Economic Inequality and the doom of Mankind

ADreamOfLiberty: I agree with your call of BS but disagree with your reasoning.

Let's take money out of the equation entirely for a moment. Imagine a world with two hungry people and two apples (scarcity). We could have equality, both people eat an apple and both hungers are satisfied. Or we could have inequality, one person eats two apples, while the other starves. When we think about it in terms of money it's easy to think that the biggest harms of poverty on society are merely a lack of being able to buy nice things. Poverty means famine, disease, and most of all, death. It's not money that matters, it's the distribution of scarce resources. If the 1% used all the natural resources of the world to build those robots, then the 99% would still be screwed.

You're argument seems to be that society will be safe so long as all of society agrees to put up with inequality, ie a high death rate among all but the very richest. Two problems. First, people are still an important means of production, so such societies usually collapse very fast. And second, society has never been very accepting of everybody dying anyway. Society is not, in general, a suicide cult where everybody aims to die sooner.

Whether poor are getting poorer is relative to a prior time and place. For example, I think it's pretty clear Mali is less well off than it was a millenium ago. I also don't accept that new technology always makes us "richer". Sometimes technology has actually caused a lot of death and destruction.

I get the feeling that you're basically saying that if the poor would only use their means of production to produce goods to trade with the rich people, then society could be happy and law and order maintained. You only need to look at not only reasonable historical proxies but also about 90% of the countries of the world to see that's not the case. Moreover, many places that are happy traders, and sometimes even very wealthy, aren't exactly bastions of law and order (middle east is the most obvious modern day example, but also china).

admin: "Let's take money out of the equation entirely for a moment. Imagine a world with two hungry people and two apples (scarcity). We could have equality, both people eat an apple and both hungers are satisfied. Or we could have inequality, one person eats two apples, while the other starves. When we think about it in terms of money it's easy to think that the biggest harms of poverty on society are merely a lack of being able to buy nice things." - admin

Thinking that way is the starting point of marxism and from that premise it easily follows that economic inequality is arbitrary and unjust.

Problem is that is a faulty starting point. A much better description of reality (and it has gotten more accurate with every century is this

There is no food on the table, there are two people who will starve to death without taking action to prevent that outcome. Thus they must go and find apples, there is the potential for hundreds of apples, but none are actually in either person's possession.

They can get more apples if they work together so they do, and they get three apples. One person gets two apples and the other gets one.

If they didn't talk about it beforehand I agree that ambiguity should default to equal shares, BUT if they agree before hand that one person gets 2/3 and the other 1/3 then this inequality is moral inequality.

Why they agreed is actually irrelevant unless one person was lying or using force. A parent could decide his/her child needs1/3 more than they do. Or someone can realize that without the others help they couldn't even get one apple, who would starve rather than let someone else eat well? No one rational.

The system of capitalism is in essence a system for facilitating economic cooperation. The market and currency by nature setup a matrix of consensual shares of cooperative effort. In capitalism, there is no pie to share; except those pies which were divided and agreed upon before they were even baked.

"Poverty means famine, disease, and most of all, death." - admin

If so, then economic inequality doesn't mean poverty.

Can't have it both ways.

Either poverty is defined absolutely as wealth insufficient to sustain life and human dignity, in which case you can have a huge wealth gap where no one is impoverished.

Or

Poverty is defined relatively as being the lowest rung in a ranking of wealth, in which case the lowest rung can be more than enough to sustain life. In my country the number of millionaires outnumber the number of 'poor' people if you define 'poor' people as those who cannot feed and shelter themselves. Indeed obesity is more of a problem for the less wealthy in my country.

"It's not money that matters, it's the distribution of scarce resources." - admin

No, that is the fundamental Malthusian mistake. Natural resources are found in great abundance, it is utilization and applied engineering knowledge that have always been the bottlenecks to human wealth. Especially in terms of the 'essentials.'

"If the 1% used all the natural resources of the world to build those robots, then the 99% would still be screwed." - admin

A common sentiment, but one that falls apart in 99.99% of all possible cases when we look at specifics. Let's look at specifics here.

What are robots made of? Metal, plastics, energy. Let us say that the rich robot-builders created 50 per person. There are 7.163 billion people in the world, the top 1% is by definition 0.01 * 7.163 billion.

0.01 * 7.163 *50 = 3.582 billion robots.

What resource shall we look at? aluminium? That element is the third most common in earth's crust, at 8.3% by mass [Greenwood, Norman N.; Earnshaw, Alan (1997). Chemistry of the Elements (2nd ed.). Butterworth-Heinemann. p. 217. ISBN 0080379419.] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Natural_occurrence

If we use 100kg of aluminium per robot, and the mass of the crust of the earth is 0.026e24 kg [ http://nineplanets.org/earth.html] then we should be able to make:

(0.083 * 0.026e24 kg ) / (200 k /robot) = 1.079 e19 robots

That means the robot-builders used 0.0000000332 % of the worlds natural resources. This is a far cry from 99% to say the least. It will be the same story for energy, oil, and practically everything else. Yes it takes work to get it, and that work is what we are buying, that work is what the market manages. Natural resource scarcity is a fringe case in economics.

"You're argument seems to be that society will be safe so long as all of society agrees to put up with inequality" - admin

Don't take offense to this, I am not saying you are a racist (and I hope that is obvious) but imagine if someone made a post "mixing races and the doom of mankind."

and I say "it's not a problem unless people make it a problem."

What kind of response would "You're arguments seems to be that society will be safe so long as all of society agrees to put up with racial impurity."

Yes, you are right; I am saying its not a problem therefore if society won't accept it, its society's mistake having nothing to do with the phenomenon.

"ie a high death rate among all but the very richest."

What is that supposed to mean? Does it become high because the rich contrive to make themselves live longer and avoid danger?

"First, people are still an important means of production"

The human mind is and will always remain the fundamental means of production.

"And second, society has never been very accepting of everybody dying anyway. Society is not, in general, a suicide cult where everybody aims to die sooner." - admin

This is a bit sensational...

"For example, I think it's pretty clear Mali is less well off than it was a millenium ago" - admin

I wouldn't be so sure. During the industrial revolution there seemed to be more starving people. but the reality is that more people were surviving infancy. There is a 'danger zone' when people have enough to feed themselves and five children but there isn't enough work to feed five adults and two elderly people.

"Sometimes technology has actually caused a lot of death and destruction."

Aside from military technology, do you have any examples?

"I get the feeling that you're basically saying that if the poor would only use their means of production to produce goods to trade with the rich people, then society could be happy and law and order maintained." - admin

That's what they are doing, (and not just trading with the rich). That is how they are alive. That is how the rich are alive. It is the beliefs such as those you have expressed that are making people unhappy with economic inequality. People don't like being cheated. If you validate jealousy with the claim of impropriety of course many people would flock to adopt those ideas.

In essence it is easier to believe that someone is ruining your life and that your ancestors had it better than to accept that your life is good compared to your ancestors and it only seems bad to you because you see how well humans can live in the rich. It is no different than when people invented demons and trolls to blame for misfortune. Why in the world would we want to create evil beings? Because having someone to blame is psychologically more satisfying than having only reality to blame (or worse yourself).

A moral disagreement is created by the belief, and the root of all war is moral disagreement.

"Moreover, many places that are happy traders, and sometimes even very wealthy, aren't exactly bastions of law and order (middle east is the most obvious modern day example, but also china)." - admin

China is a bastion of law and order, just not the best law and order

I said the heart of society is trade *and* law and order. Unfortunately they do not cause each other, trade simply relies on law and order. The middle east is a perfect example of how a lack of law and order disrupts trade and why it causes so much trouble for the rest of the world who wants to buy their oil.

ADreamOfLiberty: Are you actually suggesting that, where there are wealthy and poor, and the wealthy have not lied or taken their wealth by force (outside of claiming their own personal property), the poor have necessarily agreed to be poor? That every poor child in the world starving of malnutrition right now has entered into a contract of sorts that they're alright with getting no food while the rich have plenty? In fact, I'm pretty confident no poor person has ever offered their assent to that. Middle class, maybe. But not poor. So of course in your example the two people didn't agree beforehand. Suppose a poor person can't get a job. Did they assent to their inability to find work? No. But was work taken from them by lies or force? Not really.

