NationStates Jolt Archive

I often hear it said by capitalists that socialism is theft.

I often hear it said by socialists that capitalism is theft!

Make your cases; convince me.

Socialism is the anti-theft movement.

(I couldn't think of a quote by a right-wing leader.)

Well, I'm not going to get too involved with this, but in a socialist society, the government owns my time and my produce. That, in essense, is theft.

Feel free to quote me in your above post.

Well, I think the basic argument against individual ownership is the idea that an item can be used by anybody, but is restricted in it's use by it being the private property of an individual. An entire system of people produced an object, so it may be unfair to take it for your own (essentially a "theft" of sorts).

I think most would say that since such a high percentage of money is taken by taxes in a socialist society, and not for the benefit of yourself, but to benefit the government and others instead, Socialism is a major theft of a large percentage of one's wages. The idea of working as a doctor or someone making a great deal of money, but not getting the fruit of your own labor, would to me seem as theft.

And capitalism is theft because.

It's not the 'free' system people say it is. People get far better starts than others. GWB for example has effectively 'stolen' the money and power by not having to fight his way up for it.

It's a protection racket. Pure and simple, large countries/corporations bully the small ones out.

The only thing a person can claim natural ownership of is his or her body. The only economic value a person's body has is its labor. One begins to support oneself by exchanging labor for capital in the form of wages on the marketplace. The value of your labor is determined at the level of utility it provides to society by economic pressures.

So a person gains wealth by trading in the economic value of their body on the marketplace. The provide a utility to society, and society compensates them with a fair value. That means that wealth is a direct result from labor expenditure, so, any attempt at wealth redistribution is also a means of labor redistribution. Labor redistribution robs the individual of the only natural value that he or she can own.

Of course another reason capitalism could be theft is when someone has a lot of money, but never earned it. For example the largest source of fortune for billionaires is inheritence. Is sitting on money earning it? Is it even physically possible to "earn" millions and billions of dollars? If bill gates had to actually earn his money, it would take tens of thousands of years going at the rate that most others earn money for work. Especially considering that his products weren't particularly special...

And capitalism is theft because.

It's not the 'free' system people say it is. People get far better starts than others. GWB for example has effectively 'stolen' the money and power by not having to fight his way up for it.

It's a protection racket. Pure and simple, large countries/corporations bully the small ones out.

You have to explain why someone who starts with an advantage due to inherited wealth is stealing from someone who is disadvantaged when no interaction actually occurs.

Of course another reason capitalism could be theft is when someone has a lot of money, but never earned it. For example the largest source of fortune for billionaires is inheritence. Is sitting on money earning it? Is it even physically possible to "earn" millions and billions of dollars? If bill gates had to actually earn his money, it would take tens of thousands of years going at the rate that most others earn money for work. Especially considering that his products weren't particularly special...

Microsoft has offered some of the greatest utility to American society throughout its history.

The last time I checked, no one was using Microsoft products because they had a gun held to their head, or even because they would starve if they didn't. Face it, Microsoft and Bill Gates made their billions by offering the individuals in our society a utility that made their lives easier.

"You have to explain why someone who starts with an advantage due to inherited wealth is stealing from someone who is disadvantaged when no interaction actually occurs."

Because as you stated, only labor value can be owned. What happens when someone recieves wealth without giving up the same labor value? The wealth doesn't come from nowhere; it is a collection of labor value derived from the people in the system.

I often hear it said by capitalists that socialism is theft.

I often hear it said by socialists that capitalism is theft!

Make your cases; convince me.



(I couldn't think of a quote by a right-wing leader.)
I would, but I just can't seem to care either way. :fluffle:

Put simply, each person, were it equal would have a fair shot at riches and fame.

As it stands, you are far likelier to get them by accident of birth. If nothing else it's theft of an ideal, the way I see it it is also theft of a chance. If GWB or Paris Hilton started in the same approximate place as me they would have to work for their money. That's money that could have gone to a million other people who have worked their asses off but because they weren't priveliged they will never see it.

EDIT. Socialist Autonomia did this better.

An entire system of people produced an object, so it may be unfair to take it for your own (essentially a "theft" of sorts).
That's not theft, as long as the new owner pays for the object. Bill Gates is not a thief either, for the reasons VO explained. You'll have to do better than this, SA.

Microsoft has offered some of the greatest utility to American society throughout its history.

The last time I checked, no one was using Microsoft products because they had a gun held to their head, or even because they would starve if they didn't. Face it, Microsoft and Bill Gates made their billions by offering the individuals in our society a utility that made their lives easier.

But did Bill work the requisite amount to earn that money? No. They weren't even original ideas. They were merely ideas applied in a way that created a monopoly.

Do you use your life energy to do work? Life energy in this case is a combination of time, effort, etc. that results in fatigue, and may or may not result in injury and death?

YEs, you do.

Does a stranger, by dint of merely existing, have a right to suck that life energy away because he or she doesn't want to spend theirs working?

Government, at its base, is Force. That is, it uses armed force to extract a portion of that life energy in the form of taxes.

Every law, every tax, is based on the threat of violence. In most cases, the Threat is coupled with the provision of a service-usually creating a less volatile environment in which to live.

Can we agree on these fundamentals?

Okay, now... You work. You spend life energy to obtain money to buy things. Your wages represent your time+energy multiplied by the Demand for what you do. (ie someone is willing to pay you x amount for y work, which uses up z amount of your life.)

Is it theft, then, to use the threat of violence, to take n amount of money and transfer it to a total stranger for no work?

If a non-government employed the same tactics, to the same outcome, it would be termed "Organized Crime" or "Racketeering", in particular, it would be "Extortion".

Socialism is theft. It's taking the product of work, and redistributing it without the prior consent of the worker, for benefit of non-workers.

Note the "Prior Consent" portion carefully. If I contribute to, say, a Charity (let's use the United Way), that's me being generous, I'm contributing the product of my life-energy to help others voluntarily.

If, on the other hand, I'm taxed (Extortion) an additional 5% of my income so that someone else can help others by contributing 4% to Amnesty International, it is a contribution that is not voluntary, and taken without consent. I may not want to contribute to AI, I may want to have my donations go somewhere else, or even (gasp!) not want to be generous at all.

Under Capitalism, I may choose. Under Socialism, I do not get to choose, unless I am one of the top men in Government.


None of this is "Intent", it's all "Outcome".

There are some services that the Government does that are legitimate, these are determined by economy of scale, and utility to the majority of the population. Roads, Armed forces for Defense, Basic Law and Law enforcement (Police, courts, jails...), these give fair value for the money extracted.

Wealth-Transfer, whether in the form of subsidies for business, or direct-transfer payments to non-productive elements (Welfare, SSI for Drug addicts, etc.) do not give fair value, the nicest thing that can really be said about it, is that these programmes serve as efficient vote-buying mechanisms-but the exchange is one where the Politician extorts life from productive people to buy the votes of unproductive people-being generous with other people's money.

Socialism is theft.

You have to explain why someone who starts with an advantage due to inherited wealth is stealing from someone who is disadvantaged when no interaction actually occurs.
The right wing favours policies which disproportionally benefit large corporations and the wealthy. It's not theft because they started with more money, it's theft because they get more than their fair share just for having more, so they are in essence skimming money off of everyone else's share.

At least I think that's the argument most socialists have in mind - personally I don't really buy it. I believe in socialism because with the surplus of wealth we have nowadays I think our country would be a better place if everyone could rely on having a minimum standard of living, and I don't see why we shouldn't do what we can to help those who need help.

But did Bill work the requisite amount to earn that money? No. They weren't even original ideas. They were merely ideas applied in a way that created a monopoly.


Wow, do I disagree. Back in the early days of the PC it was equal opportunity programming, developing and marketing. You cannot fault the guy who figured out how to do it best. And by the way, you all realize that Bill Gates is one of the most philanthropic million/billion-aires ever.

Because as you stated, only labor value can be owned. What happens when someone recieves wealth without giving up the same labor value? The wealth doesn't come from nowhere; it is a collection of labor value derived from the people in the system.

Inheritance is not the right of the person receiving it, it is the right of the person handing it down. The individual gained his wealth through an exchange of labor, then because of his right to the fruits of his own labor, handed it down to the recipient of the inheritance.

Of course another reason capitalism could be theft is when someone has a lot of money, but never earned it. For example the largest source of fortune for billionaires is inheritence. Is sitting on money earning it? Is it even physically possible to "earn" millions and billions of dollars? If bill gates had to actually earn his money, it would take tens of thousands of years going at the rate that most others earn money for work. Especially considering that his products weren't particularly special...

So, you think a person should not be able to pass on the benefit of their work to their progeny? That we should behave like Reptiles, and let our own offspring fend-or-starve with no assistance, is that it?

And you think this is Fair and Just???

Man, I feel sorry for your kids. At its base, every fortune is based on someone's work, and the value placed upon it. Inheritance is a Legacy of your family's work. You really, really can't take it with you when you go-you can only pass it on to the next generation. What you propose is, effectively, graverobbing. A man spends his life making a Farm, for instance, and under your system, that farm doesn't go where he wants it to when he dies, it goes to some stranger, in order to "Keep things fair".

But did Bill work the requisite amount to earn that money? No. They weren't even original ideas. They were merely ideas applied in a way that created a monopoly.

The classic misunderstanding of labor = physical work.

Labor does not equal physical work alone, it is the measure of utility that you can provide to society. Bill Gates puts in no more work than many people that are far less wealthy than him. However, he has expertise and an awareness of what is society can utilize that makes his labor hours much more valuable to society.

Does a billionaire's wealth adhere to this equation? They obviously didn't expend the same rate of work to get their wealth. Say a miner works 9 hours to get his $10 per hour. 10x9=$90. Say they do this 300 days a year. $90x300=$27,000.

The head of a multinational automobile corporation does the same, but earns $27,000,000. Where does the extra money come from? The miner produced the metals needed to make the car whereas the CEO directed how the company would make the cars. Both are necessary to produce the car. But one gets 1000 times more wealth. How does he attain the wealth? By controlling the rate at which he receives wealth.

