If Relative Wealth is So Ethically Relevant, Then Toyota Should be Applauded

Don pretty much performed a combo breaker here. Very impressive.

Increasing automation will render factory workers obsolete completely within 40-50 years. So yeah even those Chinese workers will have to find something else to do or perish.

But will the machines unionize?

Maybe if the statists can expand suffrage to them.

It's not a problem for Toyota to move their assembly operations to Mexico, but how about CA? Unemployment rate in CA is 12.5% which is fifth place in US and over 4,700 well-trained engineers will lost their jobs this time. US Government supported three billion dollars for 'Cast for Clunkers' and Toyota seems to take so much advantage from it. Moving their operations to Mexico is simply a betrayal of US Government and CA.

Should a business have loyalty to a government or their customers?

I am excited for the day George Mason University moves to mexico because economics professors can be enslaved at $4 an hour.

"enslaved at $4 an hour"

I curious. What word do you use to describe people who are kidnapped, forcefully dragged to a different land, prohibited from leaving, and made to do forced labor under penalty of corporal punishment?

Enslaved? Would the Professors of Economics be forced into that type of employment arrangement or would it remain voluntary? If it were compulsory for them to work there, would that detail still excite you?

Lot of complainers today. None offering better solutions.

My solution: Ban imports and exports totally and only allow the movement of people. If you demand resources you must move to the place that offers them and live amongst the laborers that you say generously say that free trade is "helping". Or, offer a better life for laborers until the countries who standard of living no longer have a population and are therefore forced to either join ranks with those that actually support a happy life for laborers whatever that may be. Labor competing for a place that makes them happiest. Once all political boundaries are gone or all standards of living have evened out among differing political boundaries. Free trade can reign. For now I just don't think its doing more good than harm.

Don't bring in or out of your house any good for the next two weeks! Go!

Bans? So, is this the type of liberties that I can expect to see you refer to if you decide to answer my post upstream?

Alex,
Lets start with your house (Include your yard) . We will ban all imports and exports. Now please explain how you will be wealthier than you are today.

I agree though with your idea of the free movement of people. Combined with the 100% free movement of goods/ service and capital. It would be the fastest way to create a much wealthier world.

My solution is to let free people act freely with their property. Who owns Toyota? Not the workers; they just work there. What does it mean to own something? It means the owner gets to do anything peaceful with it that he chooses. The owners of Toyota have chosen to move to Mexico. That's their right. That's the end of the discussion. All you people that don't own Toyota have no say in the matter.

You do have options, however. You could buy Toyota and move the factory back to America. You could boycott Toyota and hope that enough people would join you so that Toyota would voluntarily return to America. Can you think of anything else you peacefully could do to accomplish your desires? Then do it! Just be sure it's peaceful. Just be sure it doesn't initiate force or fraud.

Then wealth truly would be tied to the location which randomly happened to have physical resources. But in fact, it would be worse than that. There is no guarantee that the intellectual ability needed to make use of those resources would happen to live in those countries, and might not be willing to move their.

Countries with no resources would become islands of poverty, leaving behind only those with no means to leave.

The better solution is to allow goods, resources, people, and capital to flow freely to any place where it can best be used. I can't think of any logical reason to draw invisible fences for resources and not people. Why not arbitrarily allow raw materials and capital, but disallow finished goods and people- There is no reason, it's all arbitrary and silly.

Self sufficiency is the road to poverty. The extended order is what allows prosperity. Where men are free, prosperity reigns. Where capital, men and goods are not free to move, people live in abject poverty.

I challenge you to a project. A little homework assignment if you dare to take it up. You could do it in an hour if you have Excel. There are several indices of economic freedom, Heritage, Freedomhouse, Fraser Institute and others produce them. You can use any of them, or make your own composite score by combining theirs. I can tell you from my own research that they all correlate at the .90 or so level.

Take the scores of countries by economic freedom, and look up their GDP per capita and life expectancy. The CIA World Factbook is an easy source, but there are others.