I do think my example is better anyway though. The only differences are that in your example apples are less scarce (and I do seriously believe that outside of money, most of the planet's resources are very scarce at any one time), and that you start from the factors of production (I don't usually agree with social credit theory much, but it's absolutely right about this - wealth is collectively created through division of labor, then disseminated through trade and money, making who does the actual producing irrelevant to who gets the end goods in the modern economy, thus starting from the factors of production to look at wealth distribution makes no sense).

I'm not an anti-capitalist per se, but I don't think the picture is as rosy as many would make it out to be, which is why I believe strongly in income protection, somewhat regulated industry and such. Certainly if I were in on these pie-dividing discussions I would be somewhat wealthier today. I didn't agree - the market agreed. And the market is not, as some frame it, some neat democracy of rational thinkers. The market is an unfair representation mostly consisting of a small proportion of society, and like all people, their choices are largely irrational. Almost never do people get to set their own salary (James Bond notwithstanding).

It's true that you can have a huge wealth gap where nobody is impoverished IF you do away with scarce resources. Currently 1/5th of the world's population is obese, and 1/5th is starving and malnourished. There is a very simple solution to this problem. It can't be a lack of utilization or engineering knowledge because clearly we already have the food to feed everybody in the world, it's just being given to the wrong people.

Are you aware that you just literally destroyed 8.6 trillion tonnes of the earth's crust right there, just with the aluminium? And you do realize aluminium is actually a really important element to have in that crust, right? This is the approximate equivalent of destroying the country of Ireland (just from some quick rough maths). Yeah, I hope you don't actually have designs for these robots. The point is this: why do you think Australia is a wealthy country? Because they have minerals everybody else needs that are hard to get elsewhere. The market would prefer a lower price, but Australia says "screw you guys" and sets a higher price anyway. And boy, do they make profit, because there just aren't that many countries willing to sell uranium etc.

I think society is a lot more worried about inequality than racial impurity. Not a reflection on what I believe, I was just making a comment on what matters to society at large.

I would be pretty sure about the Mali case specifically. Life expectancy in the industrial revolution is tricky because it pretty clearly fell significantly in the first 10 years. Then it rose a bit as the fruits of the revolution began to become available to the general masses. But by then things had improved somewhat anyway in terms of conditions.



"Aside from military technology, do you have any examples [of tech causing death]?" - yip, sure (and I assume accidents related to technology wouldn't count for you either). Depends a bit if you agree a concept is a technology though. For example, water privatization.

"If you validate jealousy with the claim of impropriety of course many people would flock to adopt those ideas" - ok, so I take it you (by this logic) support inheritance tax then?

I'm not denying that on average, people live much better today than we lived in times past. I think that's true regardless of the economic system. But the problem is that this does not imply the distribution of living standards today is fair or acceptable. A minority of people are no better off, and a very small number are clearly worse off, than their ancestors. My problem would be this inequality becoming more mainstream. Pretending it doesn't exist helps nothing.

admin: "Are you actually suggesting that, where there are wealthy and poor, and the wealthy have not lied or taken their wealth by force (outside of claiming their own personal property), the poor have necessarily agreed to be poor?" - admin

The poor do not agree to be poor, that is the default state. They do not agree to be poor when they trade with anyone else (rich or poor) because trade does not make them poor, that's how they started.

"That every poor child in the world starving of malnutrition right now has entered into a contract of sorts that they're alright with getting no food while the rich have plenty?"

The implicit contract, the contract of morality, and proper law is that even if you're not alright with getting no food, neither are you alright with stealing it.

"In fact, I'm pretty confident no poor person has ever offered their assent to that." - admin

Depending on how you define "poor" I might have qualified sometime in my life.

"So of course in your example the two people didn't agree beforehand." - admin

I said they agreed to work cooperatively. If they didn't the moral outcome is clear. Whoever produces an apple may do what they want with it.

"and I do seriously believe that outside of money, most of the planet's resources are very scarce at any one time" - admin

When men affect the scarcity with their actions the word loses it's meaning in this context. Then we are talking about production.

"who does the actual producing irrelevant to who gets the end goods in the modern economy" - admin

No, who does the producing is by agreement identical to who gets the end goods; that is what the agreement is. Who is responsible for (and thus owns) what fraction of the total product. When you agree to work *for* someone the wage you agree to is the productivity you consent to.

If you could code this website by yourself why would you agree to be paid by a stranger on the street only a portion of what that work is worth? Regardless of your evaluations in any case, you must get the others you work with (even your employee) to agree or else you are forcing your will onto them.

If you say "I will do this job, but I am producing more than I am given", why cannot your employer say "I am letting him do this job, but he is producing less than he is given."

You agree to certain wage or a certain dividend, and that is the evaluation of your productivity you agree to. If it is inaccurate do not agree to it.

If you must agree in order to feed yourself do not blame the employer or the market. They are offering you an option, that is all; if you don't think its fair yet choose it that is your choice. They do not have a duty to offer you what you call a fair option; and if they did, then why don't you have a duty to offer the employee what they think is a fair option?

"I'm not an anti-capitalist per se" - admin

and I am not pro-capitalist per say, I am pro liberty and I believe capitalism is the inevitable result of any consistent application of liberty to law. In economics capitalism is what free speech is to politics, and free association is to religion and art. If you give them the right to speak or to trade; you cannot deny the macroscopic structures that the sum of such exercises produce.

"Certainly if I were in on these pie-dividing discussions I would be somewhat wealthier today" - admin

You were, every time you traded your product; including your time and skills. You are not wealthier because you couldn't find anyone who agree with your evaluation of your own contribution.

This is a hard truth, I have worked jobs where I felt either wasted or exploited; but I know what I did when I accepted the job and I know it would make a liar out of me to claim I was stolen from. It wasn't "the system" or an international CEO that got me into those positions. It was my own needs and my own choices that did so.... and I would do it again because I know the alternative is waiting around the corner. The alternative is being just another upright ape with a stomach to fill minus Eden to forage in.

I do not claim to defend the cruelty of nature or say it is just, what I find problematic is when people; unwilling to admit this nature try to blame their brother for not being there to shield them from reality. Who shields the shield?

"I didn't agree - the market agreed." - admin

In the context of trades you participated in, you and the other party WERE the market.

"The market is an unfair representation mostly consisting of a small proportion of society, and like all people, their choices are largely irrational." - admin

When I read such statements I find it helpful to see if the writer believes such things about themselves. You are the sole representative of yourself to the market. Unlike so called political democracies there are no proxies or majorities to consider (unless you so agree to such conditions). You choose to buy everything you bought. You choose to sell everything you sold.

Were your choices irrational? What made your representation of your own wishes unfair?

"Almost never do people get to set their own salary" - admin

Almost never do people get the star ship enterprise by mail order. Supply and demand. Is the market distorting the worth of a man's work, or is a man's work less valuable for being commonly offered?

I say the latter. Of course men cannot set their own salary's unilaterally. It is a trade. They need the consent of all parties.

"It's true that you can have a huge wealth gap where nobody is impoverished IF you do away with scarce resources. " - admin

No, scarce resources have nothing to do with it. You are assuming that were the rich not to eat food, there would be the same amount. Morally and practically that is false, they made the food in proportion to their ability to buy it.

Food is not a scarce resource, it is a produced resource. Housing is not a scarce resource, it is a produced resource. Energy is not a scarce resource, it is a produced resource.

Nearly everything we call a necessity, nearly everything we call a luxury is not limited because of inability to find the base components in nature. If the components are thus in excess the only thing that can be scarce is production, and that is indeed what has predicted the wealth of nations far more than any survey of natural resources. Some of the greatest civilizations have been in deserts while people have lived only slightly beyond the stone age in lush jungles for a hundred thousand years.

When Europeans went to North America, there was no way for everyone to live on the same land living as the natives did. Yet there was a way for many to live as the Europeans did. Same land. More people. Yet more food, more housing, more medical care, more education.

How can you explain that with scarcity of natural resources? Please please don't say something ridiculous like "the natives were saving the good stuff for a rainy day."

No, same land; same natural resources. Same natural resources, same natural resource scarcity.

