Here’s a letter that I recently sent to the Boston Globe:
William Joseph Leach is correct: arguments for income "redistribution"
typically rest on nothing more firm than highly subjective assessments
by Jones of what Smith "needs" or "doesn’t need" (Letters, October 5).
If
such assessments truly justify "redistribution," why start with
monetary wealth? Far better first to redistribute political power.
Such power – unlike wealth in market economies – is extracted from
voters who have little incentive or ability to wisely assess what they
receive in return for their votes. I believe that neither John McCain
nor Barack Obama needs the power that one of them will soon acquire.
The same is true of Members of Congress, high-level bureaucrats, and
governors: they neither need nor deserve the power they possess.
Let’s
redistribute this power widely and more equally, to the masses, so that
America is rid of unconscionable and socially destabilizing
concentrations of power.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
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Wow, that is a great letter. Plenty to ponder upon.
Well said, Dr. B.
I don't suspect is very well received. They probably read it like it was written by a Martian.
I can hear it now from the politicians: "But wait a minute, I EARNED my political power."
And money grows on trees.
How? This "call for action" is vague enough to suit any politician. You should go into speech writing.
How about replacing the income tax with a progressive consumption tax and simultaneously forbidding Federal deficits?
The progressive consumption tax is a reform of the progressive income tax and entitles every taxpayer to unlimited tax deferral on investments, essentially an IRA with unlimited contributions. It also raises marginal rates gradually, to lower revenue from the tax.
Juries hearing tax evasion cases effectively define "investment" expenditures and so influence the reorganization of Federal resources idled by the falling Federal revenue. Investors may assemble a jury before investing.
Common investors typically contribute to funds, as they do now, and fund managers adhere to the legal definition of "investment", as they do now.
Sounds good Martin.
Do you want to propose a constitutional amendment to that effect?
Martin, I think he was be facetious, pointing out how silly redistribution arguments are when based on other aspects of life other than material goods.
Make sure you write into the amendment a prohibition on special treatment for certain classes of expenditures. Otherwise we'll still have social engineering through the tax code, but potentially on an even more massive scale.
I can see it now – food purchases are exempt, because eating is a basic right, except for food consumed on the premises, because that's just wasteful, unless those premises are small businesses, because they shouldn't be penalized relative to the big supermarkets, unless those small businesses are franchises of a chain, because that would unfairly benefit the franchisers, unless there are no supermarkets within 5 miles (because not everyone can go that far for groceries) or the only grocer within that range gets more than 50% of its revenue from non-food items (because, you know, Wal-Mart), in which case grocery purchases are taxable. Or aren't, I've lost track. Save your receipts and contact your CPA.
The system needs improvement but the "libertarian" way of returning power to the people is simply an unknown calling to return to feudalism. I can't see left to itself in it's pure form how it could result in anything else. The democratic way of returning power to the people is by mundane, uncertain trial and error. By a mix of good and bad competing political ideas. The proper road to take involves philosophically sloppy pragmatism of what works in the real world. There are no neat clean ideologically pure answers to our problems but the one guiding principle is that concentrations of power either economic or political should not be tolerated because both ultimately lead to a loss of freedoms and liberty. If such massive accumulations of power and wealth are occurring something is wrong with the system and it needs tweaking.
If you believe any one man is worth 100,000 in any sense you're a believer in concentrated power and not of power of the people.
Well, you might actually try to educate yourself by opening a history book. Let me explain it very simply. Look at every country in the world where there are written records. Which countries have one class that has all the wealth, while the peasants live in crushing poverty? Which countries have the largest proportion of the population in a middle class? When a country transitions from one state to another (no middle class -> middle class or vice versa) what causes it?
If you actually would study the history books, you would find that the size of the middle class correlates with how free the economy is. Where ocuntries have liberalized their economies, the middle class has exploded. When countries have deliberalized the eocnomy, th emiddle class has shrunk or even disappeared entirely.