Scatter-plot the GDP per capita vs. economic freedom. Scatter-plot life expectancy vs. economic freedom. See what the Pearson's R is for each. See what the graphs look like. Label the countries on your graph and see which ones are at the bottom and which are at the top. This takes about an hour if you pick 10 or 20 random countries through the list. You could do them all within a few hours.

Let me know how that turns out for you.

We all know the answer. But because America does worse then Japan and 2 other European countries we are horrible and should be destroyed. That's the leftist attitude. Oh and we deserve to be destroyed because of the atom bombings of Japan and Vietnam.

If Mexican professors could create as much value at $4 an hour (I assume "enslaved" just means Marxian wage exploitation here), that would be a good thing. I suspect Don would agree, and is not too worried.

I read all of Don's letters. I don't always agree with them, but I'm pretty supportive of this one. If I had to guess, I would guess that the actual stance revealed by Herbert is something along the lines of "it's great to help the disadvantaged as long as you don't profit from doing so." If the Toyota plant in Mexico really is going to give poorer people a better standard of living and and such (even if it is at the expense of American workers), then I'm all for it, since American workers in general have better alternative opportunities. However, it seems that people get lost in the fact that Toyota is making the change to cut costs and don't stop to think that maybe there are benefits to others of Toyota's self-interested behavior. I mean, isn't that what Adam Smith was talking about when he said that society benefits from the breadmaker acting out of his own self-interest or whatever?

Oops ... "Do it with models" is subscribing to the Austrian fairy tale. Now I've no problem moving the factory to Mexico. I've a problem with the argument that overall there are more winners than losers. And that the winners will compensate the losers. This is the standard mainstream economic argument. But eventually this compensation never materializes. And that's the problem with mainstream economics. Now Austrians have the big advantage, that they don't care about losers at all. For them this is just some sort of collateral damage caused by Mr. Market. In general the Mexican factory would be a really good deal for all - winners and losers - if losers are indeed compensated.

If anything, I am subscribing to a utilitarian fairy tale. Furthermore, I never argued that the US workers weren't SOL on the car making thing or that the market would somehow compensate them for their loss. They'll go get different jobs that aren't as good as the ones that they had with Toyota, since, if they were, they wouldn't have been working for Toyota in the first place. All I asserted is that the tradeoff of much better opportunities for really poor people versus somewhat worse opportunities for middle class people likely improves overall global welfare, and we shouldn't rule out that possibility merely because Toyota is behaving selfishly.

Was any of your trillion letters to the New York Times, Paul Krugman, ... ever published? Does somebody care about your concerns and wishes? Why no send all this letters to Santa Claus? Here in Europe his postal address is:

Santa Claus, Rovaniemi (Arctic Circle), FIN-96930 Arctic Circle, Finland

More than 8 million people send their wishes to this address every year. And the good thing about it is: you might get an answer! Fair chance it's even in English. Last but not least you can come up with a very solid wish-list every year on Christmas.

You do realize that the purpose of the letter is to attempt to change the opinion of any reader [and hopefully, but doubtfully, another author] who may have previously not considered a differing viewpoint, don't you?

As for the Trillion letters to the NYT -- I'd rather see that than I would the 2+ Trillion in cash/check/credit card payment that taxpayers reluctantly have to fork over to the various Internal Revenue Service processing centers around the country. And you know what? Some people think that the final recipient of this money -- the congress -- acts a whole lot like they're Santa Claus.

I read all of Don's letters.

Does somebody care about your concerns and wishes?

You do. Why would you be a regular here, spending the most valuable commodity in your life?

Sure I do! But maybe I'm living in Rovaniemi and care about every letter sent to me. Or I'm just concerned about the next crazy idea some super right-wing economist comes up with.

So you answered your own question.

I'm living in Rovaniemi and care about every letter sent to me

Ho Ho Ho ;-)

U.S. workers will quickly become poorer than their Mexican counterparts if they fail to get employment or they need to take a job that pays less than what the Mexican is making. You also have to take in to account the cost of living which is less in Mexico. If Toyota is trying to skirt environmental laws or worker safety regulations then they should be booed rather than applauded. The triumvirate of business are the shareholders, the consumers, and the workers. A given company should be applauded if they take into consideration all three essential components.