Humanity found out 7000 years ago in the fertile crescent, we need not be bound to have only what we can find on the forest floor. We can make value where nature did not do it for us. Why do some modern economist seem confused on that issue?

"There is a very simple solution to this problem. It can't be a lack of utilization or engineering knowledge because clearly we already have the food to feed everybody in the world, it's just being given to the wrong people." - admin

The reason it is given to the obese instead of the starving is because the obese produced it and the starving didn't. What you speak of has a name, when you take something you produce and give it to someone for nothing in return, that is called charity.

There is also a name for taking something you did not produce without permission, regardless of what you do with it. Theft.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. If you have never wanted to keep the product of your effort, even when someone might say you don't need it as much as they do; then maybe you can pass judgement. However I don't see how you could say that and yet complain about your 'piece of the pie' being too small.

When I see a starving person, I still see the problem as production; because even if some rich fat person out there has the power to alleviate their hunger; that hunger was not created by the fat on another man. I know the starving man's crops did not fail because somewhere a rich man's crops did well.

If someone is not getting enough to eat, either we need to make them richer; or we need to make food cheaper; I'd prefer a combination of the two. Yes they should be fed in the mean time by charity, but call it what it is. Charity is not an entitlement, it is a gift and a recognition of the value of life. It cannot be extorted or stolen and remain virtuous. Doing so only makes villains of everyone except the very people that are being blamed

It turns the starving man from a dignified being who through no fault of their own needs help into a parasite. It turns the compassionate social minded into thieves. It turns the uncaring fatcat into a victim of theft and extortion.

Do not be surprised if I cannot help but leap to the defense of the fatcat rather than the starving man. Justice comes before empathy as facts must precede one's reaction to them.

"Are you aware that you just literally destroyed 8.6 trillion tonnes of the earth's crust right there, just with the aluminium?" - admin

I would say used not destroyed. I am not sure where you got that number, I notice that I said 100 kg and then my calculation had 200 kg but I still can't find what you are referring to. If you are saying 8.6 trillion tonnes of aluminium mined for the robots, that would be enough for 43 trillion robots (at 200 kg). That would mean 6000 robots for each human on the planet. Ever read Asimov? That's even more ridiculous than Solaria.

"And you do realize aluminium is actually a really important element to have in that crust, right?" - admin

No I didn't. I thought most of it was locked in nonreactive bauxite ore, serving little chemical role and having no free electrons to serve any EM role.

"This is the approximate equivalent of destroying the country of Ireland (just from some quick rough maths)." - admin

Except that most of the world doesn't have near the population density of Ireland, after the aluminium is removed there is still soil since its distributed all over the place, and there is no way we would need (or could power) 6000 robots per capita.

"Yeah, I hope you don't actually have designs for these robots." - admin

I wish I did, I could transform the world economy and make them so cheap that malnourished 1/5 of people can buy themselves 2 or 3 full time mechanical farmers.

"The point is this: why do you think Australia is a wealthy country? Because they have minerals everybody else needs that are hard to get elsewhere." - admin

If that was the case, a significant portion of Australia's GDP would be made up of leasing mining rights to property. Is that the case?

" The market would prefer a lower price, but Australia says "screw you guys" and sets a higher price anyway. And boy, do they make profit, because there just aren't that many countries willing to sell uranium etc. " - admin

There may be a moral problem with making money off of arbitrary land claims, but that is the only place there is a problem. It is not inherent to capitalism. Land claiming is an ancient tradition, almost a instinct it would seem for humanity. It is not a primary factor in most wealth creation.

To cast this to another simplistic example, if you guard a stream and charge anyone who comes along for crossing it; that's a moral problem. You do not own the stream by virtue of seeing it first (or kicking out the last guy to claim it). If you charge for a bridge though, that is your moral property.

Insofar as it is possible the citizens of Australia are staking out the stream as opposed to producing rare metals by their effort it could be immoral. An easy way to tell is this:

If the sovereignty of Australia and the claims of private citizens there to vast stretches of land nullified, would the rest of the world send their own mining companies or would they just buy from Australian ones?

If they would send their own there is a possibility Australia is 'cheating'. If they wouldn't, that means Australia is not charging more than the value they produce, the value is the mining.

"I think society is a lot more worried about inequality than racial impurity." - admin

A peculiarity of the times nothing more. As far as irrational fears go, when one's in fashion; it can always be pointed out that many people are concerned about it.

"I would be pretty sure about the Mali case specifically. " - admin

Have you also somehow isolated the effects of wealthy people from different countries on Mali or have you just noted that things are worse than they used to be there?

"yip, sure (and I assume accidents related to technology wouldn't count for you either). Depends a bit if you agree a concept is a technology though. For example, water privatization." - admin

Accidents count, but you must also count the lives and stuff gained or saved by the technology too. I don't consider water privatization technology. There is dangerous technology, bad technology; it just doesn't catch on unless someone (like a military) is picking technology for its danger level.

"ok, so I take it you (by this logic) support inheritance tax then?" - admin

I condemn all taxation. What in what I said made you think an inheritance tax was implied?

"I'm not denying that on average, people live much better today than we lived in times past. I think that's true regardless of the economic system." - admin

Then you may want to check up on a little place called the USSR. Then China before they adopted a de facto capitalist policy. Then North Korea. Then Vietnam. etc..

In all these cases economic policy halted, slowed to a crawl, or even reversed progress in living conditions.

"But the problem is that this does not imply the distribution of living standards today is fair or acceptable." - admin

Living standards are not distributed they are made. There is no central repository except in the mistaken theories of people who want to think of it as a giant wealth pie that humanity stumbled upon.

"A minority of people are no better off, and a very small number are clearly worse off, than their ancestors." - admin

But are they worse off than a minority of their ancestors? Do not forget all those who died of starvation, exposure, disease, pollution, war, crime, natural disasters in the past. Is it not true that in looking at the standards of living in the past, you are forgetting that not everyone lived?

Even if they are worse off, how have you linked that to economic inequality which does not depend on being worse off than your ancestors but can be achieved by being worse off than your neighbor?

"My problem would be this inequality becoming more mainstream. Pretending it doesn't exist helps nothing." - admin

Acknowledging its existence doesn't make it a problem.

ADreamOfLiberty: "The poor do not agree to be poor, that is the default state."
Wrong. Some people are born poor, and others are born wealthy. It's not always through trade or even work that one earns ones income.

"They do not agree to be poor when they trade with anyone else (rich or poor) because trade does not make them poor, that's how they started."
Sometimes trade does make people poorer. Blood diamonds are a good example.

"The implicit contract, the contract of morality, and proper law is that even if you're not alright with getting no food, neither are you alright with stealing it."
How is this implicit contract not problematic though? Surely that's a lose-lose for starving people then, right?

"Depending on how you define "poor" I might have qualified sometime in my life."
Well, I defined it in my previous sentence as children dying of malnutrition. But I'll extend that to any sort of hunger or disease not staved off due to a deprivation of wealth despite a relative lack of scarcity.

"Whoever produces an apple may do what they want with it."
And where does this rule come from? In modern capitalism this is strictly false - whoever owns, not produces, the apple may do what they want with it. And in anarcho-capitalism one of the valid choices includes not paying the producers of the apple anything at all.

"When men affect the scarcity with their actions the word loses it's meaning in this context."
This is why economics has the concept of opportunity cost. Men always forgo opportunities for greater production, and in so doing produce something else. It would not be very wise to harvest all the world's oil at once, not least due to the supply shock, but also because we kinda need production for food and stuff. The meaning of scarcity in context is that we don't have enough of everything to satisfy all our wants.

"When you agree to work *for* someone the wage you agree to is the productivity you consent to."
You make it sound like getting a job is a free choice. What about people who can't leave a job because they don't have another one, nor do they have many savings, for example? Also, why do you say there is a relationship between wage and productivity? Does a CEO really work many thousands of times more productively than a cleaner?

"If you could code this website by yourself why would you agree to be paid by a stranger on the street only a portion of what that work is worth?"
For example, because I need the money to survive? I mean, in my specific case that's not so much of a problem as I've got decent job security from local work and such, but there's a lot of developers in India or Nigeria who have to bid their prices down for exactly this reason.

