Parasitic capitalists - a point to ponder.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

MM, you don't have to change human nature, you just have to find ways to live with it. We've learned to live with our inner caveman for the most part. Now we need to go an extra step.

I agree.

"Civilization? GREAT IDEA! When do you think we'll get one?"

[PsychoSerenity]

I broadly agree. ... a healthy system needs a variety of checks and balances. Unions, consumer groups, a strong press and activist shareholders are all part of the mix.

It's all been tried, and kept failing, Jim. Look at Australia's social, economic and media developments since the Harvester judgement by Justice Higgins in 1907, just to pick one example. You're doing no more than defending the status quo.

I'm really only wondering what the alternative is...

Previous attempts to find one are not encouraging...

That's the most depressing part about it. I like Churchill's quip on the matter, but given where we have been heading for decades now, it's was horrible thing to say. "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." In other words, this is as good as it gets. Fucking great.

Plenty have yet to be tried at all, especially considering recent advancements in technology. A modern democratic socialism, perhaps with John Rawls' "justice as fairness" as a basis, and technocratic sustainable resource management to ensure people have access to food, shelter, healthcare, education etc. - the world is changing fast. I'm not giving up hope just yet.

[Drewish]

How did I miss this thread?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I was wondering that myself.

[Blind groper]

Unfortunately, if you have enough estate to make the inheritance tax a factor, you also own a few legislators. So the imbalance is self-perpetuating.

This is the nub of it. The very wealthy are also very influential over government. Too bloody influential!

Anyone who thinks we can set up a system based on altruism is being very, very naive. The best we can hope for is to minimise corruption in government. Capitalism in one form or another is necessary. Alternatives have been tried and failed miserably (their failure led to the people living miserably). Capitalism inevitably leads to some people becoming rich and therefore powerful. This means that the change required is that which makes government relatively immune to the blandishments of the rich,

I see no great difficulty there. In the USA, you have your constitution with its clauses that have taken on a life of their own, becoming elements of a kind of religion for most people. Add to those tenets of religion, a clause to make outside groups prohibited from even approaching government, unless accompanied by signed requests by a stated large percentage of the people.

[PsychoSerenity]

Anyone who thinks we can set up a system based on altruism is being very, very naive. The best we can hope for is to minimise corruption in government. Capitalism in one form or another is necessary. Alternatives have been tried and failed miserably (their failure led to the people living miserably).

Capitalism, and particularly the way it is set up today, is something very recent in terms of history of social structure. It's had a few hundred years, but it's not some invincible, everlasting, inevitable way of the world. And soon, like everything that came before it, it's time will have passed.

[Drewish]

Anyone who thinks we can set up a system based on altruism is being very, very naive. The best we can hope for is to minimise corruption in government. Capitalism in one form or another is necessary. Alternatives have been tried and failed miserably (their failure led to the people living miserably).

Capitalism, and particularly the way it is set up today, is something very recent in terms of history of social structure. It's had a few hundred years, but it's not some invincible, everlasting, inevitable way of the world. And soon, like everything that came before it, it's time will have passed.

Exactly. Just as soon as resource scarcity is no longer an issue.

[JimC]

Ah, but it is also human nature to want to provide for and leave your shit to your kids.

Yeh, I know. That's what I meant by a drop in incentive. But if you can't leave them loads of money, then perhaps people will concentrate on raising them well.

Of course that loss of incentive is the stumbling block. BUT, if you pay more tax when you die, then tax could be less while you are alive. I'm not saying we should increase the overall tax take, apart from enough to improve the worst schools, and anyway, that would be self-financing in the very long term.

So lower income tax when you are alive, is an extra incentive, to counteract the lost incentive of leaving your kids a fortune. And your kids would ALSO have more incentive to actually work, as tax rates would be lower, and they won't inherit a fortune.

There are pluses and minuses.

You could do it in a way that allowed people to leave a reasonable amount to children without tax, but over that threshold (whatever the sum might be), additional money would be taxed heavily. That would allow ordinary folk to provide something for their kid's futures, without allowing the accumulation of great wealth and power in dynasties.

[Blind groper]

One of the problems of excessive taxes, whether on the living or as inheritance tax, is that those who are going to suffer from those taxes can pack their bags and leave. This happened in Britain a few decades back, with a bunch of celebrities, rock stars and the like, going to live in the USA.

The very wealthy are also people you do not want to lose, since they take so much wealth with them when they go, and the whole country is the loser. For this reason, taxes are a fine balancing act. Governments wants maximum income, but not at the cost of driving the goose that laid the golden egg offshore. This applies to corporates as well as individuals. How many Americans want Apple to set up shop in Mexico?

[PsychoSerenity]

Anyone who thinks we can set up a system based on altruism is being very, very naive. The best we can hope for is to minimise corruption in government. Capitalism in one form or another is necessary. Alternatives have been tried and failed miserably (their failure led to the people living miserably).