It's essentially as if the miner uses a dollar to buy a soda, but the CEO gets his usual soda, plus 999 extra, free sodas. The wealth doesn't come from nowhere, because real value never can. It comes by lowering the proportional value of the miner's labour.

Taxes would merely be redistributing what was never the CEO's to the people he stole from by lowering their rate at which labour is worth.

Here Here!!!

Every communist/socialist has tried to attack the capitalist position, and the capitalists have resorted to defending their own position.

I will switch the tables.

The socialist idea that capitalism is theft revolves around the theory of exploitation, so can any of the socialists/capitalists provide any sort of evidence for exploitation in economic terms or mathematics, or are you just blindly following the faulty 150 year old concepts of a man with minimal formal economic schooling?

The classic misunderstanding of labor = physical work.

Labor does not equal physical work alone, it is the measure of utility that you can provide to society. Bill Gates puts in no more work than many people that are far less wealthy than him. However, he has expertise and an awareness of what is society can utilize that makes his labor hours much more valuable to society.


No No, I mean ditto Vittos!

Does a billionaire's wealth adhere to this equation? They obviously didn't expend the same rate of work to get their wealth. Say a miner works 9 hours to get his $10 per hour. 10x9=$90. Say they do this 300 days a year. $90x300=$27,000.

The head of a multinational automobile corporation does the same, but earns $27,000,000. Where does the extra money come from? The miner produced the metals needed to make the car whereas the CEO directed how the company would make the cars. Both are necessary to produce the car. But one gets 1000 times more wealth. How does he attain the wealth? By controlling the rate at which he receives wealth.

It's essentially as if the miner uses a dollar to buy a soda, but the CEO gets his usual soda, plus 999 extra, free sodas. The wealth doesn't come from nowhere, because real value never can. It comes by lowering the proportional value of the miner's labour.

Taxes would merely be redistributing what was never the CEO's to the people he stole from by lowering their rate at which labour is worth.

You need to get off of this track, it is economically wrong.

The miner provided the materials to produce one car. His labor is easily replaceable, and does not provide much utility to society.

The CEO lays out investment and operative plans that are crucial to the construction and distribution of thousands of vehicles. His labor is not easily replaceable, and provides a great utility to society.

Does a billionaire's wealth adhere to this equation? They obviously didn't expend the same rate of work to get their wealth. Say a miner works 9 hours to get his $10 per hour. 10x9=$90. Say they do this 300 days a year. $90x300=$27,000.

The head of a multinational automobile corporation does the same, but earns $27,000,000. Where does the extra money come from? The miner produced the metals needed to make the car whereas the CEO directed how the company would make the cars. Both are necessary to produce the car. But one gets 1000 times more wealth. How does he attain the wealth? By controlling the rate at which he receives wealth.

It's essentially as if the miner uses a dollar to buy a soda, but the CEO gets his usual soda, plus 999 extra, free sodas. The wealth doesn't come from nowhere, because real value never can. It comes by lowering the proportional value of the miner's labour.

Taxes would merely be redistributing what was never the CEO's to the people he stole from by lowering their rate at which labour is worth.

No No No. The CEO is enabling all the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of workers to earn the $1.00 to buy their soda. Therefore, the utility is much greater. It does take special skills to be a CEO. Not everyone can run a business, let alone a multi-billion dollar business; just like not everyone is cut out to be a gymnast or a footballer, etc.

Every communist/socialist has tried to attack the capitalist position, and the capitalists have resorted to defending their own position.

I will switch the tables.

The socialist idea that capitalism is theft revolves around the theory of exploitation, so can any of the socialists/capitalists provide any sort of evidence for exploitation in economic terms or mathematics, or are you just blindly following the faulty 150 year old concepts of a man with minimal formal economic schooling? Well, I live in a sort of semi-socialist country, the UK. Capitalism (the unfettered kind) does NOT allow equal opportunities, and to suggest otherwise is gross complacency - basically saying that those that are poor deserve to be poor.
The argument that inheritance should not be taken away by the government and given to any old Johnny is well put. But equally, surely it's not fair for one guy to start life without ever having to work because he's rich, and another guy not starting with anything?

And this is coming from a white middle class male.

The classic misunderstanding of labor = physical work.

Labor does not equal physical work alone, it is the measure of utility that you can provide to society. Bill Gates puts in no more work than many people that are far less wealthy than him. However, he has expertise and an awareness of what is society can utilize that makes his labor hours much more valuable to society.

So clever marketing and business tactics are worth the same as real labour? How does that benefit the people receiving the service? Do you feel glad that you bought ads and business tricks? That isn't a service.

And yes I realize that Bill Gates is pretty philanthropic, but it isn't really relevant to the discussion. It could be any billionaire.

capitalism is protection of accumulated wealth, which increases income inequality
socialism is redistribuition of accumulated wealth to decrease income inequlaity
you could call socialism, solidarity with the less fortunate
and capitalism as, no solidarity with the less fortunate

What is theft, it is highly based upon the perceptions of the former owner, because who defines what is theft and what is not. Is handing back former stolen goods considered theft (in the case of socialism, or in the eyes of the thief), is putting hindrances on others to accumulate wealth considered theft, or forcing them to play by your rules in e.g. a game of poker, also considered theft (in the case of capitalism, a con man, or a corporate executive)

Well, I live in a sort of semi-socialist country, the UK. Capitalism (the unfettered kind) does NOT allow equal opportunities, and to suggest otherwise is gross complacency - basically saying that those that are poor deserve to be poor.
The argument that inheritance should not be taken away by the government and given to any old Johnny is well put. But equally, surely it's not fair for one guy to start life without ever having to work because he's rich, and another guy not starting with anything?

And this is coming from a white middle class male.

It depends on your idea of fairness. I personally don't feel that enforcing economic equality is fairness, it appears that you do.

No matter, though, as this does not address the original issue of theft. From what you are saying, it would appear that you do not wish to argue that wealth redistribution is not theft, but that it is justifiable theft.

Distributive justice as Pure Metal would like to say.

The problem being, of course, that both viewpoints see the other as theft from their point of view.

From the Socialist viewpoint, individual ownership of /anything/ is theft. How can it not be? It takes the thing owned out of the community, the society, and thereby decreases the wealth of the whole.

From the Capitalist point of view, that's fine. What's not fine is the government or some analogy taking everything away from the individual and pooling it with everything from every other individual, and then spreading it out. They define that as theft.

The Capitalist point of view emphasises possession, and humans like possessing things, which is why Socialism - pure Socialism - doesn't work on the world as we have it. It has to be enforced - things have to be taken by force, and they are seen as stolen. The point of Socialism is that theft cannot exist, because everyone - /everyone/ - voluntarily gives up everything to the Community to be shared equally. The only theft could be from the community, by hording things - that is, by becoming capitalist.

It's all about what comes first. In Capitalism, it's self first, world second. In Socialism, it's the other way 'round. Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. For the moment, whatever people might think about Canada and the UK, we're all - or mostly - living in Capitalist regimes. The world hasn't seen a Socialist country since prehistory. Communist, yes, but not Socialist. Or at least, if it has, I've not heard about it.

So clever marketing and business tactics are worth the same as real labour? How does that benefit the people receiving the service? Do you feel glad that you bought ads and business tricks? That isn't a service.

And yes I realize that Bill Gates is pretty philanthropic, but it isn't really relevant to the discussion. It could be any billionaire.


"Real labor?" How is using your noggin not "real labor?" Examine Isaac Newton's efforts and the benefit to society they provided. So far as I know, Newton never mined or built anything that required physical labor.

Philanthropy is relevant. There is a limited noblesse oblige of the rich in a practical capitalist society, but it certainly is not the place of the government to redistribute the wealth unfettered.

Does a billionaire's wealth adhere to this equation? They obviously didn't expend the same rate of work to get their wealth. Say a miner works 9 hours to get his $10 per hour. 10x9=$90. Say they do this 300 days a year. $90x300=$27,000.

The head of a multinational automobile corporation does the same, but earns $27,000,000. Where does the extra money come from? The miner produced the metals needed to make the car whereas the CEO directed how the company would make the cars. Both are necessary to produce the car. But one gets 1000 times more wealth. How does he attain the wealth? By controlling the rate at which he receives wealth.

It's essentially as if the miner uses a dollar to buy a soda, but the CEO gets his usual soda, plus 999 extra, free sodas. The wealth doesn't come from nowhere, because real value never can. It comes by lowering the proportional value of the miner's labour.

Taxes would merely be redistributing what was never the CEO's to the people he stole from by lowering their rate at which labour is worth.


The market determines what value is placed on the Labour. You can get a thousand miners for every man that's competent to serve as a CEO. Just like you can get ten thousand floorsweepers. Qualifications for white-collar work involve intangibles like temperament, intelligence, education, "Killer instinct", etc.
You're paying a CEO for a combination of prudence and Leadership. Note that many CEO's do the same job that a Head of State does in Government-but instead of having life-and-death power, they are paid well, and instead of being paid based on their organisation's ability to use force and extortion, they're paid based on that organisation's ability to deliver a product to market. (We'll leave out the scandals for now-any system can be abused.)

Further, your example of Bill Gates is an example of success in Entreprenuership, that is, taking the initial risk, having a good product, and marketing it effectively.
The market decides how much Bill collects in royalties. It's not just 'handed' to him by some faceless entity that stole it from a large group of people (that would be Socialism).

So clever marketing and business tactics are worth the same as real labour? How does that benefit the people receiving the service? Do you feel glad that you bought ads and business tricks? That isn't a service.

Many people will be easily fooled in whatever system you choose. The rapid rise of communism and the rapid rise of problems within the communistic efforts shows that.

I have never thought of capitalism or socialism in terms of possession desires. I have always thought of capitalism as being merit-based (for the most part) and socialism as being entitlement-based.

From the Socialist viewpoint, individual ownership of /anything/ is theft. How can it not be? It takes the thing owned out of the community, the society, and thereby decreases the wealth of the whole.

Is the person not a member of society? Does money not get cycled back into the economy? Study your finance and economics and you will learned that private ownership of capital does not take resources out of the community.

The capitalist viewpoint comes down to this. The only wealth we truly have is our labor. Any attempt at economic equality is to take away labor. This is slavery and theft.