"Regardless of your evaluations in any case, you must get the others you work with (even your employee) to agree or else you are forcing your will onto them."
Again you're ignoring the natural power imbalance in these negotiations. Companies find selection harder than recruitment today. If you don't accept that's not a huge loss for the company - but it's a huge loss for you. Thus companies can often force some pretty crazy terms into employment contracts. And that's barely the start of it.

"You agree to certain wage or a certain dividend, and that is the evaluation of your productivity you agree to. If it is inaccurate do not agree to it."
That's not how labor prices work. Wages are set by supply and demand. It is irrelevant how much the work is worth in wealth creation terms, only how many people are willing to work and how many vacancies there are to be filled.

"If you must agree in order to feed yourself do not blame the employer or the market."
I explicitly blame the system of capitalism as a whole for that. At every turn capitalism assumes people have free choice, when in fact this is rarely the case. People rely on the capitalist system and are thus forced to do things that you frame as agreements. People don't "consent" to offers they cannot refuse - that's not how law works. Everything in capitalism is coercion of the weak.

"They do not have a duty to offer you what you call a fair option; and if they did, then why don't you have a duty to offer the employee what they think is a fair option?"
Because I as an employer make a financial gain if the offer is unfair?

"I am pro liberty and I believe capitalism is the inevitable result of any consistent application of liberty to law"
I'm pro liberty too, but I have a different understanding of liberty I think. Liberty is not a right, like freedom of speech implies a right to speak, or freedom of association implies a right to associate. Liberty is a protection. Liberty means a protection from others (as groups or individuals) to govern your behavior. So for example, if you had to work in a hazardous mine every day to earn your living, the lack of freedom from those hazards or from the monopolistic grasp on your labor by the employer are both violations of liberty, because they govern your behavior. If you could freely choose your line of work and were relatively safe at work, then that society would be liberal.

"If you give them the right to speak or to trade; you cannot deny the macroscopic structures that the sum of such exercises produce."
I don't know if that's an inevitable consequence. Depends if you are conflating trade with free trade here.

"You were, every time you traded your product; including your time and skills."
No, that only helps divide the pie for the rest of the market. The rest of the market in turn served me a divided pie.

"The alternative is being just another upright ape with a stomach to fill minus Eden to forage in."
Not really an alternative. If I held a gun to your head and said I would kill you if you don't sign this contract, is the contract valid? No. But if I hold starvation to you, you say the contract is valid? Why?

"I do not claim to defend the cruelty of nature or say it is just, what I find problematic is when people; unwilling to admit this nature try to blame their brother for not being there to shield them from reality."
No - humans create inequality even in capitalism by failing to exercise compassion and generosity. It need not be reality that even a single person in this world dies hungry - that is a choice the elite of this world have made.

"Who shields the shield?"
Exactly. This is why we need democratic oversight over the economic elite, where votes are counted in popular support among people, not dollar signs.

"In the context of trades you participated in, you and the other party WERE the market."
I purchased an apple today (no surprises where my analogy comes from lol). Are you saying that the price of this apple was wholly determined by me and the other party, in this case the supermarket? I can assure you I have never dealt in apple prices and the supermarket couldn't care less what one individual consumer decides when determining their overall pricing strategy.

"You choose to buy everything you bought. You choose to sell everything you sold."
Can you prove this?

"Were your choices irrational?"
I've absolutely made irrational choices. The paper I did at university on the marketing principles of buyer behavior was a case study on how to coax people into buying stuff they don't really rationally need or even want, for example by creating wants for them.

"Of course men cannot set their own salary's unilaterally. It is a trade. They need the consent of all parties."
And you believe that if not all parties consent to something fair, there is no problem?

"Morally and practically that is false, they made the food in proportion to their ability to buy it."
So you believe every person on this earth personally made their food? The rich for the rich, and the poor for the poor? No, the poor make food for the rich and often end up being then forced off their land to starve if it so conveniences the rich. Not everywhere has legal protections as strong as where you and I live.

"Energy is not a scarce resource, it is a produced resource."
Nothing is a scarce resource by that logic.

"Some of the greatest civilizations have been in deserts while people have lived only slightly beyond the stone age in lush jungles for a hundred thousand years."
So basically you're saying the jungle people were lazy?

"How can you explain that with scarcity of natural resources?"
First of all, initially there was a huge population decline. Europeans brought disease too, and then forcibly removed the natives from their land. But to your main point, sure, the euros had better tech. Natural resources were still scarce, and the level of technology is also scarce. We don't have tech to satisfy our every desire. So the law of scarcity was never violated. Just because some finished goods because less scarce does not mean that natural resources did not continue to constrain scarcity. Settler colonies did in fact starve you know.

"We can make value where nature did not do it for us. Why do some modern economist seem confused on that issue?"
I think you misunderstood my point. There's only so much fertile land, so even with the development of new technology, new forms of resource scarcity are also developed. Atomic power gave rise to uranium scarcity etc etc.

"The reason it is given to the obese instead of the starving is because the obese produced it and the starving didn't."
Not true. In the middle ages many rich kings ate their fill while peasants starved, yet peasants did all the hard work producing the food. The same is true in many places today that still operate under a feudal system. Many peoples wish to be able to grow their own food but are not allowed to by law or by lack of capital etc.

"If you have never wanted to keep the product of your effort, even when someone might say you don't need it as much as they do; then maybe you can pass judgement."
So you're saying every fat person has earned the right to be fat? The fact you call this a sin strongly implies a problem.

"I know the starving man's crops did not fail because somewhere a rich man's crops did well."
Not really. All the crops (usually) did well and there was enough to feed everybody. One person just took much more than he needed. It's my whole 2 apples scenario in action. The worst part is that usually the fat people of the world aren't even the particularly successful farmers.

"If someone is not getting enough to eat, either we need to make them richer; or we need to make food cheaper; I'd prefer a combination of the two."
Or, you know, we could stop the rich folks from hogging all the food. Neither of these actually solve the root cause of the problem and only allow the more middle class to become fatter too. The poor stay at the bottom.

"Charity is not an entitlement, it is a gift and a recognition of the value of life. It cannot be extorted or stolen and remain virtuous."
So these people are not entitled to life?

"It turns the starving man from a dignified being who through no fault of their own needs help into a parasite."
I rather think of the rich as parasites on the labor of the poor. Very rarely do wealthy people actually work, as they can make money off investments, thereby fitting the exact definition of a parasite.

"It turns the compassionate social minded into thieves."
Implying one can't be both? Because really all government spending at all could be twisted to meet this criteria.

"Justice comes before empathy as facts must precede one's reaction to them."
This is exactly why I ground my case on economic injustice.

"That's even more ridiculous than Solaria."
I think I may have misinterpreted something you said earlier. Regardless taking non-reactive metals out of the soil is not something to be done lightly because it makes the soil more reactive and less stable. Oh, and it destroys ecosystems and homes and livelihoods and stuff.

"If that was the case, a significant portion of Australia's GDP would be made up of leasing mining rights to property."
No because the mining companies have already seized ownership of vast swathes of desert speculated on many decades ago. There are occasional scandals whenever mines need a new permit though. Sometimes the economy has had some pretty big downturns just because a single mine was destroyed.

"If they would send their own there is a possibility Australia is 'cheating'. If they wouldn't, that means Australia is not charging more than the value they produce, the value is the mining."
No question about it, they'd send their companies. Same with most mining countries around the world. It's a kind of new colonialism.

"A peculiarity of the times nothing more."
No, I think people have always been concerned with inequality. See my current debate on the fall of Rome, for instance.

"Have you also somehow isolated the effects of wealthy people from different countries on Mali or have you just noted that things are worse than they used to be there?"
The why it's the way it is, is irrelevant. All I'm trying to show is that some people are poorer today relative to another time and place. Mostly I just had a problem with how you phrased it as an absolute.

"Accidents count, but you must also count the lives and stuff gained or saved by the technology too."
Very well. Name me a life gained by hydroelectric power, and I'll name you 10 taken.

"I don't consider water privatization technology."
Really? Why not?

