Samuel Adams once expressed opposition to the redistribution of wealth stating:
“The utopian schemes of leveling, and a community of goods are as visionary and impracticable as those which vest all property in the Crown, are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional.”
U.S. President Grover Cleveland once vetoed an expenditure that would have provided $10,000 of federal aid to drought-stricken Texas farmers. He explained to congress why such an appropriation of taxpayer money was inappropriate:
“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution; and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadily resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people. … The friendliness and charity of our fellow countrymen can always be relied on to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMzf9QzaNI8
Hilarious video, especially at the end “Where does Bill Gates live?” Lots of laugh. But seriously, some have none and some have too much which is not a “right” to take away from the haves. However, it’s never enough to satisfy one man’s greed. Wealth comes from somewhere and its not from the sky fairy. At the gaining of wealth some have suffered for the accumulation of wealth of individuals.
Sky fairy, indeed. I’m reminded by Ayn Rand’s statement about wealth being >created<, not simply found/gained. And that is the hidden premise of all wealth (health) redistributionists; that is, if we distort and evade and oversimplify the nature of wealth, then ‘we’ regard it as some sort of pile of stuff that ‘we’ all have equal shares/rights to.
Economic Numbskulls
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Economics Upside Down, Inside Out, And Out To Get You!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMzf9QzaNI8
One of the features not included is the newly energized consumer of the pie (and his buddies who also ate some of the pie). This newly energized consumer is not benign, it is malignant. It not only seeks more pie to consume but it also destroys the makers of the pie and the growers of the berries and the owners of the land where the berries grow!
And like cancer it kills its host and leaves total devastation.
“U.S. President Grover Cleveland once vetoed an expenditure that would have provided $10,000 of federal aid to drought-stricken Texas farmers. He explained to congress why such an appropriation of taxpayer money was inappropriate:”
yes but I believe it was cleveland who subsidized the collapsing railroad business…talk about inconsistency.
“At the gaining of wealth some have suffered for the accumulation of wealth of individuals.”
This is a horrible fallacy! One must understand that in a free exchange of value, there is gain on both sides of the transaction. No one suffers a loss to feed someone else’s gain.
Both parties are making an assessment of the value of the exchange that is equal to or greater than the value given. Profit occurs on both sides of an equitable exchange. To say that there is loss on one side for the gain on the other is to say that only one person profited in an inequitable exchange. This would be called stealing or fraud. In a free and voluntary exchange, there is at least equivocal exchange of value.
When I say value in this context, I am not refering to the numeric value of the price, but rather the Human value, the personal assessment of value to the individual. This is the source of monetary valuation, what it is worth TO YOU! This is the source of both Wealth and Money.
Value is assigned, not by the price, but by the Objective interpretation of the value of the good or service as it relates to the life of the individual making the evaluation. An Observer sees a subjective evaluation when observing the value presented by that individual because the Observer can only observe, and evaluate objectively relative to himself and cannot evaluate the exchange from the other persons perspective except in a subjective manner
This can be confusing when profit is being calculated, since the price given by the individual’s objective evaluation is the only object that the observer can evaluate himself. Both Parties in an exchange are judging the value of the exchange Objectively for themselves, and observing Subjective evaluation in the other. We are, in any exchange, both the Observer, and the Observed depending on our point of view.
The fallacy in the statement that there is a loss in the exchange that is a transference of wealth to the recipient alone is that this point of view only takes into account the Observation of one side of the exchange! From the other perspective, the same condition exists!
A profitable exchange has gain in value, as perceived by each individual, on both sides!
Let’s say A exchanges with B.
A objectively evaluates what B is offering as >= to what A is offering.
B objectively evaluates what A is offering as >= to what B is offering.
Both evaluations are valid assesments.
A gives to B and B gives to A.
A is Happy. B is Happy. Both parties either broke even or gained in the transaction. No one suffered a loss! Both likely profited!
Grover Cleveland is arguably the last president who could be classified as a “free market” president.
Was he perfect? No.
Should perfection be the criteria?
