Mamet tends to work in hyperbole, brilliantly. But it's
>applied surrealism, truth-through-fiction, not
>reportage.
>
>In fact, the phrase "wag the dog" is precisely *the*
>hallmark for a conversation leaving reason and heading
>for The Land Of All Things Konspiratorial.
The Truth is, Julius Caesar was assassinated by a conspiracy of
high-ranking officials and nobles.
The Truth is, the Paris food riots of 1773 were organized by major
landowners and grain monopolists to discredit Jacques Turgot, the
finance minister, because he had begun to remove their privileges.
The Truth is, the Nazis started the Reichstag fire.
The Truth is, the Kuwaiti royal family paid a major PR firm to get the
Kuwati ambassador's daughter on national TV, where she _lied_ that she
was a nurse from a hospital in Kuwait, and witnessed atrocities
committed there by Iraqi soldiers. _Total_fabrication_, complete with
choked-back tears, the whole schmeer.
And still we have the morons who bray about black helicopters, blah,
blah, any time anyone suggests that there may be more to a story than
the pablum fed to the credulous.
>>>Bush43 and his father were neither all that wealthy.
>>
>> I agree. But they are servants of the really wealthy.
>
>To the extent that campaigns need to be finianced. No
>further. We're talking about the size of a middling
>IPO. And the donors generally don't get much more'n
>a photo op .
It is often astonishing how cheaply massively valuable political
favors can be bought. AFAICT, the normal return on a political
donation in excess of $1000 is about 100,000%.
>It's the political equivalent of winning a backstage
>pass to the Stones concert, and nothing more.
??? Open your eyes.
>>>>>>It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
>>>>>>what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
>>>>>>god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
>>>>>>a ruling class economically.
>>>>>
>>>>>Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
>>>>>*think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
>>>>>emerging Mandarin class?
>>>>
>>>>Everywhere: the growing predominance and egregiousness of
>>>>government-created and -enforced IP monopolies in business;
>>>
>>>Nothing new there.
>>
>> It is most definitely new, on a historical timescale.
>
>It's only new in scale. It means little - if the patents
>are too expensive, people evolve the technologies around them.
It's still a tool of privilege.
>I've personally seen it dozens of time. And IP means nothing
>in China, and other emerging markets.
It only means nothing when they want it to. There's plenty of IP rent
seeking going on in those markets, too.
>>>>>If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
>>>>>is WalMart.
>>>>
>>>>Micro$oft. Pure rent seeking.
>>>
>>>Microsoft is a thing of the recent past. It won't
>>>survive sucession of Gates and Ballmer. The remains of
>>>the company will drown in all that cash.
>>
>> Don't you believe it. I have a gut feeling that Gates is not actually
>> a bad guy, but Ballmer is the Antichrist.
>
>It doesn't matter. They cannot maintain market position for
>long.
Funny, that's what people were saying about them 10 years ago...
>Their practices show they are not making
>the inroads they once made.
I hope you're right, and they aren't just replaced by someone even
worse.
>>>>>They are extraordinarily good at what they
>>>>>do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>>>>>
>>>>>AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
>>>>
>>>>And they are the recipients of tens of billions of dollars worth of
>>>>publicly created land rent.
>>>
>>>But they run trillions ( I don't even know how much )
>>>in merchandise yearly.
>>
>> It's not that much, and anyway it's rrelevant. Trading and retail
>> companies do big volume because that's what they do.
>
>Point being: it overwhelms all real estate owned.
Nope. Not even close.
-- Roy L
Mark Monson
Oh, there are plenty of opportunities for small-time land investments like the
appreciation on your home and REIT's. But the fixed supply of great locations
limits BIG-TIME land investments.
MM
Ron Peterson
> REITs invest in real estate, not land (i.e., they invest in
> improvements that depreciate as well as land that appreciates -- some
> even invest in mortgages), and have all the weaknesses of stock mutual
> funds: largely wasted management costs, slavish pursuit of short-term
> performance, worship of fads and trends, etc. Their performance will
> never match that of a diverse portfolio of rentable land properties.
Are you saying that there is no REIT or REOC that invests in rentable
land properties? If there were, we could check your hypothesis.
--
Ron
Grinch
wrote:
Nice try to change the subject. ;-)
>(silly hyperbole snipped)
Operative statement repeated:
"I'm still waiting for the data...."
<wink!/nod!>
>MM
>
ro...@telus.net
wrote:
I have no idea if there is or not. The ones I've seen don't seem to
focus on land.
>If there were, we could check your hypothesis.
It would be interesting. Anyone know if there is a highly
land-focused REIT?
