[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oiless', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '
')Simply stated: Why does income redistribution not work?

[cube]

okay I'm going to *try* and push this thread along.

Imagine a rich man who owns a $10Billion oil refinery in a nation of 100million people.

Question:
How do you redistribute wealth?
Rich people tend to have most of their wealth tied up into assets that are not easy to divide out amongst a large number of people.
How the hell do you divide an oil refinery so 100million people each get a $100?

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'o')kay I'm going to *try* and push this thread along.

Imagine a rich man who owns a $10Billion oil refinery in a nation of 100million people.

Question:
How do you redistribute wealth?
Rich people tend to have most of their wealth tied up into assets that are not easy to divide out amongst a large number of people.
How the hell do you divide an oil refinery so 100million people each get a $100?

[Sixstrings]

cube wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow the hell do you divide an oil refinery so 100million people each get a $100?

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Snowrunner', '.')..
You're limiting Wealth to possessions (e.g. oil refinery) and cash.

Wealth is much more than that. Wealth is when someone can get around town without needing a car (e.g. public transit paid for by taxes) etc.

[ReverseEngineer]

The underlying "success" if you want to call it that of Western Capitalism is built on two Pillars. One is the legal deeding of property rights based on land, the second one is an equaton between those rights and Precious Metals, primarily Gold but Silver to an extent also.

Going way back to the beginning of the Agricultural revolution ad the development of counting systems, it became necessary to account for wealth in terms of land held and food produced in terms of something tangibel besides digital bits on a computer, they didn't have those back then. They did have papyrus and kept countign sheets but commerce without some Token you could exchange didn't work without a Debit Card or even the ability to print difficult to reproduce pieces of paper. PMs in this time period were a GREAT way to both store wealth AND to provide coinage for trade.

Fast forward to a world where PMs represent very little in terms of total pouplation and aren't useful for coinage, but you still retain the legal contracting and deeding of property to individuals. Layer upon layer of these contracts have been built up over the centuries, with disembodied "corporations" holding it all so no individual can be held accountable. DESPITE the fact that some individuals do hold the greatest stake in these corporations and accrue profits from them when they are successful. Soon as they fail though, "Hey, I'm not responsible. The Company went Belly Up, not ME!". So it is possible through this construct to arrive at the Socialization for the Rich, which is that when times are good, they get all the benefits, when times are bad, all the debt gets thrown back off their backs onto somebody else, whoever their corporation owed money to.

Property ownership in its essence is the centralization of the commons into the hands of a given individual. Once you say one person "owns" the land, then that person is the sieve through which all the people who live on that land get paid for their labor. "I own this land, you farm it for me and I will pay you a subsistence wage". Or, "I own this land and I will Tax you on your profits from it so I can live well".

Why should one person or one family from generation to generation be the Owners of the Earth? You are born into the world, and why is not one piece of that world as much yours as someone who was born to someone else? The only thing that separates you both are contracts which say one person owns the land and another is beholden to that person. Its fundamental slavery of course.

You cannot have ownership of land and have equity between people, and the proposition that "All men are created equal" is immediately undermined by property ownership and inheritance of property rights.

The land upon which we all live has to be held in trust by ALL the people, no one man deserves the right to own it all and all others live by his leave. Nevertheless, since the days of agriculture and Feudalism, such has been the concept with Pharoahs and Kings. It was not that way of course with the Hunter Gatherers, for whom all land was the Commons. The problem of course there is that as population increases, the commons get used up pretty fast. So you have wars between the tribes for use of the commons. This however does keep these populations in check all the time, it was only once Agriculture was introduced it went out of whack and large organizations of people could swallow up others with big armies.

Holding the Commons in trust for ALL the people is of course the fundamental underpinning of Communism. Where communism falls apart is in the Corruption of the individuals repsonsible for holding that trust, just as Capitalism falls apart in trusting the Banksters to hold your money safely. Individual Greed undermines any big system like this. the society must remain small enough so that the leaders of the society have a direct connection to the people they are leading, their grandchildren for the most part. This is the nature of a Tribal society of Hunter Gatherers.

There will be no equity and there will be no balance in society until such time as the population is once again reduced to the poitn that we govern ourselves in small tribes of no more than 10,000 Human Souls in parcels of land around 500 miles in diameter. That day is coming to a Theatre Near You, sooner than many here think. It does not have to be Clan of the Cave Bear though, much technology could be retained. It just needs to be much smaller than it is now, our footprint on Gaia is too big for the planet to support this way. It would be my great hope that once the die off is complete and that people understand the nature of a WORLD of limited resources, they will change how they looked at life, as a never ending expansion and conglomeration of ever bigger entities up to the Nation Sate and World Civilization. This MUST end if humanity is to survive, and it WILL end. The only question is whether there will be people around to rebuild a better society and better way of life after this one is finished.

Reverse Engineer

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '[')b]cube wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow the hell do you divide an oil refinery so 100million people each get a $100?