IMHO, I don’t think so.
We should praise when a politician gets it right and criticize when a politician gets it wrong. In between, we need to work to educate and inform all.
Does Ron Paul have a 1.000 batting average?
Would Paul change a few votes over the course of his career if he could?
Prettyskin,
Who are you to judge that some have “too much” ???
Fakename,
And I suppose that subsidizing the railroad was much more expensive than helping some Texas farmers. Talk about inconsistency indeed. I suppose that it was simply more politicaly expedient at the time to subsidize railroads thant to help Texas farmers.
prettyskin wrote:
“…But seriously, some have none and some have too much which is not a “right” to take away from the haves.”
What does this mean? Are you saying that the have-nots don’t have a right to take from the haves?
“Wealth comes from somewhere and its not from the sky fairy. At the gaining of wealth some have suffered for the accumulation of wealth of individuals.”
Yes, wealth comes from somewhere. Most wealth today comes from the power of capital to amplify the power of labor. Without the accumulation of wealth, capital could not be accumulated, and labor would be much less productive than it is today.
The Political Dictionary
Liberal Economics: Money falls from heaven for everyone to use. But, the immoral and sneaky rich gather more than their share. The government should then step in and redistribute the money the way God intended. Sorry, I mean the way Gaia, or the Tooth Fairy, or whoever intended.
@ Deefburger
There are inequitable exchanges, lets not deny this simple fact. Yes, one person can and do profit in an inequitable exchange.
@ 2nd Amendment
Not a judgment, it is an observation.
As has already been pointed out, in a voluntary exchange, both sides benefit, or else they would not willingly engage in the exchange. How is that possible, you may ask? Won’t one of them necessarily benefit from the other’s loss? Obviously, if one of them thought he would be losing on the deal, he would not do it. More importantly, though, both sides gain because value is subjective, and it is because of this that the creation of value is theoretically unlimited–a free market creates ever larger pies, instead of a limited pie.
The only time one gains at the expense of others is when force or fraud is used, as for example, an item for sale is misrepresented to the buyer–he thinks he’s getting something other than what he is actually getting.
Government programs and policies depend largely on coercion, from taxation to fund them to political decision making to decide who benefits. These programs create haves and have-nots, because those who are providing the funds are not doing so willingly. Since government doesn’t create wealth, it can only redistribute already-created wealth, causing strife and political fighting between different interest groups, as they try to divy up the limited, political pie.
Political harmony, and ever-increasing wealth, can only be assure by getting government out of the redistribution business.
There are inequitable exchanges, lets not deny this simple fact.
Of course there are inequitable exchanges, but can you provide an example of one where force or fraud has not been involved? Are there such things as inequitable exchanges that people willingly engage in? For example, do you “willingly” pay your electric company every month, or do you pay them because they have a monopoly on the distribution of electricity in your region? There may be some other alternatives, but they are most likely more costly or more undesirable to you (solar, wind power, portable generator, doing without electricity).
prettyskin wrote:
“There are inequitable exchanges, lets not deny this simple fact. Yes, one person can and do profit in an inequitable exchange.”
Who gets to decide which exchanges are inequitable? And why would a person voluntarily engage in an exchange, if he doesn’t think he’s better off after the exchange than before it?
Two baskets, one is full of blueberries– hand picked by the owner of that basket and the other basket is empty. There is no blueberries in the latter basket whereby the owner hand picked none. The observation is that one basket is empty and this is a fact. Therefore, one basket has too much. It doesn’t matter why there is no blueberries in one of the baskets. The have not blueberries owner has no right to take from the have blueberries. Dorothy Parker said that If you want to know what the sky fairy thinks of money, just look at the people who has it.
@ Russ
Fraud do exists. The observation and documentation of a fraud determines an inequitable exchange.
Where fraud exists in an exchange, it is obviously not a voluntary exchange–it just seems to be. The solution is not redistribution, but restitution.
prettyskin wrote:
“The observation is that one basket is empty and this is a fact. Therefore, one basket has too much.”