Capitalism, and particularly the way it is set up today, is something very recent in terms of history of social structure. It's had a few hundred years, but it's not some invincible, everlasting, inevitable way of the world. And soon, like everything that came before it, it's time will have passed.

Exactly. Just as soon as resource scarcity is no longer an issue.

Resource scarcity isn't an issue. We produce enough food to feed the world, yet a billion people are going hungry. Poor resource management is the issue. Power being in the hands of a small minority that have long been fighting to hold on to it, is the issue. But hopefully not for much longer. The relentless advance of technology, and particularly in the last decade communications technology, is giving power back to the masses. It'll take some time and I doubt it'll be a smooth ride, but I don't think progress will be halted.

[Hermit]

Resource scarcity isn't an issue. We produce enough food to feed the world, yet a billion people are going hungry.

Food isn't the only resource. Once others run low enough, we won't have the means to grow enough food either. Where, for example, do you think most fertiliser comes from? And what does it take to get the food from field to market?

[Seth]

What is wrong, it the inheritance part. That's what causes the unfairness. Some are born with more than what the hardest worker can ever save. It's there that society gets divided.

What's "unfair" about inheritance? First, your claim falsely presumes that "fairness" is achieved by economic equality. It has been conclusively proven by Socialism that "economic equality" is far more destructive to society than anything else save perhaps plague or nuclear war. This is because basic economics and human behavior turn universal economic equality into universal economic penury in short order, and everybody starves.

Wealth, you see, is the reward for hard work that creates the drive to work hard and excel. Wealth (in the form of capitalism) is what made America the dominant economic engine of the world, and inheritance is nothing more than the person who created that wealth doing with it as he pleases, as opposed to as someone else pleases for their own benefit. The inheritor benefits from the bequest, but no other person is harmed by the passing on of that wealth, which the deceased owner could just as easily pile up, pour gasoline over and burn to cinders if he chooses to do so. Upon what moral basis do you presume to tell someone what they may or may not do with the wealth they created? Moreover, on what moral basis do you lay claim to the wealth of others (directly or through the expedient of thugs hired by government) for your own benefit? You didn't work to create it, so you have no right to it, moral, legal or ethical.

The deceased has every moral right to direct the benefits of his or her wealth to whomever they choose because their choice is far superior to yours, which is based only in greed, jealousy and class warfare ideology.

I would much rather burn and blow up everything I own than give a dime of it to the government to be distributed to the cupidinous proletarian masses who are utterly undeserving of the fruits of my labor.

[Blind groper]

Where, for example, do you think most fertiliser comes from?

The most important fertiliser, needed in greatest quantity, is nitrogen. This is made from atmospheric nitrogen and is essentially unlimited.

Two other kinds are also important. Potassium and phosphorus.
Potassium is currently mined, but there is an essentially unlimited amount dissolved in sea water, and is extractable. We will never run out.

Phosphorus is the only important kind of fertiliser that is currently in 'limited' supply. There is 80 years proven resource at current offtake. However, there are many ways, in theory, of obtaining more. For example ; a team of researchers has already developed an alga that can extract it from human sewage oxidation ponds. Future sources will probably include the ocean. If humanity cannot develop technology to extract far more phosphorus from these and other sources within 80 years, then something has gone very wrong with human ingenuity.

Much the same can be said for other vital resources.

[JimC]

Where, for example, do you think most fertiliser comes from?

The most important fertiliser, needed in greatest quantity, is nitrogen. This is made from atmospheric nitrogen and is essentially unlimited.

Two other kinds are also important. Potassium and phosphorus.
Potassium is currently mined, but there is an essentially unlimited amount dissolved in sea water, and is extractable. We will never run out.

Phosphorus is the only important kind of fertiliser that is currently in 'limited' supply. There is 80 years proven resource at current offtake. However, there are many ways, in theory, of obtaining more. For example ; a team of researchers has already developed an alga that can extract it from human sewage oxidation ponds. Future sources will probably include the ocean. If humanity cannot develop technology to extract far more phosphorus from these and other sources within 80 years, then something has gone very wrong with human ingenuity.

Much the same can be said for other vital resources.

The potential limits are imposed by the large amounts of energy required to convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrate fertiliser, to mine the phosphates etc. and distribute them to farmland...

[Blind groper]

The potential limits are imposed by the large amounts of energy required to convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrate fertiliser, to mine the phosphates etc. and distribute them to farmland...

Energy is even less limited than those other resources. Thorium based nuclear energy, for example, currently under development, has the potential to supply ten times the power output of current nuclear reactors for the next thousand years. Long before then, we should have deuterium based nuclear fusion, which means enough deuterium for at least 100 million years energy.