One thing I don't understand - if the government taking away wealth and giving it to those who don't have it is theft, surely that makes tax theft to a degree?

Aside from that, the way many socialists see it is that NOT redistributing wealth is not letting someone have a future (as they have little/no money of their own), therefore it is in a way stealing their labour - not letting them get the benefits they deserve through what they put in. No equal opportunities .

One thing I don't understand - if the government taking away wealth and giving it to those who don't have it is theft, surely that makes tax theft to a degree?

Tax is necessary for the operation of government in many instances. However, both the cost and benefit of taxation must be applied fairly and universally. It is a very tricky question.

Is the person not a member of society? Does money not get cycled back into the economy? Study your finance and economics and you will learned that private ownership of capital does not take resources out of the community.

Temporary removal is still removal. And there are people who earn such massive amounts of money that they don't put it back in. They horde it. It's like... oh, say I manage to somehow take half of the fresh water in the world - which isn't owned by anyone, so I'd be perfectly entitled to do that - and store it in a very large tank, which I then use only to power my garden sprinkler. I mean, it'll all go back into the system in time, so that's fine, right? Never mind the fact that in the mean time, millions of people are dying of thirst.

Think that's unreasonable? You'd be right. But imagine, say, one billion people each taking a much smaller fraction of the world's water - or, to bring it back to the point, wealth - and slowly trickling it back out. That leads to drought, or poverty. And it's what we've got at the moment. No doubt there are ways it /could/ work, and give everyone enough wealth to get by on, but it /doesn't/.

(Note that the one billion figure is made up. I have no idea what the proportions of 'rich' to 'poor' are in the world today)

Tax is necessary for the operation of government in many instances. However, both the cost and benefit of taxation must be applied fairly and universally. It is a very tricky question. Surely the country would run better if everyone had an equal opportunity to succeed? Note that it's VERY important not to confuse Socialism with Communism, no matter what the Bolsheviks said. I know some people who wouldn't be studying to become doctors unless they had got government grants for education at good schools.

<<The world hasn't seen a Socialist country since prehistory. Communist, yes, but not Socialist. Or at least, if it has, I've not heard about it.>>

I'm surprised you weren't murdered for this already.

Humanity has seen two communist countries if you are optimistic. None if you aren't. The first was the month or so before Russia was taken over by the Bolsheviks, the other, China before Mao went round the twist.

All so-called 'Communist' countries (China, North Korea, the Warsaw Pact nations) were oppressive socialist dictatorships at best.

Surely the country would run better if everyone had an equal opportunity to succeed? Note that it's VERY important not to confuse Socialism with Communism, no matter what the Bolsheviks said. I know some people who wouldn't be studying to become doctors unless they had got government grants for education at good schools.

I will agree that the higher the level of education in a society, they more the benefit to society, and I do support basic education to be provided for free, and higher education to be provided for by universally available, low interest loans.

But I stand for the greatest freedom, and limiting the rewards that some people can earn in order to limit the risk of some people failing just isn't fair or free.

I would say they think socialism is theft because it involves taxes. *gasp*

I think some consider capitalism theft because some businesses can gouge people for cash when there is an emergency (like store prices going up before a hurricane hits, or private health care costs that can drive you to bankrupcy).

Pure forms of both can be inefficient. It's best to have a responsible mix of the two with socialism in control of the things that directly effect the lives of its citizens and take the burden off industry. Meanwhile industry can provide the fun stuff :)

One thing I don't understand - if the government taking away wealth and giving it to those who don't have it is theft, surely that makes tax theft to a degree?

Right in one. A certain amount of this kind of theft is inevitable because of the nature of Civilization at its root. Anarchy has proven not to work as intended (see the period between the fall of rome, and the rise of Nation States in Europe), so Government is a necessary evil. With it, you do have state-sponsored extortion (a small amount of Socialism). This is merely a practical matter of needing roads, communication, the ability to defend society, and the need for law and order.



Aside from that, the way many socialists see it is that NOT redistributing wealth is not letting someone have a future (as they have little/no money of their own), therefore it is in a way stealing their labour - not letting them get the benefits they deserve through what they put in. No equal opportunities .

Except those opportunities tend to shrink, rather than expand. I put forth this challenge to you: go to a socialist country, and try to open a business with the bare minimum of Land, equipment, and wages.

You can't. you deal with Regulations that, in practice (*though not in theory) actually serve to protect and defend the largest corporations at the expense of Entreprenuership. Socialism, like Pure Capitalism, prefers Monopolies. The more regulations, taxes, fees and fines, the fewer can afford to pay them, and the Consumer, Entreprenuer, and worker foots the bill and pays the cost for errors.
These are called, in Economics 101 "Externalities" that affect the market.

An example of this, is to examine the difference between the automobile market in the U.S. in 1930 vs. 1970. In 1930, there were over a dozen 'major' automakers. by 1970, there were three domestic makers, and a handfull of imports, (most of whom existed in 1930 as well.)
Other examples of this trend can be seen more recently in Aerospace. There are (globally) two major Commercial Aircraft makers. Airbus Industrie, and Boeing.
This is a "Monopoly Market" example-it is interesting to note that commercial aviation is a heavily regulated field containing Many Externalities. It is also interesting to note that in 1985, there were three Commercial Aircraft makers in the U.S. and Airbus (Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, and Boeing).

Socialism presumes the Economy is a zero-sum proposition, that is, for you to benefit, someone else must suffer (and vice-versa).
It also presumes that your work, your mind, and your life-energy belong to the State, to do with as it sees fit.

Essentially, in extreme cases,the Socialist has replaced both the Individual's worth, and their "God" into the State. It's a Religion. The Collective can, taken again to the final equation, do whatever it likes to you as an individual so long as it serves to keep the Collective in power.
You, the worker (at whatever level) are the property, then, of the Government-you have no sovereign rights.

By contrast, when you own your life-energy, you are a free person, you are sovereign, you have sovereign rights.

Temporary removal is still removal. And there are people who earn such massive amounts of money that they don't put it back in. They horde it.

No one hordes finances or resources.

It is a financial fundamental that capital that is not being used is being wasted and/or losing value.

It is ridiculous to think that someone is just going to have millions of dollars in cash, or millions of barrels of crude oil just lying around.

Temporary removal is still removal. And there are people who earn such massive amounts of money that they don't put it back in. They horde it. It's like... oh, say I manage to somehow take half of the fresh water in the world - which isn't owned by anyone, so I'd be perfectly entitled to do that - and store it in a very large tank, which I then use only to power my garden sprinkler. I mean, it'll all go back into the system in time, so that's fine, right? Never mind the fact that in the mean time, millions of people are dying of thirst.

Think that's unreasonable? You'd be right. But imagine, say, one billion people each taking a much smaller fraction of the world's water - or, to bring it back to the point, wealth - and slowly trickling it back out. That leads to drought, or poverty. And it's what we've got at the moment. No doubt there are ways it /could/ work, and give everyone enough wealth to get by on, but it /doesn't/.

This analogy would work if the rich simply stuffed banknotes in their matresses, however they don't. The liquid assets of the rich are where? In banks, in trust funds, in stocks and shares, in treasury bonds etc. Now these all are methods and means of providng capital for the economy to function. It is as if the owner of the water asked the water supply companies to tyake care of his water for him. yes they can use the water, but this simply means that they have to pay him something for providing the raw materials of their business.

The very rich are the people who pay for government services, either directly or indirectly through taxation or purchasing treasury bonds. They finance the country as a whole.

Now the the taxation is simple theft, the money is taken under threat. It is legal theft, but theft all the same. Bonds etc are not theft, they are voluntary contracts between the wealthy and the government to provide money for use now in return for receiving back a little more money in the future.


How do the socialists justify taking the hard earned results of a persons labour from them using threat of government violence and passing this to other individuals? This point has not been addressed here. The socialists/communists have concentrated on attacking. Now defend yourselves please. You are stealing from the hard worker to give to the lazy guy. This is theft, clearly and indubitably the extraction of the rightful possessions of one individual to supply to another who has no right to that possession.

I would say they think socialism is theft because it involves taxes. *gasp*

I think some consider capitalism theft because some businesses can gouge people for cash when there is an emergency (like store prices going up before a hurricane hits, or private health care costs that can drive you to bankrupcy).

Pure forms of both can be inefficient. It's best to have a responsible mix of the two with socialism in control of the things that directly effect the lives of its citizens and take the burden off industry. Meanwhile industry can provide the fun stuff :)

FYI and as an aside: Actually, price gouging is illegal in most states in the US. And even where a price-gouging statute does not exist per se, it can still be prosecuted under the common law tort "false pretenses."

Price gouging and capitalism are not compatible.

Surely the country would run better if everyone had an equal opportunity to succeed? Note that it's VERY important not to confuse Socialism with Communism, no matter what the Bolsheviks said. I know some people who wouldn't be studying to become doctors unless they had got government grants for education at good schools.


And a lot of your British docs are coming to the US so they can earn some $$.

How do the socialists justify taking the hard earned results of a persons labour from them using threat of government violence and passing this to other individuals? This point has not been addressed here. The socialists/communists have concentrated on attacking. Now defend yourselves please. You are stealing from the hard worker to give to the lazy guy. This is theft, clearly and indubitably the extraction of the rightful possessions of one individual to supply to another who has no right to that possession.

Okay. I'll try.

First of all, not everyone with less money is 'lazy'. Are you going to call virtually the whole of the African continent 'lazy'? If so, then we can't debate any further, because I can't get my head around that viewpoint.

But let's assume you aren't. Let's assume that when you said 'lazy', you meant exactly that - the people who willfully leech off society, who take without giving.

By my particular take on Socialism - I have no formal knowledge in this, I'm just putting together a system that I think would work - doing that would be one of the highest forms of crime, right up alongside murder. It /is/ murder, in a way - if you're taking without giving, you lower the net wealth of the Community, and that lets the other people die that little bit faster. So what do you do? Force them to work? No, because that makes you opressive, just like taking wealth from those who do earn by force would. What's the solution?

There isn't one. It's tied up in human nature. An ideal Socialist society would be made up of people who /want/ to be Socialist. So they want to work, and they want to give everything back to the Community. Unfortunately, there aren't enough people like that. So, yes, for a Capitalist/former Capitalist, it would be theft. For a Socialist, it isn't - it's just the way things should be.