One can imagine a factory that automates to the point that there are few employees, what then? Nothing really unless the returns to capital are so great and concentrated that whole economy suffers and wealth accumulates in the hands of the few. I would say that we have already surpassed that point - look at the forbes billionaire list - and should do something about it. That's what worthy economists, and progressive politicians are for and I leave it them to fix the problem of gross accumulated wealth, and the resultant drag on the economy, the environment, and on the well-being of the vast majority of the populace. If you think everything is hunky-dory, you are sadly mistaken.

"One can imagine a factory that automates to the point that there are few employees, what then?"....well if they do it to bring consistent quality, lower prices, and better products to market the following might happen: 1. Their customer base will likely increase. 2. Their competitors will have to innovate and provide more value to the consumers. 3. The people who invested in the company will get a return on their investment.

Are you suggesting that a plant is better off simply by having more people hanging around? That seems like a bad way to run a plant.

Gross accumulated wealth is earned through providing customers with things that they are willing to pay for!

"One can imagine a factory that automates to the point that there are few employees, what then?"

I have imagined that. And I think it would be great. First, because I've worked in a factory, and it ain't all that the progressives would have you believe. The people can then find other ways to be useful. There are really very few limits to human imagination. Most of them will be luxuries, and that's fine by me.

It is amazing how "progressives" all romanticize about factory workers, but they all want to be actors or "artists". While they eat organic farm raised salmon with their EBT card (food stamps) that you pay for.

This fetishistic view of factory labor is perverse. It's like lefties are against the evolution of man. Why not go back to Paleolithic times when every man made their own stone tools? Surely it was better back then, no Forbes billionaires.

Agreed! My view is that if some job or task within a job is able to be automated with mechanical or information technology then it is an indication that the job SHOULD no longer be done by humans. Using technology to free people up to do what people do better than mechanical or information technology is a tremendous advancement.

Are we living in the same world? I don't think I see the same things you see when I look around.

I'm glad I don't do the same thing my dad did his whole life. In fact, I can afford *not* to work temporarily while going back to school. That's a luxurious society.

I have a device in my pocket that plays the music of the greatest composers of all time, on command, for only me to hear. This device talks to satellites in space. It can tell me how to get to Chinese, Italian, Indian, Greek, Japanese, or many other types of food within seconds. All these options are within a 20 minute drive. I can talk to two friends at once, and invite them to come along.

The cars that all three of us would drive to lunch (combined) produce less pollution then either of the cars my parents drove. No one I know works 16 hours a day, or works in a field under the sun. My friends work in air-conditioned offices, they take lunch when they want within reason. One just survived cancer, because techniques exist that did not exist 20 years ago. He was able to afford these treatments because he works, and purchased insurance.

I enjoy photography as a hobby. I can afford equipment that allows me to recreate work that only the truly wealthy would have been able to afford one generation ago.

Three weeks from now, my house will have new siding and new windows, all of which allow me to use less energy to heat and cool my home. These materials didn't exist when my parents bought their first house. I can afford this because we refinanced our house for half the time of our original mortgage, and had enough equity to pay for the repairs. This was due to the fall of the housing market, and therefore interest rates. Thus, even in bad times, those who are prudent can benefit.

There has never been a better time to be alive on this planet. I don't know what world you see around you. I get frustrated at things I see on the news. I get frustrated when I get stuck in traffic; but then I think "Thousands of people here can afford to go where they want, when they want, under their own control".

I don't know how to define "hunky-dory". If there is some magical time in the past, or some other place where you think your life would be better, I'm willing to bet it's a fantasy.

"My friends work in air-conditioned offices, they take lunch when they want within reason."

