Hi Craig Weinberg 

Lord of the Flies is basically the conservative view put forth by Hobbes (and 
Paul).
    At root we are criminals.

Welfare is essentially the leftist view put forth by Rousseau.
    At root we are saints.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
9/5/2012 
Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him 
so that everything could function."
----- Receiving the following content ----- 
From: Craig Weinberg 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-09-05, 00:40:00
Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect




On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:14:17 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 9/4/2012 9:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 8:49:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: 
On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: 
> What struck me is that the "the USERS of wealth in directing the life 
> of the country." 
> seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. 
> Richard 

     OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every 
one. Then what? 


then we have democracy?


    No, because people always congregate into groups, it is their nature. And 
from there it is "Lord of the Flies" all over. It has happened many times 
before. Why do we never learn?


I think that's why Jefferson was keen on periodic revolutions. If inequality is 
inevitable though, it makes sense to mediate that tendency to some extent if we 
can, rather than giving carte blanche to the winning savages. It's like saying 
we should learn that there is always crime so why bother with police. Isn't 
civilization based upon the effort to tame our innate tendencies toward self 
interest? Or at least to agree to conspire against the barbarians outside of 
the walls.





wouldn't even need to confiscate all capital, and I don't think that anyone is 
suggesting that. Just make hoarding wealth more expensive.

    Sure! A tax credit for investing. Oh way, that already exists! It is why 
the investment tax is so low as it is!


Investing in guaranteed payouts is what makes hoarding of wealth possible. Why 
would we want to give tax breaks for the wealthy to find ways of taking more 
money out of the economy faster? At the plutocrat level, you should be rewarded 
only for investing in non-profit enterprises that lose money. Being able to 
invest huge amounts of money, especially unearned money from a dynastic 
fortune, is a privilege that should be taxed, not rewarded.
 



Maybe follow the Scandinavian model on a trial basis for 20 years in a handful 
of cities.


    Scandinavia is a bad place to build a model because it has a homogeneous 
population. Such populations behave, on average, very different from highly 
diverse populations. Segregation into polarized groups happens much slower in 
homogenous populations. You might check out the meme flow in such conditions, 
its amazing.


If by homogeneous you mean financially homogeneous, then a plan which tilts the 
economy in favor of the middle class should by definition make any place into a 
more homogeneous society - in which case the Scandinavian model would be 
expected to perform as it does for them now. If you are talking about anything 
else, then I suspect it's just a coded racism. This country was built in large 
part by slaves. We exploit poor migrant workers. There may not be a choice 
ultimately for us but to choose whether to become slaves and disposable workers 
ourselves (assuming we are not already) in a feudal plantation-prison society 
or to settle the score and go after those who continue to benefit the most from 
the system as it is.

In any case, there is no reason to think that experimenting with a Scandinavian 
type system, or even Canadian, British, etc, when it comes to health care would 
not be better than what we have now. The biggest problem is that our political 
assumptions are unfalsifiable. No matter how far our standard of living 
plummets and how the far-too-rich get richer at everyone else's expense, it can 
always be suggested that it could be worse had we not done what we did. Only 
through experimentation in a scientific way will we ever learn anything.


Craig





Craig

-- 





-- 
Onward!

Stephen

http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html
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