On a slight tangent, the way to fix things is, sadly, to use force. The best solution would probably be a completely open society - the Community can see what each of its members does or does not do, and then puts pressure on them to pull their weight. Not even the pressure of threats - social pressures can work too. The easiest one is one that's practiced against trolls occasionally on here - Shunning. If someone doesn't pull their weight, you flat out refuse to acknowledge their existence. If everyone in the Community does it, it's quite scary.

And if that doesn't work, exile them. They'll go somewhere else, get kicked out again, and after a few repeats they'll either get to work, or be dead.

<<The world hasn't seen a Socialist country since prehistory. Communist, yes, but not Socialist. Or at least, if it has, I've not heard about it.>>

I'm surprised you weren't murdered for this already.

Humanity has seen two communist countries if you are optimistic. None if you aren't. The first was the month or so before Russia was taken over by the Bolsheviks, the other, China before Mao went round the twist.

All so-called 'Communist' countries (China, North Korea, the Warsaw Pact nations) were oppressive socialist dictatorships at best.

WHAT about social democracies, a term used on govermnets who base their ideology on socialist values (avoiding the term socialist, because the term is misread and confused with totalitarian regimes) Remember that most labour parties were originally socialist movements, who moderated themselves over the years.
Social democracies, have more income equality than other regimes, less unemployment, and better welfare for it's citizens. This is achieved by increasing taxes, especially on the rich, and a strong goverment body which is more able to resist corporate pressure (lobbyism/corruption is restricted)
In my country, which is a social democracy, we outlawed the nobility and all priviligies a hundred years ago. So even today the extremely wealthy are compared to the old nobility, so they don't have that much sympathy from the ordinary people. (WHich surprises me when I Compare that to the people of the US, who orginally was against any priviligied upper class)
I CAn undertand that a rich person is capitalist, but I DOn't understand why a middle class citizen or a poor man is, that like being whale who is pro whaling. :rolleyes:

so there is no freedom not to work?

WHAT about social democracies, a term used on govermnets who base their ideology on socialist values (avoiding the term socialist, because the term is misread and confused with totalitarian regimes) Remember that most labour parties were originally socialist movements, who moderated themselves over the years.
Social democracies, have more income equality than other regimes, less unemployment, and better welfare for it's citizens. This is achieved by increasing taxes, especially on the rich, and a strong goverment body which is more able to resist corporate pressure (lobbyism/corruption is restricted)
In my country, which is a social democracy, we outlawed the nobility and all priviligies a hundred years ago. So even today the extremely wealthy are compared to the old nobility, so they don't have that much sympathy from the ordinary people. (WHich surprises me when I Compare that to the people of the US, who orginally was against any priviligied upper class)
I CAn undertand that a rich person is capitalist, but I DOn't understand why a middle class citizen or a poor man is, that like being whale who is pro whaling. :rolleyes: Because the potential is there to be something other than middle class or poor.

that is, unless you are content being middle class or poor

so there is no freedom not to work?

No more than there is in Capitalism. Unless, of course, you're doing something else that increases the overall wealth of the community. Learning, say, so that in future, you can work better. And, of course, unavoidable inability to work is different.

by the way, have you heard about the whale who was pro whaling, it got eaten..

it is not really like the whale being pro whaling, it is more like being anti-whaling in the hopes of being a whale one day.

so there is no freedom not to work?

are you asking, me... you get social welfare if you don't work, but your outcome then is not so great, so you don't have any money for holidays abroad etc.
you can do whatever you like, even get rich which also the goverment have support funds for, if you intend to.... you just not get the opportunity to get insanely rich.... and why should you, are you a dragon?
an other thing is that, I don't get shot by the police, if I try to run from them... the police carry no guns... guns are outlawed except if you go hunting and have a licence

No more than there is in Capitalism. Unless, of course, you're doing something else that increases the overall wealth of the community. Learning, say, so that in future, you can work better. And, of course, unavoidable inability to work is different.


I think if you don't want to work, you should be able to. Of course, you have to be willing to suffer the consequences of that choice. I have friends who have no ambition and work little and are poor. But that is fine with them, because they see more value in being able to surf or hang out, than they do in the creature comforts afforded by wealth. That's their choice.

Because the potential is there to be something other than middle class or poor.

you obviously suffers from the american "RED SCARE" propaganda.... it is a middle way you know

I think if you don't want to work, you should be able to. Of course, you have to be willing to suffer the consequences of that choice. I have friends who have no ambition and work little and are poor. But that is fine with them, because they see more value in being able to surf or hang out, than they do in the creature comforts afforded by wealth. That's their choice.

Exactly. Consequences. You're free to choose not to work - provided you also choose not to take anything from the Community. Of course, if you're taking a holiday, and you've been a good worker, it qualifies as beneficial - you take a break, and come back refreshed and better able to do your job. But you couldn't do nothing all day just because your parents did a lot and passed their wealth on to you. Big no-no.

...an other thing is that, I don't get shot by the police, if I try to run from them... the police carry no guns... guns are outlawed except if you go hunting and have a licence

What? so socialism automatically = no guns/little crime?

Does a billionaire's wealth adhere to this equation? They obviously didn't expend the same rate of work to get their wealth. Say a miner works 9 hours to get his $10 per hour. 10x9=$90. Say they do this 300 days a year. $90x300=$27,000.

The head of a multinational automobile corporation does the same, but earns $27,000,000. Where does the extra money come from? The miner produced the metals needed to make the car whereas the CEO directed how the company would make the cars. Both are necessary to produce the car. But one gets 1000 times more wealth. How does he attain the wealth? By controlling the rate at which he receives wealth.

It's essentially as if the miner uses a dollar to buy a soda, but the CEO gets his usual soda, plus 999 extra, free sodas. The wealth doesn't come from nowhere, because real value never can. It comes by lowering the proportional value of the miner's labour.

Taxes would merely be redistributing what was never the CEO's to the people he stole from by lowering their rate at which labour is worth.

"value" of work, by your own definition is "the value of that work relative to society".... What you're supposing is that the work of the miner, is of equal value as the work of the CEO (not directly mentioned by you, however, infered by you).... To-date, you have not directly held why this should be considered true. Therefore, untill you proove that point, all other cursory points stemming from that, are unfounded and unsupportable....

Okay. I'll try.

First of all, not everyone with less money is 'lazy'. Are you going to call virtually the whole of the African continent 'lazy'? If so, then we can't debate any further, because I can't get my head around that viewpoint.
Fine. I was just painting the worst case scenario. I happen to live in the third world (check my location, it is true) and the presumption that because people earn what would be starvation level wages in the USA or Europe they are poor is not justified. Look at what they buy, what standard of living they have, On that basis, you are being judgemental about Africa OK. There are a large number of people living there with decent or excellent standards of living. (Not all of them, but this also applies to the USA and Europe.)

But let's assume you aren't. Let's assume that when you said 'lazy', you meant exactly that - the people who willfully leech off society, who take without giving.
No. I meant people who are willing to accept what life gives them, rather than make the effort necessary to rise above this. I was not refering to the freeloaders (they starve here).

By my particular take on Socialism - I have no formal knowledge in this, I'm just putting together a system that I think would work - doing that would be one of the highest forms of crime, right up alongside murder. It /is/ murder, in a way - if you're taking without giving, you lower the net wealth of the Community, and that lets the other people die that little bit faster. So what do you do? Force them to work? No, because that makes you opressive, just like taking wealth from those who do earn by force would. What's the solution?
You can not make not trying hard enough a crime. It is unmeasurable. You can punish it if the system you choose does this automatically, as capitalism does. So to force people to make an effort to contribute to the society you have to appeal to their self interest.

There isn't one. It's tied up in human nature. An ideal Socialist society would be made up of people who /want/ to be Socialist. So they want to work, and they want to give everything back to the Community. Unfortunately, there aren't enough people like that. So, yes, for a Capitalist/former Capitalist, it would be theft. For a Socialist, it isn't - it's just the way things should be.
There are no people like that. There are people that think that the world would be better if people did behave that way, but how many of them give the excess food off their plate to the beggar in the street? Socialism is an intellectual ideal that disappears when it comes to practice. However this is all off the point. I have cut the rest as it is following that line of thinking which is not the point under discussion.

Nowhere here have you shown that socialism is not theft. You have tried to show, and failed how a work ethic could be created in a pure socialism, but this still does not deal with the fact that it proposes taking the product of my labour from me and giving it to another.

Fine. I was just painting the worst case scenario. I happen to live in the third world (check my location, it is true) and the presumption that because people earn what would be starvation level wages in the USA or Europe they are poor is not justified. Look at what they buy, what standard of living they have, On that basis, you are being judgemental about Africa OK. There are a large number of people living there with decent or excellent standards of living. (Not all of them, but this also applies to the USA and Europe.)

I apologise. I was thinking of all the stories we hear about 'starving children in Africa', which paint a lovely image of a continent of poverty. I know these are inaccurate, it was something of a generalisation.

No. I meant people who are willing to accept what life gives them, rather than make the effort necessary to rise above this. I was not refering to the freeloaders (they starve here).

I'm afraid I must confess I don't understand what you're saying here.

You can not make not trying hard enough a crime. It is unmeasurable. You can punish it if the system you choose does this automatically, as capitalism does. So to force people to make an effort to contribute to the society you have to appeal to their self interest.

Exactly right. Self-interest is why pure Socialism doesn't, wouldn't, and hasn't worked here.

There are no people like that. There are people that think that the world would be better if people did behave that way, but how many of them give the excess food off their plate to the beggar in the street? Socialism is an intellectual ideal that disappears when it comes to practice. However this is all off the point. I have cut the rest as it is following that line of thinking which is not the point under discussion.

Yep. I wouldn't say there are /no/ people like that, but there aren't many. It's sad, but it's true. Socialism doesn't work.

Nowhere here have you shown that socialism is not theft. You have tried to show, and failed how a work ethic could be created in a pure socialism, but this still does not deal with the fact that it proposes taking the product of my labour from me and giving it to another.