What if your friends are replace by robots? And the next job is filled with robots instead of people. How will your friends eat and pay the bills? Food stamps? Begging for a handout? From whom will they beg? Other "displaced" workers? The Sisters of Charity? Please explain yourself. You don't appear to understand my point. You are the weakest link, goodbye.

You mean when they no longer produce buggy-whips? Saddles? Shoe horses? Light gas lamps? Carry ice blocks up stairs? Apply leeches as medicine? Mine coal? Grow corn? Set lead type? Operate elevators? Set bowling pins? Run logs down river? Deliver milk? Operate the switchboard? Guard the castle? Run the telegraph? Make rope? Navigate rivers? Piece at the spinning wheel? Forge brass? Carry stones from quarry? Repair fences? Thatch a roof? DJ? Gas pumper? Cooper?

There are countless jobs that no one does anymore because we have better options, the use is outdated, safer methods have been developed, or the task or product is just obsolete. This is the creation of wealth, not the destruction.

200 years ago, it took 90% of the US to produce agriculture. Now it takes less than 2%. And those 88% aren't at a loss because of it. Now they have jobs like graphic designer, speech language pathologist, biotechnology patent lawyer, medical test group web coordinator, TV news station web maintainer, set theory mathematics professor, management consultant, alumni coordinator, podcast host, non-profit educational foundation intern, neuropathology research fundraiser, Just-In-Time production inventory controller...

Many of these are professions that didn't exist, or wouldn't have even made sense to these people's great-grandparents.

None of them are begging. Some of them have been out of work. But they get other jobs. It is a sign of an incredibly luxurious society that they can often go without work for months at a time looking for the "right" job, without having to resort to something they consider "beneath them". You can't do that in poor societies.

Three generations ago in India, you did what your father did for a living, and you lived and died within two miles of where you were born. A few weeks ago I met a man who is now running the Indian subsidiary of a major American consumer products company. He has hired thousands of people, moving them from a level of poverty to a life where they are now sending their children to college, some in the US and Western Europe. They are also helping hundreds of thousands of people in India to buy cheaper, more convenient, and safer, sterile products that they can trust with a brand name backing them up, and regular production and distribution, so they can always count on those products being on the shelf.

We are not richer if we all shoe horses. It can be difficult to see the jobs of the future. All human beings inherently seek to better themselves. If they are allowed to trade their labor and minds, own property, save money, and transfer that money to their children- they can do just about anything, and change their lifestyle dramatically, often very quickly.

I understood you fine; you didn't have a point. Your words of dismissal may make you feel better, but they are just words. If you don't want to hear this anymore, you can always go away.

1. Besides the lack of the physical resources (which is usually overcome by science eventually anyway), why cant these goods be made in the U.S? The labor in the U.S. shouldn't have to compete with shoeless southeast Asians to see who could have the worst life.

2. Our parents did not have very difficult lives either but I KNOW! They did not have cell phones!! Are you saying that the lives of Africans being killed to get that precious special metal for your cellphone are worth less than the benefit you get from having a cell-phone? Maybe to you.

3. There has never been a better time to be alive on this planet!? HA! Only in your world buddy. Some people do not have the liberties you have, and while you import goods you are also importing their lifestyle which sometimes is truly inhumane. Glad you are enjoying yourself though!

Loony left on display is always funny.

Alex, you have no idea what you want, you demonstrate no ability on how to think about it, and your draw conclusion strictly based on your feeeeeeeeeeeelings (said in a high whiny voice).

Where do the keepers house you guys when you aren't out writing with your crayons?

Let us hear more about liberties. Tell us how you feel about the liberties that we still do have. Tell us what you do, say, and write to be a champion for those liberties. What will you share with us on the topic, Alex?

1. Why shouldn't the Asians and Mexicans be able to compete to gain in lifestyle? You like keeping them poor?

2. I didn't mention Africans. But I have little control over their government. The best thing I can do for them is send trade their way. As people gain even some moderate measure of economic benefit, they begin to demand a better quality of life. Millions of people not buying cellphones with that special metal would not help anyone in Africa, it would make them even poorer.

