12/16 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEFD6133BF93AA1575BC0A966958260&sec=&pagewanted=print
Let history be a guide.
\_ recent history has not seen the concentration of wealth we're seeing
- maybe santa clara+l.a.+manhattan will stay rich, and avg locations
eat it
\_ Why the fascination with concentration of wealth? It's captial
that allows us to create companies, which create jobs. It's not
surprising that the more specialized we get, the more capital is
used to create industry.
\_ Through out Chinese hisotry, 9 out of 10 dynasties fell
not because of the ruler being brutal, but rather, over
concentration of wealth. Over concentration of wealth will
eventually made into policies which denies opporunity for the
mass to get ahead, thus, re-enforce the wealth which they
have amassed. The brightest would no longer have a chance
to go to school because it's too expensive. The skilled
wouldn't have a chance to use it. The offspring of the
super-wealthy would just sitting on their butt and complains
the mass is not working hard enough and don't deserve the
opportunity they demanded.
\_ You got the trees. Here's the forest: "9 out of 10
dynasties" fell *because* they were dynastic and not
at all democratic and thus completely unresponsive to
the needs and wants of the people.
\_ it's a balance. no one likes communism, and no one likes
an aristocracy. the problem is over the last five years
there has been a significant shift to the latter. the impt
question is: are we getting closer to or further away from
what's good for America?
\_ Both are government and economic entities. As long as we
have a functional democracy, where's the problem?
\_ Big assumption.
\- without getting into a longer answer, there is also a
positive feedback loop. if i am so wealthy, all i need
the gov for is defense, then i'm willing to lobby for
lower taxes at the cost of say public education, social
safety insurance or medical social safety net [because
i can self-insure]. we havent totally gotten to the
point where people can opt for lower support for say
fire and police protection by self-insuring ... while
those haven't gone private, there are definitely class
shenanigans that area too [people of course talk about
gated communities with private security, but a more
sublte example might be something like piedmont "opting"
out of oakland ... i dont know the history of how
piedmont emerged, but my understading is piedmont has about
10 cops while the oakland police beat that surrounds it
is larger and has 2 cops. i bet if you were teleported
into a piedmont and the nearest oakland school, you could
guess with a high probability which one you had been sent
to in each teleportation trial. \P if there is no
cooperation/social contract via progressive taxation,
you are more likely to end up in a sub-pareto equillibrium
rather than adopting optimal outcome ... since optimal
outcome often has distributional consequences, so you can
only get their either via coercsion or enforced side
payments. in the context of a corporation, once the
trickle down to the rank and file goes below some
threshold, incentive based performance doesnt really
work any more ... if my marginal dollar of productivity
goes 99% to people 4 steps up from me in the org chart,
what's the point?
all liberals should be able to answer the question
"why should we have a progressive tax code".
i guess that was pretty long.
\_ yeah could you point to some wikipedia articles or
concise urls, i get asked this a lot by my
liberotarian friends and i really would like to
defend myself articulately.
\- dood, the internet is not the be all and end all
of learning. read "the procedural republic and he
unencumbered self". i dont know if it is avail
on the public WEEB. it is available via JSTOR.
this isnt the kind of thing to look for in a
wikipedia article.
if you are really interested, i probably have a
pdf i can dig up. the short version of the answer
is "when society makes investment, the rich
disproportionately reaps the rewards" sort of
like when up to $1m of mortage interest is
deductable that disporpropiratioantely benefits
people buying million dollar houses rather than
$200k houses. similar logic applies to NIH research
(an agency i dont remember hearing criticized as
as much as say the Dept of Educ). also many "xfers"
to the wealthy are not in the form of easy to see
cash xfers [welfare, food stamps] but more subtle
[nicer parks, faster police response time]. finally
there are some deeper criticisms of measuring
efficiency/risk/etc in dollars terms, but hat is
beyond the scope of this motd post. if you are a
berkeley student, consider taking philosophy 115,
political philosophy. samuel scheffler would be a
good person to take this from. --psb
\- I'll add one thing: generally the way Lib'tarians
operationalize force/fraud is rather self-serving,
just like most countrys' notion of what
constitudes "free trade" or a resonable IP
regime is totally self serving. the world is a
complicated palce and all "one line" philosophies
are inadequate, whether it is Libertarianism
[force/fraud], Jebus and the Golden Rule,
Communism [each according to needs/means],
Original Intent/Plain meaning jurisprudence,
untilitariamsim etc.
\- BTW, I'd be interested if you could ask
your little liberatrian friends if they would
get rid of the SEC.
\_ Could you try to capitalize words on occasion or simply
point to the wiki article?
\_ Hey, don't restrict his form of expression with
your bourgeois grammer rules, you facist!
\_ grammar
\_ Same to you!
\_ It turns out that an economists blog I read it talking about
\_ It turns out that an economist's blog I read is talking about
this very same subject right now -ausman
http://www.csua.org/u/hre
"How Inequality of Wealth Destroys Liberty"
\- JAMES AUSMAN ADVISORY: i assume you know this, but some
of this may be the tail end of something that errupted a
few mos ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality_Debate_of_2006
but of course for thoughtful people, this is a perennial issue.
as your web site suggest, it was discussed a 100yrs ago.
this is not a bad book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0815764758 |
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