I know, I think I went off on a tangent. The point is, sharing is not theft. Yes, it's taking from you to give to another, but that makes the world, as a whole, better off. It's theft from the individual - it's a gift to society.

That better?

This analogy would work if the rich simply stuffed banknotes in their matresses, however they don't. The liquid assets of the rich are where? In banks, in trust funds, in stocks and shares, in treasury bonds etc. Now these all are methods and means of providng capital for the economy to function. It is as if the owner of the water asked the water supply companies to tyake care of his water for him. yes they can use the water, but this simply means that they have to pay him something for providing the raw materials of their business.

The very rich are the people who pay for government services, either directly or indirectly through taxation or purchasing treasury bonds. They finance the country as a whole.
that's why those same rich people have made it so, and is a system which is hard to just tear down without causing a greta deal of damage to the nations economy....

Now the the taxation is simple theft, the money is taken under threat. It is legal theft, but theft all the same. Bonds etc are not theft, they are voluntary contracts between the wealthy and the government to provide money for use now in return for receiving back a little more money in the future.
one problem is that taxes have to be compulsary, if it was voluntarily no one (Except a few idealists) would pay them.... bonds are ( I like the name) a method of keeping the goverment dependent on the wealthy, keeping the goverment in bondage so to speak.... it's what the wealthy offer instead of taxes... they always want something back... remember that the goverment gives something in return for the taxes, like health care, education, and if you onbe day is unable to work because of a disease or something you would be taken care of....
How do the socialists justify taking the hard earned results of a persons labour from them using threat of government violence and passing this to other individuals? This point has not been addressed here. The socialists/communists have concentrated on attacking. Now defend yourselves please. You are stealing from the hard worker to give to the lazy guy. This is theft, clearly and indubitably the extraction of the rightful possessions of one individual to supply to another who has no right to that possession.
what about the accumulated wealth that the extremely rich have, most of that wealth were orginally stolen, so if you call handing back stolen goods theft. ( in the eyes of a thief it probably is theft)
and socialism is not about stealing from any hard workers, to give to the lazy... it prime target is the hard worker's master who profits on the hard worker's labour.... socialism is about giving the hard worker more form is produce and less to the owner, who is the true lazy guy....

The only thing a person can claim natural ownership of is his or her body. The only economic value a person's body has is its labor. One begins to support oneself by exchanging labor for capital in the form of wages on the marketplace. The value of your labor is determined at the level of utility it provides to society by economic pressures.

That's a pretty classic view of ownership as far as I know. I have a couple of questions though, not meant to 'defeat' this view but as an honest inquiry.

1) Why can we claim ownership of our own bodies and thus our own labor? We certainly did little to create ourselves. Certainly our parents undertook the biological efforts necessary for our conception. And they, or any legal guardian(s), provided all necessities and luxuries of our childhood. So then considering the great amount of labor expended, how do we claim any ownership of our bodies and the labor they produce?

2) Our labor has a certain value given the conditions of a particular market place. One thing that is common to all markets is the division of labor. My specific labor is only possible and only has value in the context of labor performed by others. For example, any good I receive, through fair exchange to be certain, is the product of the labor of hundreds of others, depending on the complexity and development of the good/market/etc. Assuming that everyone has been fairly compesated, the good itself would still not have existed if not for their labor. We may have rights over this good we have acquired, but can we really say that we own it, that it is the product of our labor alone?

Basically what I am trying to do here is seperate rights over something from ownership of something and see if that is valid.

And as far as exploitation goes, do you mean in a capitalistic competative free-market? Or can we also look into capitalistic non-competative markets?

that's why those same rich people have made it so, and is a system which is hard to just tear down without causing a greta deal of damage to the nations economy....
How is it the rich have this imaginary power to shape the society to suit them. They do not. They simply work within the rules ofd the society and are successful at what they do. Unlike those who don't work, or fail. No one on the capitalist side is going to arue for equality of outcome. We will argue for a principle of from each according to his will, to each acording to his effort. If htere are those that will badly or make no effort then they will suffer.

one problem is that taxes have to be compulsary, if it was voluntarily no one (Except a few idealists) would pay them....
Which is why they are theft. We agree there then that taxation is legalised theft.

bonds are ( I like the name) a method of keeping the goverment dependent on the wealthy, keeping the goverment in bondage so to speak.... it's what the wealthy offer instead of taxes... they always want something back... remember that the goverment gives something in return for the taxes, like health care, education, and if you onbe day is unable to work because of a disease or something you would be taken care of....
The government may give back in return for taxes, but it does not have to. A thief who contributes to charity is still a thief I believe. Additionally, if I do not want to use the state health care, do I have the option of not paying that portion of the taxation? No. It is not giving me back something I want, it is imposing its decisions upon me regardless of my desire. "You have to buy this, you have no choice or we will take away your liberty" is called extorsion. So we have a system where the worker is stolen from and then extorted into using a service nnot of his choice. I prefer to choose my insurance, rather than have a larege criminal organisation take money from me and then use a portion of this to pay themselves, a portion to support people who have not worked to support themselves, a portion to pay for a war I disagree with, a portion to fund advertising in the next political campaign, a portion to subsidise abstract perfomances of meaningless art, and then take the tiny fraction that is left and use this as a premium in one of the worst performing insurance schees ever devised. However if you are happy with that scheme then pay your taxes without complaint.

what about the accumulated wealth that the extremely rich have, most of that wealth were orginally stolen, so if you call handing back stolen goods theft. ( in the eyes of a thief it probably is theft)
It was earned by labour, not theft. If you collect books to read, paying for each one, is it nott theft if someone comes and takes books from you. If I am rich (and as it happens I am not particulalrly) then I have collected assets due to the value of my labour or the value of the labour of my forebears. Taking this away from me is theft. The assets were not stolen, or at least no one here has explained how you see them as stolen, despite repeated requests.

SO EXPLAIN WHY YOU THINK THIS WEALTH WAS STOLEN



and socialism is not about stealing from any hard workers, to give to the lazy... it prime target is the hard worker's master who profits on the hard worker's labour.... socialism is about giving the hard worker more form is produce and less to the owner, who is the true lazy guy....
Meaningless drivel not worthy of a response I am afraid.

Well, I'm not going to get too involved with this, but in a socialist society, the government owns my time and my produce. That, in essense, is theft.


In a capitalist society, my boss and my landlord own my time and produce, as I must spend considerable time laboring in order to raise a paycheck which I then must surrender as rent in order to secure my continued use of someone else's property.

Having to surrender my time and produce to someone else is not exclusivly a problem of socialism.

It was earned by labour, not theft. If you collect books to read, paying for each one, is it nott theft if someone comes and takes books from you. If I am rich (and as it happens I am not particulalrly) then I have collected assets due to the value of my labour or the value of the labour of my forebears. Taking this away from me is theft. The assets were not stolen, or at least no one here has explained how you see them as stolen, despite repeated requests.

SO EXPLAIN WHY YOU THINK THIS WEALTH WAS STOLEN

Because you are hording it. Especially in the case of things such as books, they are removed from the community, if not forever, then probably for years or decades. By enriching yourself, you make the rest of the world poorer.

Taxes aren't unique to either socialism or capitalism. The differance between these two systems is in the ownership of the means of production.

Why are you all attributing taxes to socialism? Calling them theft and then accusing socialism of theft as if it requires taxes more so than capitalism does?

If we want to find the theft inherent in these systems it has to be done via the examination of the differances between public and private ownership of the means of producition.

Put simply, each person, were it equal would have a fair shot at riches and fame.

As it stands, you are far likelier to get them by accident of birth. If nothing else it's theft of an ideal, the way I see it it is also theft of a chance. If GWB or Paris Hilton started in the same approximate place as me they would have to work for their money. That's money that could have gone to a million other people who have worked their asses off but because they weren't priveliged they will never see it.

EDIT. Socialist Autonomia did this better.

97% of the wealthy were not born that way. Even higher if you include people who are upper-middle class. Pretty much blows that theory to shit.

Well, I think the basic argument against individual ownership is the idea that an item can be used by anybody, but is restricted in it's use by it being the private property of an individual.

This argument might have some merit if there was an unlimited supply of this item, so that everyone could use it without denying anyone else equal share. Unfortunately, this is not the case with limited resources. In situations where there is only so much of something to go around, some kind of rationing mechanism that can establish exclusive use is necessary. Private property is this mechanism.


An entire system of people produced an object, so it may be unfair to take it for your own (essentially a "theft" of sorts).

Except that when I purchase an object, I surrender something of my own (money) which is then used to compensate those who labored in order to produce and bring the object to me on the market. This is not theft. This is a trade.

"You have to explain why someone who starts with an advantage due to inherited wealth is stealing from someone who is disadvantaged when no interaction actually occurs."

Because as you stated, only labor value can be owned. What happens when someone recieves wealth without giving up the same labor value? The wealth doesn't come from nowhere; it is a collection of labor value derived from the people in the system.

Some would call that a gift. Unless the givor was under duress.

97% of the wealthy were not born that way. Even higher if you include people who are upper-middle class. Pretty much blows that theory to shit.

Source?

But did Bill work the requisite amount to earn that money? No. They weren't even original ideas. They were merely ideas applied in a way that created a monopoly.

From the first day Billy G worked smarter than his competition. It takes more than just working hard to earn wealth.

Some would call that a gift. Unless the givor was under duress.

You can call it a tribute or a hot dog for all I care. That doesn't change or challenge the arguement that SA was making...

Of course another reason capitalism could be theft is when someone has a lot of money, but never earned it. For example the largest source of fortune for billionaires is inheritence.

So long as the current owner of the money/resources surrenders those money/resources to his heir voluntarily, there is no theft. One may as well say that I am a victim of theft when I make a donation to my favorite charity.

Because as you stated, only labor value can be owned. What happens when someone recieves wealth without giving up the same labor value? The wealth doesn't come from nowhere; it is a collection of labor value derived from the people in the system.

The person recieving the inheritance may not have given up the same labor value, but the person who originally labored in order to amass the wealth did. As such, that original laborer rightfully owned that wealth. Because he owned that wealth, he can dispose of it as he wishes, including (EDIT: transfering ownership) to someone else voluntarily as an inheritance. Thus, no theft.