3. You contradict, but give no examples. Many people do not have the liberties I have. I don't have some liberties that others do. Your verbiage lacks what we used to call "a point". Man has always lived in poverty. We didn't invent poverty. We invented a solution to it. Just about anywhere you can look in the world, people even in abject poverty are doing better than the level of poverty they were in just a generation ago- much less 100 years ago, or 1000. I saw a picture recently of a child in India sleeping in a large cast iron pipe set aside from construction work. Her grandparents wouldn't even have the pipe to sleep in.

You can always complain about someone somewhere being poor, but you've proven nothing. And you certainly haven't successfully contradicted that millions of people all around the world have had their lives improved both measurably and immeasurably.

No Red-Bull
Have you been to the grocery store in CA lately and seen the self scanners? A group of four can be supervised by one person why do you think that is?

It is grown from a ration of 1 employee to 4 scanners to 1 employee to 6 scanners where I live and the number of self-checkout lanes is slowly taking over growing from 4 originally to 12 now. Supermarkets are going the way of gas stations. At Home Depot, depending on what day and time of day you don't have any option but self-checkout.

If capitalists continually reinvest returns to employ available resources most productively, a factory requiring little labor can make laboring consumers richer. If a shrinking population of capitalists simply consumes the yield of a growing capital stock, the rest of the population does not benefit similarly.

Needless to day, a bureaucracy of authorities taxing away the yield of capital, only to consume it, is no different. In a central planning regime, the central planners are the capitalists.

Some people say that the Federal bureaucracy fits this description. Some say that a financial bureaucracy centered on the Fed fits the description. Some say a corporatist, managerial bureaucracy glued in place by the regulatory state is the culprit. Some say it's "the rich" gaming all of the above. I suppose they're all right.

How is accumulated wealth a drag on the economy?

Wealth is the authority to organize valuable resources. The greatest accumulation of wealth on Earth, and in history, exists in the District of Columbia right now, and it's a drag on the economy.

The authority to organize valuable resources that belong to you is wealth. The authority to organize valuable resources that belong to someone else and to borrow on their behalf is power.
D.C. is most definitely a drag on the economy, but not for accumulated wealth.

No, it's all wealth, and it belongs to whoever the law says it belongs to; otherwise, nothing makes any sense. If we returned everything ever "stolen" by other logic, the economy would immediately grind to a halt, because everything you and I own is hopelessly mired in layer upon layer of "theft" by other logic.

D.C.'s incredible power, to "solve" the "systemic problems" in our banking system, is only the most recent evidence of this fact. How much of your own bank account would be left without this power? You don't have a clue. Neither do I.

I do have a clue as to the value of the electronic IOUs we call "bank accounts". It works on collective psychology. We all believe it works and has value, therefore it has value. If our belief vanished, our bank accounts would be worth nothing overnight. The only things left of value would be durable goods for barter.

You know the value of your bank account. You don't what the value of your bank account would be without TARP and countless other forcible impositions redistributing wealth over your lifetime. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm only saying it's a fact.

I've been working on a framework with two terms; property and entitlement. Both of which are forms of wealth. Property is what I create. All the rest (including money) is entitlement. I trade my property (what I create) for entitlement (dollars) which I can then trade for either other property (something that someone else creates) or other entitlements (e.g., land).

To apply this to the discussion above. Property is held by right of creation. Entitlement is held by right of power.

Oh crap! I was just scrolling and reading [minding my own business] until I saw the word "property". Having, in the past, seen the weirdness that flows from MB's posts whenever that word is mentioned, I just know that the detour that lies ahead would make Rod Serling proud. [then I stopped minding my own business]

And here is Merriam-Webster on "property".

"a : something owned or possessed; specifically : a piece of real estate b : the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of a thing : ownership c : something to which a person or business has a legal title ..." [my emphasis]

So it's not that my use of "property" is so weird. It's that I use the word conventionally in a very weird context. Your use of the word is actually weird, so conventional usage seems weird to you by comparison.