Your notion that somehow in a free amrket that wealth would be concentrated in the hands of a few families is given lie to by numerous examples in history.
In a free market productive people grow more wealthy in proportion to how productive they are (note, Bill gates is not productive per se, but his operating system allows people to be far more productive than thye otherwise would ahve been, which is why he can get people to trade a portion of the extra wealth they are able to create for access to his operating system). The only wealth they have is wealth they create, or can convince peopel to voluntarily give to them.
Productivity is not purely genetic. The world is full of families where one guy ammasses a fortune, and his children and his grandchildren piss it away. One could make a powerful case that ones parents are a secondary or tertiary factor on how much wealth one can create.
This is understaneable, people who are poor, but have great ideas, have a powerful incentive to engagte in the creative destruction enabled by the free market. While wealthy people tend to be less interested in engaging in creative destruction.
Feudalism depended on the aristocracy wielding unlimited poltiical power, where peaseants were denied the means to defend themselves. It was the antithesis of the free market, and wherever respect of private property rights has spread the aristocracy has found itself under siege, losing prestige, poltiical clout and its grip on political power.
Why do you think so many aritocrats embarced socialism in the late 19th century? They were casting about for a system where once again they would be in charge, and the uncouth tradesmen would be shoved back into their rightful subordinate place.
"I believe that neither John McCain nor Barack Obama needs the power that one of them will soon acquire."
I'd argue of the two the best chance of one of them actually decreasing the power and likelihood of you and me paying for political corruption is THAT ONE ( as no hand shake McCain calls him) who is not taking contributions to his campaign from lobbyist and has no lobbyist running his campaign.
Muirgeo asks:
"If you believe any one man is worth 100,000 in any sense you're a believer in concentrated power and not of power of the people."
Such a question borders on the meaningless, for it doesn't specify what is meant by "worth." If what is meant "produces and sells output valued by others by at least $100,000," then of course I believe that one person can be, and often is, worth $100,000. (You can raise the figure to $10 billion, if you like, and my answer doesn't change.)
But such a claim that someone is "worth" a certain amount of money speaks not at all to the moral dimension of worth. My son, for example, isn't worth, in financial terms, $100,000 — but I would pay that amount and more, if I had to, to save his life.
….
I have a question for Muirgeo: who has done more good for society: Ted Kennedy or Steve Jobs? Who has more "concentrated power": Ted Kennedy or Steve Jobs?
Martin,
Good idea on the tax plan. However, I hope you know Don wasn't attempting to suggest new ways of taxation or truthfully expecting politicians yielding more power to the citizens. Don, good point expressed!!
Martin,
Good idea on the tax plan. However, I hope you know Don wasn't attempting to suggest new ways of taxation or truthfully expecting politicians yielding more power to the citizens. Don, good point expressed!!
Sorry, not sure how the duplicate was posted?
Take a look at what's happening in southern Oregon, via my buddy Max:
http://tinyurl.com/3g24a2
I laughed when I read this article. Politicians will give up their power when you take it from their bloodied hands.
.
The system needs improvement but the "libertarian" way of returning power to the people is simply an unknown calling to return to feudalism.
Simple assertion does not an argument make.
Like the left, the aristocrat exhibited great disdain for commerce.
And what was the aristocrat's claim to nobility and wealth?
Simply that his ancestors had participated in the conquest of the land he held title to. This was how serfdom came about, not by a free market, but by conquest through force of arms, and force of arms is how government operates.
Muirgeo, how can you want to give people the power to make government serve them yet deny to people the power to serve themselves?
If they are not fit to exercise this power themselves, then how can they be fit to delegate it? And who is fit to hold this power?
Greed
Greed is but a manifestation of the human urge to survive.
More access to wealth (money) give greater assurance of survival.
So too with political power. Political power also provides its wielders greater assurance of survival. The most well protected man in the world is the one that wields the most political power.
