What's Wrong With 1% Owning As Much As 99%?
Let's look at the data. What is this?
This is wealth creation through history. You can see how through history we pretty much weren't creating much wealth at all until the industrial revolution and the present age. So yeah, 'wealth' was more evenly distributed back then too. But it wasn't much wealth.
Who created wealth for the past 200 years? Only a handful of industrious people. So we do expect that 1% to own most of the newly created wealth - that is fair, since they have created it. Since there is a lot more wealth today than there ever was in the past AND most of this wealth was created by a few people, the 1% owning more and more relative to the others is no big mystery. It's exactly what we should expect, and it's quite fair.
Now, let's take a specific case. Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Jeff Bezos has provided tremendous value to millions of people. How many times have I not acquired books via Amazon? His service has been tremendously useful for me. And for millions of other people, if not billions. So it's not at all strange that he has $90 billion in wealth... how can you not when you impact the lives of billions of people? :s
Now I have no idea how you will prevent people doing useful work for others from becoming millionaires and billionaires except by appropriating what they produce. Either you sell big volume at small profit, or you sell small volume at high profit (ie very valuable, like selling oil tanks), and it is unavoidable to become rich. It's no big mystery. Just like fitness - keep going to the gym and working your butt off, and you will be fit. It's relatively simple.
Take Jordan Peterson. He's providing what millions find useful, and he's making $70K/month. It's really no big mystery.
Jeff Bezos or Jordan Peterson being rich does not prevent you or anyone else from making your own money. But you actually have to do something, you cannot sit there with a finger up your nose and expect the dough to fall from the sky. You have to find a way to help others - not one, two, three people, but millions. And anyone can do this. The 1% owning even 99% of the wealth does not stop anyone from doing this.
This is wealth creation through history. You can see how through history we pretty much weren't creating much wealth at all until the industrial revolution and the present age. So yeah, 'wealth' was more evenly distributed back then too. But it wasn't much wealth.
Who created wealth for the past 200 years? Only a handful of industrious people. So we do expect that 1% to own most of the newly created wealth - that is fair, since they have created it. Since there is a lot more wealth today than there ever was in the past AND most of this wealth was created by a few people, the 1% owning more and more relative to the others is no big mystery. It's exactly what we should expect, and it's quite fair.
Now, let's take a specific case. Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Jeff Bezos has provided tremendous value to millions of people. How many times have I not acquired books via Amazon? His service has been tremendously useful for me. And for millions of other people, if not billions. So it's not at all strange that he has $90 billion in wealth... how can you not when you impact the lives of billions of people? :s
Now I have no idea how you will prevent people doing useful work for others from becoming millionaires and billionaires except by appropriating what they produce. Either you sell big volume at small profit, or you sell small volume at high profit (ie very valuable, like selling oil tanks), and it is unavoidable to become rich. It's no big mystery. Just like fitness - keep going to the gym and working your butt off, and you will be fit. It's relatively simple.
Take Jordan Peterson. He's providing what millions find useful, and he's making $70K/month. It's really no big mystery.
Jeff Bezos or Jordan Peterson being rich does not prevent you or anyone else from making your own money. But you actually have to do something, you cannot sit there with a finger up your nose and expect the dough to fall from the sky. You have to find a way to help others - not one, two, three people, but millions. And anyone can do this. The 1% owning even 99% of the wealth does not stop anyone from doing this.
Comments (202)
They didn't create it in a vacuum and at some point if they're given too much everything will collapse anyway (the economy needs people wealthy enough to buy the stuff rich businessmen produce). So, try to imagine what a society where 99% of people are forced to share just 1% of the wealth would look like or how that would even be sustained. I mean, really.
Okay, so let's analyse what would happen if 1% owned as much as 99%.
The 99% would live no worse than they ever lived in the past. They actually have the same wealth they had in the past, the only difference would be that they're not participating in the growth of wealth that the 1% is experiencing. That's why they own less and less relatively - new wealth keeps being created, but they're not the ones creating it, so they don't have it. What's wrong with that?
You see that big spike in wealth in the previous graph? Most of that new wealth goes to the top 1%, since they're the ones creating it. They are creators of wealth, not consumers. Now, some of the wealth also goes to the bottom 99% - I mean pretty much everyone in developed countries today lives better than in the 1800s.
Yeah, their wealth is not affected. The bottom 99% are as rich as they ever were, in fact they're somewhat richer than they were 200 years ago. And the economy needs both low-value transactions in high volume (selling to the middle class, poor, etc.) and high-value transactions in lower volume (selling to the rich, other businesses, etc.)
How can the 99% be any richer if they don't create wealth? :s To be rich you have to do something useful for others. For many others. If they don't do that, they'll remain at low values of wealth and won't participate in wealth creation.
At the very least it would seem to be more of a symbiotic relationship between the wealthy and their less 'successful' counterparts than is being suggested in this antagonistic scenario (I could very well be misinterpreting your intention), and without the latter group the former would not have been able to achieve what they have.
IMO I think there's an important distinction to be made between pursuing economic equality to an excessive degree, which would negate differences in talent, hard work, and the like, and the sort of sociopathic, Ayn Randian justification of boundless greed with its corresponding contempt of the masses that you seem to be either supporting or playing devil's advocate for, Agustino.
I sense a bit of hyperbole and false dichotomy being employed to make a point, although I could be wrong. I'd imagine that being ridiculously rich and generous aren't mutually exclusive, and that one can be financially successful while also feeling a sense of gratitude and indebtedness to the larger community to which one belongs.
IF I approached it from that standpoint then I'd imagine I'd find your argument much more compelling. I'd question whether there's strong link to be found between personal happiness/well-being and a thriving economy which often appears to place the pursuit of profit above all other aims. Perhaps there's a compromise position of sorts which would embrace economic growth while also subordinating it to, say, something like the 'higher' values and aspirations of the people who make up the community.
Of course that doesn't mean I'd want to return to some romanticized pre-modern era of agrarian simplicity, but I also wouldn't be quick to dismiss the idea that a few important things have been lost in the drive towards unrestrained economic development.
The individual talents of this or that entrepreneur-flavour-of-the-month is entirely irrelevant. As usual the focus on the individual is simply sociologically inane and obscures the real issues.
It doesn't disproportionately benefit the wealthy, if by that you just mean that the wealthy own more of the newly created wealth than the others.
Quoting Erik
This is nosense. Yes, without other people on Earth, the entrepreneur would have no one to help. But that's not saying much. The entrepreneur isn't aided one iota in actually helping those people by their mere existence. It's his ingenuity and effort that is of help. The entrepreneur identifies and solves society's problems.
Quoting Erik
It's not boundless greed. To make money you need to solve problems that others have. You're not just going to give me your money, but on the other hand, if, say, I help you make $10,000, you don't mind giving me $1000. Or if I help you get your health back, etc.
Quoting Erik
The entrepreneur doesn't need to feel gratitude, he is already helping his society by his very existence - providing needed services and products to millions of customers.
Quoting Erik
It obviously depends on the individual.
Why is it disgusting? :s Again, if they create that wealth, who should own it? The people who keep a finger up their nose expecting money to fall from the sky in their lap? :s
Quoting StreetlightX
Could you provide examples of what you mean? I don't find this to be the case. Most billionaires, for example, are self-made, and they don't come from rich families. Nobody stops you from providing a useful product or service, so how are the means of wealth creation kept away from middle-class people like us? More like most of us are too lazy to be interested in doing something useful at a large scale, including dealing with all the complexities that involves. But how are the mechanisms of wealth creation kept away from us? :s
Fact check:
There Are More Self-Made Billionaires In The Forbes 400 Than Ever Before.
The evolution of absolute self-made fortunes (10s) and inherited, but not growing (1s) in the Forbes 400 from 1984 to 2014:
I rate your claim as true. (Y)
Despite what your teachers might have told you in school, it isn't just about effort. 9 out of 10 start-ups fail. The idea that just about anyone (or most people) can succeed if they try hard enough is ridiculous. Skills, knowledge, innovation, a lack of competition, starting resources, and even luck all play a major role. A single mother working two jobs is never going to get out of that situation without help, despite the massive amount of effort she's already putting into living and supporting her family.
If you can't see it you're either blind or analytically challenged.
In the meantime, you can educate yourself.
Sure it can, especially if the wealthy infiltrate the political system and affect policy. Embarking on expensive and adventurous wars under the guise of spreading democracy; maintaining a massive military which not only protects but also expands their assets and interests; negotiating free trade agreements which hurt average folk but benefit the already rich; etc.
Quoting Agustino
This seems one-sided since the entrepreneur also creates certain problems - social, environmental, etc. Automation, for example, may help entrepreneurs cut labor costs and become more efficient but it also hurts certain groups of people that have lost their livelihoods as a result of advanced technology. This is the ambiguous nature of what Joseph Schumpeter referred to as the "process of creative destruction" as I understand it.
You know way more about this topic than I do, obviously, but I'm almost certain that it's not nearly as simple as you're portraying it. There are winners and losers here, even when judged strictly according to economic considerations; if we factor in other long-term criteria then it would seem to become an even more complex topic.
I'd also maintain that a large work force and robust consumer base would seem absolutely necessary for peddling the products and services that the visionary entrepreneur you're so in thrall to creates. Let's not forget the tremendous amount of money that goes into creating needs through advertising, often through extremely sophisticated and manipulative psychological means.
Quoting Agustino
That's great, sincerely, but what about creating a smart phone or a highly addictive website (e.g. Facebook, porn) or some other thing which may impact your life, your relationships, your health adversely, in such a way that you become more isolated form others, less physically active, more prone to feelings of depression and suicide, etc. The jury is apparently still out on these things, yet you seem to be assuming they only lead to positive and beneficial results.
So again, it's not just a simple matter of 'solving problems' - it could be about exploiting weaknesses, catering to the the basest of human desires, etc. I'd argue, yet again, that you're employing an overly simplistic perspective on the topic which remains blind - and MUST remain blind if the rigid position is to be maintained - to the many potentially destructive consequences of entrepreneurship and economic development without regard for any other (economic and non-economic alike) considerations.
To summarize, it seems like you're isolating economic activity from the larger historical, social, environmental, and cultural (just to name a few) context in which it takes place. That tactic seems extremely suspect on a number of levels: morally, intellectually, etc.
Yes, but most people can succeed if they know what to do. Now knowing what to do isn't easy. Most people have completely wrong notions about business, so I'm not surprised when I hear most businesses fail.
Most people don't understand the critical importance of marketing and getting sales, above all else. Without capital, you cannot finance your operation and you will fail. Capital can make up for mistakes, lacking the right people, etc.
So most people develop products that no one buys (wrong approach), they start a product-based / manufacturing business with not enough capital, etc.
These are all mistakes. Get sales first - make sure that there's a market that you can reach and tap in before you invest.
Trust me, analytically challenged or blind is definitely not what I am. That should be measured by practical results you get not the postmodernist books you read. Anyone can read books and spew out a bunch of theories. But not everyone can get practical results.
Quoting StreetlightX
All these are the result of poor individual choices if you ask me. For example, people are taking on debt to finance housing purchase etc. because they don't understand how it works. Even in Eastern Europe a lot of young people are accumulating a lot of debt to finance housing purchases - why? Because they're happy they get their own house immediately, but do not understand how variable interest rates function - they don't see how inflation will go up, and how the amount they'll end up paying for the house is a LOT more than what the bank initially presents them. But if they lived with parents for say 10 years until they could afford a house by saving money, they would escape from having to use bank debt. Or they could buy a cheaper house outside the main cities. Nothing that cannot be fixed with smart individual decisions.
Quoting StreetlightX
That's a good thing.
Analytically challenged it is.
Yes, that's the only thing I would agree on. The government shouldn't serve the interests of entrenched corporations through corruption or laws the prevent competition.
Quoting Erik
Look, that's only because people have the wrong expectations. You are only paid if you are useful, and that holds as much for the entrepreneur as for everyone else. If you keep doing the same job your entire life, without on the side always studying and expanding your skills, you may indeed wake up one day out of work and in a terrible situation, lacking other skills, and not having a job either. That's true. And there are many people I've met who are precisely in this condition. But all this could have been avoided had they dedicated themselves to self-improvement during many many previous years.
Quoting Erik
There are indeed winners and losers, but you lose because you don't play your cards right. You don't lose because of a systematic issue.
Quoting Erik
Marketing isn't about that though. That's another common misconception. Marketing is about communicating, honestly, to prospects what problems they have, and what products can solve their problems. Raising awareness about pain-points is just as important as showing what the solution for them is. If you don't know you have a problem you won't buy the product that could solve it.
But of course there is also unethical marketing (deceptive, bait & switch, etc.), but by and large most people are more honest than we would expect them to be in business according to our popular culture.
Quoting Erik
Does anyone force you to watch porn though? No, that's your decision. But obviously developing porn is also unethical - but there is a demand for it. I wouldn't personally ever get involved in unethical businesses, and wouldn't mind, for that matter, if we were to ban such businesses.
But things like Facebook, even if they are addictive, are still more beneficial than otherwise for most people, since they can keep in contact with others more easily.
Analytically challenged who can probably solve a practical problem 4 times as fast and better than you can :-} Of course, it's easy to show off and insult others when there's no real standard, and real interaction with reality, to compare our results with.
And even if such a distribution is "fair" according to some moral definition of fairness pertaining to the individual, does that necessarily imply that wealth shouldn't be re-distributed? After all, what is "fair" for individuals might not be "fair" or beneficial for the collective, or vice versa.
There's also a quantitative question, what is wrong with this magnitude of inequality specifically, and is there a minimal magnitude of inequality (or a similar quantity) which makes the problems of inequality go away? Alternatively, do injustices and unfairness scale with the magnitude of the inequality; and if so, how?
The first one is a lot easier to address. It's quite well understood that inequality within a community correlates very strongly with all crime rates (except for arson, weirdly). Poverty and inequality have a mediated relationship, but in the US they correlate quite strongly over communities. There's also strong correlations with poverty/inequality and ethnic diversity and proportion of non-whites in a community. I studied the data for this a few years ago.
I aggregated census data in the US with crime data and income data, extracted communities which are measured in each data set, then dida principal component analysis of crime, make a coordinate system with the first 3 principal components (of which the first and the second are the most interesting). Plotting demographic variables and measures of inequality/poverty over the sphere gives you a colinear relationship between poverty, inequality, ethnic diversity and non-white population proportion. Which is to say that in terms of variation in crime rates, (inequality)-(poverty)-(ethnic diversity)-(non-white proportion) are a single construct. Or more prosaically 'race and class are two sides of the same coin'.*
This isn't to say that such an analysis lets you draw causal conclusions from the demographics, in fact it impedes treating inequality, poverty, ethnic diversity and non-white proportion as separate quantities for causal analysis. Which isn't to say it's not possible, it's to say that their alignment gives strong evidence of pairwise mediation, or in another word, confounding, when trying to draw causal conclusions.
Some analysts also throw economic growth into the mix as an inflation factor of inequality. Prosaically, money makes more money. It's interesting to ask where the money's made - what kind of human activity generates the biggest changes in ownership of monetary value?
This is hands down the stock exchange or financial sector. Worldwide, in total about 60 trillion Euros are traded in stock exchanges per year. This is more than the combined monetary value of all goods and services bought in a year worldwide. See here for World Bank data on the subject. Wealthy countries have a bad habit of trading more monetary value in stocks and financial assets than their entire yearly GDP.
It's interesting at this point to note that the idea 'those who demonstrate consistent skill and utility to their communities are reward financially', that @Agustino said, is pretty much bunk considered under this light. The majority of US stock traders are worse than chance at their job, but are disproportionately rewarded to the tune of a wage equal to about twice the median income in the US.