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
wrote:
>Operative statement repeated:
>
>"I'm still waiting for the data...."
>
><wink!/nod!>
Do you have any data showing that land does no better than typical
returns on other asset classes? Should be easy to find. If it
exists.
-- Roy L
Ron Peterson
The closest thing I could find in a REIT was a mobile home park company
although it did have a high ROE.
I think that the forestry and wood products companies are probably the
most land intensive such as Weyerhaeuser but they seem to only have a
moderate ROE. Perhaps they are hiding their profits since they have a
high revenue growth.
--
Ron
Les Cargill
> On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 01:13:12 GMT, Les Cargill
> <lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>
<snip>
>>In fact, the phrase "wag the dog" is precisely *the*
>>hallmark for a conversation leaving reason and heading
>>for The Land Of All Things Konspiratorial.
>
>
> The Truth is, Julius Caesar was assassinated by a conspiracy of
> high-ranking officials and nobles.
>
> The Truth is, the Paris food riots of 1773 were organized by major
> landowners and grain monopolists to discredit Jacques Turgot, the
> finance minister, because he had begun to remove their privileges.
>
> The Truth is, the Nazis started the Reichstag fire.
>
> The Truth is, the Kuwaiti royal family paid a major PR firm to get the
> Kuwati ambassador's daughter on national TV, where she _lied_ that she
> was a nurse from a hospital in Kuwait, and witnessed atrocities
> committed there by Iraqi soldiers. _Total_fabrication_, complete with
> choked-back tears, the whole schmeer.
>
> And still we have the morons who bray about black helicopters, blah,
> blah, any time anyone suggests that there may be more to a story than
> the pablum fed to the credulous.
>
The list of actual documented events is considerably
longer than that. With the single exception of Turgot's
story, none of the examples are of rentiers "wagging
the dog" to maintain privelege.
Anybody who seeks high political office for the
mooney and power is simply doing things
the hard way. High political office is an
impediment to money for sure, and arguably to
power - beyond specific powers as enumerated
in the law.
>
>>>>Bush43 and his father were neither all that wealthy.
>>>
>>>
>>>I agree. But they are servants of the really wealthy.
>>
>>To the extent that campaigns need to be finianced. No
>>further. We're talking about the size of a middling
>>IPO. And the donors generally don't get much more'n
>>a photo op .
>
>
> It is often astonishing how cheaply massively valuable political
> favors can be bought. AFAICT, the normal return on a political
> donation in excess of $1000 is about 100,000%.
>
Yeah, I've heard the figure, and it sounds ridiculous. It
is as if a roadbuilding contractor contriburted, then the
contributions were attributed for his next four years'
top line.
Of course this happens. I just don't think it's the
*dominant* mode. Ironically, every time we try to
crack down on it, this gets worse.
>
>>It's the political equivalent of winning a backstage
>>pass to the Stones concert, and nothing more.
>
>
> ??? Open your eyes.
>
Open yours. Musical artifacts gor for $millions
at auction . We live in a celebrity culture.
How can the average Congrefscritter dispense as much
in favors as his campaign costs? Not a committe chair,
but the average guy?
>
>>>>>>>It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
>>>>>>>what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
>>>>>>>god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
>>>>>>>a ruling class economically.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
>>>>>>*think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
>>>>>>emerging Mandarin class?
>>>>>
>>>>>Everywhere: the growing predominance and egregiousness of
>>>>>government-created and -enforced IP monopolies in business;
>>>>
>>>>Nothing new there.
>>>
>>>It is most definitely new, on a historical timescale.
>>
>>It's only new in scale. It means little - if the patents
>>are too expensive, people evolve the technologies around them.
>
>
> It's still a tool of privilege.
>
>
To an extent.
>>I've personally seen it dozens of time. And IP means nothing
>>in China, and other emerging markets.
>
>
> It only means nothing when they want it to. There's plenty of IP rent
> seeking going on in those markets, too.
>
>
Less so - they're earlier in the curve.
>>>>>>If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
>>>>>>is WalMart.
>>>>>
>>>>>Micro$oft. Pure rent seeking.
>>>>
>>>>Microsoft is a thing of the recent past. It won't
>>>>survive sucession of Gates and Ballmer. The remains of
>>>>the company will drown in all that cash.
>>>
>>>Don't you believe it. I have a gut feeling that Gates is not actually
>>>a bad guy, but Ballmer is the Antichrist.
>>
>>It doesn't matter. They cannot maintain market position for
>>long.
>
>
> Funny, that's what people were saying about them 10 years ago...
>
>
Not me. But they've reached a point.
>>Their practices show they are not making
>>the inroads they once made.