"What in what I said made you think an inheritance tax was implied?"
Because you're saying jealousy (and I take it you think tax is more or less equivalent to greed) can be validated by impropriety (such as when somebody has taken anything that isn't theirs by production). You added a stipulation that you are OK with charity though in your last post - this wasn't clear before. Kinda hard to get what you do believe in.

"Then you may want to check up on a little place called the USSR."
They too lived better than they did before, on average, over time. Russia under the czars was no paradise.

"In all these cases economic policy halted, slowed to a crawl, or even reversed progress in living conditions."
Depends on how you measure it. I would say Vietnam today is better off than 100 years ago.

"Living standards are not distributed they are made. There is no central repository except in the mistaken theories of people who want to think of it as a giant wealth pie that humanity stumbled upon."
You're the one who keeps using the analogy - but seriously, there is a central repository, and that's money. The monetary system is where we primarily store and collect wealth. Only problem is there's more money than there is wealth, of course. Otherwise what do you think money is?

"Is it not true that in looking at the standards of living in the past, you are forgetting that not everyone lived?"
It is true, standards of living in the past were low. But today, in some parts, standards of living are low.

"Even if they are worse off, how have you linked that to economic inequality which does not depend on being worse off than your ancestors but can be achieved by being worse off than your neighbor?"
I'm disproving your link that technology keeps magically making the world better, and that nobody is really poor any more, from one of your previous posts.

"Acknowledging its existence doesn't make it a problem."
Funny how not a lot of poor people would make the argument that there's no problem with having the poor.

admin:

ADreamOfLiberty: Just trying to whittle this discussion down to the most important/relevant points, because it's inflating like a dollar. If there's something I skip that you think was important let me know, I'm not trying to be evasive or anything.

"If you're going condemn inheritance you must also condemn charity for it is the same act."
Charity is given in response to a need. Inheritance is awarded for any number of reasons, often selfish. So I don't see them as being the same. I don't believe charity is always the solution to inequality either. For example, I condemn charity of giving arms to poor countries to ensure some sort of protection from other countries with more arms. The moral case for charity depends on its reasons.

"Without it, not only would the starving people be starving, but they wouldn't have the right to feed themselves."
Having a right to feed yourself does not imply having an absolute right to property. For example, consider a system where everybody could only keep as much of their production as they needed, and the rest was given to those who, because of circumstances they could not control, had no such means of production. That would always be a win win because then nobody would ever go without. Sure some people would get less than under strict capitalism, but that's not a loss for them, because their needs are still satisfied.

"Then being poor has nothing to do with economic inequality."
You missed the "relative lack of scarcity" part. What I mean by this whole definition is, when there is an abundance of goods, and the basic human needs of some are not fulfilled, I'd call them poor.

"the right to seek an apple is meaningless if you can't eat it once you produce it."
I don't think this follows, for example if the right to eat were merely conditional upon non-production (ie if only traded goods could be consumed). I right to want is not really tied to the right to keep in any way. I may want to pay nothing for goods, but that doesn't mean I can keep my money if I buy goods - yet my want of money is not meaningless.

"Therefore either we don't have the right to seek value (and thus do not have liberty) or we have the right to property, so long as we created the value."
Two points. First, are you confusing value with wealth? Because it kind of looks like it. And second, how does this follow from the above? Right to property necessitating a right to seek value - how is that derived from not seeking value being contingent on ability to exploit property? Right to own and right to exploit are not always the same.

"Which by your definition above means they aren't poor since you said "despite lack of scarcity.""
No, I said despite relative lack of scarcity. Meaning, there must be ample goods in the world at large, and yet the poor don't have enough to fulfill their basic needs. If nobody had enough to fulfill their basic needs, nobody would be poor.

"Life requires effort, that fact does not mean you are being forced to work with others and makes others indebted to you."
So you're saying a rich person who has never worked a job in their life should give up their wealth?

"According to the company, he does."
Again, this is not how wages are set. Most jobs are set by supply and demand for labor but a few - often including CEO - are generally set by current or expected performance, and set directly by the company board. The CEO's pay is thus tied to the company as a whole, not his own contribution.

"Anyone who works for that company has agreed to their wage and thus implicitly agreed to the wages of everyone else in the company."
Not true, and I still don't think people agree to their wages - people mostly accept whatever wage people are willing to pay them not because they agree it is a fair wage, but because they have no other choice. Why else would poor people be trading before fair trade? Moreover, doesn't the same implication mean they agree to the wages of everybody not just in the company, but in the system that produced their wage, ie every single other worker in the world? So basically you're saying no wage can be unfair because consent? And third parties can not offer somebody a job at a livable rate and let them die because consent?

"why don't you work to produce what you need to survive; so that you don't have to trade?"
Because most countries in the world could not produce all the items required to survive if they tried without trade. Even in better off countries - what's a beggar in China to do? If you don't own land you can't grow crops.

"The worst capitalism can do to you is not give you food. You will die without food and capitalism did not create that fact, thus your blame is misplaced."
If capitalism is supposed to create liberty, which seems to be your view - death is the ultimate end to liberty. Always been strange to me how libertarians can oppose war waged with guns but be so perfectly accepting of war waged with corporate contracts. When death is the outcome of so-called liberty, it is not liberty, it is the end of liberty. The worst capitalism can do is what management theorists call corporate slavery. Just like how in olden times slaves would either work or be killed, companies today do exactly the same thing with their workers. Workers either work... or die. There is no liberty in that.

"That does not follow."
Yes it does. If a company doesn't pay a worker as much money, then the company keeps more profit for itself. So companies have a financial incentive to bid down wages. This is why the demand curve for labor is in the shape that it is.

"It is a right to do anything you wish so long as you don't interfere with the self-determination of others in the process."
I must disagree with you, but even if that were true - how does allowing your neighbor to die NOT interfere with their self determination? Surely the positive act of withholding food from them removes their self-determination?

"Now what if 'others' are the poor, and the behavior they are trying to govern, is how much of your own harvest you eat?"
Now you're talking about personal liberty, not liberty as a whole. Personal liberty is just an individual expression of something everybody should be equally entitled to. Therefore if somebody else is being denied liberty, then your personal liberty is meaningless unless you give them liberty. I know a libertarian, such as I gather you are, would not accept that premise of equal entitlements to liberty, in favor of an individual rights analysis. At that, we may have reached an economic impasse - I see your position as being ethically and philosophically problematic, however. If nothing else, capitalism should have equality of opportunity for everybody.

"What is truly different in that then preventing two people from praying together?"
Because your prayer does not limit the ability of somebody else to pray. Your consumption does limit the ability of somebody else to consume.

"You can, except when that choice would compel others to surrender their self-determination."
And you don't believe that a strong possibility of death is a strong possibility of surrendering self-determination? That companies should do everything in their power to protect the ongoing liberty of their workers?

"But you don't hold starvation to me, nature does."
So when I'm threatening death you blame me, but when the system threatens death I'm not allowed to blame the system. Nature is a gun by another name. Why is that being held to a different standard? Your argument is like NAZIs defending action T4, the precursor to the Holocaust - "Well, they freely CHOSE to walk into the gas chamber - we weren't threatening them at all, blame them for being unable to breathe poisonous gases once they offered their 'consent'."

"A right to trade is free trade, as you noted above a right to associate is free association."
Free trade, by its common meaning, is free of regulations. It's not a free right to trade, because that would imply regulations only stifle the right to trade, and nothing else impacts on one's ability to trade.

"Creation by inaction? This is sounding like one of my catechism lessons. Does a rock also create inequality since it is perfectly inactive?"
A rock doesn't have possessions so it can't create inequality. If rich people were instead wealthy rocks and never did anything, then yes, they would create inequality.

"by definition if you did not choose to buy something yet it was given to you and your money taken; you did not buy it. You were stolen from."
I'm not sure I understand how you define "buy" though. Would you also say that every purchase must be a choice 'by definition'?

"So you should have been prevented from making those choices?"
Whenever a choice would remove my rights to liberty, that choice should be illegal.

"if all parties consent there is no right to prevent it."
Would you extend that right, say, to a suicide pact? If so, how would you prove there was consent?

"No, they made the value equivalent of their food."
So you're saying that equal prices implies equal value?