Who actually has the money to invest in stocks, to play the game that generates most wealth? You need about 3000 dollars to purchase an index fund. This breakdown of the 'average cost of living per year', they have enough to minimally purchase index funds or speculate on the stock market. But what about people receiving the minimum wage of 7.25 dollars per hour? They can't even afford the average yearly expenditure on food+housing in that breakdown (approx 16k dollars per year before tax). So they're locked out of the mechanisms by which the economy grows, so will receive less and less of a share. Conversely, those who get to play the game will get more and more of the share. The poor also can't pay for lobbying, so their political impact is diminished as well.
So what's so bad about income inequality in general? It correlates strongly with racial inequality, inequality of opportunity, it locks out the poorest from growth, it promotes crime.
What about the quantitative question at the start of the post? How do greater magnitudes of inequality impact a nation? Well. inequality has a strong link with crime rates, more inequality more crime. Also, growth magnifies unequal distributions of monetary value to the extent that the the monetary value is unequally distributed. So if we have a monotonic relationship between X and a set P(X), increasing X increases P(X) - so growth is likely to increase the inequality in income, which through its correlates is likely to increase poverty, racial inequality, crime and decrease social mobility and political agency of the poor. Since these relationships are linear (see collinearity earlier, linear is a subspecies of monotonic), the more unequal things get, the worse the expected impact on poverty, inequality, crime, social mobility and political agency.
*the angle between the first principal component and all those vectors was between 5 and 15 degrees, perfect correlation is 0 degrees, no correlation is 90. The vectors were pointing along the first principal component, this means that they all contribute/explain the major components of variation in crime over the US.
I don't see how it can reasonably be maintained that someone appropriately has far more resources than he/she can possibly require where resources are limited. This would be to honor rampant self-indulgence. Are gluttons and hoarders admirable because they consume and keep far more than they need to be sated or that they will use? I would say no, even if they "earned" what they so selfishly and needlessly eat and acquire.
No, that handful of people scammed millions of people wasting their life working for them to gain even minimal upgrade in their standard of living.
Quoting fdrake
Monetary value in and of itself is irrelevant. Production and problem-solving are relevant.
Quoting fdrake
The stock exchange and the financial sector are very different. The financial sector is much much larger. But I take it you don't know much about this... clearly.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, actually roughly 66 trillion euros - not that it means anything. You actually don't understand matters very well if you think stock trades are the figure you should quote. You should quote forex markets. Every single day approximately $5 trillion USD exchange hands on the forex market - meaning approximately $1800 trillion per annum.
And a large share of these transactions are required by businesses since international trade and international selling always involves buying and selling of currency.
Quoting fdrake
>:O No, you clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. If you think most of today's fortunes were created by trading stocks or financial speculation, then you're wrong. Most of the people who get rich do so through starting and running a business, which produces something useful for society that other people need or want.
Financial speculation and trading stocks, etc. is only a way for rich people to maintain their wealth and avoid having inflation eat it up - once they are already rich. Having said that, I am actually opposed to financial speculation since it doesn't produce anything useful. So I wouldn't mind taxing PROFITS (definitely at least short-term profits) from that at 90%.
Quoting fdrake
Sure, so what? They're not where the real money is.
Quoting fdrake
>:O >:O investment in stocks is the game that generates the most wealth? >:O
You seem to confuse the passivity of growing a sum of money through financial investments with the ability to generate wealth. Financial speculation generates no wealth, since it produces nothing. Wealth is generated when products or services are sold. People who are already rich use financial investments not because they're so great at producing wealth, but because they're passive - they take relatively little effort when compared to, say, starting a business.
You seem to think that those who are the most successful at accumulating enormous wealth are motivated, not by accumulating an ever greater fortune for themselves, but by benign, or even beneficent, desires, such as the wish to solve problems and help people. So, if there were a cap on personal wealth accumulation, and anything earned above that had to, by law, go back into the public purse, do you think the billionaires would remain motivated?
If those who accumulate great wealth are motivated mostly just by the desire to create great wealth (and the power that comes with that) for themselves, do you think that such a situation is morally acceptable and should be tolerated, or even encouraged?
Right, but that's how money is accumulated in the first place, by solving problems for society or providing needed products or services. You wouldn't pay me unless I provide you with something useful.
Quoting Janus
Sure, I don't think that would be a problem so long as the respective billionaire gets to decide how that additional money is to be invested for the public's benefit. But, on the other hand, if invested for the public benefit really means that the billionaire gives over control to some corrupt or incapable government bureaucrat to decide how to invest the money on his behalf, I think that's a problem.
I think there comes a point though when more money doesn't make a difference in terms of personal power. If you have $100 million, you're pretty much as powerful as someone who has $20 billion for the most part. There's not much you can do in terms of personal power with more money. So I don't think personal power can be a source of motivation beyond that level.
I think it depends on whether this has a net benefit for society or not, and whether the solution to people motivated in such a way produces a better result or not.
Capitalism operates under the assumption that self-interested economic behavior results in net benefits for society. Of course there has to be some rules in place for this to work, and maybe capping the absolute wealth one can accumulate should be one of those. But then again, you might be disincentivizing the would be Steve Jobs or Elon Musk's of the world. So it's not entirely obvious what we should do.
I agree though when it comes to power that we need to limit any individual's influence. But a large part of that is what modern democracies are set up to do. They may need to be tweaked to take into account undo monetary influences.
Didn't know that about the Forex market, nice. How does it change things?
I don't think I implied much about how people get rich. What I care about is what makes money flow around, apparently this is the Forex Market then the Credit market. This paragraph is dataless assertion anyway. Also due to the failure rates previously mentioned in the thread it's necessary but not sufficient for wealth generation.
First sentence is the important thing. Companies can also sell their shares to generate wealth, the credit market is implicated in business start ups too (most of which fail, as was already pointed out).
Where is the real money? What does 'real money' mean?
Financial speculation generates no wealth, but the credit market is the second biggest, and the first biggest contains currency speculation and exchange. What conception of wealth are you working with?
You've provided mostly dataless counterpoints with no arguments. Most of the argumentative force of your post consists in 'fdrake didn't know the proportional size of the forex market to the credit market' then mockery. Bad form.
Financial markets don't "generate wealth". Comparing the world's GDP with the volume of transactions on financial markets is meaningless. If I, using entity A, sell $300 billion to entity B (which is also owned by me), and then entity B sells $300 billion back to entity A that counts as $600 billion worth of trading in terms of volume. What does that have to do with how much entity A and entity B produce (which does impact GDP)?
Quoting fdrake
You talked about the generation of wealth though.
Quoting fdrake
Those are tools though. Money can flow for different reasons, such as avoiding taxation, getting ready to do business with another country, etc.
Quoting fdrake
They don't generate wealth, they generate capital when selling their stock. Capital isn't the same as wealth.
Quoting fdrake
Significant sums of money.
Quoting fdrake
Wealth = production + services
Quoting fdrake
What data do you want? Take a copy of Forbes for example, and tally up how many billionaires made their fortune from starting a business and how many from the financial markets.
Quoting fdrake
There are arguments there, and they are based on data. It is a fact that most rich people make their fortune from starting a business. I told you what exercise you can do if you don't believe me.
This would seem to be a difficult thing to determine. Is Bill Gates more powerful than Rupert Murdoch? Does the degree of power, and kind of power, one possesses, depend on where one's wealth is invested as much as the extent of that wealth? Could Bill gates, for example, buy out Rupert Murdoch and appropriate the power the latter presumably wields via whatever control he exercises of the news media he owns?
That specific trade doesn't happen so much does it. The disjunction between the production of goods and services and the amount of money flowing around shows that production and services have a smaller impact on money flow than the exchange of securities.
The significant sums of money aren't contained in the two markets which dwarf all goods production and services many times over?
What conception of wealth are you using then?
I agree, it is possible that capping wealth would be a disincentive to those who, despite their aims, might be thought to create benefits to society. So, I agree it is a diabolically complex issue, as to just how individual desires and social rules forces interact.
I'm not positing any easy answers; even if what would be best to do could be clearly seen, how to implement it might be somewhat of a problem.
I think power is only to a certain degree financial. Mostly power comes in the form of controlling important decision makers through different means, whether political, economic or even militarily.
Financial power is irrelevant in the face of political power for example. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the richest man in Russia, and in one day his company was bankrupted and he was thrown in jail. Financial power only works if something is for sale.
Just some clarification - while it's interesting to find things out about how the income distribution looks like that, the main point of the thread is to assess whether an income distribution shaped like it is now is a good thing or a bad thing. Regardless of how companies get their wealth - which, yes, is composed of goods and services - people are not in the same position of power. Even those who try to usually fail. What people have is their skills and what they can do with them.
I think we can both agree that financial markets amplify trends like these. Your business does well, your stock and derived securities go up in value, people buy these things, it goes up in value more. Then you can sell the shares, generate more money, invest it into expanding production of goods and services...
Overall, the discussion of what factors make wealth is orthogonal to the discussion of what consequences does inequality have.
No - those are repeated transactions using mostly the same pool of money.
Quoting fdrake
Money flows around just to facilitate production of goods and services for the most part - there's also pure financial speculation.
Quoting fdrake
I already said that wealth is the production of goods and services.
Quoting fdrake
I think it's neither, but people make it so.
It seems to be that in militarily sustained dictatorships, a few individuals or even one individual, can possess great power. This is power in the hands of the politician, but only so long as he keeps the military pacified. In so-called free market democracies individual politicians and even incumbent political parties as wholes would seem to exercise far less power. In capitalist societies covert as opposed to apparent power seems to, by and large, be associated mostly with possession of wealth.
Just some clarification - while it's interesting to find things out about how the income distribution looks like that, the main point of the thread is to assess whether an income distribution shaped like it is now is a good thing or a bad thing. Regardless of how companies get their wealth - which, yes, is composed of goods and services - people are not in the same position of power. Even those who try to usually fail. What people have is their skills and what they can do with them.
I think we can both agree that financial markets amplify trends like these. Your business does well, your stock and derived securities go up in value, people buy these things, it goes up in value more. Then you can sell the shares, generate more money, invest it into expanding production of goods and services...
The important thing is that a typical person will not have access to these money amplification effects, so they cannot benefit from them. Another example in this regard is that if wage growth lags inflation it disproportionately effects people with low income. Being low income exposes you to risks that are already hedged against if you have more money.
Overall, the discussion of what factors make wealth is orthogonal to the discussion of what consequences does inequality have.
Really? I don't think so, control over the public opinion is the source of power in democracies.
I don't agree. "Public opinion" never seems to reach a level of coordination that would be adequate to think of it as an exercise of power. The closest it comes to that would seem to be during elections. But it's efficacy is questionable as, for example, under Australia's current effectively 'two party' system, there is little to choose between the two major parties, so it is debatable as to whether the "public" is exercising any significant power of choice.
And furthermore, manipulation of "public opinion" is rife throughout such systems, and operates in such diverse and subtle ways that determining exactly where effective power lies is difficult if not actually impossible.
Also, I would say that "control over the public opinion" is the manifestation, not the source, of power in democracies. That "control", whatever it might be believed to be worth in terms of power's real effectiveness, flows from a great diversity of sources.
Wealth isn't simply money. Wealth = Value x Quantity of Goods or Services Sold. I can have no money for example, but if I control a valuable service or product, I can sell it and make the money I don't have in no time. So just because the money isn't currently in my pocket, would it follow that I'm not wealthy in the above scenario?
If I'm the only person in the world who knows how to fix a specific component of specific type of ship's engines without which those particular ships can only move at 60% of their normal speed, but I have no money, do you reckon that's a problem? No, I can easily earn even $50,000/hour. So I am wealthy, even if I don't have money, because it's not money that makes you wealthy. It's your control over the above equation.
So you are wealthy either if you control a distribution network that can pump out a large volume of products/services quickly, or alternatively, you have an extremely valuable product/service as in the ship example I gave above. In these terms, money is a shadow. So wealth is the area under a value - quantity graph.
Employees tend to think of wealth in terms of money, but that's not an efficient way to think about it. It won't help you increase it. Usually, most employees have a low value - low quantity equations, hence why they don't earn a lot of money either. And they can't earn more unless they alter the equation. As I said before, money is a shadow, not the real thing.
I don't think this is relevant to inequality.
No, but it was dealing with your mistaken notion that the 99% don't have access to wealth generation mechanisms.
Really? What access to them do the 99% have? Besides their jobs.
Starting a business? :s
Ah yes, if only someone working two full time jobs would have thought of that, how stupid everyone is!
I'm not part of the 1%, I'm middle class, maybe middle-upper class where I'm from. In the West I'd be considered poor or bottom levels of middle class at most. So why is it that someone like me can study and learn, and find all the material I need, and you people in the West can't? And all this while working too.
I don't see the difference between what you're saying and 'if everyone was just in the situation I was in, everything would be OK, therefore it's the poor's fault that they are poor'.
:-d It's quite tiring talking when you don't bother to read and take in what I've said.
Quoting Agustino
(not in the West - refering to really poor people, who don't have access to schooling, electricity, hot water, etc.)
I do read what you're saying. People create wealth by offering goods and services. It's their own stupid fault in the west if they're stuck working paycheck to paycheck since they had access to education, hot water and electricity.
You seem to be under the impression that just because it's possible that someone can 'make something of themselves' and overcome the conditions of their environment, it's nothing to do with their environment when they don't do it, and is all their own responsibility not to fall into the traps of their environment.
Yes, they also had access to basic education, even if not higher education, and also any additional education they need through the internet, libraries, etc.
They can work 2 jobs, and I'm sure there's still some spare time at night 1-2 hours to study. They can then work to cut their costs - no drinking, no cigarettes, no drugs, just the bare essentials of life. It's possible actually to live with very little money if you are a bit of a Spartan. Do that for 5 years, and you'll have enough knowledge to change to better-paid jobs, or otherwise start a business or work as self-employed. Why is that path that unthinkable for you?
Many have done it. Here's an example.
The path isn't unthinkable to me. The fact that it's possible doesn't really say anything about inequality though. Other than it's eventually going to buttress an argument you'll make that inequality is a result of poor people not being motivated enough to change their circumstances.
Why is inequality a problem if you have the means to rise up through your own intelligence and efforts? :s
Because inequality makes it a lot less likely that someone is able to do those things!
The harder it is, the greater the accomplishment of succeeding!
And actually, I don't think inequality has anything to do with someone being able to do this, granted they are in the circumstances I've outlined above. Why does it matter someone has more money than me? Again, go back to the wealth equation. The additional money isn't of much help to him or her unless he or she knows what to do with it.
So you're down with the idea that social mobility is impeded by inequality. Good, that's a start. But you don't care because it's still possible that someone 'makes it', without any thought of how wealth redistribution would make it easier to 'make it'.
Inequality makes crime more likely, it entrenches poverty by locking people out of the benefits of economic growth, or other things which can generate greater income. Inequality is a structural property of the distribution of wealth, you see its effects in the aggregate in a probabilistic manner. You don't see the effects when focusing on individual success stories and the bare possibility of 'making it'.
No, I'm not down with that idea except in the case of people who are really really poor. I asked you before, how does someone having more money than me prohibit me from becoming wealthy?
Quoting fdrake
Right, what does this have to do with the individual becoming wealthy which is the topic, granting that we were discussing social mobility?
Quoting fdrake
What benefits? What's the relationship between these benefits and becoming wealthy?
Quoting fdrake
What things? How?