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'T')his is not a discussion of whether or not government should provide the most basic level of services like for example police, fire department, traffic signals so we all don't crash our cars and kill each other.

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'H')olding the Commons in trust for ALL the people is of course the fundamental underpinning of Communism. Where communism falls apart is in the Corruption of the individuals repsonsible for holding that trust, just as Capitalism falls apart in trusting the Banksters to hold your money safely. Individual Greed undermines any big system like this. the society must remain small enough so that the leaders of the society have a direct connection to the people they are leading, their grandchildren for the most part. This is the nature of a Tribal society of Hunter Gatherers.

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '
')Despite all the generous social welfare, Joe Sixpack in France is no better off then people in other countries which have significantly less social welfare: USA, Singapore, Japan, etc...
Interesting huh?

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Snowrunner', '
')
Every system designed by humans for humans will eventually be corrupted. The only solution is to smash it to pieces and rebuild when the point is reached.

And no, this is not a nice process and in fact it can be very ugly.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'o')kay I'm going to *try* and push this thread along.

Imagine a rich man who owns a $10Billion oil refinery in a nation of 100million people.

Question:
How do you redistribute wealth?
Rich people tend to have most of their wealth tied up into assets that are not easy to divide out amongst a large number of people.
How the hell do you divide an oil refinery so 100million people each get a $100?

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Snowrunner', '
')
Every system designed by humans for humans will eventually be corrupted. The only solution is to smash it to pieces and rebuild when the point is reached.

And no, this is not a nice process and in fact it can be very ugly.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Snowrunner', 'Y')es it is. Because any service that is provided "for free" is something you don't have to shell out for yourself.
If I can get around for free in my city I don't have to buy a car, maintain a car, fill up a car, pay taxes on the car, pay the car loan etc.
In the end it is more money for myself which increases my ability to spend money, this can be (I did it for myself) be as high as $1000 / month.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', '.')..
That would be obvious. You divide it up into shares and pay them each dividends. Or you simply Nationalize entire industries such as Oil and use the proceeds from those industries to fund the Goobermint, which provides services to the People. The Saudis do that. Of course the Sheiks keep plenty of the proceeds for themselves.

It would be very easy really to redistribute the wealth of America. Just take every square inch of property over by Emminent Domain, nationalize all the industries and make everyone an employee of the Homeland. This isn't rocket science Cube.

The problem with this is that those at the top of the pyriamid don't want to give up the power, wealth and status that such redistribution entails, so they fight it of course. Poor folks have little problem with such redistribution of course.

If you run a good Slave farm and keep your slaves well fed and happy, the Slaves don't begrudge Massah his Gulfstream Jets and his Mansion all that much. When Massah screws up on the markets, loses all his money and can't keep the Plantation running, the Slaves hang him up by his Gonads. Basically, TPTB are approaching the Gonad Hanging stage now.

[bl00k]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'I') never said money / wealth was the end all to everything.
For example Denmark is one of the most socialistic countries on the planet but they have ranked number 1 in happiest country
sure being happy is important but....
*points to message board subcategory*
This is "Economics & Finance" and NOT quality of life, wellbeing, happiness, etc....

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '
')A country finds itself in economic distress.
Political revolutionaries seize the opportunity and make the same tired argument that has been repeated 1,000 times throughout history.
political message:
"Lets throw the fat pigs out.
Put us in power and we'll redistribute the wealth fairly and that means we can all get to have double servings because the fat pigs are no longer around to hog up most of the economic pie.
Sounds great right!"
ReverseEngineer - You know how the story ends 95% of the time.
When everything is all said and done Joe Sixpack finds himself no better off then before.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bl00k', '.')..
So maybe it never happened that the middle class got a pay raise on the expense of the rich. That doesn't prove income redistribution doesnt work. Through tax money (of which rich pay more than poor people) the government can offer certain services, so in a way the income of the rich is redistributed over the total population (or anyone who needs those services). The middle class didn't get a pay raise, but might get a little bit more help.

[cube]

*4 shots of espresso + trying to short the stock market == very little sleep*

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'I') would dispute that conclusion. If J6P is out of a job, his house foreclosed on living in a tent in Bushville unable to buy food for his starving children, he certainly can be no worse off with a wealth redistribution, since he has been stripped of any he had at all. When the Romanoffs got filled full of lead in a Ruskie basement, most certainly the impoverished Ruskies improved their lot in life under Communism, because they were starving to death before Communism, that is WHY they had a revolution.

[ReverseEngineer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'I') would dispute that conclusion. If J6P is out of a job, his house foreclosed on living in a tent in Bushville unable to buy food for his starving children, he certainly can be no worse off with a wealth redistribution, since he has been stripped of any he had at all. When the Romanoffs got filled full of lead in a Ruskie basement, most certainly the impoverished Ruskies improved their lot in life under Communism, because they were starving to death before Communism, that is WHY they had a revolution.