That is a “non sequitur” logical fallacy; your conclusion does not logically follow from your assumptions. Yes, the fact that one basket is empty *is* a fact. It does not logically follow from this that one basket has “too much”. “Too much” is not a fact at all, but a value judgment, just as 2nd Amendment said in an earlier post. It is based on an implicit assumption that all baskets should have an equal amount of blueberries in the end.
“Fraud do exists. The observation and documentation of a fraud determines an inequitable exchange.”
Yes, fraud does exist. And yes, fraud does constitute an inequitable exchange. But inequality of outcome does not necessarily imply fraud, so not all exchanges that involve inequality of outcome are inequitable.
Bro, this is the crux of Libertarian jurisprudence. Restituion only. And boycott.
The justification of meansends is always circular when explaining redistribution (as if government buildings, lofty office space and more bureaucracy ever benefitted anyone other than government or their freinds). It sort of reminds me of the Rawlsian veil of ignorance, which according to him makes everyone undeserving and not responsible for their own lives.
Yes there are inequities – the free market has no time for the unproductive.
Gil wrote:
“Yes there are inequities – the free market has no time for the unproductive.”
This depends on what you mean by inequity. If you mean inequality of outcome; yes, there is inequity in the free market. If you mean injustice, there is no inequity without fraud or theft.
“Honeste vivere…suum cuique tribuere” …Ulpian’s law of common sense.
luisdiego22002 wrote:
“”Honeste vivere…suum cuique tribuere” …Ulpian’s law of common sense.”
By exercising my mad Google-Fu skillz, I found that this quote is “Honeste vivere; alterum non laedare; suum cuique tribuere”, which means “Live honestly; do not harm others; give to each his own”. It is the last of these, “give to each his own” that is in dispute here. Some (socialists) would interpret this as meaning something along the lines of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. Most of us here would interpret this as meaning more or less “honor your contracts”. Big difference.
Bravo Everyone!
An equitable exchange:
A percieves exchange value >= B
B percieves exchange value >= A
Fraud:
A percieves exchange value >= B
B percieves exchange value >= A
B lies, so A’s perception is in error.
A discovers exchange value > B
B recieved value > A
Coersion:
A has value > B
B takes from A
There is NO exchange of value in this scenario. B recieves A’s value by force.
In the first scenario, A and B percieve equality or gain. Both recieve value in the exchange.
In the second, A and B do not percieve equitable exchange after the fact. B lied. So A recieved less than A thought was due. B knew the value was less and that it would be percieved to be a value greater than it was.
In the third, there was no exchange of value. Only a transference of value from A, unwillingly.
This is not rocket science. It is a simple calculation of percieved value and a Happy-Happy outcome. It makes no difference if the exchange is money, time, goods, services or whatever, so long as A percieves >= value and B percieves >= value.
No one is robbed by a profitable voluntary and honest exchange.
As for the blueberries, only the the basket holder full of berries can determine if there is “too much” or not. No one else has a claim on that property.
The holder of the empty basket may have been the orginal seller! If his basket is now empty and the other’s basket is full, then it is possible that there was also an exchange of some other commodity or service that the empty basket holder is owed or already possesses. Or the empty basket is empty because the holder failed to fill it some how. In any case, the full basket is just a full basket. Only the basket holder can evaluate the worth of their property relative to the others around them. To observe, and then pass judgement, and then enforce consequences is wrong!
Bravo Everyone!
An equitable exchange:
A percieves exchange value >= B
B percieves exchange value >= A
Fraud:
A percieves exchange value >= B
B percieves exchange value >= A
B lies, so A’s perception is in error.
A discovers exchange value > B
B recieved value > A
Coersion:
A has value > B
B takes from A
There is NO exchange of value in this scenario. B recieves A’s value by force.
In the first scenario, A and B percieve equality or gain. Both recieve value in the exchange.
In the second, A and B do not percieve equitable exchange after the fact. B lied. So A recieved less than A thought was due. B knew the value was less and that it would be percieved to be a value greater than it was.