Not even wrong. What matters is the pattern of wealth distribution. You don't seem to want to consider aggregate effects at all. Inequality is a property of an income distribution, you can see its effects over communities and how people in those communities live their lives and what they are likely to be able to do with them. Crime obviously has an impact here.
The individual becoming wealthy is made less likely through inequality, inequality scales with poverty, crime, poor social mobility... I had a lot of details on this in the mega-post I made at the start.
Well the hope is that economic growth increases the average livelihood of people. But what it actually does (see the papers I linked in the first post) is entrench patterns of inequality, people without much before have proportionally less when an economy grows.
Why is it so difficult for you to consider the aggregate properties and changes in circumstance suggested by an income distribution? You're telling stories about people while eliding the things that affect their average livelihood, free time, propensity to commit and be a victim of crime, greater exposure to risks due to an inability to save money...
You haven't addressed the question...
Quoting fdrake
I know that's what you claim, but for example, most billionaires are self-made. Many of them come from among the poor too. That's stats, you know, the stuff you like.
In addition, how many amongst the poor buy cigarettes and alcohol even though they don't have sufficient money for food? There's many such people out there. Do they have no responsibility for the continuation of their poverty?
Quoting fdrake
Yeah so what? Of course if everyone's wealth grows, and you don't do anything to grow yours, you will remain RELATIVELY poor. But relative poverty is not of interest to me. If you have money for food, electricity, and the other basic necessities of life, and assuming you have access to healthcare and other necessities, what's the issue? If you had those before everyone's wealth grew, you still have them now, even though relative to them you're poorer. What's the problem there? The only problem may be that you're envious, because there are political agitators who tell you that you should have more, etc.
We should focus on providing that bare minimum for everyone, not more. If you want more, you have to work for it.
Quoting fdrake
I don't believe in stats, I believe in people.
Quoting fdrake
So if I am poor, is it not a moral choice whether I steal or not? Am I not responsible for stealing? Or what's the matter here? And what does all this have to do with the ability to become wealthy? :s
You're exactly like the people here. Seems like you guys don't understand how the market works... For example:
(1) is entirely false. Many businesses don't need a startup capital, or if they do it is very small, or you can otherwise obtain it by working the business yourself before you hire others. There's also a ton of arbitrage opportunities always around for making a startup capital.
(2) Employing others isn't exploitation since the job of organising production requires effort, knowledge and expertise and it must also be rewarded, even though it doesn't actually produce a product - it's still necessary to achieve that production on a greater level and obtain, for example, economies of scale.
(3) That may be true, but it's unavoidable within our economies. Whatever you do, even if you are an employee, you're basically exploiting resources stolen from 3rd world countries.
Quoting Agustino
Read the above. Also you misinterpret my position. I am against big business, which means multinational corporations, which seek to control the government and enact laws that prevent competition and protect them. I'm not against entrepreneurial endeavours.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, but I like Stalin's rephrasing: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work"
Quoting Sapientia
Yes. I disagree for the reason outlined in my previous post, right above you.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes - I am entirely for restraining non-entrepreneurial endeavours which seek to stifle competition and get in bed with the government.
I am left-leaning in terms of my economics, sure. But not with regards to entrepreneurship and private ownership. I am a distributist in many regards.
A handful of industrious people like (not mentioning all the well known current rich folks)
Samuel Crompton (Spinning Mule) Great Britain
Thomas Newcomen (Steam Engine) Great Britain
Johns Hopkins (commercial, banking, railroads) USA
John D. Rockefeller (Oil) the world
Andrew Carnegie (Steel) USA
Cornelius Vanderbilt (Railroads) USA
John Jacob Astor (Fur, Real Estate (like... Waldorf Astoria Hotel) USA
James Hill (Railroads) USA
Jamsetji Tata (Shipping, Steel, Hotels...) India
Richard Trevithick (Sugar) Germany
Coco Chanel (Fashion) France
Enzo Ferrari (Sports Cars) Italy
J. R. D. Tata (Everything) India
Richard Branson (Media, Transportation) UK
Rod Aldridge (Business process outsourcing), UK
Hernán Botbol (Internet) Argentina
Strive Masiyiwa (Telecommunication) Zimbabwe
Sure, a handful. But... none of these people actually produced much wealth themselves. Andrew Carnegie wasn't shoveling iron ore into the coke ovens; Jamsetji Tata wasn't steering the freighters; Strive Masiyiwa wasn't bolting together cell towers in Zimbabwe.
It just isn't possible for one person to invent and develop large industries which produce millions or billions of dollars of income. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did start working on computers in their families garages (so they say), but before long they, like other entrepreneurs, had to start hiring people to develop and produce code, pieces of gadgetry, and so on. Generally setting up production (plant and people) requires loaned capital.
You, AGUCORP, sitting at your desk somewhere in Eastern Europe, providing some services to other businesses, are not going to become rich. At some point you will have to start hiring other people to sit at desks, answer phones and emails, and to do this you will need to obtain capital, probably first with a loan, then with maybe selling shares. If Big Finance thinks you have the makings of becoming the Bloomberg of Business in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Belarus, and Botswana, they might back you, then you might become rich.
But no matter how rich Agustino gets as founder of AGUCORP, it won't be on the basis of your personal labor. Your ideas, sure; certainly the ideas of your employees too.
You are too wrapped up in the idea of the Glorious Solitary Knight of Commerce to see that wealth is created socially by dozens, hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of people working to produce wealth. And then, in order for you to become very, very rich, you have to expropriate a slice of the value all those people created, and keep it for yourself.
You don't have to be a physically powerful ox of a man to personally do the expropriating. Expropriation is a social affair, and the rules of commerce (assuming there are rules of commerce wherever you are operating out of) allow for, and facilitate the expropriation. The armed services of the country you are working in are paid to make sure your employees do not turn on you and seize your business services goldmine (expropriating the expropriators). The Courts are there to make sure that your patents, trademarks, and contracts are protected. The stock markets are there to facilitate your IPO, and various business already exist to facilitate your financial operation.
I know, I reject the framing of the issue that produces it. As you said:
Which means your method of questioning will never even see aggregate properties and what propensities they endow to individuals. Despite these propensities being both real and measurable, you have cultivated a blindspot to this kind of analysis. It isn't surprising that you don't see the methodological issues in your line of questioning.
The fact that you equate societal properties manifesting as changing propensities for individual actions with the possibility and individual responsibility for doing those actions is exactly a symptom of your blindspot for aggregate properties and constraints.
Note that they are soft constraints, society doesn't make your decisions for you, you make decisions in the contexts and communities it generates and is constituted by.
Well, despite that your assumptions are often false for people on minimum wage in America... You're completely wrong about having the same standard of living if everyone's wealth grows. If you're poor, you're disproportionately effected by inflation - which is strongly correlated with economic growth. Your means don't stretch as far when real wages lag inflation (which they have for some time).
I'm actually quite well off and do contract work in addition to my job, so stop your daft psychologising. It was much better when you were insulting me for things more relevant to the issue. I can appreciate a good 'you don't even know this, you damn fool', not 'you're wrong and i'm better than you so there nyer i have money u jelly lol?'. Even though both are bad form, your standards of insult are slipping man!
Perhaps this makes the point about your methodological errors better. Would you be able to get a job at the OECD by saying 'I don't believe in stats, I believe in people', not looking at all the measurable effects inequality has on people's lives, and apparently skirting over the problems that come along with inequality and poverty? Probably not, but then you 'don't care about relative poverty'.
I submit that no one at the OECD would think your approach to these problems was particularly good, being mostly composed of select success stories, claims that your opponent is stupid, claims that your opponent doesn't understand things that are largely irrelevant to the debate, and an absolute insistence on moralising category errors in analysing societal properties.
If you want to understand how a societal configuration effects its people, it should be done in the aggregate, it should employ concepts sensitive to changes in individual agency. You've used success stories and the possibility of 'making it', they're the only methodological constructs you've used to understand inequality. By definition they're not sensitive to aggregate properties - the first is a selection of decontextualised anecdotes demonstrating possibilities for action at best, the second is a blunt insistence to not analyse the ways societal configurations can impact people.
Some people are, of course. That's just the normal distribution. At the opposite end of the distribution are highly motivated, energetic, acquisitive, skilled individuals who have stumbled upon opportunity and have sunk their teeth into it's haunches. What will happen to most of them? Many of them will fail in their entrepreneurial projects. Some will do as well in their business as they would have done if they had worked for someone else. A diminishing number will make it into the big time.
In the middle of the distribution are about 80% of the population. We are people who are reasonably smart to very smart, energetic, educated, motivated, etc. who are not interested in becoming individual entrepreneurs. Perhaps we have other interests which are more important than working 16 hour days trying to establish a business. Perhaps we are interested in spending time with our families; pursuing our demanding careers in education, welding, medicine, carpentry, accounting, bricklaying, architecture, cooking, civil service, sales, auto repair, or whatever.
There is nothing especially exalted about individual entrepreneurial effort. If you like it, I am sure it is most enjoyable. It's probably like the public health job of syphilis contact tracing: it requires training, considerable skill, dedication, attention to detail, persistence, and intelligence. If you enjoy doing syphilis contact tracing, tuberculosis case finding, optometry, repairing alternators, religious work, garbage hauling, milking cows--whatever it is, it's enjoyable and useful.
Getting rich? For most people, getting or being rich is an idle fantasy or unimportant, and in any case, not a fixation that people should be encouraged to dwell on. Riches are not good for people's morals.
Yep, exactly.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Started out poor.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Started out middle class.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Started out poor.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Started out poor.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Started out poor.
The others I haven't heard about or read about much.
Quoting Bitter Crank
But who learned about the technology, who brought it to the US, who organised production, who risked his capital, who worked as a poor boy his way up, etc.? The steel part came after Carnegie was quite successful in business and investments.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree, but do we need people to organised production? Organised production achieves economies of scale, which are not achieveable by separate labourers, even if they can do the job themselves. Is it unfair, for example, for the entrepreneur to take these economies of scale for himself, allowing the labourers to earn only what they could earn if they were working by themselves?
Quoting Bitter Crank
That might work like that in the US, but here most successful businessmen have bootstrapped their operations (excluding the ones who made their wealth through corruption and theft with the government, which are a lot of them).
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, that's true.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I already have to do that, because it's not like business comes automatically to you - you need to reach out and find it.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Okay but go back to my previous point. So say I start a web development company. I will hire people, but I won't hire jack-of-all-trades like myself. I will hire, for example, an HTML/CSS expert, a javascript expert, a backend/PHP expert, a database expert, a Wordpress expert, a Node JS expert etc. etc. and put them to work. Now they will do the work a lot faster since they are experts at each individual component. They can probably do each individual component of the project much faster (and better) than I can.
So they are going to earn a fair amount for their individual work - but I will take for myself all the benefits that emerge from me having brought them together right? Any economies of scale, I will take for myself, since that was my work, to bring them together, and set the whole system up. So if they can finish projects faster than I can alone, then anything extra I will take. Isn't that fair?
Quoting Bitter Crank
It's very complicated to do that, because specialisation means typically one person does just one small bit. These actual constraints are a lot more important than the legal ones here.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Forget it, if I have to rely on the courts or government for anything, including ensuring I get paid, then I'm dead here. I have to rely on payment agreements, contracts, etc. to make sure that I get paid. That doesn't mean courts will ever enforce them, what I mean is... For example, asking for a certain percentage upfront, getting paid along the way, and other such tactics. You have to get a feel for whether people will cheat you or not here - typically it's good to leave some work for the future also, since if they have to keep working with you, less likely that you get cheated.
"Here" is no different than everywhere. There are crooks everywhere. So, how do you protect yourself? Through established legal institutions or do you employ your own goon squad as enforcers?
With regards to what is happening in the US, and pretty much everywhere, yes, I do think business taxes should go down.
Quoting Sapientia
As far as I'm concerned that unfairness is just corruption and getting in bed with governments. That's how they gain unfair advantages and squish out smaller businesses. Accumulation of money and tax avoidance aren't such big problems in and of themselves. Again, the fact that someone has more money than you doesn't stop you in any way from making your own money - and tax avoidance isn't necessarily immoral, although it is indeed illegal.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I told you how. By structuring the deal in such a way such that it's not really feasible that I get cheated (or if I do get cheated, I only lose a small bit). This is achieved by asking for a certain % of the contract upfront (before doing the work), or getting paid along the way such that to continue working you need to receive a certain payment. I certainly don't rely on established legal institutions, nor on my own enforcement squad.
I did get cheated before, and I just don't work with that business ever again, and if anyone asks me about them I say bad things. So it's all about not getting too hurt if such a thing happens, not about entirely preventing it. It doesn't work in corrupt developing nations.
:s - what's wrong with you, I actually haven't insulted you in that post at all, and especially not about how much money you have. How much money you (or I) have is irrelevant in a discussion which aims to find the truth. If you're from the US, you're probably richer than me anyway. Hopefully, you do realise the "you" there is a hypothetical "you" who is in those circumstances, not you in particular.
It's not about having the most money, it's about doing the most useful work for society that you can do. That requires money to scale and finance your efforts. You seem to have missed all my posts about money being irrelevant to wealth, and wealth being formed of value x quantity of goods/services, where money is just a shadow.
It's pretty patronising regardless of whether the addressee is out there somewhere or me. As if the only problem arising from income inequality is envy.
:-} That's not what I said. I said envy emerges because certain people, political agitators, tell poor people that they really should be wealthy, but it's because they are exploited that they're not. That breeds envy and hatred. Instead, they should be taught the skills that they need, and encouraged to work, study and learn, since they too can earn more money if that's what they want.
Quoting fdrake
What's inflation in the US? 2%/year? So they lose approx. $400 (assuming $20,000/annum) in 12 months in buying power assuming wages don't increase. That is approximately 1 week of work or 60 hours. You are right, it is actually quite a bit, so I suppose yes, inflation does impact the poor. So then it's really a bad idea not to try to grow your income.
Quoting fdrake
Right, so then there is no iron-will necessity of robbing others if you're poor, it's just more of a temptation. Is this what you mean?
Yes, very good idea. I think most people have striven to do that.
Quoting Agustino
Of course it requires an expenditure of money. Most of money which made my work possible (health education, social services) came from social investment. The non-profit NGO sector is, in general, socially financed. (I don't know about where you live, but in this part of the US, non-profits form a significant sector of the economy.)
Quoting Agustino
No, I just didn't buy those points. A nation's wealth surely is composed of the resources of its people, an asset that isn't readily measured in dollars. Individual wealth IS measured in dollars, pounds, euros, or some currency; wealth consists of property, cash, and shares. Your talents and potential just don't count as "wealth" in any ordinary usage. Features of your mind are too intangible to count as assets.
The data on this is pretty complicated. It's often the case that poverty is used as the dependent variable in a study, then it's found that more educated implies less poor. That's a global trend AFAIK. But it's also the case that more poor implies less educated, and there's some evidence that people from poorer backgrounds are empoverished mentally as well as materially; they're worse at learning! It's also often the case that the available schooling is of a much lower quality in poor communities and countries. The effect of education on poverty and inequality is always relative to the average or expected education of a population, or relevant sub-population - like being the only Spanish tutor in an interested community would be quite profitable.
In Pakistan, being able to read gives you a big advantage. In the UK, being able to read is normal, not having finished highschool or an equivalent course is a big disadvantage. Similar to the US. Not having a degree is becoming a large disadvantage, to the tune of 35% reduction in median income in the UK.