>
>
> I hope you're right, and they aren't just replaced by someone even
> worse.
>
It doesn't matter. The market place loves 'em, so they
probably will be.
>
>>>>>>They are extraordinarily good at what they
>>>>>>do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
>>>>>
>>>>>And they are the recipients of tens of billions of dollars worth of
>>>>>publicly created land rent.
>>>>
>>>>But they run trillions ( I don't even know how much )
>>>>in merchandise yearly.
>>>
>>>It's not that much, and anyway it's rrelevant. Trading and retail
>>>companies do big volume because that's what they do.
>>
>>Point being: it overwhelms all real estate owned.
>
>
> Nope. Not even close.
>
Their top line is 258 *billion* per annum ( I was
off by a factor of four ).
( I had read annual figures as quarterly before ).
Balance sheet shows 58 billion in property, plant
and equpiment. Total assets are 104B - about
four years top line.
This is not some feudal culture where people belong
to the land. Production outstrips assets values or
you get cut up for scrap. Period.
Les Cargill
There are partnerships in the DFW area that specialize in
holding unimproved ( or rather agro ) land until suburban
development makes sense on 'em. Dunno if they're REITs -
they'e usually more like LLCs, because that keeps the
mickey mouse to a minimum.
--
--
Les Cargill
ro...@telus.net
<lcar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
??? The Roman nobles were indeed rentiers (though Julius didn't pose
a direct threat to their rents, he did pose a threat to their
stranglehold on power), and the Kuwaiti royal family is _nothing_but_
rentiers.
>>>>>Bush43 and his father were neither all that wealthy.
>>>>
>>>>I agree. But they are servants of the really wealthy.
>>>
>>>To the extent that campaigns need to be finianced. No
>>>further. We're talking about the size of a middling
>>>IPO. And the donors generally don't get much more'n
>>>a photo op .
>>
>> It is often astonishing how cheaply massively valuable political
>> favors can be bought. AFAICT, the normal return on a political
>> donation in excess of $1000 is about 100,000%.
>
>Yeah, I've heard the figure, and it sounds ridiculous. It
>is as if a roadbuilding contractor contriburted, then the
>contributions were attributed for his next four years'
>top line.
I can give you any number of Canadian examples. The Bronfman family
gave the Liberal Party of Canada 3/4 of a million over the course of a
decade, and then a Liberal government _waived_ $700M in capital gains
taxes when the Bronfmans moved ownership of their company offshore.
Bomabardier gave $175K to the Liberals one year, and then got an
interest-free loan of $180M the next. Li Ka-Shing arranged a small
land deal through offshore buyers that shoveled a couple million bucks
into the _personal_ pockets of government leaders, then got hundreds
of acres of land in downtown Vancouver for a song, making hundreds of
millions of dollars in land rent profits when the land was rezoned.
>Of course this happens. I just don't think it's the
>*dominant* mode. Ironically, every time we try to
>crack down on it, this gets worse.
I've never seen anyone try to crack down on it.
>>>It's the political equivalent of winning a backstage
>>>pass to the Stones concert, and nothing more.
>>
>> ??? Open your eyes.
>
>Open yours. Musical artifacts gor for $millions
>at auction . We live in a celebrity culture.
>
>How can the average Congrefscritter dispense as much
>in favors as his campaign costs? Not a committe chair,
>but the average guy?
The small contributors typically don't get such favors. Only the big
ones. And the average Congressman does it by selling his vote. Quid
pro quo.
>>>>>>>They are extraordinarily good at what they
>>>>>>>do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>And they are the recipients of tens of billions of dollars worth of
>>>>>>publicly created land rent.
>>>>>
>>>>>But they run trillions ( I don't even know how much )
>>>>>in merchandise yearly.
>>>>
>>>>It's not that much, and anyway it's rrelevant. Trading and retail
>>>>companies do big volume because that's what they do.
>>>
>>>Point being: it overwhelms all real estate owned.
>>
>> Nope. Not even close.
>
>Their top line is 258 *billion* per annum ( I was
>off by a factor of four ).
>( I had read annual figures as quarterly before ).
But they can't get that money unless they have the locations that let
them get customers.
>Balance sheet shows 58 billion in property, plant
>and equpiment. Total assets are 104B - about
>four years top line.
Their land is grossly undervalued. That's entirely normal. But in
any case you are comparing flows with funds, apples and oranges.
>This is not some feudal culture where people belong
>to the land. Production outstrips assets values or
>you get cut up for scrap. Period.
Complete garbage. You don't have to produce _anything_ when you're
pocketing land rent.
-- Roy L