"Last I checked it was governments that were given the legal privilege of using force, not the rich."
Obviously depends how you define force. If you have more resources, you can harass people into giving up their property. If worst comes to worst, smoke out the house by building a huge smog-factory next door. Lawyers can then make the "they had the free choice to not sell even if that will mean their death" argument that you seem to support.

"Platinum is scarce"
By that logic it isn't - we just haven't mined all the platinum in the universe yet.

"Their philosophy (or lack thereof) held them back."
So you're saying jungle people hated capitalism and liberty?

"production constrains quality of life more than natural resources, which are found well in excess of production in almost all cases."
So again, you're making the argument most poor people chose not to work despite opportunities being available for them. Correct?

"We have not come close to using it all."
I should probably have said usable. Property disputes were pretty common in ancient times if the code of Hammurabi is anything to go by. People don't squabble over who owns what if everybody who doesn't own something can just claim some more.

"Especially (as if we should expect otherwise) in those places where people are starving."
Like where are you thinking?

"if there are less of them; the problem is being solved."
So by killing the poor we solve the problem of poverty?

"Strictly speaking they have a right to not be killed by moral beings, but that is all."
I don't believe life and liberty need to be at odds. Without a right to life there can in fact be no right to liberty, since liberty is contingent upon life.

"It's something that doesn't do something for the food provider and yet gets fed."
So you're saying the poor do nothing for society?

"That is not 'work' but it is a value, and it is a productive contribution."
This is why you need to talk less in absolutes. When you say stuff like - money is earned through labor - I can't help but get the impression that you're missing at least 80% of the modern economy.

"the thieving compassionate and social minded belong in prison"
So why is the law of property sacred above the law of humanity in your conception of the principle of liberty?

"If you are referring to taxation, yes it is theft."
But you also say you believe in law to protect property rights. How will it be enforced without money?

"Define and objectively condemn economic injustice please."
I would define economic injustice as a violation of Fayol's principle of fair pay for fair work. Injustice generally is a violation of the principle of fairness. If you condemn property injustice, you must condemn economic injustice, because the principle is exactly the same and cannot be distinguished.

"Now I feel justified in desiring the bike, now I can try to take it without thinking of myself as a petty thief."
But if Bob didn't consent, then by your logic that's theft. Or are you considering cultural capital here?

"But did they live better than everyone else with the same technology? No. Their economic policy was shown to be regressive."
That's not what regressive means, and besides, the poor in Russia lived much better than the poor in America. Just look at the fallout when the Berlin wall fell and all the protests sprang up from people who didn't understand why they didn't have jobs any more. Everybody worked, everyone got paid.

"Money represents wealth, there can't be more than there is wealth because one is a derivative unit."
That's not true. One can print money a lot easier than one can print wealth. Most of the world's money today is based on fractional reserve banking.

"Money is a medium of exchange nothing more."
We are given money as a sort of ticket for giving up pies we bake, and then use our money to get other pies to eat. When we gave up our pie, we still have that pie's wealth, just converted into money. The money itself acts as a repository for the value of the pie. Our wallets are the central place where we collect and store everything we produce.

"Almost as funny as how not a lot of rich people would make the argument that there's no problem with stealing from the rich."
Well actually... Bill Gates... Warren Buffet... you know, quite a large proportion of very rich people are in favor of higher taxes.

admin: "just trying to whittle this discussion down to the most important/relevant points, because it's inflating like a dollar. If there's something I skip that you think was important let me know, I'm not trying to be evasive or anything." - admin

If we're doing that, then it seems like we have two interrelated but independent threads here.

1. I am disconnecting economic inequality (simply defined as a steady state of some people have a lot more wealth than other people) with the proposition of suffering due to lack of basic needs.

2. I am supporting free trade and capitalism primarily via an appeal to liberty. I found your definition of liberty sufficient, and I believe if we apply it consistently to law you will see that capitalism is the only practically possible end state.

"Charity is given in response to a need. Inheritance is awarded for any number of reasons, often selfish. So I don't see them as being the same." - admin

In terms of the rights of the giver they are the same. If you have a right to do something (like give away your own money) then you can give it to anyone. If you can't it's not a right, but a privileged. Ultimately to be interpreted like this:

'We/I would just take your money and do what we want with it, but we'll/I'll let you spend it in those ways I approve so you can feel better about yourself.'

"I don't believe charity is always the solution to inequality either." - admin

It's not a solution, it's not meant to be a solution; economic equality is not a problem which needs to be solved.

Charity is a solution (though not guaranteed) solution to people lacking basic needs.

"Having a right to feed yourself does not imply having an absolute right to property. For example, consider a system where everybody could only keep as much of their production as they needed, and the rest was given to those who, because of circumstances they could not control, had no such means of production." - admin

You are assuming the morals are arbitrary, that you can engineer a more 'perfect' system but you can't. Morals are not a means to an end. They are not there to help us attain value. They are the identification and abstraction of values.

You said the implicit contract where by the starving respect the rights of the well fed is problematic. The choice is not between this morality or that morality but correct morality or no morality.

You have started with the moral outcome you wish to reach and then worked your way back.

The moral outcome you want is this:

[ People deserve to be fed, and if they're not fed someone did something wrong. ]

That is the nature of a moral principle, it does not identify mere facts; it assigns and identifies value. It does not say "this exists and this doesn't", but "if this exists it is good or evil." Furthermore it does not identify the unavoidable goods and evils of chance or accident, it only identifies that good and evil which follows as result of conscious action or inaction.

The problem arises when someone thinks they can go backwards, start with an unsupported moral outcome and then determine what morality best fits the bill.

Sure the poor starving might like your moral proclamation, but something is not right because it is proclaimed so. If someone else decides to start from their own unsupported moral outcome and work backward they will pick a different morality.

Suppose they want a life better than what you would define as their own needs? To them your system is lose lose, even if they work enough to produce in excess of those needs you defined there will always be someone out there to use the profit. Their only hope is that you raise the definition of need, but that of course presupposes that no one may have a better life than any other human in the universe without committing an evil.

Now your premise is 'problematic' to them. They reject it, since both your moral systems are arbitrary there is nowhere from which to see who is right. Morality is out the door, and you're just two groups in conflict; the final arbiter being war.

That is what I meant by 'the only chance for a win win.' If they would rather die trying to kill people of differing moral opinion than die of starvation, there are certainly people on other sides who share the sentiment. I hope and know there is something better in us than that. That is why I firmly and proudly denounce and reject any notion that reduces morality to a paltry mask for the concept "might makes right."

"You missed the "relative lack of scarcity" part. What I mean by this whole definition is, when there is an abundance of goods, and the basic human needs of some are not fulfilled, I'd call them poor." - admin

I'll put it more precisely: Your definition of poor necessitates economic inequality but economic inequality does not necessitate your definition of the poor.

Even if I accept your definition, and accept that poverty is a problem; that does not mean I need to consider economic inequality in of itself a problem.

"I don't think this follows, for example if the right to eat were merely conditional upon non-production (ie if only traded goods could be consumed). I right to want is not really tied to the right to keep in any way. I may want to pay nothing for goods, but that doesn't mean I can keep my money if I buy goods - yet my want of money is not meaningless." - admin

1. Traded does not equal non-produced.
2. Wanting something is not a right to something.

To exploit natural resources implies the possession of intermediate stages of exploitation, those intermediate stages are property. Everything from the first utilization to the final satisfaction or consumption can be considered part of the process of exploitation; interference thereof constituting the interference with the liberty of another.

You may want to own land, but nothing you want can make that land more yours. If someone else comes along and decides to use the land as well you cannot stop them without violating their liberty. However if you start using a stick to make a fire, and they take the wood pile you are trying to light; have they not interfered with you?

Either they can take the wood pile, there is no property; and your right to start a fire without interference is meaningless if such protection only extends to the operation of your limbs; or the wood pile became your property by virtue of being actively used in production or being itself the product of production (such as the completed fire).

"Two points. First, are you confusing value with wealth?"

No, all wealth is valued; not every value is wealth.

"No, I said despite relative lack of scarcity. Meaning, there must be ample goods in the world at large, and yet the poor don't have enough to fulfill their basic needs. If nobody had enough to fulfill their basic needs, nobody would be poor." - admin

When defining scarcity you said wants not needs. The rich do not have enough of everything to satisfy all their wants. Therefore there is a global scarcity, and as such not a general lack of scarcity.