Who is greedier, the man who seeks more money or the man who seeks more power?
Quite often, they are one and the same.
Don, I think Muirgeo was saying if you believe one man is worth 100,000 other men. Not $100,000. Muirgeo is saying something along the lines that if you believe its right that one man has the same amount of wealth as another 100,000 men combined, you believe in concentrated power and not "power of the people"(tm). It still borders on nonsense, but I hope that helps. Muirgeo can correct me if I'm wrong.
"Who holds more power? If you damn Libertopians had your way it would be the greedy business owners building their businesses on the backs of emaciated child prostitute porn-star nuns with worthless paper while shoving their religion down everyone's throats!
The only way for more freedom is for government to give it to us. Tyrants! TYRANTS ALL OF YOU!!"
Whoa, I was channeling someone again. I'm not sure why that keeps happening.
I got that, but I like a little meat with my potatoes. The current statesmen are always a lot of morons, but that ain't news.
Martin,
I'm lost as to how this is a "progressive consumption tax" that you propose. I'm under the impression that a progressive consumtion tax would look something like this: a customer goes into a retail establishment and walks up to the check-out counter to buy something — s/he has something on her/his person that identifies that amount s/he earns in salary through wages or in distributions of investment income. Based on the amount this person has in annual income, the sales tax rate is calculated and added to the original price tag. The more income the person earns per year, the more percentage of tax that is paid on the purchase.
Plus, in regards to comparisons with feudalism, my main problem is there is a link between your legal regime and your geographical location. Under feudalism, you are tied to the land, you are born somewhere, and you work that land, and the landlord makes the rules, and the landlord is beholden to some other bigger landlord and so forth. But in democracy it is the same, except democracy holds meetings where they choose the landlords from a list. The legal regime is still dependent on where you happen to be located. That's the link that has to be severed. Just because we live on the same street, shouldn't mean we have to have the same abortion policy. The bank I use doesn't have anything to do with where I live, I could use a Swiss bank if I wanted, but I have to use (and pay for, even if I use a private alternative) a Virginia court system or a United States welfare system. In fact the Swiss banking firm tries to beat a path to my door, to get my business. No matter where my door might be located. THe State of California just tries to induce me to move myself out there, I don't see them trying to move themselves to me.
So libertarianism is far from feudalism, in that your legal regime is not tied to your location. Libertarians form their voluntary associations, and write and agree to contracts that specify who will do the judging and enforcing and how the enforcer will enfore should somebody not perform. And guess what, it won't be the same enforcement agent each time, and guess also what, the enforcement agencies will end up competeing with each other to be the best, most sage and judicious and impartial agent. Or they'll go out of business.
And socialists can get together and pay their premiums and proudly display their membership cards that give them access to and the claim on all the other card carrying members stuff. But don't be shocked if a non-subscriber punches you in the face when you try to reach for his wallet.
Sever the link between land and law.
"Let's redistribute this power widely and more equally, to the masses, so that America is rid of unconscionable and socially destabilizing concentrations of power."
Are you here recognizing the concept of positive liberty as well as negative liberty?
Commies want positive liberty.
The idea is that you either consume or invest your income, so you account for your income and you account for your investments. You subtract the latter from the former to determine your consumption. This way, you aren't accounting for your consumption in detail, because you're presumed to consume any income that you don't invest.
No. It's not a retail sales tax. You aren't accountable for what you consume at all. There are no exemptions for food, no rebates for low income people (as in the FAIR tax), nothing like that. You're only accountable for "investment", which is not taxed at all.
When you receive returns from your investments, that's income again. If you reinvest this income, you still owe no tax. If you don't reinvest it, you pay the tax.
Needless to say, this accounting would be incredibly burdensome. The tax deferred investment approach is much simpler, because you only account for your investments, not for your consumption.
Most people "invest" largely by handing money to someone else, so little accounting is required. Most of the accounting falls to relatively few investment professionals, as it does now. If you're a small business person or a wealthy individual, you invest more directly, so your accounting burden is greater, but that's already true.