Does a billionaire's wealth adhere to this equation? They obviously didn't expend the same rate of work to get their wealth. Say a miner works 9 hours to get his $10 per hour. 10x9=$90. Say they do this 300 days a year. $90x300=$27,000.

The head of a multinational automobile corporation does the same, but earns $27,000,000. Where does the extra money come from? The miner produced the metals needed to make the car whereas the CEO directed how the company would make the cars. Both are necessary to produce the car. But one gets 1000 times more wealth. How does he attain the wealth? By controlling the rate at which he receives wealth.

It's essentially as if the miner uses a dollar to buy a soda, but the CEO gets his usual soda, plus 999 extra, free sodas. The wealth doesn't come from nowhere, because real value never can. It comes by lowering the proportional value of the miner's labour.

Taxes would merely be redistributing what was never the CEO's to the people he stole from by lowering their rate at which labour is worth.
First, very few CEOs make a salary approaching your numbers. Even fewer are billionairs.

A CEO is paid to make the company successful. Often they receive a bonus for creating growth (in jobs, productivity and value). The CEO does not work for the employees, they work for the shareholders. The CEO is able to make decisions which can create considerable wealth for the shareholders, or cost them. Their compensation is often only a fraction of the value thay create for the shareholders, particularly when they hit a bonus.

If a $10/hr. miner were able to create comparable wealth for shareholders through his actions he too would get that sort of pay. That is not likely to happen in the role of miner because of the comparitively narrow scope of the job.

Some corporateions have been 'taken to the cleaners' by a crappy, overpaid CEO. The case could be made that the CEO stole money, but not from the workers - since they are not the ones who paid him - He stole money from the shareholders who paid him.

Well, I live in a sort of semi-socialist country, the UK. Capitalism (the unfettered kind) does NOT allow equal opportunities, and to suggest otherwise is gross complacency - basically saying that those that are poor deserve to be poor.
The argument that inheritance should not be taken away by the government and given to any old Johnny is well put. But equally, surely it's not fair for one guy to start life without ever having to work because he's rich, and another guy not starting with anything?

And this is coming from a white middle class male.
I suppose if one believes that money is all that matters this would have some merit... It would be a sad world if that were true.

The truth of the matter is that the person is far more important than the resources. A recent study compared graduates from IVY league to graduates of state colleges who had similar high-school credentials. They found little difference in their careers, income or social status. The biggest difference was their cost of tuition.

Government, at its base, is Force. That is, it uses armed force to extract a portion of that life energy in the form of taxes.


Just as my private capitalist landlord uses the threat of armed force (eviction, civil/criminal action via government) to extract a portion of my life energy in the form of rent.


Every law, every tax, is based on the threat of violence.


Including those laws that protect and enforce private property, the corner stone of the capitalist system?


Socialism is theft. It's taking the product of work, and redistributing it without the prior consent of the worker, for benefit of non-workers.


But then capitalist societies and governments take the product of work, in the form of taxation, to fund the institutions necessary for the protection of private property (police, courts, etc.) all the time. They do this for the benifit of non-worker and worker alike.

EDIT:

Is it theft, then, to use the threat of violence, to take n amount of money and transfer it to a total stranger for no work?



There are some services that the Government does that are legitimate, these are determined by economy of scale, and utility to the majority of the population. Roads, Armed forces for Defense, Basic Law and Law enforcement (Police, courts, jails...), these give fair value for the money extracted.

If "theft" is the "taking [of] the product of work, and redistributing it without the prior consent of the worker, for benefit of non-workers," then what you describe above is theft, as government must take taxes, regardless of consent, in order to fund these "legitimate" functions. If "theft" is "to use the threat of violence, to take n amount of money and transfer it to a total stranger for no work," then what you describe above is theft again, as it is necessary for government to threaten violence in order to collect taxes in order to fund these "legitimate" functions. "Fair value" and "utility" are irrevelant. Or are we simply willing to look the other way should theft happen to serve our interest? :D

I have never thought of capitalism or socialism in terms of possession desires. I have always thought of capitalism as being merit-based (for the most part) and socialism as being entitlement-based.

I'd disagree. Merit is not always rewarded, and sometimes there is reward without merit. I would instead de-couple income from merit. Instead Capitalism is about taking personal responsibility and concenquences. Socialism is about mitigating concenquences and absolving personal responsibility. Obviously, productivity is abridged without concenquences and personal responsibility - which is why capitalist societies always are more productive, particularly when complimented by a distinctly seperate and strong system of ethics such as provided by the church.

Temporary removal is still removal. And there are people who earn such massive amounts of money that they don't put it back in. They horde it. It's like... oh, say I manage to somehow take half of the fresh water in the world - which isn't owned by anyone, so I'd be perfectly entitled to do that - and store it in a very large tank, which I then use only to power my garden sprinkler. I mean, it'll all go back into the system in time, so that's fine, right? Never mind the fact that in the mean time, millions of people are dying of thirst.

Think that's unreasonable? You'd be right. But imagine, say, one billion people each taking a much smaller fraction of the world's water - or, to bring it back to the point, wealth - and slowly trickling it back out. That leads to drought, or poverty. And it's what we've got at the moment. No doubt there are ways it /could/ work, and give everyone enough wealth to get by on, but it /doesn't/.

(Note that the one billion figure is made up. I have no idea what the proportions of 'rich' to 'poor' are in the world today)
Boy oh boy, this is really economically naive. There are only two things a wealthy person can do which do not contribute to the economy.
1) Withdraw cash and keep it in their closet.
2) Spend it on illegal goods.

Everything else results in their money helping society.

Your example is naive even in its inception - that teh person took the water from the pond themself. Now, if he exchanged something to the villagers for a bucket of water and they were the ones who filled it, well, maybe it could be redeemed - but really it is just impractical.

What? so socialism automatically = no guns/little crime?
All the criminals end up working for the government.

In a capitalist society, my boss and my landlord own my time and produce, as I must spend considerable time laboring in order to raise a paycheck which I then must surrender as rent in order to secure my continued use of someone else's property.

Having to surrender my time and produce to someone else is not exclusivly a problem of socialism.
You can choose your landlord or where you live. If you don't want to pay to use someone elses property nobody is forcing you to. If you don't want to work for someone else nobody is forcing you to.

Because you are hording it. Especially in the case of things such as books, they are removed from the community, if not forever, then probably for years or decades. By enriching yourself, you make the rest of the world poorer.
This is an even more egrigious example than the pond-water above. Do you really need me to explain it again or did you get it back on pond-water?

Source?
Eeek! I just saw that. Sorry - I was catching up.

I'll look now for the source, but be patient - I have dial-up and am running short of time.

whooo -easier than I thought; Here are a few;

John Weicher, as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank, wrote in his February 13, 1997 Washington Post Op-Ed, "Most of the rich have earned their wealth... Looking at the Fortune 400, quite a few even of the very richest people came from a standing start, while others inherited a small business and turned it into a giant corporation."


and here;


"According to an extensive study by Professors Wojciech Kopczuk of Columbia University and Emmanuel Saez of Berkeley, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in June, the share of wealth owned by the top 1 percent of Americans has dropped by half over the last 80 years (37.61 percent in 1920 to 20.79 percent in 2000).

Over the same period, the drop in holdings owned by the top 0.1 percent (tenth of 1 percent) was even sharper (10.07 percent in 1920 to 3.90 percent in 2000). "

and here is where I got the percentage, though I was in error - it is closer to 80% - the 97% was on the line before this one;
"* Most of us have never felt at a disadvantage because we did not receive any inheritance. About 80 percent of us are first-generation affluent. "
which can be found here;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/millionairenextdoor.htm

Of course another reason capitalism could be theft is when someone has a lot of money, but never earned it. For example the largest source of fortune for billionaires is inheritence..
Source?

You can choose your landlord or where you live.


I certainly can, if I live in a sufficiently democratic and free society, and if I have sufficient means to make the move. The "you can always go somewhere else" argument is often used in defense of government, part of the "love it or leave it" type of argument, but that argument fails precisely because I may not have the liberty ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_wall ) or means to leave a particular country. The argument used here fails for the same reasons, as a capitalist society need not necessarily be a free and democratic one ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Pinochet ) that allows freedom of movement, and I may not be able to afford the alternative choices.


If you don't want to pay to use someone elses property nobody is forcing you to.


Unless the resources available to me to use are completely privately owned. Consider the desire of some to privatize roads and other sorts of "public" infrastructure. If all the roads are essentially toll roads, then yes, I do have to use someone else's property if I want to get anywhere (like, say, escaping a particular landlord), and I do have to pay someone else for this use, ironically, just as I must pay the government to use the public roads my society has now...


If you don't want to work for someone else nobody is forcing you to.


Unless I lack sufficient education, financial means, or even physical ability to become self-employed. Even if I am highly educated, and have large financial resources and am not handicapped in any way, the vast majority of entrepeneurs will fail. This is, of course, the rightful function of the market; to weed out the incompetant. So no, no one is forcing me by gunpoint to work for someone else. The odds that will be the case, nonetheless, are still very high.

The way I've always looked at it and understood it - and the way it is for most of the posts throughout this thread - socialists are pissed at wealthy people A.) for getting rich with minimal work or B.) being born rich and not having to do any work. They claim that it doesn't make sense for those in group A to make more than they do for the same amount of work or less, while ignoring the fact that those in group A were simply smarter, more inventive, or more cut-throat than they were, and thus deserve what wealth they attain. On the flipside, they claim that those in group B are given an unfair advantage over them, and therefore take oppurtunity away from them, while ignoring the fact that somewhere along the line, an ancestor of a member of group B overcame the same odds that socialists claim make things unfair for them. So, either socialists are mad at the world for not being smart enough or mean enough to succeed, or socialists bitch about the odds being stacked against them and making it unfairly difficult to succeed - even though many people overcome the odds every day.

Just in case no one has covered this yet:

Capitalism is theft because private property is theft - or, to be more exact, private property is illegitimate.

