Re: Question re: inequality
- From: royls@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 19:23:13 GMT
On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:44:14 -0700, "rvfulltime (was xenman)"
<rvfulltime@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Wealth tends to flow to people that are able
>to master new technologies first.
Nonsense. It flows to people that are able to make others pay for
access to new technologies. Mastering new technology gets you a
minimum wage job at a tech support call center. Controlling others'
access to new technology gets you ownership of their livelihoods,
their incomes.
>Throughout history those
>that mastered new technologies; agriculture, metalurgy, steam
>power, steel, oil, transportation (railroads), electronics, internet,
>etc. have acquired great wealth but not at the expense of
>other people. They created wealth rather than expropriated it.
Garbage. The people who created and mastered those technologies did
it, by and large, for little better than stoop labor wages. The
people who got rich from those technologies were the ones that were
able to find a way of denying others access to them, unless they paid
up. Edison's staff did almost all the work creating and mastering the
new technologies that came out of Menlo Park; he owned the patents.
They worked for little better than ordinary wages; he got very rich.
>Look at what
>Japan was able to accomplish in 150 years.
A little over 100, actually. And note: they did it by recovering land
rent for public purposes rather than taxing production.
>Look at Hong Kong in the last 60 years.
The 50 years ending in 1997 are probably more illuminating. And
again, HK got most of its government revenue in those years by leasing
out public land, not by taxing production.
>Look at South Korea in the last 50 years.
SK benefited greatly from both MacArthur-style land reforms
implemented after WW II and a significant land value tax since then.
Taiwan very much likewise. Singapore got rich in just 30 years the
same way as HK, by leasing out public land instead of taxing
production.
-- Roy L
.
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- Question re: inequality
- From: Mason A . Clark
- Re: Question re: inequality
- From: rvfulltime (was xenman)
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