If you give someone access to high quality education (relative to the population and community), and they know the relevance of it to their welfare from their upbringing and previous education (not always the case with poor areas), their standard of living should (is more likely than before) go up. The converse is also true, if a community is poor, they are less likely to be able to increase their skills within that community, so will be 'stuck in a rut'. Put 'being stuck in a rut' together with poverty - lack of food, shelter, basic living conditions, and you start getting some real motivation for crime. No other options, few skills, what you gonna do?
Prostitution, theft, selling drugs. Might sometimes be the only way to make enough to live by. Hell, even use this newfound wealth to catapult you out of your bad circumstances like someone in the article I linked just there.
So, yes, inequality promotes crime, but not in the manner of 'thou shalt be a drug dealer', a necessary divine mandate, but probabilistically - it raises the chances of individuals turning to crime.
It's interesting to compare Norway to the US here, the minimum wage (enforced through union action rather than law) in Norway for a minimal full time Job gives you something like 21 USD per hour for at least 36 hours a week. This is enough to live and save, even considering the mark up in prices from the US. Despite Norway still having an income distribution with a similar shape, violent crime and theft are a lot lower there.
The problem with inequality, like with most things, is determined by what relationships it has with other things, and what those things mean on the level of the community, the county and the country.
Edit: of course, not being able to read in the UK is a massive disadvantage...
Boo! (N)
Quoting Agustino
Unfairness is that [I]and more[/I]. [I]Excessive[/I] accumulation of money is a problem, as is tax avoidance and evasion (I forget which is which, and would need to look it up). How is avoiding (or evading) paying what you owe to society not a problem? I'm not sure what you're getting at with your qualification, "in itself", so I'm not sure whether or not I agree. I mean, it's a problem in light of the consequences, rather than when considered in itself, so in that sense I would agree. And that it is not [i]necessarily[/I] immoral, or that it is either legal or illegal, does not alter its status as immoral.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the few owning the much and the many owning nothing as long as owning nothing isn't a prison or death sentence.
Let's start with the oldest and most secure form of wealth: land. If most of the land is owned by a few people that's fine so long as there is enough public or poor-owned land that the poor masses have an equitable amount of living space.
Regardless of who owns what and why, if for whatever reason the population should require use of some private land to ensure an equitable standard of living, the moral argument telling them to stay on their own land breaks down (and potentially the larger system maintaining land use and ownership rights). That we can own private land is nice and all, and the free market is the strategy we're employing so we ought to keep private land ownership around if at all possible, but we must realize that we should only agree to this arrangement if it actually functions as a strategy and regime of wealth production and distribution. The concept of a monopoly is ubiquitous in anti-capitalist rhetoric, and there's a good reason why: Once enough of the wealth becomes concentrated into so few hands, they get the power to extort everyone else.
During a widespread food crisis, should one arise, the concept of ownership in general may be subject to change. If the population can be kept fed and entertained though (neither of which are easy to do these days), then you can do just about anything to them while maintaining whatever form of government. It doesn't matter how much you own; so long as I have access to bread and games I will be content. A few fancy praetorian can then quell the entire Colosseum.
There's also a new kind of wealth at stake that is only just beginning to be considered as such (and yet it can be just as powerful as traditional wealth). Data, information, and control over the media we use to transmit it. The massive conglomerates which control the bulk of our media outlets possess a clear and present conflict of interest when it comes to the impartial delivery of the news, honoring the privacy rights of individuals, and ensuring fair and equal access to the information super-network that is the internet.
News outlets owned by larger corporations surely act in the primary interest of profit rather than honest and useful news. There do exist smaller outlets which are laudably independent and provide a useful service, but they are small and lack the massive virtual monopoly of outreach that the mainstream networks and the dominant social media networks currently enjoy (and if they do become very successful, there's a good chance the owner will cash/sell out and it will become yet another ad-revenue driven buzz-feed like echo-chamber).
Consider that twitter may be in some ways the single most influential social media that presently exists, and then consider as a corporation twitter has absolute authority to un-verify, ban, block, berate, edit, and manipulate any user and any tweet at any time for any reason. So far twitter has mostly tried to uphold the value of free speech, but they've had many many failures. Traditionally radio and news media have been subject to some regulations in terms of quality and right of access (the right of people to do public broadcasting, the right of people to have access to public broadcasts, and perhaps even the unwritten right to not be outright lied to), but there are no such regulations in place for any online media. "Net-neutrality" is about disallowing service providers and corporations like google from making deals to keep their sites fast while slowing down everyone else. Should they succeed, the public would be morally obligated to step in and claim ownership or the right to regulate over whichever apparatus are required to maintain minimum equitable standards of public access to information through the internet.
The moral justification actually holding society together (and it's present distribution of wealth) is not our adherence to sacred and objective moral truths like land ownership rights, it is rather that the current arrangement works and is beneficial to us. If and when a given arrangement becomes too detrimental to too many people then that society rightly collapses; we need not go down with the ship of property rights if and when it comes down to it.
From my experience, most people have striven to do well for themselves and for their families, not for society. Those who have striven for society, and have sought to achieve scale doing it are few.
They include some entrepreneurs (though probably not the vast majority), some social workers, some revolutionaries (like Ghandi), etc.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yeah, but this social investment means that you are at the hands of others in terms of the work you do. If they cut the financing, your work is put to an end. That's not a good position to be in. It's like in business owning something like an Amazon FBA business - in one day, an Amazon policy change can make your business go from $10 million revenue to 0.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Why do you consider money to be wealth? Money is a fictive commodity, that's useful just to facilitate trade. It has no use in and of itself. Production of goods and services is what is useful. So if you return to my formula, Wealth = Value x Quantity, then it is controlling those two variables - value, through your skills, knowledge, expertise, technology, etc. and quantity - through distribution/production networks that you control - that wealth consists in. Money by itself, without access either to value or quanity is useless.
Yes, I obviously would agree.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
That only works in silly games like Monopoly, in real life, unless the people in question are sociopathic or psychopathic, they would not want the workers to be extorted, since that is a breeding ground for rebellion and unrest. I'm sure if a food crisis were to arise, smart business owners would do their best to make sure food is as available as possible in the circumstance for the other workers. The entrepreneur cannot exist without the workers, so doing something that is bad for the workers is ultimately doing something that is bad for oneself as an entrepreneur.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Doubtful, their user base is declining very rapidly, and they may actually go out of business sometime in the future.
In some towns Wall-Mart has such a tight grip that decades owned small business that provide good jobs to the community (and keeps money within the community) go out of business. They indirectly create a large pool of out of work service industry workers which they can and do exploit. They over-hire and keep everyone on part time so that no befits or overtime need ever be offered, and at the first sniff of the word "union" they will happily fire and replace you. It's not just in the board game unfortunately. "Good for the workers" isn't as appealing to a corporation as "better for the stockholders" if they can get away with it. And boy do they get away with it...
Quoting Agustino
Their user base is declining rapidly? That's just not true. They may have have had a down-tick in active users for a single quarter, but that doesn't spell doom, nor is the stock tanked.
At some point we may require competition/antitrust laws which ensure that the market can function as it is intended, and as we have done frequently in the past (with steel, oil and telecommunication) along with other regulations that ensure the existence of these companies is not detrimental in the long run.
Why is it a problem? If I have, say, x1000 what you have, how does that negatively impact you? What impacts you is how much you have, not how much others have relative to you.
Quoting Sapientia
Tax avoidance represents legal arrangements that allow you to minimise your tax burden. Even IF you owe that money to society (and who decides that that is the percentage that you actually owe), it doesn't mean that surrendering control over it to your
The question of morality isn't the same as the question of legality. It may not be immoral to not pay your taxes, depending on the circumstances. For example, if you live in a corrupt country where public money is misused or stolen, or if you can use the money in a better way than the government can for society, then obviously it would not be immoral to avoid paying your taxes.
It's a problem if it's excessive. That would be a problem because it's unfair and creates an imbalance. And an imbalance impacts people like me. That would be money in excess of what you've earned, which you do not deserve, could go to those who need it more than you do, and therefore ought to be redistributed.
Quoting Agustino
It's your burden for a reason. You shouldn't seek to minimise it without good reason, and you shouldn't be permitted to minimise it without approval from the right people.
Who decides? Well, we live in a democracy. We regularly elect a government for that purpose.
Quoting Agustino
I know. That doesn't mean that the answers can't be in sync. That doesn't mean that there must be a discord between the two.
Quoting Agustino
Yes, granted, but that's often not the reality. At least, not over here. I don't live in North Korea or Syria, and neither do you. Let's keep it real.
Why is it unfair?
Quoting Sapientia
Why is it an imbalance? Would it also be an imbalance if I work more than you? If I produce more than you? If I do something more valuable than you? If I do something at a much larger scale than you? Why or why not?
Quoting Sapientia
Who decides that and based on what criteria?
Quoting Sapientia
No, you don't decide how to appropriate the money of other people by force, that is certainly not moral.
Quoting Sapientia
I can simply reorganize my affairs and still operate legally. If you don't want me to do that, then pass appropriate laws which don't allow for loopholes. Otherwise, why complain?
Quoting Sapientia
Again, this can be at most a legal issue, not a moral one.
Quoting Sapientia
I am keeping it real. You have no idea how deep corruption runs in the Eastern European countries. You literarily cannot even begin to imagine - it's totally NOT like UK.
Syria and North Korea aren't just corrupt - their problems there have to do with more serious forms of violent oppression.
The accumulation of wealth is impossible without a society. Those who benefit the most from a society are indebted the most to society.
But at what point do you set this limit? If someone starts a software business today that becomes very successful and is used by millions of people, then they might become a billionaire at a fairly young age. Some of that will also be the result of investing their money, or funding other startups that turn out to be successful.
Do you penalize them for their company's success and returns on investment because it's excessive?
What if it's an entertainer or athlete who becomes widely popular and makes a similar amount of money, partly by starting another business and investing. Do you redistribute some of their wealth as well?
I understand that extreme wealth imbalance is a problem, but then again, are not the self-made billionaires generating wealth and jobs as well? Aren't they growing the economic pie? Should we penalize them for being more successful than most?
I agree, but again, notice how this refers mostly to non-Western societies. The PMC article focusing on Canada & US is interesting, BUT we must note that I don't think education in a school / university is much relevant today. That's not what I mean by education - I don't think that piece of paper (degree) is relevant I know now you'll throw the stats now how the one with a degree on average makes like 20-30K/year more than the other, yadda yadda. Not super interesting.
Educational institutions today are super inefficient, and for the most part in terms of actual skills you obtain, not that great.
Also interesting to note that relatively poor nations - for example, Russia - do much better in mathematics than the US today. However, they are poorer in terms of creativity, but in terms of pure technical ability, these ex-communist nations are very very good in their schooling.
Quoting fdrake
Depends on what you want to become. If you want to become an entrepreneur, a degree by itself is probably useless. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a professor, then it's absolutely a must (for the most part). If you want to become an engineer it's not absolutely necessary either, but can be helpful, etc.
Quoting fdrake
Sure.
Quoting fdrake
Right, so we return to what I was saying from the beginning. Relative poverty is irrelevant, what is relevant is whether most people in the country have enough money, not whether 99% of the wealth is owned by 1% but the 99% still have enough.
I went on to explain that. At some point it's down to you. You either recognise it or you don't. If you don't recognise it, you don't recognise it.
Quoting Agustino
It's an imbalance because of the excess, just like if you were to add weight to one side of a balanced set of scales. If you change the situation by altering factors such that the wealth is [i]not[/I] excessive on one side, then we're talking about something else. I said that fairness means getting a proportionate slice of the pie, and I stand by that.
The slice of pie should be proportional to the kind of work that you do - with the exception of welfare, which should also factor in for those who need it - and the size of it should be determined based on a fair distribution of overall wealth. That means that the size of the slice can fluctuate along with the size of the pie.
Unfortunately, how it should be is not always how it is. In reality, you get greedy people who want a bigger slice of the pie than they're due, and who are powerful enough to cut it for themselves and to keep hold of much of it. Consequently, others do not get as much as they're due, and as they otherwise might have recieved. These greedy people who get the bigger slice might justify this to themselves by overestimating their merits or by asserting private ownership, but that doesn't cut the mustard. It should be redistributed. Raise tax, tighten regulation, close loopholes, nationalise... whatever it takes.
Placing caps on pay might help.
Quoting Agustino
It would be based on the market, but the market just wouldn't be as free. It would be regulated by some official body, whether it be governmental or independent. As long as it functions rightly and is kept in check, I don't mind so much about the finer details. Whatever works.
Someone with far greater knowledge than myself, but with the same sense of justice, should set the exact criteria. I could only give you a rough idea of how it might look.
Quoting Agustino
Of course I don't. It's not up to me to decide. I do not govern these affairs. It's up to the relevant authority. That's just my opinion of how it ought to be. If I want to see this ideal put into practice, then it's down to me to advocate for it.
It's moral provided it's done right. Both the means and the ends are important.
Quoting Agustino
Unfortunately, I am not in a position to do so. Only a comparatively small number of people are in such a position, as you well know. So you're being unreasonable. I would much rather see that done than complain about it. In fact, if that was done, then I would have no reason to complain about the situation, and my complaints about it would cease.
Quoting Agustino
No, it's both. It would be the right thing to do and it ought to be law.
Quoting Agustino
But I'm not talking about those places, precisely because they're so corrupt, and precisely because it is such a mess. They need to be overthrown, not merely reformed. That's the point - they're totally not like the U.K. It's a different can of worms.
That's the opposite conclusion from the one you should draw. What you should draw from the idea is that increasing the lowest of wages decreases inequality. Specifically because being payed a living minimum wage decreases both poverty and inequality. It's a way of decreasing inequality, and oh look, less crime, good education standards, great healthcare, the poorest citizens are exposed to much less risk and you get the highest happiness index in the world, shoutouts to Norway. This is noting and using the previously established correlations of inequality with various standard of living factors.
A lot of this wealth is generated by the state oil fund (Norway owns all its oil produce, in contrast to Britain), and funneled into state endeavors such as the healthcare system and social security. Also Norway has a ridiculously high GDP per capita, so it's easier to achieve less inequality because they have a mixed economy and a lot of money.
What this highlights is the importance of reducing right skewness in income distributions, while at the same time having well funded public services... Skewness itself can be used as a way of measuring income inequality. If you give the lowest 10%tile of earnings a living wage, you dramatically decrease the skew and thus decrease inequality and likely its attendant problems.
So you're not able to provide a reason for why it is unfair? You're not able to put your finger on the harm that someone else having more than you does to you?
Quoting Sapientia
Right, but what is proportional isn't very clear to most people. So take the example I gave to BC:
Quoting Agustino
Consider another example taken from here.
This Marxist framework doesn't portray the full complexities right. There was something that Karl Marx didn't realise, which represents the value of the entrepreneur, which isn't tied solely to owning the means of production. In other words, economies of scale do not result from the simple ownership of the means of production.
So say in my case, the product is a website, let's say a very simple one for now. It costs basically nothing in terms of raw material costs - people I employ would be people who own computers at home too, so they don't need me to access the means of production.
So all these people can basically produce and sell websites by themselves. I do not own the means of production as such - at least not in a way that they cannot individually access because of lack of capital.
Now the theory of surplus value has it that the worker is exploited because he doesn't have access to the means of production (the assembly line for example) himself. So he cannot, by himself, produce in as short a time as much as he can produce by working under the capitalist, having access to the capitalist's assembly line. So his labour under the capitalist produces a lot more value than he is given.
In my case, the advantage comes from specialization. The entrepreneur also creates something useful - he creates a system which employs specialised people and out of that individual specialization and the internal processes which ensure the smoothest flow possible, the time it takes to finish one website minimises. Let's say that this procedure minimizes the time it takes to finish one website individually by 70%.