"So you're saying a rich person who has never worked a job in their life should give up their wealth?" - admin

No. If they have never produced anything they are living by the effort of others. The law holds, and they are not morally compelled to give up anything unless they were not given it freely.

"Again, this is not how wages are set." - admin

I am not talking about how people decide on them, there are no doubt a thousand and one ways to do so. I am talking about the moral interpretation of the wage because there is no moral room for "I know I agreed to be paid X but I secretly wanted X + Y so now you owe me after the fact."

"The CEO's pay is thus tied to the company as a whole, not his own contribution." - admin

If they aren't tied to his contribution, why hire him? Surely they would have happier employees if they just paid them a cut of the CEO's wage; or (better?) yet just pocketed what they were going to pay him as profit.

Is the position of CEO to you simply a wide spread con being pulled on company owners everywhere?

That is a rhetorical question, a better one would be this. How do you calculate what his own contribution is in terms of production?

I don't actually need an answer. Whatever your way is, that is your means of determining his proper wage.

Now we get to the two important questions:

1. Is it objective?

Let us assume your answer is "yes" in which case your method is part of a larger system of objective price determination.

2. Would you use force to stop two people from trading if they were trading at a price differing from the one predicted as 'fair' or 'just' by your system?

"Not true, and I still don't think people agree to their wages - people mostly accept whatever wage people are willing to pay them not because they agree it is a fair wage, but because they have no other choice." - admin

Agree != accept? They do have a choice, don't take a job. Don't say that is not a 'real choice.' It is a choice, and the company is offering the person a new option and not limiting their natural options.

If there was no company then the person's choices must be limited to just "die." Who is at fault then?

"Moreover, doesn't the same implication mean they agree to the wages of everybody not just in the company, but in the system that produced their wage, ie every single other worker in the world?" - admin

No. I really should have made the example dividends and said they agree the sum of the contributions of everyone else is equal to the whole - theirs, in which case they accept the dividends of everyone else in the company implicitly because theirs is not more or less.

Technically speaking, a typical wage is not a share of the product, but a straight trade. They are buying your time and labor, and they are using that to produce some final good. You do not produce that good anymore than you are producing an apple by purchasing it in a market. (Although I say you have done the moral equivalent of producing that apple) Even if it comes together under your hands those are the company's hands at the moment.

If you were truly producing the good you wouldn't bother with the company or the wages. There is a reason people find places to work and that is because they can't produce things all by themselves. There is value added in what everyone else is doing there, in the components used, in the facility.

There is nothing stopping people from getting those things and producing under the local premise that they are all somehow adding exactly the same value to the end product (i.e. equal per capita dividends). It just seems to be the case that most such attempts fail to compete with companies with those supposedly useless CEOs.

Anyway there is no 'world product' nor any questions of dividends.

"So basically you're saying no wage can be unfair because consent?" - admin

Actually I am saying no wage can be immoral because of consent (though none of this world stuff, because each person consents to their wage or they are by definition slaves being given a pittance and not wage earners). Unfair does not equal immoral to me.

If Jane wants to trade every last book in her library for one marble; that's her right. I don't think its a fair trade but it is a moral trade.

I run into unfair trades daily, originating from large companies and individuals alike.

"Because most countries in the world could not produce all the items required to survive if they tried without trade." - admin

Interesting that you assumed countries, I was referring to individuals. But the principle is the same, so in essence you have admitted that individual production is not always sufficient.

This leads to one of the fundamental truths about trade, it is production increasing. It is not merely a pointless exchange, the net result is profit for both parties because the act itself enhances the production of both parties.

So, having admitted that personal (or national) production is sometimes insufficient, it must be true that people need each other for trade. Even to fulfill basic needs these days. When did that happen? If we cannot live independently, does that give us the right to enslave those we must be dependent on? Will you claim that it is not slavery so long as you take only one you need and no more?

Let me ask the question in a different context. Say I meet a wolf in the woods. She's hunting on her own. We are independent in basic needs. One day I find her with a broken leg on the ground. I can leave her there to die, or take care of her.

Now she is dependent. (at least for a time)

Do I owe her more than I did before? If so, then when did it happen? Was it when I met her, when she broke her leg, or when I first worked to prevent her death?

"If capitalism is supposed to create liberty, which seems to be your view ." - admin

Liberty creates capitalism under real world circumstances. Capitalism is merely compatible along with any other purely voluntary economic system.

"death is the ultimate end to liberty" - admin

True, but the universe is not a moral being. It remains relevant who or what ended or deprived the liberty.

"Always been strange to me how libertarians can oppose war waged with guns but be so perfectly accepting of war waged with corporate contracts. " - admin

Let me explain it to you:

Guns kill people.

Corporate contracts pay them, at worst pay them very little.


Payment is not a cause of death, getting your organs ripped up is.

"When death is the outcome of so-called liberty, it is not liberty, it is the end of liberty." - admin

Death has been the ultimate outcome of every single life known to exist. Has liberty never existed, or are you trying to mix and match 'liberty from men' with 'liberty from physics'?

"Just like how in olden times slaves would either work or be killed, companies today do exactly the same thing with their workers." - admin

Minus the killing part.

"Workers either work... or die. There is no liberty in that." - admin

If the set of choices is [Work, Die] and the company added the choice "Work." Then the choice before or without the company is "Die."

With your interpretation there was no liberty in any case. In your view Adam was born a slave to nature, other men who have been more successful are responsible for finding him some liberty.

You cast it as destroying liberty, but that's not what your examples and scenarios say. You imply liberty is created. The act of destruction which you blame on capitalism or its wealthiest users is in fact an act of non-creation. To you, their success walks hand in hand with their duty to expand the options of their brethren, only to be forgiven if there was no possible way to do so.

The implicit alternative to working is not working. If there are only two options [Work, Die] then the non-work must be death. What you are saying is that a company is doing the same thing as holding a gun to the head of workers if they do not prevent this identity: non-work = death.

When men are responsible for altering reality for other men, there is no liberty... because human life requires human work.

"Yes it does. If a company doesn't pay a worker as much money, then the company keeps more profit for itself." - admin

I asked about duty not profit, and I asked about offering a deal to an employer. If the employer has a duty to offer a deal that the employee thinks is fair, then it would be only fair that the employee has a duty to offer a deal that the employer thinks is fair.

If you are claiming there is an asymmetry in the duty justify it,

"I must disagree with you" - admin

Can you please contrast your definition of liberty and mine you disagreed with. (which was

It is a right to do anything you wish so long as you don't interfere with the self-determination of others in the process.

"how does allowing your neighbor to die NOT interfere with their self determination? Surely the positive act of withholding food from them removes their self-determination?" - admin

Putting "positive act" in front of a negative one does not make it positive.

The difference between a positive and negative act is extremely simple to establish. A positive one would not occur if you did not exist. A negative one would.

What would happen if you did not exist?

You would not give food to your neighbor on account of your non-existence.

It is most certainly a negative act.

"Now you're talking about personal liberty, not liberty as a whole. " - admin

This sounds like a definite precursor to the collectivist fallacy.

"Therefore if somebody else is being denied liberty, then your personal liberty is meaningless unless you give them liberty. I know a libertarian, such as I gather you are, would not accept that premise of equal entitlements to liberty, in favor of an individual rights analysis." - admin

You aren't talking about liberty. Personal liberty is liberty because people are real and collectives are abstractions. Liberty is liberty from the interference of others not liberty from reality, or your body, or God or what not.

A man on a deserted island has liberty, even if he's starving and freezing, and soon to die of a easily cured disease. He has liberty.

You are talking about entitlements, you are talking about a duty to feed to hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty. The opposite of liberty.

You have not been consistent and I am calling you on it. The man on the deserted island, who governs him? What other men do so? Remember the definition of liberty you gave. "Liberty means a protection from others (as groups or individuals) to govern your behavior."

On the desert island there is no one to protect him from. He has liberty, your definition of liberty, yet no one gave it to him. He is not free from reality he is free from interference. He is free from external governance.