How is property created? By working to change previously-existing property in some way. Eventually, if we trace back the source of any object, we come to natural resources and the work that was used to transform those natural resources into that object.

property = work + natural resources

Now, we can all agree that a person is entitled to "own" his work, but what about natural resources? Natural resources ultimately come from land. Thus, property over natural resources comes down to property over land. And if we go back in time to follow the history of ownership of land, we eventually come down to theft. How was private property over land first created? A guy with a big stick pointed to a patch of land, said "this land is mine", and proceeded to beat the crap out of anyone who tried to use "his" land.

So, to put it in capitalist-speak: All property was created through the illegitimate use of force. That is why private property is illegitimate.

And here's one of my favourite quotes:

"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this imposter; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

yoink!


So does that mean I get to hold you entirely responsible for any and all wrongs committed by any and all of your ancestors?

1) Why can we claim ownership of our own bodies and thus our own labor? We certainly did little to create ourselves. Certainly our parents undertook the biological efforts necessary for our conception. And they, or any legal guardian(s), provided all necessities and luxuries of our childhood. So then considering the great amount of labor expended, how do we claim any ownership of our bodies and the labor they produce?

That is actually a very interesting question.

How do we determine ownership of labor, when labor is the product of someone else's labor. I think that it must be determined with contracts, and since a child is not of the legal age to consent to a contract of this sort, the parent's labor must be considered a form of charity.

2) Our labor has a certain value given the conditions of a particular market place. One thing that is common to all markets is the division of labor. My specific labor is only possible and only has value in the context of labor performed by others. For example, any good I receive, through fair exchange to be certain, is the product of the labor of hundreds of others, depending on the complexity and development of the good/market/etc. Assuming that everyone has been fairly compesated, the good itself would still not have existed if not for their labor. We may have rights over this good we have acquired, but can we really say that we own it, that it is the product of our labor alone?

It is assumed on the free market that all labor and all goods and services are valued at a fair rate. The valuation process is tricky and its components are complex, but if we assume labor and wages are set fairly, then the wages one receives will be enough to purchase the same amount of labor that you provided in the first place.

If we assume that all transactions are freely agreed upon contracts in which economic value switches ownership, and we also assume that wages paid equal the economic utility of the labor provided, then we can also assume that the capital we own is an equal and fair representation of the labor utility we provided to society.

And as far as exploitation goes, do you mean in a capitalistic competative free-market? Or can we also look into capitalistic non-competative markets?

I am assuming a reasonable level of competition or possibility of competition.

"what about the accumulated wealth that the extremely rich have, most of that wealth were orginally stolen,"

I see accusations. I don't see a shred of evidence.

"By enriching yourself, you make the rest of the world poorer."

Zero-sum game rubbish.

Wealth is created, not fixed and distributed.

Here's a book to download and read: Economics in One Lesson (http://www.fee.org/~web/Economics%20in%20One%20Lesson/Economics%20In%20One%20Lesson.pdf)

Just in case no one has covered this yet:

Capitalism is theft because private property is theft - or, to be more exact, private property is illegitimate.
For anything to be illegitimate there has to be a system or code of laws which establish rights. In the absence of such a code, no such claim makes sense. This is critical here. Private property may well have been illigitimate in a non existant golden age that the likes of Rousseau chose to dream about. In this imaginary golden age, there was plenty for all, with no need to have property. There was also no need for any legal code. As soon as life ceases to be pictured as being in this mythical paradise and is transcribed into the real world, a need for a system or code of rights becomes apparent. Why, because there are not enough natural resources to satisfy everyones desires here, unlike in the utopian paradise. People, individuals have possession of resources. They have land they live on, they have the clothes they wear etc. Now when this is codified, these possessions become property, that is the main function of the code that we call law. To establish property rights. It is therefor contradictory to say that private property is illigitimate.

The left wing love Rousseau, even though he copied Locke pretty much letter for letter on property. They refuse to consider the thinking of other political thinkers of the time. Where are Grotius, Hobbes, Hume, Berkley, Spinoza etc. Absent from the considerations as they are inconvenient. As they do not base their thinking on an imagined utopia, they base it on the world as it is.

How is property created? By working to change previously-existing property in some way. Eventually, if we trace back the source of any object, we come to natural resources and the work that was used to transform those natural resources into that object.
How property is created is in dispute, was it God or was it the Big Bang. More relevant here is how does a claim to the property become established. You can take Lockes line of work done to improive what was there, but I prefer the concept of possession and use, which still applies today. If you occupy land and live there and make use of it, in most countries, after a period of possession this land becomes your property. so this means that

Property = natural resources possessed and used.
not
property = work + natural resources


Now, we can all agree that a person is entitled to "own" his work, but what about natural resources? Natural resources ultimately come from land. Thus, property over natural resources comes down to property over land. And if we go back in time to follow the history of ownership of land, we eventually come down to theft. How was private property over land first created? A guy with a big stick pointed to a patch of land, said "this land is mine", and proceeded to beat the crap out of anyone who tried to use "his" land.
A major point here. No one had to have a big stick, in fact historically they only used big sticks for driving away wild animals. There was enough land for everyone to possess sufficient, so property rights were mutually agreed, No violent theft was involved. Additionally theft is the illegal removal of property belonging to one or more others. No property means no theft. If the land was not the property of anyone then no theft was involved in it becoming the property of someone. Only if the land was communal propertry, which it was not, would there have been theft.

So, to put it in capitalist-speak: All property was created through the illegitimate use of force. That is why private property is illegitimate.
In Capitalist-speak, which I think I speak better being a native, All property rights were established through the undisputed claim on unused resources.

If the claim were disputed then no property right is established until the dispute is resolved.

B0zzy,

I have to disregard the 1st and 2nd sources as commentary and irrelvant, respectively, but that was a good 3rd source. A lot of interesting information there.

I certainly can, if I live in a sufficiently democratic and free society, and if I have sufficient means to make the move. The "you can always go somewhere else" argument is often used in defense of government, part of the "love it or leave it" type of argument, but that argument fails precisely because I may not have the liberty ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_wall ) or means to leave a particular country. The argument used here fails for the same reasons, as a capitalist society need not necessarily be a free and democratic one ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Pinochet ) that allows freedom of movement, and I may not be able to afford the alternative choices.


My family left a bad situation with the money in their pockets and what we could cram onto the car.

I know a number of people who came to this country by swimming across the border, or walking through the desert, or crammed on a leaky boat from fucking Asia. With no Money at All.

You Can Always Move. It's a "gut and balls check", but unless you're actually incarcerated, you can always move.



Unless the resources available to me to use are completely privately owned. Consider the desire of some to privatize roads and other sorts of "public" infrastructure. If all the roads are essentially toll roads, then yes, I do have to use someone else's property if I want to get anywhere (like, say, escaping a particular landlord), and I do have to pay someone else for this use, ironically, just as I must pay the government to use the public roads my society has now...

So what you really want, is someone else to do the work for you. Typical.


Unless I lack sufficient education, financial means, or even physical ability to become self-employed. Even if I am highly educated, and have large financial resources and am not handicapped in any way, the vast majority of entrepeneurs will fail. This is, of course, the rightful function of the market; to weed out the incompetant. So no, no one is forcing me by gunpoint to work for someone else. The odds that will be the case, nonetheless, are still very high.

Whine, whine, whine. You're demonstrating a perfect example of why most non-socialists consider Socialism to be the lazy man's fantasy. Socialists don't want to take the risks, they don't want to take responsibility. I've started and failed three businesses since I turned eighteen, I've worked in everything from odd-jobs through Aerospace, and am currently working for someone else until I get my feet back under me. In spite of having neither pot to piss in, nor window (of my own) to throw it out, I've never taken a dime from the State. (well, there was that term in the military, but that was different...) A big part of Responsibility is Risk. Knowing it, accepting it, and, occasionally, taking it, including the undesirable side.
If you have a cushion provided by someone else, you're not taking responsibility. THEY are.

You can't be free, unless you're willing to be Responsible, and Accountable, for your mistakes. PERSONALLY responsible. Freedom isn't about getting what you want, it's about accepting the cost of getting what you want, and being willing to pay it-whatever it takes. It's also about doing whatever it takes to be able to pay for what you want... if that means you live in a hellhole, paying rent, and working a menial job, foregoing luxuries and skimming tight to save your nest-egg, that's what you do. I've worked for people who barely speak english, and came to the United States with nothing. No contacts, No Money, No place to live, they did it, how can someone with more to start out with (you) claim the system is unfair when they haven't even got the stones to try?

Capitalism, like life, punishes the Lazy, the deliberately ignorant, and the Cowardly.

Socialism Punishes the Brave, the Wise, and the Productive to reward the Lazy, the Deliberately Ignorant, and the Cowardly.

Whine, whine, whine. You're demonstrating a perfect example of why most non-socialists consider Socialism to be the lazy man's fantasy. Socialists don't want to take the risks, they don't want to take responsibility. ...

You can't be free, unless you're willing to be Responsible, and Accountable, for your mistakes. PERSONALLY responsible. ...


Let me assure you that you are preaching to the choir here. I am more than convinced of the superiority of the market oriented way of doing things. However, I am not going to pretend that capitalism is without it's own share of the problems that arise with any activity that involves the interaction of the self-interests of two or more persons.

A wise man once said that "...though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. ...even if the recieved opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who recieve it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds." (John Stewart Mill, On Liberty )

A person ought to make a habit of stepping outside of his own beliefs and ideas in order to consider, and even argue for, the opposition. A person who does this is liable to come across a piece of truth that he may have overlooked or not considered before, and thus come that much closer to possessing the entire Truth. Plus, attacking one's own beliefs and ideas is a good way to find problems with those beliefs and ideas, so that one can fix the problems and ultimately argue from a position of Truth, instead of dogma and clever slogans.

Do not assume that a person who attacks capitalism necessarily rejects capitalism. The attacker may, in fact, be (edit: capitalism's) best ally.

Let me assure you that you are preaching to the choir here. I am more than convinced of the superiority of the market oriented way of doing things. However, I am not going to pretend that capitalism is without it's own share of the problems that arise with any activity that involves the interaction of the self-interests of two or more persons.