The entrepreneur also ensures that there is continuous work. Now that production is 70% faster, there needs to be a bigger pipeline of willing buyers lined up outside. Who maintains that pipeline? Who works to bring the buyers in? The entrepreneur, of course. Without the pipleline, the other people have nobody to sell to (or at least not enough).
So suppose each person can produce 10 websites by himself in a month, and each website costs $200. So that means, if they were to work individually, they would make $2000 assuming they could source the work themselves.
Now, when they work in my team, they will produce faster due to their individual specializations and the team I have formed as entrepreneur AND also because they no longer have to market and look for business by themselves - the entrepreneur takes care of that. We'll quantify this time as 20% decrease in working time compared to working by themselves (meaning they will produce 20% more assuming they will work all that time). So, let's say I am employing 5 people.
5*(1+0.7)*(1+0.2)*10*200 = $20,400/month in revenue or total value produced.
So I will pay them what they can earn individually which is $2,000/month. For 5 people that is $10,000. But the benefits from increased production is due to my work as entrepreneur - I brought them together, arranged them in a team, and setup the whole marketing pipeline to get sufficient work so that we can achieve those numbers. So I pocket the other $10,400.
I make $10,400 and they make $2,000. Is that unfair? You could argue no. I pay them exactly what they would earn working by themselves for the same time, and I pocket what is the difference from bringing them together, arranging them by specialization, and organising the sales and marketing required to sell all the production - since I myself am not actually producing the products sold (websites).
And this remains true even if it would be a worker's collective. There would still need to be someone who does the entrepreneur's job. How much should that someone be paid, since he doesn't actually produce any of the products himself, all he does is make production faster and more efficient through his work. That person would effectively be responsible for the growth in numbers that are achieved, so it's fair that he pockets all of it.
But, let's say now that I want them to love their job and prefer working for me than working for themselves. So then I will share some of what I earn with them, so that we're both better off.
So I pay them $2,600 each, and I pocket $7,400. Now they make 30% more than they would have made working by themselves, without the risk of bad months (not finding work, etc.). It's a fixed wage, which wasn't the case if they would work for themselves. You think that's fair?
Quoting Sapientia
I agree, but politicians want it to be like that, because they need the loopholes to launder money too. Why do you think tax codes, etc. aren't fixed? :s It's because the people in government are corrupt. If they were paragons of virtue, they would fix them, it's not super complicated.
Not necessarily. Once a technical brand becomes established it tends to focus on features that increase revenue, rather than efficiency for the user. Think web browser!
Good point. Don't forget though that politicians work hard to keep on lots of others in the club wealthy and low tax paying...
Please send me all of your fictive commodity (bank transfers are convenient) as it uselessly accumulates at AguCorp.
Quoting Agustino
The problem with a small number of people owning the bulk of wealth (in the United States, in any economic group, or the world) is that they monopolize capital. They tend to sit on it. Consider Apple's $250 billion dollar savings account. It's been growing steadily over the last several years. What good is it doing?
The absurdly rich population can't put their extraordinary large share of wealth to productive use at the level where it would really make a huge difference (among the entrepreneurs at the bottom third of the economic distribution, give or take a billion people). They can't because the task of investing in a billion small entrepreneurs would exhaust their time-and-organizational resources.
Piketty's insight--that wealth grows faster than economic output, thus concentrating capital (and the income it produces) in ever-fewer hands--is at the root of problem. As you know wealth isn't like air -- it doesn't distribute itself to find equilibrium. It's more like cat hair -- it tends to stick to people. So, a relative handful of people -- say, 10,000 -- are sitting on more wealth than 60% of the world's population.
They can't distribute their trillions of dollars. Andrew Carnegie found that giving money away was very time consuming; he established foundations to help manage this task -- they are still giving his money away. He built libraries across the country, for instance -- quite handsome, well built, and enduring. I had the benefit of one of his libraries in the town of 1,800 people I grew up in. It's still going strong.
Suppose you are terrifically successful at your business and accumulate $1,000,000,000. Suppose you decide you want to give it to promising but starved-for-capital entrepreneurs around the world. Just how long do you think it would take you? You would, like Carnegie and others, run out of time pretty quickly.
So we have trillions of dollars accumulating, which are not benefitting anyone. Meanwhile, a couple billion small entrepreneurs need capital and can't get it.
No, that's not a fair assessment. Come on, Agustino, I think you know that that's not what I was getting at. I have already explained why it is unfair. I was pointing out to you the fact that explanation can only go so far, and that understanding is what is required. If you don't understand it the way that I do, despite explanation, then we might be at an impasse.
As for the rest of your essay, I will make my way through it in time.
That's a very good question. I'd quite like to see a lot more class consciousness. Given enough people, it might even lead to a revolution of sorts.
No, but I actually don't understand any possible reason for it :s . So far you have told me that it's unfair because:
So it's unfair because it's unfair. And it's unfair because it's excessive (what's the link between excessive and unfair?). And it's unfair because it's unbalanced :s - why is unbalanced unfair necessarily? It impacts people like you - how? Just because there are people who need the money more than me doesn't necessarily mean that it should be redistributed by force.
>:O
Quoting Bitter Crank
Right, okay, now I see what you mean. Yes, that is a problem. What do you think can be done to motivate these people to invest that money in the economy and not just hoard it and sit on it?
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree, so perhaps above a certain level it makes no sense to permit the accumulation of wealth since the person cannot put it to use anymore without basically employing an army of people.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yeah, I agree with this. So what solution would you propose for the stagnation of capital, because it seems that that is the real problem, not only its concentration in a few hands?
The thing would be to lose a big chunk of it to taxation or lose a big chunk through useful investment and outright donation. A lot of activities in South America, Africa, and south Asia especially need funding. The middle east needs to address water shortages, for instance, as well as food production and environmental problems.
Whatever the adjustments are needed for global warming are and will be expensive. That's another area where money can be donated or invested.
Money obtained by nations by taxing these huge cash and asset stores should likewise be used for things like paying down national debt--not for defense, not for tax rebates, and the like. These windfalls of tax or forced spending may not be repeated, so they should be used for exceptional purposes.
Quoting Agustino
Quoting fdrake
Quoting Agustino
No, that's a [i]potential[/I] wealth generating mechanism. An important distinction.
Are you suggesting that those included in the 99% should each take a gamble with a 90% chance of failure by starting a business? That doesn't sound like good advice to me.
That's nonsense. It's not a gamble since the result depends on you and your skills to quite a large extent. I advocate that you educate yourself before doing that.
The indication that 9/10 businesses fail on average says nothing about you and your potential. Your chances may be worse or better than that. Starting a business isn't playing the lottery.
I don't set the limit. I don't have the expertise of a politician or an economist. But I can point to examples of excessive pay. One example would be a Premier League footballer with a salary per week of £260,000.
Quoting Marchesk
Their reward should be proportional. That ought to be satisfying enough. Anything beyond that would be greedy and ungrateful. It would be a bit like winning a race, but then complaining about not being awarded the silver medal and the bronze medal in addition to the gold medal. That's not being a good sport.
Quoting Marchesk
[I]Yes.[/I]
Quoting Marchesk
If it's excessive, then yes.
Quoting Marchesk
They should be rewarded proportionately, and penalised for transgressions.
Individualistic aspirational nonsense. It's not sensible to disregard the data that 9/10 businesses fail on average. There's a fine line between being confident and being foolhardy.
:D
PS your graph is a fiction in any event.
Statistics don't work like this in this case. Events - such as business success - are not random. Statistics must be considered differently with regards to business success than you would treat them when applied to radioactive decay for example. The phenomenon underneath radioactive decay is truly random, with specific outcomes being impossible to predict in individual cases. That's not the case in business.
Now take something like health. The chance of getting lung cancer is an average calculated for the average person. Now I hope you realise that if you never smoked, if you have an active lifestyle, if you never drink, if you've never been exposed to dangerous smokes/chemicals or radioactive elements (such as radon gas) etc. then your chances of getting lung cancer are significantly lower than that average. Why? Because you're not average, you're an outlier.
Average life expectancy in the UK may be 82 years, but that is irrelevant for you as an individual. If you live a healthy lifestyle, you have grandparents who lived up to 100, etc. then, granted that no accident occurs to you and you don't commit suicide, you can expect to live well into your 90s.
Statistics do not apply to individuals. You have to understand the underlying causes. Statistics in these things, which are actually determined, blind you from gaining an understanding of what actually leads to failure and what leads to success. Statistics just show what happens to the average. Are you average? Maybe you're not. Maybe you have more knowledge than most people in that business. Maybe you've studied it for a very long time. Maybe you have the right connections. Etc. Etc.
Quoting Sapientia
Understanding that statistics don't apply to individuals and that you need to gain a deeper, bottom-up and causal understanding of success and failure in business before starting out isn't being foolhardy. It's just being rational. If you are rational, then you always minimise your risks.
This is the difference between judging based on "that's what always happens" (convention, statistics) and judging based on a bottom-up causal analysis of the factors that play into success. You need to think for yourself and understand the phenomenon. Understanding is key. If you always let others think for you, you can never do anything innovative or new.
A very good source explaining what I've said above is this blog. The article is quite old (and very long - not all of it is relevant), but it's interesting. You don't have to buy the book to read this particular chapter, it's all available for free here.
No, I can't respond in that manner if you arrive at a basic truth that is unfair. What is unfairness? Unfairness is not giving to each what they deserve. So, first of all, we must understand what each person deserves. I would say that we all deserve access to the basic necessities of life - healthy food, clean water, access to education, access to healthcare, and shelter. Other things apart from those, must, to one extent or another, be earned by participation in society. It's okay if we provide these basic necessities for all, but no more. Providing more would be unjust, since we don't deserve more by default.
Rich people and especially the very rich have one hugely important role in any economy: they save, they spend far less than they get in income. Now this is important, but so is spending also.
Now that is all and well, but when it means that the 99% aren't prosperous, that means that the aggregate demand takes a hit. One billionaire in the end doesn't spend so much as 1 000 millionaires. Above all, this is a question of absolute povetry: if you have a small wealthy community and in comes a billionaire, the people aren't at all less well off even if then 1% would own 99% and earlier it was 1% owning 50%. Unfortunately povetry is never measured in an absolute scale, which would be so utterly important to this.
In many Third World countries this is the Basic problem: even if there is a huge population, that population is to poor to be consumers and hence there isn't a domestic demand goods other than the basic necessities. Couple of hugely rich people who at worst move their income out of the country don't help.
The Basic point is that this isn't a moral issue, but an economic one. How wealth transfers are done is another matter, which is a political question.
You can't approach a social problem by looking at individual cases so this is a bit of a red herring. Inequality in itself isn't the issue, it is how it arises on a widespread scale. We live in societies that predominantly favour capital over labour, allows capital as an expression and means of exercising political power and does not adequately deal with the lack of opportunity for large groups of people as a result of bad luck or socio-economic factors.
Inequality in a society where upward mobility is the rule rather than the exception would be much more likely to be acceptable than the situation we find ourselves in now, where it is reversed.
So that's the opportunity side.
It is also questionable that theory of value we apply now is fair. Take corporations that have limited liability and therefore externalise costs to society at large yet protects capital who also pay lower taxes. So they get the biggest rewards but their losses are limited. The idea that capital risks more is also something I reject. A labourer loses his livelihood, which is worse than losing part of your savings. The exercise of political power by means of capital creates an uneven playing field and this has become increasingly more uneven as power consolidates. It's basically class warfare and the rich are winning.
I agree with you on this.
Quoting Benkei
Well, it makes sense for a corporation to have limited liability. I mean if I start a business, and something goes wrong and my company is taken to court, do you think I should pay with all of my personal assets too? Limited liability is the only way to make sense of it, and say that the company is only liable to pay up to whatever its working capital happens to be.
I currently work as self-employed and an individual contractor, so I don't have limited liability, but that's one thing I'm interested in acquiring.
Quoting Benkei
If the labourer cannot find employment elsewhere that is true.
Quoting Benkei
I agree with this. That's the problem of corruption and big government getting in bed with big business.
Yes, I actually think that would be better. We had an industrial revolution without limited liability so why not? For a nice historical overview about how the benefits of corporations increased over time, you might be able to find the following article : THE CORPORATION AT ISSUE, PART I: THE CLASH WITH CLASSICAL LIBERAL VALUES AND THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR CAPITALIST PRACTICE. If you can't find it I can email them.
Interesting, I never knew the industrial revolution happened without limited liability. But I can tell you that without limited liability things look quite scary, especially on a large scale where you can't really control what's happening in 100% of the cases.
That doesn't get the heart of our disagreement. That's preaching to the choir.
Our disagreement relates to the breaking down of what the various kinds of participation in society entitles one to. The way I see it, there are limits. No one is entitled to a grossly excessive share of overall wealth, like 99%. No one could have participated in society to such a great extent that that should be their reward. No one could have truly earned that much. And if you disagree, then I think that you're due a reevaluation.
True. It would be unlikely we'd have such large corporations as we do now and progress would likely be slower. I suspect though the benefits could outweigh these.
Also thanks, it's a good article.
So this is not a mathematical and scientific question that must be decided by actually looking at what the facts happen to be, it's something you decided a priori? :s
Hey Agustino...
How does the fact that not everyone has the same ability factor into your notion that everyone has the same opportunity to become wealthy via starting a business?
Another problem with this argument is that though what entrepreneurs create must be somewhat useful, or at least seemingly somewhat useful, entrepreneurs ultimately put their own profitability above the lives and personhoods of individual citizens - capitalism, in other words, may objectify the worker.
This is not to say that capitalism should be abolished - indeed, it is good for keeping check on governments - but wealth inequality at a certain level is definitely an issue.
Well, if everyone had the same ability, then everyone would be starting the same businesses, and nobody would be rich :P
A business is just an activity which provides value to society. Pretty much everyone can start a business if they spend their time developing a skill/craft that is useful to society. The more useful it is, the more money they will make. Most businesses in the US, for example, have 0 employees (80% to be more exact). They're just a one-person business.
The main problem is that most people are not reared to start businesses - you're told go to college, get a job. You're not told figure out how you can be of value to society and start a business.
Getting a job is well-respected, but many people who have a job are really wasting society's time and provide little of value, little of what's needed. So that self-respect prevents people from understanding that they're actually NOT doing what they should be doing at all, which is provide value to society.
For example, say someone is a cashier at the supermarket. That's a job that will be low paid, since we don't really need it. Supermarkets are getting better and better at eliminating those workers, and replacing them with technology. If someone holds that job and feels proud that they're earning their own money, etc., they're really wasting everyone's time. They ought to spend that time looking to learn something that can be of greater use to society.
There is a problem in our society with thinking that you need to be a genius etc. to start and run a successful business. That's not true, you just need to provide something of value. But people aren't taught to think in these terms. They're taught to think in terms of earning x/hour. But that's irrelevant. What's relevant is not earnings, but how much value is provided and at what scale. If you provide value to millions of people, well, sooner or later, you will be a millionaire. It's almost unavoidable.
So people have this idea that money comes from working a job (false) instead of money comes from providing something valuable. If they don't get out of that mindset they can't advance. Then they don't understand why they're poor - they think they have to work harder, spend more hours, etc. Another untruth. They just have to find a way to provide something valuable.
In some cases in the industrial revolution sure. But not so much right now in the West. That, however, is still largely the case in developing countries.
Also there are many cases like this:
Quoting Agustino
No, I've considered the facts, and I remain unable to conceive of a situation like that I described. Even Superman wouldn't deserve such a high percentage, let alone someone of a much lesser stature. That's insane.