You use the term liberty because its a well liked word in western culture (or at least it has been for a couple hundred years); but the concept you have attached it to is completely alien from its traditional political meaning and this fact has been exposed in the way even your own definition comes in conflict with your examples and statements. It is not given, but it can be taken away.

"At that, we may have reached an economic impasse " - admin

No, we've reached a contradiction.You said liberty is not being governed by others, but you also imply that the needs of others must govern a man's actions. A man with a good harvest under the moral scheme you have described is governed by every single hungry person within shipping distance. He does not have liberty.

"I see your position as being ethically and philosophically problematic" - admin

Why? If you want to ignore everything else and just answer that I think it would be on topic.

"Because your prayer does not limit the ability of somebody else to pray. Your consumption does limit the ability of somebody else to consume." - admin

Not unless you assume the metaphysical global stockpile (the 'pie' we aren't supposed to talk about anymore). If they produced it and then they consumed it they haven't limited anything.

To say that you must be thinking they produced it, added it to the global stockpile where presumably others were just about to consume it; and then they took it back thus limiting the consumption.

To apply the same thinking to prayer would be as follows:

I pray, God(s) are about to answer; but then he/she/they offer a "answered prayer" token and put it on a global pile of tokens. Someone else happens to be praying and before they finish pleading they see a token there from my heartfelt prayer. Just as they are about to quit praying and go watch TV after redeeming the token I take the token. Then they complain I limited their praying.

It's ridiculous... in both cases.

"And you don't believe that a strong possibility of death is a strong possibility of surrendering self-determination?" - admin

It is. But not giving someone food is a negative and not to be accurately described as "compelling their starvation".

"That companies should do everything in their power to protect the ongoing liberty of their workers?" - admin

Everyone should do everything in their power to protect liberty of every moral being. But when I say that I mean liberty, not entitlements to positive benefits.

"So when I'm threatening death you blame me, but when the system threatens death I'm not allowed to blame the system." - admin

No, go ahead blame the system. If the law says you need to die for eating cheese it's threatening death. If it says you aren't entitled to cheese because that would make dairy farmers your slave, it is not threatening you with anything it's stopping you from threatening dairy farmers.

"Nature is a gun by another name." - admin

Then blame the wielder of that gun, God if you believe in him, not wealthy people who have the same gun to their head.

"Why is that being held to a different standard?" - admin

Nature is not controlled by moral beings and moral beings cannot be held responsible for its implications.

"Your argument is like NAZIs defending action T4, the precursor to the Holocaust - "Well, they freely CHOSE to walk into the gas chamber - we weren't threatening them at all, blame them for being unable to breathe poisonous gases once they offered their 'consent'." - admin

No it isn't. The Nazis controlled those gas chambers. The victims did not consent because the Nazis were dishonest with them, fraud which is a form of interference.

"If rich people were instead wealthy rocks and never did anything, then yes, they would create inequality." - admin

If a sculptor builds two statues and one is fifty times bigger, did he create the inequality or did the rock? Which of us sounds like T4 defenders again?

"Would you also say that every purchase must be a choice 'by definition'?" - admin

Yes.

"Whenever a choice would remove my rights to liberty, that choice should be illegal." - admin

You are making your own choices illegal to prevent yourself from removing your own liberty...... I have nothing to say because I cannot form a polite version of my thoughts.

"Would you extend that right, say, to a suicide pact?" - admin

Yes

"If so, how would you prove there was consent?" - admin

That is a separate problem. Moral theory is theory. It is enough to say that if something is a certain way it is right or wrong. Proving that was the case can be very complicated or impossible.

"So you're saying that equal prices implies equal value?" - admin

Yes, that is the premise of using currency as an exchange medium.

"Obviously depends how you define force." - admin

Yes I suppose it does. Force is the use of threatening and/or actually perpetrating the violation of rights, OR dishonesty about a trade or when advising someone's judgement; typically to extort a course of action.

"Lawyers can then make the "they had the free choice to not sell even if that will mean their death" argument that you seem to support." - admin

lol, not they couldn't because the death smoke is not natural. It is a positive action that caused it.

"By that logic it isn't - we just haven't mined all the platinum in the universe yet." - admin

I see your point, an excellent example of why the concept of scarcity is completely inadequate for understanding economics. It ignores the concept of production and thus ignores more than half the picture by far.

"So you're saying jungle people hated capitalism and liberty?" - admin

More like they didn't think in those terms. What occupies are daily thoughts is often a function of the culture we are exposed to. It is quite possible to concern oneself with food, clothing, and making your wife and children happy for your entire life without wondering if it would be more efficient to specialize or whether fighting the chief over taking half your fruit is a fight that needs to happen regardless of how much the fruit is worth.

For most of human history, we sat around and did nothing particularly important. It's easy to take civilization for granted now after we have seen it take over the world; but it is something that was invented.

"So again, you're making the argument most poor people chose not to work despite opportunities being available for them. Correct?" - admin

No. The world would be a much simpler (and perhaps happier) place if work implied sufficient production. I am saying that poor people are in possession of great amounts of natural resources and that has not made them rich because natural resource scarcity is not the limiting factor. Production is, in most cases the poor do not have the resources to invest and increase their productivity. That's why they trade their time and effort to people who do. Sure their cut is a lot less than the overall productivity they are involved in, but its still more than they were capable of by themselves. That is the precondition for a trade, and its why trade happens.

"Property disputes were pretty common in ancient times if the code of Hammurabi is anything to go by. People don't squabble over who owns what if everybody who doesn't own something can just claim some more." - admin

They lived in a desert. I am not saying you can just go find land that isn't claimed because people decided (unfortunately) that "I saw it first" is good enough for claiming natural resources. I assure you, there is far more fertile farmland available than is being used. Claimed or not.

"Like where are you thinking?"

some places in: Central Africa, South America, South East Asia. Lets say Mali since you are familiar with that country.

"So by killing the poor we solve the problem of poverty?" - admin

That's why morality is always a factor.

"I don't believe life and liberty need to be at odds." - admin

They aren't, but neither do they guarantee each other.

"Without a right to life there can in fact be no right to liberty, since liberty is contingent upon life." - admin

If a right to life is a right to be fed, there can be no liberty; since liberty is the right to feed or not depending on your choice.

"So you're saying the poor do nothing for society?" - admin

I couldn't care less about society. It is an abstraction, and not a feeder of people by any stretch of the imagination.

Are you saying the rich and obese do nothing for farmers?

"This is why you need to talk less in absolutes. When you say stuff like - money is earned through labor - I can't help but get the impression that you're missing at least 80% of the modern economy." - admin

All truth is absolute, I think you mean universal. 'money is earned through labor' is not a universal. 'all money is earned through labor' is.

In my country most work is a combination of mental and physical. People who don't work at all are few and far between.

"So why is the law of property sacred above the law of humanity in your conception of the principle of liberty?" - admin

The law of humanity sounds like an anti-concept to me. We are human, such cannot be magically condensed into a moral principle. Criminals deserve to be locked up for doing wrong, nobodies evil all the time nor usually corrupt in their motivations; and that is not a requirement.

"But if Bob didn't consent, then by your logic that's theft." -admin

yes.... I was explaining why people would want to imagine that they have been cheated.

"Or are you considering cultural capital here?" - admin

cultural capital?

"That's not what regressive means, and besides, the poor in Russia lived much better than the poor in America." - admin

With your definition of poor, that could be because Russia as a whole was poor.

"That's not true. One can print money a lot easier than one can print wealth. Most of the world's money today is based on fractional reserve banking." - admin

Having what to do with the truth value of my statement?

"We are given money as a sort of ticket for giving up pies we bake, and then use our money to get other pies to eat. When we gave up our pie, we still have that pie's wealth, just converted into money. The money itself acts as a repository for the value of the pie. Our wallets are the central place where we collect and store everything we produce." - admin

Sounds about right, but since the money has no value in of itself it is a medium of exchange. It has value only because it represents a debt which you can cache in for something intrinsically valuable to you.

"Well actually... Bill Gates... Warren Buffet... you know, quite a large proportion of very rich people are in favor of higher taxes." - admin

If they're all so willing to give why aren't they feeding the world as you say they can?