Re: Lucas: Shame on the redistributionists

royls_at_telus.net
Date: 06/07/04 

Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 20:02:47 GMT

On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 00:27:19 -0400, "Matt Timmermans"
<mt0000@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote:

>"sinister" <sinister@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
>news:rNJwc.7944$QI2.5944@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
>>
>> "Matt Timmermans" <mt0000@sympatico.nospam-remove.ca> wrote in message
>> > Determining the optimal distribution and how best to encourage movement
>in
>> > that direction is far more practically important than worrying about
>_how_
>> > it got to be the way it is.
>>
>> Not when one of the most important factors behind the current distribution
>> is government forcing people to pay holders of titles to scarce natural
>> resources like land for the use of said resources.
>
>If the most socially efficient distribution of wealth is highly skewed, and
>I believe it is,

Hmmm. What is "social efficiency"? Is it something like the degree
to which others are forcibly compelled to serve your ends?

>and if it's better to have one's wealth determined by past
>economic success than by lottery or decree, and I believe it is,

??? This simply assumes that "economic success" (whatever that is) is
not itself determined by lottery or decree.

>then there
>must be some mechanism in place to give wealth some inertia, i.e., to make
>it easy for wealthy people to acquire wealth, so that they can stay wealthy
>even with their increased consumption.

?? Wait a minute. Nobody could actually believe anything that evil,
so you must be just trolling, right?

_Right_??

>Without such mechanisms, the distribution of wealth would tend to go flat.

Well, flatter than it is now with such mechanisms in place, anyway.

>Since any income produced by any such mechanism is economically classified
>as rent, I have to confess that I think a little rent is a good thing.

So you think it is a good thing that the productive poor are currently
robbed of the fruits of their labor, and the loot given to the
unproductive rich? Thank you for proving that you really are either
evil or trolling.

>There may be too much rent available today, and deciding how much is best is
>part of the problem I referred to as important above, but the basic notion
>of rent is not inherently evil when it is created and maintained by
>consensus.

Like the consensus that slave owners were entitled to collect the
rents their privilege created?

>I, and most people, I think, want whatever wealth I leave to my children to
>be of benefit to them, for example -- that's one of the primary reasons I
>work for it.

Just as long as you are clear that the degree to which your children's
inherited wealth will allow them to receive rent income they have not
earned will be inversely related to the degree to which other people's
children's labor will allow them to receive the income they _have_
earned.

At least you appear to understand the type of mechanism that will make
the children of the rich the beneficiaries of crimes committed against
working people's children.

>Since I can't expect a free society to allow special rent just
>for my kids, I must concede it to everyone else.

To be more accurate, you can't expect a _free_ society to allow
private capture and retention of rents at all.

>Similarly, I expect
>whatever wealth I manage to accrue during my lifetime to be of benefit to
>me, so I grant the same to everyone else as well.

The rent income your wealth brings you, which you do not earn, is
income that is forcibly taken from those who do earn it.

>We should all have to
>play the game by the same rules, and we pretty much do.

Having the same rules for everyone is not enough to guarantee the
rules will be fair. A rule that allocated income in strict proportion
to wealth would be the same for everyone, but hardly very fair to the
working poor.

>In short, while I accept Georgists' argument that rent taxes are
>economically efficient,

IOW, you think it is preferable for the rich be more privileged
relative to working people than for the whole society to be absolutely
wealthier in material terms. Well, that's clear enough.

>I don't accept their claim to the moral high ground.

Right. Because you are evil, you do not accept that freedom and
justice are more moral than tyranny and privilege.

>I think that the benefits of wealth should exist, and I accept the
>fundamental mechanism that produces them -- rent -- because it's better than
>the alternatives,

Better for the rentiers, that is....

>and so a lot of the hue and cry about the "evil landlords"
>who currently have the wealth and get to collect these rents sounds like
>petty jealousy to me.

Well, I think I have made it clear what your preference for tyranny
and privilege over freedom and justice sounds like to me: the
deliberate, vicious, unrepentant greed of a servant and beneficiary of
Evil.

-- Roy L

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