If I secure a $5 billion dollar contract for any producer, do I deserve, say, $20 million bonus?
:s Why not? I just greatly helped an important economic player to spread his goods and services and value through society. And it's $5 billion worth of goods. Maybe those are much needed medicines, etc.
Did you forget that money is simply an estimation of value added?
So, it doesn't...
It ought. Not everyone has the same ability. No one has a choice in the socio-economic situation they're born into, their cognitive ability, or their first worldview. We create the rules that are the socio-economic landscape. There is no excuse for not creating one which provides everyone with an opportunity to live a comfortable life.
Earlier you mentioned 'value'. Pure economic language isn't suited for moral discourse. You used the example of grocery store clerks (cashiers). You framed the job in terms of adding no value. Bullshit. I value the conversation.
I agree, quite obviously.
Quoting creativesoul
Right, it's really adding very little value, hence why the low pay. You may value conversations, but how much value does it add to you? Probably not much. You could do without.
You're missing the point. Value, in economic terms, is ill-conceived.
We could do without almost all of what capitalism has afforded us. In fact, it's not hard to make a case that the quality of goods and services has suffered horribly at the hands of those looking to 'add value'...
I disagree.
Quoting creativesoul
Yeah, and have very difficult lives, sure.
Quoting creativesoul
I think that quite the contrary, services are generally getting better and more easily available. Just look even 10 years ago. Public services on the other hand seem to be getting worse.
Quoting litewave
To a certain extent. That's true, for example, if you're born in some African tribe in the middle of nowhere. But on the other hand if you're born in the West, even if you're born poor (unless you're born like extremely poor), you can definitely still contribute to wealth creation and even become rich.
Quoting litewave
Demand is generally created, it doesn't pre-exist the supply so to speak.
Quoting litewave
Sure health is definitely needed, and a certain degree of intelligence helps too (though you don't necessarily need to be super smart, just not dumb). Talent? Not so much. Suitable environment? To a certain extent, once again. If you're born in extreme poverty in Africa, then yes, it would be extremely difficult and unlikely for you to become rich, even if you wanted to.
So what is the most important factor in getting wealth? Willingness to work hard? For that you need to have sufficient mental or physical energy - and how do you create that? Even that seems to be a matter of luck, in the final analysis.
Creating small value on a very large scale, or creating high value on a small scale, or creating high value on a very large scale. So the most important factors are value-creation and scale. Production and distribution.
Quoting litewave
That's important, but not enough. You have to work smart, not necessarily hard. One can take a hammer to cut a tree for example, and hammer at the tree the whole day and still not cut it. While someone else takes a saw and cuts the tree. And yet another may find an even more efficient way to cut it.
Quoting litewave
Assuming that you have no underlying health problems, then moral education and psychological training can help. Adopting the right mindset can help. Exercise, fitness, etc. All these things. You really have to build a life around it.
However, I will say that the way I spoke about above is a difficult path to walk to become wealthy. The easy way is to get involved in corruption with the government. And you can do it if you don't have moral values, are determined to do it, and put yourself in the right place. Stealing and appropriating from others is always less difficult than creating value yourself.
Quoting litewave
There is always a certain element of givenness, and gift in any sort of achievement. Wealth can be a gift from God for some, and a curse for others, who don't have the level of moral development required to handle it.
So you need intelligence or talent - luck. You need the right ideas or insights to occur to you - luck.
Quoting Agustino
You need to get the education or training and have the ability to absorb it - luck. You need to have the impulse and ability to adopt the right mindset - luck. You need to have the impulse to exercise and the ability/energy to persevere in it - luck.
In short, you need to be lucky.
Quoting Agustino
Of course, but I didn't even think about that. Even in an uncorrupted market economy you need to be lucky in order to get wealth. And it is morally not ok for the unlucky to die in the streets while the lucky enjoy lavish lifestyles.
It's not really luck, you just need to be concerned about these things and spend a long time thinking about them and working on them.
Quoting litewave
Well, if you put it that way, you need to be lucky to even be born :s . But now you're exaggerating the notion as if the decisions you take don't play a role at all.
Quoting litewave
Those aren't really matters of luck, apart from, to a certain extent, education. But you can largely educate yourself - that's what you have to do in fact. That's a decision you can take provided you have access to a library.
You need the impulse to be concerned about these things, think about them, work on them, and the ability to successfully carry out and sustain these activities - luck.
Quoting Agustino
Of course. No one creates themselves. Not even God. :)
Quoting Agustino
You see, it all boils down to the illusion and golden calf of (especially) the Western civilization - libertarian free will. By significantly separating the individual from the rest of reality, we get the illusion that the individual is in some sense ultimately independent and in control of his physical or mental actions. On the other hand, this separation "unleashes" the individual - it enables the individual to be active and creative and thus create wealth. So we need the market system that unleashes individuals but we also need a system of redistribution of wealth in order to help the unlucky ones.
Helping the unlucky ones is a moral imperative that some believe comes from God, but I think it can also be explained by a naturally evolved feeling of empathy. This feeling evolved - that is, was selected for - because it was useful for the survival and reproduction of beings, in that it facilitates social bonds and cooperation and, more generally, the ability of mental integration/synthesis. Without helping the unlucky ones the social system becomes strained and fragmented and eventually even the lucky ones lose.
Riiight, well apart from the nonsense you're speaking with regards to free will, I pretty much agree with everything else about helping the unlucky ones who cannot help themselves as you say.
In order to do a supposedly freely willed action, whether physical or mental, you need an impulse or intention to do the action. But you can't freely create that impulse - or even if you can, you need another impulse to create it, etc.
:s Maybe that "impulse" is just who I am. I am part of the causal chain afterall. Determinism and free will are not incompatible.
Ok but since you don't create yourself, even the actions that are caused by this impulse are ultimately caused by something you have not created. I don't argue against compatibilist free will but against libertarian free will. The concept of libertarian free will, whether articulated or just felt, is the principal driving force of individualism because it ascribes to the individual ultimate control (and responsibility) for his actions.
So what if I don't create myself? It doesn't follow that once created I don't have free will.
Quoting litewave
Well, actually, the individual does have a very large degree of control over his actions. What he doesn't have as much control over is his pool of possible choices. But within that pool of possible choices, he does have control. In practice, this means that he has control over virtually all his actions.
What follows is that all your actions are ultimately determined by that which you have not freely willed. So they are a matter of luck.
Quoting Agustino
The individual can have control in the sense that his impulses (intentions, desires...) can cause actions that bring him satisfaction. But in the ultimate sense, the individual has no control at all.
:s
I am created by someone else. Once created I have the FREE CHOICE between A and B. I choose one of them, and therefore end where I end up. So where I end up was, to the degree that I had a choice between A and B - determined by ME and not by luck. If you cannot see this, I suggest you think about it more carefully.
If you want, the fact that I am given choices A and B, and not C, D, E, etc. is a matter of luck. But what I do with the choices I'm given, that's up to me, and most definitely not a matter of luck.
Quoting litewave
Then this ultimate sense is bullshit.
Again, you don't have a clue what you're talking about. An individual's choice is part of the causal chain. The universe is not FATALISTIC. There is a big big difference between determinism and fatalism. The individual isn't destined by absolute necessity to X or Y particular things.
Your choice is caused by your impulses and since you can't choose your impulses, your choice is caused by something you have not chosen. In this sense it is not free, see?
Quoting Agustino
The individual is destined by his impulses, which he has not chosen.
I've told you why not countless times now. I think that that's excessive, and I don't agree with excessive pay.
I haven't forgotten that you think that money is simply an estimation of value added. Even if I think that too, it doesn't follow that our estimation will be the same.
The company I work for, and many other companies, would strongly disagree. They dominated the Australian home improvement market, and they are now looking to dominate the UK home improvement market, and I think that they have a good chance of succeeding. One of the "three pillars" they have for success is best service, and they recognise the importance of staff on the front line. After all, it will be down to them - or to us, since I am one of them - to deliver it.
Yes, I think that Agustino paints quite a misleading picture. [I]Most popular[/I] or [i]best selling[/I] or [i]highly in demand[/I] doesn't necessarily correlate to best - or even good -
value. Coke and Pepsi have already been mentioned. So take pet food. I found that out when I worked at a pet shop. The nutritional value of the pet food of the leading brands, such as Pedigree Chum, Bakers, and Whiskers, was and remains to be very poor in comparison to, for example, their own branded pet food, which sells considerably less, because of factors like it being less widely advertised and only sold in their own stores.
Huge numbers of consumers fall for things like brand names, adverts, sales techniques, and price tags, instead of actually looking at quality or value.
So, going by value added, shouldn't those businesses who produce high sales for poor quality products or services receive some sort of forfeit, rather than a bonus? Shouldn't they be regulated more, rather than regulated as per the status quo, or even regulated less, as some economic liberals would argue?
Nope, my choice isn't caused by my impulses at all. That's exactly why impulses can be resisted once they are perceived in the first place.
Quoting litewave
:s - that's not true. Impulses may give a natural predisposition towards something, but not a destiny. We can resist impulses, fight against them, etc.
How is value profit based? :s Profit is the difference between revenues and costs. If anything your profit margin is an indication of the percentage of value you keep, compared to what you pass through the economy.
Quoting creativesoul
What do you mean?
You need an impulse in order to resist an impulse. Don't forget that intentions are impulses too. If you want to do an intentional action, you need an intention, which is an impulse that drives an intentional action.
Why is it excessive if I am an absolutely essential piece in the distribution of those $5 billion worth of goods? Would you rather have excessive prices due to supply shortages and the like?
Small things or few people can lead to huge results - it seems fair that they deserve their share of that success. For example, it's not unusual for a 1 word change in a Google ad to lead to x2 improvement in clickthrough rates. There exist a series of things in nature which when done right, and being done right involves just subtle differences, leads to hugely different results.
Quoting Sapientia
Not exactly, just that money is an attempt at quantifying value (which is qualitative in many regards).
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, but they are valuable quantitatively - many small amounts of value added together from all those employees. Not individually. And what adds a chunk of the value isn't their work, but the system they're all organised in. That's why retailers typically tend to have many employees. There are online businesses out there with very few employees (less than 10) running revenues of upward of $10 million. That's impossible to do in most brick and mortar retailing unless you have hundreds or thousands of employees. Retail is inherently inefficient in that way, difficult to scale.
Also, I imagine the company you work for is quite large. Large companies employ massive amounts of PR and managerial resources mainly to keep their employees happy and in check. So internal company policies are obviously structured around this goal, as well as whatever financial goals the company has. No doubt that "best service" - or marketing yourself as the best service - is highly important. It allows you to charge higher prices, and makes it easier to compete against others. It's part of your unique selling proposition.
Quoting Sapientia
Sure, I said it's an approximation. Every time you try to convert something qualitative into a numerical representation, the conversion is imperfect. In some cases, it will be widely imperfect.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, but I presume Pedigree runs a low-profit margin business based on high volume, while the local brand is a high-profit margin (high efficiency) operation, which, if marketed well, can easily scale.
Value is most important in business. And then comes marketing. But value without marketing doesn't really take you anywhere. Value is the gas, and marketing is the engine which makes the car work. And value can be a simple thing - take a look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock
Even a rock is valuable. The guy made many millions selling... rocks.
Quoting Sapientia
Everyone uses sales techniques - especially the super-efficient high-value brands, which are many times smaller in size, but have significantly higher profit margins usually. Apple used to be a primary example. They were small relative to Google, Microsoft, Dell, HP, etc. - but they were super efficient because they were employing very effective marketing. While others in IT had ~25% profit margins, they had close to 40%, which is huge. A high profit margin means you can make a lot of mistakes - in the long run, you're more likely to survive than someone with low profit margins. A low profit margin means that mistakes are very costly (not that 25% is low, but you get the idea... 25% is actually very high, you usually only get that in software companies which have fewer employees than other companies :P ) .
Quoting Sapientia
Well, they are penalised in decreased profit margin and competition on price. That's what commodification is, when a good becomes a standard level commodity, and then the only point of competition is price.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, but those startups don't fail due to bad luck. They fail for specific reasons, which have to do with the decisions the founders have taken along the way. Also, the difference between success and failure isn't all that large. Tiny differences in practice, which lead to huge differences in results.
Quoting Sapientia
It's not about working hard (though that is certainly part of it), it's about having the knowledge of what you need to work on.
Sure, but they would also deserve a fair share of the value they add. If they get 5-10% of it, that seems fair. It's not just that someone can do it for less. Sure, they might do that. But would that be just to themselves and others?
But you wouldn't be absolutely essential, so that's not a realistic scenario to consider. There'd be someone else who could get similar results for less.
And obviously I'm not arguing against people getting their fair share. That's exactly what I'm arguing for. They should get their fair share - no more, no less.
Yes, because a $20 million bonus is too much. You don't see it that way because you aren't factoring in the right things, so you get a different result. I factor in what else that money could go towards, and I factor in priorities for society. You factor in what you think a single individual has done to earn that amount, and for you, that's the top priority.
This analysis is naive because it leaves out of the question your own self. There's nothing in the picture that you can identify with your self at this point, except a homunculus who just sits there and watches as experience flows by. That's now how it works since your self is embedded within reality, within the causal chain. When you choose you process and organise impulses according to your own nature - this process alters those impulses, whatever they happen to be.
So it's impulse -> You -> action. That processing that goes on in the "you" box is your freedom. It's not determined by external impulses, it's internally determined. In your model there is no "you" box - the you is just a homonculus, who isn't part of the causal chain at all - he's just watching the causal chain. Your model is impulse -> action. On that model, of course there is no free will. But that's a naive model, which doesn't represent reality - it's based on the Cartesian illusion.
Not compared to the value I added.
Quoting Sapientia
So why should the government invest that money, instead of me the individual? :s Why can't the responsibility for the well-being of society rest on the individual, why must it rest on (often corrupt) government bureaucrats, who actually have very little idea of what is going on, economically, in society?
You said it yourself - the impulse is you. I don't claim there is any "homunculus". You are the impulses, including the intentions, that cause your actions. And you can't choose your impulses - you can't choose your self.
In your view, not mine. In my view, even compared to the value you added, that's still too much.
Quoting Agustino
It's a matter of what's more important. I say society, you say the individual. Your view is selfish, my view is fair.
Quoting Agustino
Because that's the way it is and should be - setting aside your exception of corrupt governments, which, like I said before, is a different kettle of fish. The government here is democratically elected. The government where you are is democratically elected, yes? If business men and women want to govern, then they should put themselves up for election, and see how they fare.
Of course I can't choose my self, because that would imply to be other than my self when choosing. That would be contrary to the whole notion of being a self in the first place, and therefore contrary to even the notion of choosing. You have an incoherent model based on mechanistic assumptions.
What is incoherent about my model? It is you who assumes some kind of homunculus self who can resist his own impulses, his own intentions - intentionally!
It's 0.4% of the value I added. That's too much? :s Really?!
Quoting Sapientia
It is only selfish if "the individual" = Agustino. Otherwise if I value the individual (any individual) over society, that is not at all selfish, since it means that every individual has worth and should be respected. Society shouldn't get to oppress the individual and subjugate him to whatever 'its' aims are. Society should rather be aimed towards the aims of the individual.
Quoting Sapientia
Well, Trump did quite well >:)
Quoting Sapientia
Yes and no. Depends what role the state apparatus plays in the election. The voting can be democratic, but the counting may not be. Also, the stupid mob can be swayed one way or another by the right intelligence agencies which can pull the right strings.