Marginal tax rates could approach 100%. These hight rates wouldn't empower central authorities, just the opposite. Millions of millionaires would exercise something like the current authority of Congress to spend, in market transactions, but like Congressmen, their entitlement to consume resources personally would be limited.
This model of a personal consumption tax is not really about taxing. It's about creating a limited but decentralized authority to organize productive resources. Ideally, such a tax raises no revenue for central authorities at all.
I have a question for Muirgeo: who has done more good for society: Ted Kennedy or Steve Jobs? Who has more "concentrated power": Ted Kennedy or Steve Jobs?
Posted by: Don Boudreaux
You would pick an Apple exec over a Microsoft making it a bit harder.
The best I can say is that the answer is not obvious to me. I think we need angle like Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life to replay the future in each of their absences.
Good governance is essential to good entrepreneurship and I believe Mr Jobs large donations to the Democratic party suggest he believes the same.
How about what good Kennedy has done with his inherited wealth?
And the question was not about what Steve Jobs believes, but what he has DONE.
People give money to political parties most often to counter the money that other people give to opposing parties. That's the focus of all the fund raising letters I receive.
Muigeo,
Do you seriously doubt that Bill Gates has done more for humankind than has Ted Kennedy (or any politician you care to name)?
And I'm talking not about Gates's charity. I'm talking about his company. He created hundreds of billions of dollars of prosperity.
Martin, I assert that neither you nor a jury would be able to gauge every possible human action as investment or consumption because there is simply no difference.
Take for example a sandwich, a good that is literally consumed. Most would consider this mere consumption, but eating a sandwich has non-obvious uses in producing other goods. Yes, a man eats a sandwich because he’s hungry, but sating that hunger allows him to concentrate on things other than his growling stomach. His demeanor improves, and the quality of his work follows suit. His new mood may cause him to be more generous than usual to the people around him, raising his social status.
A more obvious example is a professional athlete that drinks a protein shake. Again, he is consuming, but the shake is a clear and direct investment in his production.
Rothbard writes, "The critics of praxeology confuse the necessary and eternal separation of ends and means as categories with their frequent coincidence in a particular concrete resource or course of action."
I see ends and means as being always coincident, entangled like some tumbleweed. How could a jury untangle them? Even if you believe there are some human actions that are purely consumption and some purely investment, surely you will admit that there are others that may have characteristics of both.
Supposed two men each buy a truck. One starts a lawn care business with his; the other just likes trucks. Which man has invested and which has consumed? Would it make a difference if the former started his lawn car business in the middle of the Mojave desert, and the latter used the truck to drive to work, tote his kids around, and for the gain in social status?
Both would prefer to purchase their trucks tax free. You say a jury might resolve each's tax liability, but if this sort of tax contention were widespread, I suspect juries would be completely overwhelmed.
A better way to judge investment/consumption is to use profitability. The Mojave Lawn Care business may fail to pay for the truck, while the other man produces something of value to society which enables him to pay.
If I lend $100,000 to someone to either buy a Ferrari or invest in a company searching for a cure for cancer, the only consideration I have for determining whether each was a sound investment is if the borrower can repay the loan plus any interest, for in doing so, he must have produced some value to society. Both of these investments could be good; both could be bad. Allowing moral judgments about these investments to override profitability will surely make us all worse off.
This entanglement of investment and consumption, of ends and means, is why I can't support any law that tries, by means of subsidies or tax deductions, to effectively produce a list, ranked by value, of all human action. This is impossible.
Don,
First and foremost the earliest microprocessors were developed in conjunction with government support and for government use. It's arguable Gates and Jobs successes would have never occurred with out prior government aided research and development of the first microprocessors. I think you'd find them thankful for the shoulders of giants that preceded them.