In the third, there was no exchange of value. Only a transference of value from A, unwillingly.
This is not rocket science. It is a simple calculation of percieved value and a Happy-Happy outcome. It makes no difference if the exchange is money, time, goods, services or whatever, so long as A percieves >= value and B percieves >= value.
No one is robbed by a profitable voluntary and honest exchange.
As for the blueberries, only the the basket holder full of berries can determine if there is “too much” or not. No one else has a claim on that property.
The holder of the empty basket may have been the orginal seller! If his basket is now empty and the other’s basket is full, then it is possible that there was also an exchange of some other commodity or service that the empty basket holder is owed or already possesses. Or the empty basket is empty because the holder failed to fill it some how. In any case, the full basket is just a full basket. Only the basket holder can evaluate the worth of their property relative to the others around them. To observe, and then pass judgement, and then enforce consequences is wrong!
“There are inequitable exchanges, lets not deny this simple fact. Yes, one person can and do profit in an inequitable exchange.”
An interesting point, but unavoidable. Interpretation is not a problem in and of itself, on the contrary, it`s vital to true discussion. There`s always someone who feels his way of seeing things is right and your wrong. The thing is you have to prove it. A problem arises when you try to interpret someone elses words on your own terms, without really caring about the authors true intent (e.g.: historical context, authors other writings on the subject), or allowing contrary opinion and then passing it off as the absolute truth, enforced coercively if possible. This is what statism does. It can`t allow dissent to go uncontrolled. It`s precisely the problem surrounding codified law, and social contracts represented by some sort of constitution. “According to his needs”? The states needs.
Let him have all my pie, let him eat 3 meals of pie every day for the rest of his lives. Eventually he will get sick and die young and then I can keep my pie for myself.
So, if the state is so inefficient for us pie-makers, shouldn’t an entrepreneur entered into a contract with us, whereby we all pay him a years worth of pies and in return he will free us from the state for good???
Property Rights Are Human Rights!
This is becoming increasingly obvious!
Monday, August 17, 2009
‘Equitable’ Exchange Is Ego-Driven Interpretation.
All exchanges in a free society are inequitable and valued subjectively.
There would be no exchange if there was the perception that before and after were simply ‘equitable.’ The subjective valuation by individuals who are unique makes the ‘inequitable’ exchange perfectly just.
No ego-driven interpretation or ego-driven intervention can improve on this just and inequitable exchange.
Bruce Koerber wrote:
“All exchanges in a free society are inequitable and valued subjectively.”
The word “inequitable” generally means unfair or unjust, not unequal. So, no, not all exchanges in a free society are inequitable.
@ Professor Blitzkrieg
Flag! Fraud.
Dear Russ,
Thank you for correcting my incorrect use of the word inequitable.
The question is not the differences in how much people have earned or retained. The difficult issue is determining who earned what they have and who obtained what they have through initiation of force and fraud.
Some may have vast amounts of wealth earned honestly, while others obtained it dishonestly. Some poor may have gotten what little they have dishonestly while others earned it.
Were their exchanges open and honest?
So, let’s try to apply this to the real world.
The Red Chinese managers who shipped pet food tainted with melamine to fool protein content tests? No, not open and honest.
Did the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac executives obtain their wealth honestly? I think not.
Fractional reserve bankers? Mostly no.
AIG execs? Mostly no.
Other protection racketeers who call their firms “insurance companies” but resist and refuse to pay valid claims? Mostly no.
Did Bill Gates? Some yes, some no.
Vivek Wadhwa, the body shopper? Some yes, some no.
Bethlehem Steel executives who destroyed the company to get out from under contractual pension obligations after decades of under-investment? No.
Tata executives who promised to hire over 1K US citizens in Buffalo, then another 1K outside Cincinnati, but, according to the best info available, hired no more than 10-25? Definitely no.
ACORN, Tides Foundation, Apollo, FFPIR, etc., execs? Nearly all no.
Cheer me up from my our mood, guys. Please, point out a few “yesses”, people who have always worked honestly and openly, produced great products and done well.
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