There is no question of resisting your own self if that's what you mean. There is no self outside your self to resist your self, so the very question is absurd. It literarily makes no sense.
And impulses are external. So yes, the self can absolutely resist those external impulses, whatever they are.
That's what I'm saying.
Quoting Agustino
Even your own intentions are external impulses? :s
There are several assumptions that can be challenged.
a. That individual's decisions will be honest, the government bureaucrat is often corrupt.
Individuals who have no connection to government are as likely to be dishonest and corrupt as the government official. They may even be more corrupt because, as individuals, they have more opportunity to shield their activities from the prying public eye than government officials do. (Except in countries where corruption is institutionalized in public and private, where the question becomes, "Is this corruption, or is it just the way business and government operate?").
b. Individuals are more likely than government bureaucrats to understand what society at large needs.
In even a moderately well run state, the government has a broader overview of society than the individual, and has the remit to serve common interests of the many, rather than the narrow interests of the individual. Individuals naturally tend to serve their own interests.
c. Government bureaucrats have very little knowledge about what is going on in society.
In even a moderately competent state, there are likely to be officials who not only have a good overview of the society, but also have a good overview of the nation's economy, and a good knowledge of who the major players in the private economy are. Granted, incompetent states will not have a good grasp of economic activity. But then, incompetent states generally don't do very much well.
Many countries have active philanthropic, non-profit, public service NGOs which privately meet many of society's needs. This is so even in countries that have very competent honest states. Government officials are generally directly involved in focussing the efforts of NGOs.
You alone could have added that much value? I don't think so. Again, an unrealistic, or very unrepresentative, hypothetical scenario.
And yes, $20 million for one person is clearly [i]way[/I] too much. What would one person need all of that money for? And what does society need that kind of money for?
Quoting Agustino
No, in practice, it means that the selfish desires of a privileged few get indulged at the expense of the many. That is immoral, and that is not Christlike. Are you sure that Christianity is for you?
Quoting Agustino
Yes, and that's a symptom of the sorry state of affairs in the US.
Quoting Agustino
I don't have serious doubts about things like that going on here in the UK, which is what I was referring to in that comment of mine which you quoted. The only bit I agree with, to some extent, is that the stupid mob can be swayed one way or the other. That is true virtually everywhere, but especially in the US in recent years, to its detriment, given Trump, and before him, given George W. Bush.
I forget where you're from. Somewhere in Eastern Europe?
"Hard Talk" is one of my favorite BBC [radio] World Service features. It comes on about 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. in the central time zone, but thanks to insomnia I am often enough awake for it. Yes, Agu should listen to or watch it.
I got the impression that Agustino lived in the US, in which case the answer to that question is 'Not really' (ref state governments disenfranchising the poor with 'voter fraud prevention' measures, elections being held on work days with no time off to vote, minimising voting places in poor neighbourhoods, gerrymandering, enormous financial domination of campaigns by the rich, collusion with foreign governments by candidates).
The cashier. All of those folk who you neglect to consider when eliminating their jobs by virtue of 'adding value'. Folk with limited cognitive ability. Folk who find great value in working with their hands. Craftsman/woman. The list goes on and on. Anyone and everyone who makes things. The manufacturing sector, in particular.
Economic jargon doesn't have to be, but it most certainly has been, used by governments and/or those in power to justify putting their own citizens out of work in the guise of the greater good. Workforce Development was created in lage part to offset that harm by virtue of retraining those who lose their jobs to trade agreements made by the government. It is grossly underfunded, and it's very existence is under attack. Threats are constant to completely defund it.
It was the tool to usurp consent. It was the promise made. That is a moral state of affairs. There ought be programs to train these people in new jobs in new technologies which are comparable in pay and benefits to those which the government legitimately outsourced and promised those workers new jobs in new technology in exchange for their consent.
That's part of what I mean.
Unfortunately that is precisely the sort of thinking that underpins inevitable disfunction.
Without a society there is no accumulation of wealth possible. Period.
Value the individual over and above society for long enough and the society collapses. That's not a pretty place for the selfish.
Those who wield great power over people bear great responsibility to those people. A wise government doesn't consist of agents who knowingly and unnecessarily neglect the governed.
Ask Agustino, but I am also pretty sure he lives in Eastern Europe--whether an EU country, don't know. He really should live in the US, since so many of his values would stand him in good stead here.
I thought this was an interesting short article. Seems like Mitt Romney's father was part of an older generation of conservatives who were able to balance personal monetary ambition with the harmful social and economic consequences that drive could lead to if left unchecked, or even worse, encouraged. In any case, I admire those who freely choose to make a little less money than they could in order to spread the wealth around a bit more fairly. That's the sort of high-minded and farsighted approach that's lacking in today's mercenary world IMO. But then again there could be a more cynical explanation for Romney's actions - other than the high tax rate on the super rich - that wasn't revealed in this piece.
Quoting litewave
No, that's not what you're saying because you think it's reasonable to talk about resisting your own impulses, an incoherent statement. You tell me you cannot resist your own impulses. False. That's nonsense.
Quoting litewave
My choices are not impulses. They are processing of impulses, which is done by complex feedback loops with respect to my nature.
Quoting Bitter Crank
It's not that they will necessarily be honest, but the individual has skin in the game. If something goes wrong, the individual is held accountable by reality, whereas the government official never bears responsibility. If he bankrupts the country, what happens to him? Nothing, just loses office.
Quoting Bitter Crank
No they're not - because they actually have skin in the game. If things don't go well, they don't profit. But government bureaucrats can profit even when things go badly, since they control the powers of the state.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Government officials who control the judiciary system and the laws of the country clearly have far more opportunity to be corrupt than mere individuals who simply have to obey a law that is not of their own making.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I did not say this. I said that individuals - because they work in the economy - have more knowledge than government officials about how the economy of their society works. A simple example - someone who works in business knows more about business than someone who works in an NGO. Someone who works in an NGO cannot understand what makes a business work, what the essential social structures there are, etc.
And someone who works for the government is even worse.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, I alone added that value, since without me that movement of goods would not have occurred. You don't seem to be willing to recognise that few people can be responsible for disproportionately large results. But this is just a fact of nature. You see this everywhere in nature, where small changes lead to vast differences in outcomes, since the underlying phenomena are non-linear. You assume that the distribution of wealth should be linear to be fair.
Quoting Sapientia
Let's see, maybe I want to start a factory producing medicine. Maybe I want to invest that money in bettering - say - 3D printing technology. Maybe I will spend that money building affordable housing. Etc. I have a feeling you're thinking I or anyone else needs that money for ourselves - well obviously not. But that money is mighty useful in trying to do a lot of thing for society at a larger scale.
Do you reckon that people who want to do something for the world should go and humiliate themselves before government bureaucrats who don't do anything, begging for a few votes here and there, give a few bribes here and there (bribes aren't just monetary, they can also be in the form of promises of what you'll do once you have power), so that they can grab the governments power to make changes in society? :s I reckon not, so therefore individuals should be allowed to accumulate large sums of money. What can I do with $100K in society? Almost nothing. I can probably do a lot of things for myself, but pretty much nothing for society at large.
And government bureaucrats are incapable to do anything, why do you think they need private entrepreneurs to do things for them? :s Elon Musk's company, for example, did what NASA couldn't do for years already.
Quoting Sapientia
Starting a factory and the like are not selfish desires.
Quoting Sapientia
So developing the productive capacities of my society is immoral? :s
Quoting Sapientia
Right, so then you can understand that no man of character would stoop so low to beg for those people's votes. Can you imagine Marcus Aurelius begging such people for their votes? :s
Quoting andrewk
Democracy doesn't really exist anywhere anyway. Some people though have the illusion it does.
You're just muddying the waters. A freely willed action should be intentional, and in order to do an intentional action you need an intention, which is an impulse (a mental state) that causes the action. But since you can't choose the intention, your intentional action is caused by something you have not chosen.
Impulse -> You (the process of forming an intention, of choice) -> action
You are the process which takes the impulse and forms an intention out of it, which is then translated into action. You as that process have free will, since you process whatever impulse you get from the external world, and only then do you act.
So you - according to your model - are an intention or an impulse right?
Quoting litewave
Quoting litewave
Yes.
Quoting litewave
So I need an intention?! Who is this I?! Isn't this I the intention? If it is, then nobody needs any intention at all to act freely. They act freely by their very nature - by being who they are, an intention. And that's the real truth - you simply cannot act unfreely while being you.
Quoting litewave
So who is the you here?!
Your framework isn't even capable to understand the process of choosing. It's as if you didn't choose anything, as if you didn't exist, except as a spectator. If this is a wrong interpretation, then please be very specific about what it is that you are choosing. What do you choose, ever?
If your answer is nothing, then you are a spectator in that framework.
So now you are making an irrelevant distinction between impulse and you, while previously you said that impulse is you. An impulse in general is a cause. An intention is an impulse, a cause, too, because it causes an intentional action. What you called "the process of forming an intention, of choice" above is a causal chain of impulses which results in an intention, and the intention is an impulse that causes the action. The point is that it is a causal chain at the beginning of which is an impulse or impulses that you cannot choose and this impulse or impulses determines the action. It is irrelevant how long the chain is, or whether there is just one impulse that causes the action directly. The action is always determined by something that you cannot choose, and in this sense the action is not free - it is determined by something you cannot choose.
Quoting Agustino
You are a collection of intentions and other impulses, so we can say that this collection - You - has a particular intention. Or we can say that you are the intentions. It is irrelevant for my argument. My argument simply is that your action is determined by something you cannot choose and therefore your action is not free, at least not in the libertarian sense.
Quoting Agustino
I choose my actions = I cause them. But I am just a link in a causal chain that is started by something I cannot choose.
False, I never said that.
Proof:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting litewave
Nope, those terms are related but different.
Quoting litewave
Nope. You have no understanding of feedback loops or how systems regulate themselves no? No understanding of top-down causality perhaps? :s
This causal chain you're referring is not like a series of dominos, one hitting the next, etc. etc. No - it is rather self-regulating. It self-regulates and maintains itself (its own nature) by modifying and re-directing external impulses.
Quoting litewave
Nope. That's actually never the case. You keep talking about something I cannot choose, as if I was outside of the causal chain, but somehow still affected by it.
Quoting litewave
No, your argument is that your action is determined by your intention, ie by you. Do you want me to cite again the part where you say that you are your intention(s)? So you absolutely freely choose it. You don't seem capable to follow the logic of your own statements.
You keep parroting about not freely choosing your intentions :s - of course, since you are your intentions. But being your intentions, you do freely choose your actions.
You don't choose to come into existence. But once in existence, you do choose things, since you are a system capable of autonomy. Once this system is put together, once it starts existing, things are no longer determined for it like one domino hitting the next, since it has top-down causality - it is a causal chain, which processes whatever forces/impulses, etc. come to it.
Quoting litewave
Okay, so you choose your actions. End of story. Therefore you're free in-so-far as you choose your actions, which is pretty much everytime you act.
Here you go:
Quoting Agustino
So are you the impulse or not?
Quoting Agustino
So what? It doesn't matter how complicated the causal system is or whether it contains causal loops. It must begin with some causes which cause the system's subsequent behavior and the system cannot choose these causes. There are self-regulating machines, for example thermostats. Does that mean they have free will?
Quoting Agustino
No, I am saying that you are inside the causal chain and you cannot choose your self, your impulses, your intentions. In other words, you cannot choose the causes that determine your actions.
Quoting Agustino
But your intentions and all your choices are determined by those causes that brought you into existence (as well as by other causes that affect you throughout your life).
Quoting Agustino
Even robots can choose - that is, cause - their actions. Doesn't mean they have free will.
Yeah it is very simplistic, though that's not a merit.
That's a non sequitur. You alone are just a cog in the machine. For the machine to function, it needs a [i]system[/I] of cogs. It's true that if you remove a single cog, then the machine won't function, but it's false that one cog by itself causes the machine to function.
Quoting Agustino
Utter silliness. Earlier on, you accused me of comparing apples and oranges, yet now you're doing just that, and with greater implications. No, let's not wait and see with our fingers crossed. You aren't accountable like a minister in the government. You could spend it on whatever you fancy without the same set of consequences. You could spend it all on beer. A government minister obviously could not.
Quoting Agustino
You can't have your cake and eat it. If you want business people to govern, then they have to go through the same system as the rest of us. If they get humiliated, then they get humiliated. That would just be a reflection of their lack of skill. If you want people to vote for you, then you have to persuade them. If you have nothing appealing to offer, or if you are inept at persuading people, then yes, you may well face humiliation. That's just part and parcel of politics, and it can't be any other way in a democratic society. Besides, you yourself pointed out the example of Trump, and he's hardly the first businessman to develop a relatively successful career in politics. So clearly it can be done.
And I don't buy this incredibly one-sided nonsense from you where you try to make out as though government is corrupt and inept. You can't prove a general point like that from a few dubious assertions here and there, or one or two cherry-picked examples.
Quoting Agustino
But I didn't say that. Desiring excessive wealth for yourself at the expense of many others is selfish.
Quoting Agustino
No, you seem to have somehow missed the point - or purposefully evaded it - despite my virtually spelling out what it is that I consider to be immoral.
Quoting Agustino
No, a man of character would have guts, and would face up to the fact that if you want to govern, then want alone will not achieve results. You have to act, you have to put your neck on the line, and you ought to respect due process in doing so.
Do you agree then that a very small clog can exert great leverage on the machine, producing exceedingly great force relative to its size? If so, then it rightly deserves more.
Quoting Sapientia
Right, he can spend other people's money buying $3000 dollar public toilets from a distant relative of his :B
I am more accountable than the government minister since I have skin in the game. The government minister doesn't.
Quoting Sapientia
I didn't mean that. I meant that the nature of the system necessitates humiliation. It has nothing to do with lack of skill or anything of that sort. Even the most skilful humiliate themselves to rise to the top in politics.
Quoting Sapientia
It's not about persuading people, it's about having to bow your head to the right people before you even get the chance to run, much less get elected. If the other boys and girls don't like you, you think they'll let you run? :s
Quoting Sapientia
No, I wasn't actually talking about businessmen. Businessmen can go into politics without being humiliated. They have money, they don't need to go around bowing their head, and kissing the hand of this and that person to obtain a bit of money to run a campaign. That's the humiliating aspect.
Trump is a perfect example. He didn't have to humiliate himself before the donors, kiss their hands, bow his head, promise them this and that, etc. Why not? Cause he had the money.
Quoting Sapientia
Is David Cameron corrupt?
Quoting Sapientia
Depends why I desire excessive wealth. Maybe I desire excessive wealth because it gives me the leverage I need to make what I've identified as the right changes in society.
Quoting Sapientia
I agree. I never said not to risk. You misinterpreted the bit about humiliation. It's not failure that is humiliating.
You're losing track. That some deserve more than others was never a bone of contention.
Quoting Agustino
No, you're no where near as accountable. The stance you advocate above is simply not credible, so you really ought to concede the point - for your own sake. It is not against the law for you, as a private citizen, to spend your $20 million on beer for you and your mates. It is very much against the law for a public servant to spend $20 million of government funds on beer for him and his mates.
Quoting Agustino
So what? Pride comes before a fall.
Quoting Agustino
You contradict yourself. It [i]is[/I] about persuasion, and that [I]is[/I] a skill. Think about what you're saying. If they don't like you, then that means that you've failed to sell yourself. And if that's an insurmountable obstacle to getting yourself elected, then you've failed to achieve what you desire.
Quoting Agustino
Then what were you talking about? I think that you may need to go back, look over what it was that you said which caused me to respond in the way that I've done, and explain yourself properly.