Second, I am quite sure had Christopher Columbus and his crew hit a rock and all drowned while leaving the port of Genoa America would have been discovered a month or two later. And instead of Columbus Day we'd maybe be celebrating Balella Day had my Genoan ancestors just got their act together.
Had Bill Gates been run over by a truck when he was 10 years old Steve Jobs computer might have enjoyed far greater success and actually the whole economy might be doing far better running under his superior OS.
A ? about your proposed consumption tax.
If someone makes just enough money to survive, how will he pay a tax?
Muirgeo, the OS isn't the biggest factor here. Mirosoft Office (Excel, more specifically)has increased productivity a thousand fold. I can do it minutes what would have previously taken weeks.
During the days of Adam & Eve, if death was the punishment for incest, none of us would have ever lived. Human Beings would have never caused global warming. Everything would have been so wonderful that nobody would exist who could admire it.
If, If, If and more Ifs. But, But, But…..
If, If, If Microsoft didn't exist, very few people would own a computer and it would cost an exorbitant sum to buy.
The problems liberals have with Gates is, he achieved tremendous wealth without a whole lot of lobbying for it. Until the feds started going after MS on anti-trust, MS hardly spent any money lobbying.
Funny thing about that is, Gates sounds very liberal in his ideology, but has not openly endorsed the progressives like his buddy, rent-seeking Buffet.
Second, I am quite sure had Christopher Columbus and his crew hit a rock and all drowned while leaving the port of Genoa America would have been discovered a month or two later.
& if the government hadn't had a hand in creating the microprocessor, someone else would have, possibly later, possibly even sooner, possibly at the same time. No matter where it came from, Jobs & Gates & other entrepreneurs made it accessible & useful for the rest of us.
I'm a life-long Mac user. I hate using Windows. But I'll have to admit, Microsoft did the world a service by being more affordable to the mass of people, & by being competition for Apple.
First and foremost the earliest microprocessors were developed in conjunction with government support and for government use.
And "the system was considered so advanced that the Navy refused to allow publication of the design until 1997."
The processor was created by a private enterprise based upon fundamental R&D in the private sector. There is no reason to suppose that demand for miniaturization wouldn't have arisen from the private sector as needed. In this sense you can consider the government as a market actor with extorted money.
The interesting thing about Microsoft is the it does not make computers which has made it possible for me to construct my own system for a few hundred dollars.
Try building a Mac for anything close to that.
I know I'm not able to gauge every possible human action. One jury couldn't either, but thousands of juries could influence these decisions more effectively than you and I pulling a lever beside the names of professional liars we've never met every two years.
Of course, investment and consumption differ. This distinction is central to any meaningful theory of economics. The distinction is not perfectly unambiguous, but distinctions rarely are.
The productive consequences of eating a sandwich for the individual eater are not relevant to this distinction, because "consumption" involves benefits exclusive to the individual by definition. Being more productive because I'm well fed is beneficial to me. It's beneficial to you only insofar as you have something of value for which I will exchange my productivity, so you want also to consume to benefit yourself, and that's fine.
"Investment" by contrast describes my expenditure on productive resources that I don't personally consume but rather organize to add value. The relevant attribute of these other resources is that they are not me and do not benefit me exclusively.
The investment is in his personal productivity. That's why it's his consumption. If he bought a shake for me in exchange for a bit of my productivity resulting from my consumption of the shake, that would be investment. If he bought hay for a horse pulling his plow, that would be investment. The plow is an investment. The land he plows is an investment. A barn for the horse or quarters for farmhands is investment. The land beneath his personal residence customarily is not. The distinction may seem arbitrary at some point, but propriety necessarily involves arbitrary distinctions. The boundary between my land and yours is such a distinction.
Juries disentangle guilt from innocence and distinguish my property from yours routinely, because they exercise this authority. If I want to know the boundary between my property and yours, must I simply ask you?