A wise man once said that "...though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. ...even if the recieved opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who recieve it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds." (John Stewart Mill, On Liberty )

A person ought to make a habit of stepping outside of his own beliefs and ideas in order to consider, and even argue for, the opposition. A person who does this is liable to come across a piece of truth that he may have overlooked or not considered before, and thus come that much closer to possessing the entire Truth. Plus, attacking one's own beliefs and ideas is a good way to find problems with those beliefs and ideas, so that one can fix the problems and ultimately argue from a position of Truth, instead of dogma and clever slogans.

Do not assume that a person who attacks capitalism necessarily rejects capitalism. The attacker may, in fact, be (edit: capitalism's) best ally.

I seem to have faceplanted a chandelier, my apologies sir.

Well I will try to change the discussion by saying what capitalism is a way of wasting resources. Because that is important is happiness not money and there in no strict correlation between money and happiness, if you look to the studies that have been done. For example why should a persone have a billion dollars he will not be happier compared if he had a million dollars. Because of course money is neeeded for security and a good life in todays society but just to a certain limit then it comes became a waste.

Like for example if you can't have a good life with a income of 70000 dollars a year the problem is not money. But this simple truth seems to be missing in todays capitalistic world. And at the sametime you have the people that workd hard but can't hardly have enough money for a decent life. So you have the well off but there many don't have a truly good life because there working so hard for more money even if they have enough for a good life. And at the sametime have the poor that really needs the money. A simple example is looking a kids but that I think have the same truth then it comes to aduly. If they don't have a teddybear they can be sad, but if they suddenly get one houndred they will go totally beserk of happiness, but sone they will get used to who's hundred teddybears and want more. Even if they could have been as happy with ten teddybears.

So todays capitalistic world is not founded on true needs or happiness but instead of gaining more money even if at a certain level it don't give you more happiness.

I certainly can, if I live in a sufficiently democratic and free society, and if I have sufficient means to make the move. The "you can always go somewhere else" argument is often used in defense of government, part of the "love it or leave it" type of argument, but that argument fails precisely because I may not have the liberty ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_wall ) or means to leave a particular country. The argument used here fails for the same reasons, as a capitalist society need not necessarily be a free and democratic one ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Pinochet ) that allows freedom of movement, and I may not be able to afford the alternative choices.
In a modern capitalist economy, you and nobody else are responsibile for your occupation, income and location. Finding a political exception to an economic question os a bait & switch argument which I won't fall for.


Unless the resources available to me to use are completely privately owned. Consider the desire of some to privatize roads and other sorts of "public" infrastructure. If all the roads are essentially toll roads, then yes, I do have to use someone else's property if I want to get anywhere (like, say, escaping a particular landlord), and I do have to pay someone else for this use, ironically, just as I must pay the government to use the public roads my society has now...

Again you use a speculative example since very few roads are indeed private. Many make the mistake of confusing government with socialism. They are not the same.


Unless I lack sufficient education, financial means, or even physical ability to become self-employed. Even if I am highly educated, and have large financial resources and am not handicapped in any way, the vast majority of entrepeneurs will fail. This is, of course, the rightful function of the market; to weed out the incompetant. So no, no one is forcing me by gunpoint to work for someone else. The odds that will be the case, nonetheless, are still very high.

In a modern capitalist economy, you and nobody else are responsibile for your occupation, income and location. Education was provided for free for 12 years and subsidized for even longer after that. - No excuse. Financial means are an obstacle, but not insurmountable. The old fashioned way was to earn and save your own capital while gaining experience. Physical ability is also called disability. Someone with a 100% disability has no choice to work whatsoever, so they are really exempt from this discussion.

The risks of entrepreneurship are exaggerated by the particular myth that you mention. Is it risk free? Of course not, but not every business which fails was a earnest attempt at starting a business. (For example - a seasonal venture, Amway flings, sub-enterprises)

Plumbers, Mechanics, Accountants, Insurance Agents are just a few of the occupations with a huge number of self-employed and a high success rate. Then there are independant contractors (often called 1099'd because of the tax reporting they get for wages) who work for a company as a contractor rather than an employee. Then there are the 100% commissioned people, such as Realtors, who are pretty close to self employed as well. Frinchisees also enjoy a higher success rate. In the end, honest entrepreneurs suceed more often than most employer/employee relationships do.

The barrier that prevents most people from pursuing entrepreneurship is not capital as often as it is risk tolerance. I would agree with one point you made - the knowledge required to start, open and run a business is not readily avaliable to most people. That is unfortunate. I'd love to see it a more prominent part of public education. I've even heard of one college which REQUIRES a certain number of business clases for their physician students in order to help them more efficiently run a practice in the future. Running a bunsiess can be learned 'on the fly', but so can boxing... and what fool would rather learn THAT on the fly!

Just in case no one has covered this yet:

Capitalism is theft because private property is theft - or, to be more exact, private property is illegitimate.

How is property created? By working to change previously-existing property in some way. Eventually, if we trace back the source of any object, we come to natural resources and the work that was used to transform those natural resources into that object.

property = work + natural resources

Now, we can all agree that a person is entitled to "own" his work, but what about natural resources? Natural resources ultimately come from land. Thus, property over natural resources comes down to property over land. And if we go back in time to follow the history of ownership of land, we eventually come down to theft. How was private property over land first created? A guy with a big stick pointed to a patch of land, said "this land is mine", and proceeded to beat the crap out of anyone who tried to use "his" land.

So, to put it in capitalist-speak: All property was created through the illegitimate use of force. That is why private property is illegitimate.

Completely incorrect presumption. Intellectual propert does not come from resources. Entertainment does not come from natural resources. So, every basketball player in the NBA is exempt from your theory, yet they make great income. Every coach in the NFL is exempt - even though any sports nut could tell you that some are much more skilled than others.

Your arguyment is null and void.

And here's one of my favourite quotes:

"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this imposter; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

So people never invented farming since everyone just raided the fenced land to take "the fruits of the earth" as the pleased. Nobody farmed, so they all starved and died.

The end.

Or would you consider it better had they just forraged for fruits and nuts 24/7 and never had the time to develop science, literature, math, or art. But hey! At least they have socialism!

B0zzy,

I have to disregard the 1st and 2nd sources as commentary and irrelvant, respectively, but that was a good 3rd source. A lot of interesting information there.

I liked that one best myself. I think it could spawn a good thread on it's own.

One thing not mentioned in any of those, which ocurred to me last night, is the effect of estate taxes and dilution. Estate taxes in the US on large estates are over 50% currently, and have been for decades.
Also there is the fact that most estates have more than once beneficiary (when generational transfers are involved) whch tends to dilute the wealth further. Then the beneficiaries often marry, more dilution, and have children, more dilution. That is why there are not alot of 'old money' millionairs. They have to not only iherit their money, they then have to grow it considerably to aproach the same value of their parents. Growing wealth is not a skill easily learned or executed, no matter what your resources. With few exceptions wealth eventually is diluted without effort from the beneficiaries comparable to that of the original earner.

In a modern capitalist economy, you and nobody else are responsibile for your occupation, income and location. Finding a political exception to an economic question os a bait & switch argument which I won't fall for.


But the idea of a "modern capitalist economy" itself has certain political assumptions built into it, chiefly the assumption that the government implementing capitalist economic policy is also implementing sufficiently liberal social policy ("liberal" meaning the protection of individual rights and liberty, etc). This assumption is not necessarily a safe one to make.


I would agree with one point you made - the knowledge required to start, open and run a business is not readily avaliable to most people. That is unfortunate. I'd love to see it a more prominent part of public education. I've even heard of one college which REQUIRES a certain number of business clases for their physician students in order to help them more efficiently run a practice in the future. Running a bunsiess can be learned 'on the fly', but so can boxing... and what fool would rather learn THAT on the fly!

When I went through high school, the only business class I ever saw was a typing class. Then there was, of course, the civics class which was really just "how to fill out the 1040 tax forms like a good little citizen" 101...

Cadillac-Gage = da man.


Good luck getting things going on.

But the idea of a "modern capitalist economy" itself has certain political assumptions built into it, chiefly the assumption that the government implementing capitalist economic policy is also implementing sufficiently liberal social policy ("liberal" meaning the protection of individual rights and liberty, etc). This assumption is not necessarily a safe one to make. ...

First, I wouldn't be so certain individual rights and liberties is exclusively a liberal value. Second, liberalism and capitalism are not mutually exclusive. I use modern capitalist ecomony to distinguish a free market from a robber-baron marketplace. I also, much earlier in this thread, distinguished capitalism from social values. Without social values there can be no modern economy or governance - and capitalism is the most compatible economy within the bounds of social values. A modern society is one which embraces both capitalism AND social values.



When I went through high school, the only business class I ever saw was a typing class. Then there was, of course, the civics class which was really just "how to fill out the 1040 tax forms like a good little citizen" 101...
Pretty lame,eh? College is not much better - the classes are there but few disciplines actually require you take one - particularly entrepreneurship.

There are some good books on the matter - they can give you insights if you wish to learn - but you can no more learn entrepreneurship from them than you could Karate.

Humanity has seen two communist countries if you are optimistic. None if you aren't. The first was the month or so before Russia was taken over by the Bolsheviks, the other, China before Mao went round the twist.
Actually, I would suggest Barcelona in 1936 and Paris in 1870 were communist communities. There have also been, and are, numerous religious communist communities in many places around the world.

The problem with communism is that everyone has to believe in it for it to actually work. That's why it can't work on a large scale.

which is why capitalist societies always are more productive, particularly when complimented by a distinctly seperate and strong system of ethics such as provided by the church.
Why would a conservative capitalist society be more productive than a libertarian capitalist society? Religion has nothing to do with the efficiency of capitalism, in my opinion.

=SwimmingpoolWhy would a conservative capitalist society be more productive than a libertarian capitalist society? Religion has nothing to do with the efficiency of capitalism, in my opinion.

That's a Weberian view of capitalist development in England and the U.S. It's not about religion so much as a strong work ethic.

Why would a conservative capitalist society be more productive than a libertarian capitalist society? Religion has nothing to do with the efficiency of capitalism, in my opinion.

You've made the classic mistake of incorrectly equating church, ethics and conservativism as one and the same. They are not. This misconception is hurting the Democratic party in the US quite a bit right now.

If you read my post, even just the part you quoted, more carefully, the meaning should jump out, particularly taken within the context of this post. If not reply and I'll kindly guide you through it.