Quoting Agustino
An ambiguous question. Unless you clarify, my answer is yes and no.
Quoting Agustino
No, it doesn't, not in my view.
Quoting Agustino
You've just misinterpreted what I took issue with. It's the bad attitude. It's the pride. It's the complacency accompanied by an unwillingness to do anything about it.
“Excuse me—do you have a moment to talk about the needs of really rich people?”
Good, so some may deserve $20 million as a result of their work.
Quoting Sapientia
The law is irrelevant. The law is going to stop neither me, nor the politician, if we really want to do something. It's not very difficult to take money from the government, politicians are all very skilled at abusing their position to benefit themselves. Look at, for example, Obama - he made many millions of dollars as President. It doesn't even take much intelligence, just shamelessness.
And now Malia Obama, his daughter, is hitting it at Harvard kissing rich white non-working class boys and smoking weed. Give me a break.
Quoting Sapientia
It's going to take me many years to spend $20 million on beer for me and my mates.
Quoting Sapientia
>:O Nope. If I'm an ambassador, for example, I spend money on booze because I need it - I meet with important officials who need to be treated well - I need to take them to expensive golf resorts, buy a lot of alcohol, etc. that's what it takes for me to negotiate great deals for the great & glorious nation of Kazakhstan. But of course, many of these times, I'm actually just meeting with friends. But no one knows, because I make the paperwork or supervise how it's made.
Governments and the law function on the basis of paperwork. Whosoever understands this, can easily abuse government. Just don't get your signature anywhere in shady deals, and you're relatively safe.
Quoting Sapientia
No, it is not against the law, except that I worked for that money. That's MY money, not other people's. It is the result of my sweat and effort. You reckon I'm going to throw it away on beer with my mates? :s
You try spending 10-15 years of your life getting to the point where you can make that $20 million fairly without being corrupt or a crook, and then see if you start spending it on beer with your mates after that.
Quoting Sapientia
There are healthy and unhealthy forms of pride. Marcus Aurelius or Socrates or Seneca - all of them had a certain "pride", or better said self-respect. They wouldn't stoop below a certain level to get something done.
Quoting Sapientia
Nope, it's not about persuasion, it's about lacking moral values so that when you have all sorts of people asking you for favours in exchange of support, money, etc. you accept them.
Quoting Sapientia
To get into a political party and rise up the ranks you need to make compromises. To run for public office you need funding. To get funding, unless you have your own dough, you need to go beg around for it. And guess what, when you're begging around for it, you're going to be told: "okay, I will give you this money, but you have to promise me that once elected, you're going to make sure that this bill passes through. It's really important for our country and we need people like you to do the right thing" - of course this is just coded language for asking you to pass something that's not so great for the country but will be great for the private interests of your donor.
Quoting Sapientia
It's a simple question. I asked you if he is corrupt. He was your PM. If even the PM is corrupt (Panama papers for example), imagine how everyone else must be. You say there is no corruption in the UK. You're very very wrong. The only difference between UK and the glorious nation of Kazakhstan is that in the UK the corruption is done behind closed curtains. In the glorious nation of Kazakhstan, it is out in the open.
Quoting Sapientia
Well that should clearly matter. Someone could desire excessive wealth to live on a beach for the rest of their life with many women around them, etc. That someone obviously desires excessive wealth for selfish reasons. Another may desire excessive wealth because wealth is a form of power that allows them to make positive changes for society.
Yes, and some pigs may fly. Point being that it's not impossible in principle, but implausible in reality.
Quoting Agustino
Pah! No, it certainly isn't. Your dismissal is irrelevant. The very serious consequences in one case, yet not the other, in light of the relevant laws, is of clear relevance. Denial won't stop you from being arrested.
Quoting Agustino
Someone ought to coin this as an informal fallacy if it hasn't been coined already. It kept cropping up in the discussion on gun control. More broadly, it's missing the point. The point was that the one is not held to anywhere near the same level of accountability for their actions as the other. Your above response fails to address that, and instead addresses something else, which has not been disputed and lacks relevance.
Quoting Agustino
How else can I put this? I do not care about your skewed opinion on such matters. I find it unpersuasive and a digression. I don't think that these sort of comments from you are anywhere near enough to lead to any kind of conclusion refuting anything that I've claimed. Can you please try to stay on track? And can you please try not to set us going around in circles, as much of our discussion has ended up doing? I do not like repeating myself. I think that my last reply was clear enough, and ought to have put this to rest.
Quoting Agustino
Hopefully it won't take you many years to get the point. I think that we're both capable of thinking up a more plausible scenario, but the underlying point would remain the same, and the underlying point is what matters.
Quoting Agustino
Jesus Christ. Kazakhstan? Really? Because this discussion is clearly about some corrupt official in Kazakhstan.
If this is what my repeated efforts at trying to keep things on track are amounting to, then why should I even read any further? I admit that I'm running out of patience. Focus!
The bottom line is that, in the UK, misconduct in public office is a serious crime, and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. A public servant who grossly misappropriated public funds for personal gain would certainly be guilty of misconduct in public office. Clearly, the same rules, as well as the consequences of not abiding by them, would not apply in the case of regular citizens simply spending their own money on whatever they like within the law.
Quoting Agustino
Right. Thus they're not comparable. Given that it's not against the law, it would obviously be a greater risk, and frankly foolish, to permit funds that I wish to be spent on things like public services to be left in the hands of a private citizen, who would be at liberty to spend the money on whatever he likes - perhaps a new yacht for himself.
Quoting Agustino
You should stop purposefully overlooking the contributions of others. I don't believe that it's an innocent oversight. It's reprehensible.
And it's only [i]your[/I] money because of the status quo. (I very much doubt that Jesus would have been so possessive or so tight with his purse strings when considering those less fortunate).
Quoting Agustino
Another point missed. What I reckon is that it's a big risk that you'll spend the money that I think should go towards society on private interests.
And yes, for all I know, that could be, say, a £15 million yacht for yourself, or £3,000 bottles of champagne for you and mates to spray over each other. (Philip Green, look it up). What safeguards do I have that that is not what you'll do? Am I to take your word for it? Who will hold you to account? Do you think me a fool?
Quoting Agustino
This seems to be another red herring. What I would or would not do in that hypothetical situation is irrelevant speculation. Maybe I would waste it all on beer for my mates and I. Maybe I wouldn't. But the system would allow me to amass all of that personal wealth, and the system would allow me to spend it as I see fit. Apparently, you think that that's fine and dandy, or you don't, but you don't think that anyone ought to lift a finger to do anything about it. One thing's for sure, frowning upon that sort of thing is not enough. Action is required.
In North Korea the law is that there should be democratic elections. Is the law relevant or not? And if it's not relevant, then we have clearly arrived at an understanding that the mere presence of a law isn't relevant to stopping a certain activity. What else is required?
Quoting Sapientia
Okay fine, I do not think it is implausible in reality, we can agree to disagree on this point.
Quoting Sapientia
The same laws exist in Russia, Kazakhstan, North Korea, etc. The punishments may even be more severe there. It doesn't seem to me like the law by itself is of any relevance.
Quoting Sapientia
Who said that you shouldn't give alms and help the less fortunate? I was saying quite the contrary. But alms-giving isn't the same as the state coming by force and taking your money.
Quoting Sapientia
Society. If I spend my money on yachts, etc. while other people in my society are starving, they will hold me accountable. The same way as if a politician steals money from the government - it's still society who will hold them accountable through its mechanisms, not the law by itself.
Quoting Sapientia
No, what makes you think that? Quite the contrary, if I thought you a fool, I wouldn't be having this conversation with you.
Quoting Sapientia
I do think that if you amass your wealth fairly then you should dictate how it gets spent, of course.
But you don't have to follow through with that sort of thing, and being found out can result in scandals and serious consequences. There's a big difference between, for example, lobbying and bribery. You could take a look at the cash-for-questions affair to see what the consequences for that sort of thing are. It resulted in resignations and the end of political careers, tarnished reputations, public condemnation, an official inquiry, a 900-page report, and the publication of conclusions relating to the case from the Standards and Privileges Committee. It's also an example of why there has been proposed regulation; and, as you know, I'm a fan of regulation. If it could do with reform, which it could, then it should be reformed. I'm a progressive. I don't need much convincing.
Quoting Agustino
Yes, that's the problem. It's too simplistic, leading to multiple interpretations.
Quoting Agustino
I can read.
Quoting Agustino
I don't suffer from amnesia.
Quoting Agustino
But it's arguable whether the former prime minister, David Cameron, was corrupt in his former role. The Panama Papers implicated his father. He is not his father. He did own shares, but they were sold before he entered office.
And even if he was corrupt, your suggestion is an association fallacy.
In a loose sense, yes, of course I think that David Cameron is corrupt. I think that the Panama Papers affair shows him to be morally corrupt, and I strongly disagree with his political views and much of what he did both in and out of power.
On the other hand, he never broke any laws, and was never charged with any offence. The UK has laws on corruption.
Hence, there is an obvious ambiguity in your simple use of the term "corrupt", which you're either oblivious to or choosing to ignore.
Quoting Agustino
No I don't. That's a straw man. I said what I said in reaction to what you said, so take a look at what you said first of all. What I have emphasised is that somewhere like the UK is very different from somewhere like Syria.
Quoting Agustino
No, I'm not. I would be if that was what I had said, and if it could be charitably interpreted in that way. But that is not the case. I'm not going to go back over the discussion to check what I've said, but if I ever said anything like that, then it was in the context of your false equivalence, and so shouldn't be misinterpreted.
Quoting Agustino
That's either speculation or you must be referring to public revelations of what was previously kept behind closed doors. The former can't be taken into evidence, and the latter would bring with it serious consequences like those that I've previously mentioned. Over here, if you're found out, you can't get away with it scott free, so it's a big gamble and a disincentive.
Quoting Agustino
No, it shouldn't matter for the reasons given in my previous reply. That's the argument that you'll need to address if you haven't already. This someone is not in a position to be held accountable in the same way. That's what matters. You're a businessman, aren't you? I thought that you people were supposed to be able to recognise a risky investment. If I were a businessman who wanted my money to be spent on public services, then I'd be a fool to give it to someone who could spend it on whatever they liked without repercussions.
Oh right, of course, you have to be an idiot to do it under your own name. A father, a sister, a distant relative - who cares, someone to cover up.
Quoting Sapientia
Yeah, Kazakhstan does too :s - you seem to be under the impression that China, Russia, North Korea, etc. don't have laws against corruption...
Quoting Sapientia
Yeah but that's not because the UK has laws and regulations that Syria lacks.
Quoting Sapientia
That's the same everywhere. Those laws can always be used to get rid of you, and punishments are often more severe than in the UK. When China's current leader came to power and ran a campaign against corruption, many very important officials were jailed or even executed, including one of the former heads of an intelligence agency. So by no means do these places lack laws and harsh punishments. But laws are enforced by people. If you get those people who enforce the laws on your side, then you are safe, at least for some time. You're really talking as if it was oh so difficult to abuse public office.
In the UK it happens less because people have some decency, that in other places they lack. They are better educated, and respect the institutions more, so they don't dare create prejudices of $50 million in one go, shamelessly. Look at the US - Trump doesn't respect the institutions, and he has no trouble changing or ignoring them. You seem to think that once in power, someone is somehow constrained by the law, as if the law was some abstract person, and not something that people who hold the power have to enforce themselves.
In the end, it all comes down to individual people. Whether that's millionaires with cash, or government bureaucrats with the judiciary power of the state behind them - it's still people.
So what? I don't disagree that it was corrupt in a loose sense. But your suggestion was an association fallacy, so it doesn't support the point you've been struggling to back up.
Quoting Agustino
No, but the UK is obviously very different from those places. I don't even know why I'm bothering to go to such lengths to make this distinction. Does the UK execute political dissidents with anti-aircraft guns in front of thousands of people who are forced to watch?
Quoting Agustino
Then it would not be about the law [i]per se[/I], but a false equivalence nevertheless. Congratulations on your Pyrrhic victory.
Quoting Agustino
No it's not. Get real. Even in my very limited experience, I've experienced corruption elsewhere unlike anything that you'd ever encounter here in the UK when a taxi that I was in got pulled over by the police in Morocco and the driver had to go off to a cash point to get the money to bribe him.
Good. What is it about then? I never disagreed there are differences between those places, but they're not primarily about the law and the regulations that exist.
Quoting Sapientia
The law is very similar.
Obviously they'd need to be enforced. I've referred to that indirectly already, and switching focus doesn't change the underlying point.
Quoting Agustino
If you go back, you'll see that that wasn't simply about the law. Have you forgotten my original comment that you were replying to already? It was only a few recent comments ago.
1. I wasn't talking about North Korea.
2. Obviously laws need to be enforced, which goes without saying, and has been referred to by myself already.
Taking that into account, do you have a serious objection? You've acknowledged that these places are different, and that in the UK, there is less corruption. I would add that there's considerably less, such that the comparisons you've been making, together with the implications of them, constitute a false equivalence.
Quoting Agustino
That sounds like a good idea, and will hopefully go some way to prevent us going around in circles.
Quoting Agustino
Did I ever talk about the law by itself? Did I ever use those words? No. The consequences are of relevance. Here are some of the consequences:
And yes, I would support harsher sentences. The above doesn't even say anything about fines and forced repayments, which I would think is a must.
Quoting Agustino
So you support Christian principles, but don't support any effective means of getting those unscrupulous individuals to abide by them. That's what you're suggesting above. And yet, you contradict yourself each time you bring up John 2:15.
That's the problem with Christianity. In the past, certainly, it was far too extreme - burning people at the stake and the like. But on the other hand, it can be far too passive - appealing to the heart instead of getting your hands dirty. Appealing to the heart can fall on deaf ears. What then? There's no hell below us; above us only sky. Stay off the opium. It's this world - [i]the only world[/I] - that matters. In this world, and in this case, it's the Jesus with the whip that's required, not the Jesus with no backbone.
Quoting Agustino
Ha! Society can't reappropriate your funds or retrieve them if they're misspent. Society can't arrest you or sentence you to imprisonment. For that you need authorities. Society can frown upon you, but that wouldn't achieve the practical results that would be required to make a real difference.
Quoting Agustino
First of all, people don't have to be starving for this to be a problem. And secondly, how are they going to do that? By making some noise until it fades away from the spotlight, leaving much unchanged? I don't envision a revolution happening here anytime soon. Do you?
Quoting Agustino
Don't you see that it's misleading to focus on the similarities when it's the dissimilarities which matter? Yes, society will make some noise in both cases, but in only one case would there be grounds for imprisonment. That's a big difference.
Quoting Agustino
But, if you're suggesting to me, as you seemed to be doing, that my goal of having that amount of money spent towards things like public services would have a greater chance of success if it was left in the hands of a private individual - which could be someone who'd spend it on a new yacht for themselves - rather than a public servant - who'd be forced to spend it on the public, lest he face serious consequences like those previously referred to - and if you expect that to convince me, then you must, by implication, think me a fool.
You asked why it should be the government that invests that money, instead of you, the individual. You asked why it can't be the case that the responsibility for the well-being of society rests on the individual, instead of resting on government bureaucrats.
I have explained why multiple times now. Because you, the individual, can't be trusted like a public servant can be. You can't be held to account like a public servant can be.
Quoting Agustino
Even if I amassed my wealth fairly, there are greater priorities than my new yacht. Why should I, and others like me, be permitted a new yacht or a second home when, for example, there's a shortage of affordable housing, as there is right now in the UK? Our NHS is underfunded. Our schools are underfunded. Our local councils are underfunded. And our police force is underfunded.