I'm not suggesting any pure this or pure that. Blurry lines don't prevent lawful processes. Here's how the tax operates. You want to buy some farmland to grow corn, and you don't want to pay taxes on the income expended this way. You consult a tax attorney. He tells you this use of the income is well within the "investment" category customarily and certifies this opinion, so you declare this "investment" and don't pay the tax. If he's wrong, you sue him and/or his malpractice insurance company. If you don't like this risk, you ask for a more official decision. It's all part of the cost of your investment.
This sort of thing happens every day; otherwise, we couldn't have IRAs and 401ks.
The lawn care man has invested, and the other man has consumed. If a man buys a Picasso and hangs it in his private residence, that's consumption too. If he displays it in a public museum, for profit or otherwise, that's investment. That's how I'd vote on the jury anyway. You might vote differently. The common law doesn't require ironclad rules, and I like it that way.
Yes, it would. If a man buys a truck and claims it for his lawn care business but doesn't use it for a lawn care business, that's fraud. My sister is a veterinarian with a truck she writes off, so this question comes up in tax law all the time.
Juries might agree that cars we drive to work constitute "investment", even over the objection of more central authorities. A jury might decide so now. Try writing off your car and find out.
If juries go the "investment" route, they must account for the truck's yield (any income earned from its use) as well as the proceeds of its sale as "income" the next time around, so they might prefer to call it "consumption" and have the accountability finished. After all, the tax is progressive, so most people pay a low rate on most of their consumption. Judges will also instruct them on statutory standards and common precedent.
No. We already have tax deferred investments, and juries are not overwhelmed.
Treating all failed investments as "consumption" definitively would be counterproductive, but juries can decide the difference between a failed investment and a fraudulent investment. Juries make these decisions every day. I'm not proposing anything new.
From your perspective, the loan for the Ferrari customarily is an investment. It's the Ferrari driver's consumption. He owes the tax, not you. He also owes you a return.
Again, this situation exists now. We pay sales taxes on Ferraris now. I expect we'd continue defining "investment" this way under a progressive consumption tax.
We already have legal distinctions between consumption and investment, between criminal guilt and innocence, between my side of a property line and yours. These distinctions already shape our earnings, our holdings, our entitlement to spend. We wouldn't have any modern economies or wealthy men to subject to consumption taxes if these forcible proprieties didn't already exist. Call it "morality" or whatever you like.
I'm not suggesting that anyone be denied a profitable investment, quite the contrary. I want profitable investments freed of all taxation. That's the whole point. Some jury might decide that something you deem "investment" is "consumption" and thus subject to the tax instead, just as some jury might decide that an oil well falls on my side of a property line and not yours.
I prefer one common jury making this decision, however mistaken, in one case to a few hundred politicians sitting in Washington D.C. making similar decisions for everyone, and I also prefer it to one man entitled to organize vast resources making the decision unchecked by a common sense of the public merits of "investment" versus the personal "consumption" of one man entitled to organize vast resources, because one man organizing vast resources for his exclusive use overrides the profitable use of these resources by others.
Who said anyting about "all of human action". This generalization is yours, not mine. You may support or oppose anything you like, of course. Go back to the state of nature if you want. It's all the same to me.
The tax is progressive, so he pays a low rate. This poor man pays a 15.7% payroll tax as well as various sales and other taxes now, so I don't suppose a progressive consumption tax will starve him. The lowest marginal rate could be zero for that matter.
Does anybody really think that if Bill Gates or Steve Job were never around that the home computer would not have been invented? It most certainly would have and who ever that guy or gal was that created the software certainly would get rich but not really so much because they were so in-valuable or irreplaceable or unique but mostly because they were in the right place at the right time and they were smart and took then initiative. But they didn't do it in isolation. They did it with a political, legal and social structure that made their chance for success even greater. There's no reason to believe there is some proportionality between their contribution and their wealth. There is reason to believe, IMO, that excessive concentration of wealth and de-funding of our social institutions in favor of an unregulated market would return us to a stagnant stage of society as only a few of the masses would ever truly get a chance to compete in the market place of ideas.
If we go back to a feudal system the odds are Gates and Jobs would have been born to serfs and never risen to their potential.
"But he does not see, or will not admit, that a return to 'free' competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly."
H G Wells on Hayek's The Road to Serfdom
Neither of them invented it.
If the biggest most powerful chimp controls all the bananas, the rest of the chimps can do one of several things to try to get some to stave off starvation. They can try to overpower the greedy boss chimp and probably have to kill him to take over all the bunches of bananas. They can beg him for taste by doing a sexy dance. They can prostitute themselves for a few bananas. You get the idea.
Aren't we more civilized than chimps? You want us to go back to the law of the jungle. Sorry buster. Been there; done that over a million years ago. YOU go back to the jungle. I resent your uncouth, uncivilized, barbarism. We need a Robin Hood-in-chief not another thief-in-chief like Bush & Cheney.
What makes Jobs more important than Gates, muirgeo? Is it that he leans more to the Left or is it because he's the underdog and you sympathize with that. Also, I could swear that you darn near wished that Jobs had become the power player/mogul (I know you really want to say monopolist because this would fit you template you spew from). If it were Jobs, then who would you hate on, Doctor?
If you want to redistribute political power, why not start with the Supreme Court's?
I live in Silicon Valley. Gates is really seen as a reincarnation of the Devil. I have worked for Sun, Oracle in the past. The hate really stems from envy. Scott McNealy, Larry Ellisons of the world just don't have the cojones to compete. Wimps need help from the big brother.
muirgeo says:
"First and foremost the earliest microprocessors were developed in conjunction with government support and for government use."
Question: "What was it like to work at DARPA 50 years ago?"
Larry Roberts says: "Very quickly, I saw that it was a powerful organization able to do things with very little red tape."
Emphasis mine…
Muirgeo, do you get it???
http://www.fcw.com/print/22_10/flipside/152283-1.html
Regarding who is better. If the competition were between Bill gates and Ted Kennedy, Gates would win with his hands tied behind his back and blindfolded to boot. However, if its between steve jobs and kennedy, I dont know…think the world would have been a much better place if apple didnt exist. c'mon people, macs really suck as well as ipods and most of the products that steve jobs makes.
Even if I shared your opinion of Apple products (I emphatically do not), what has Ted Kennedy produced for the world?
If the biggest most powerful chimp controls all the bananas, the rest of the chimps can do one of several things to try to get some to stave off starvation. They can try to overpower the greedy boss chimp and probably have to kill him to take over all the bunches of bananas. They can beg him for taste by doing a sexy dance. They can prostitute themselves for a few bananas. You get the idea.
Holy crap! That's one of the best descriptions I've ever seen of life in Soviet Russia. The Soviets road to power (well…hacked and slashed their way to power) as the great "Robin Hoods", you know.
Don,
Did you get anywhere with George Ballela, of unproductive Genoan ancestry? He has written a long and detailed post, painstakingly illustrating his complete and utter lack of understanding of the question you put to him. Worse, it then degenerated into his usual, never changing and totally irrelevant drivel.
He regurgitates Marx's discredited predictions of capitalism leading to concentrations of wealth as the rest of the population descends into poverty, the assertion that captialists are parasites, and the promise of man's freedom by freeing individuals from choice as a democratically elected Nomenklatura will make choices for the collective and will decide what is in the interest of the collective. But if you point this out to him, he will not think about it. He will accuse you of slandering him because while he doesn't know the first thing about Karl Marx, he knows he's probably not "good".
And he has to go quoting a socialist to make his charge against Hayek.
Wikipedia on Wells:
Wells believed in the theory of eugenics. In 1904 he discussed a survey paper by Francis Galton, co-founder of eugenics, saying "I believe .. It is in the sterilisation of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies."
You need another source.