Let's take Option b. What constitutes an "exclusive right"? You say the courts. I say the courts can and often do change their minds. In the healthcare issue for example, the courts will soon declare that some have a right to healthcare at my expense, meaning that "property" must be passed from me to them. But if this so called "property" must change hands by rule of the court, then it wasn't really property in the first place as it was never really an exclusive right. If the courts can take it at their will then it is not property but entitlement.

Now, what the courts will actually take in order to provide healthcare to someone else, is dollars, a form of entitlement. The socialists are not wrong when they say it is not my money, it is their money. Fiat money is entitlement, not property. But what they cannot take is what I create. Once again, if they could, they would. They don't, therefore they can't. Therefore what I create is still my property.

The next step is to figure out a way to not trade what I create, my property, for entitlements. And what is needed is a currency that is not also an entitlement.

He is a religious fundamentalist literalist. His bible is _Black's Law_.

What constitutes an "exclusive right"?

Good question. How am I supposed to know? Ask you?

You say the courts.

When uniformed agents of the state beg the question, they invite me to a court to settle it. If I say I'd rather not attend their court, they draw a sidearm and invite me again. I inhabit this reality, as opposed to your imagination.

But if this so called "property" must change hands by rule of the court, then it wasn't really property in the first place as it was never really an exclusive right.

Clearly, the exclusivity exists only at a point in time. You may imagine some exclusive right existing in perpetuity, but I don't live inside of your head. You may even imagine yourself existing in perpetuity, but I don't take this faith very seriously either.

But what they cannot take is what I create.

Then you have no quarrel with anyone, and all is right with the world, and everything is just and proper, regardless of anything the state ever does. It's a comforting way of thinking.

The next step is to figure out a way to not trade what I create, my property, for entitlements.

That's easy. Return to the state of nature and live entirely isolated from anyone trading in entitlements. It's not easy these days, but it's not impossible. You can approximate the experience well enough anyway. Ted Kaczynski did it, kind of, for a while, but he couldn't let go of his worries over entitlement, ultimately. Better luck to you.

And what is needed is a currency that is not also an entitlement.

Currency is a record of the current value of goods exchanged (at the time of the exchange) and of a resulting entitlement to goods of comparable value in the market. A currency that is not an entitlement is a contradiction in terms.

"Clearly, the exclusivity exists only at a point in time."

Clearly, that is what the courts believe. And just as clearly, a so called "exclusive" right that is only temporary is not property. "Here, this is yours... oh, I just remembered I need it for something else, give it back or I'll shoot you."

"Then you have no quarrel with anyone..."

I have a quarrel with those who exploit.

"Return to the state of nature"

I could, but that's not necessary. I don't have to create at all. I could, if I wished, just take a political position and live entirely on entitlements.

"A currency that is not an entitlement is a contradiction in terms."

Your statement omits the courts which are so near and dear to your heart. Trading in dollars, an entitlement issued by the political class, is to subject the value of that entitlement to the whims of the political class. A currency that is not an entitlement would simply be a currency that is not issued by the political class. In old Russia in was squirrel pelts, in Rome it was salt, I'm thinking we could probably come up with something more portable - an electronic currency backed by deeds to property* for example.

*Real property of course. Creations, not entitlements.

And just as clearly, a so called "exclusive" right that is only temporary is not property.

Well, you aren't forced to call it "property", not yet anyway, but since people all over creation collect the taxes I pay every day and call the resulting largess their "property", I'm kind of stuck with the more common nomenclature.

You may also call up "down" and black "white", but since other people commonly use the words otherwise, they're apt to misunderstand you. They don't misunderstand me in fact. They misunderstand you.

Your statement omits the courts which are so near and dear to your heart.

The courts are near to my heart whether they're dear to me or not, because they'll inject lead into my heart if I don't heed their decrees.

The courts are implicit in any discussion of legal tender.

A currency that is not an entitlement would simply be a currency that is not issued by the political class.

You may barter with anything you like, and you may offer or accept any promise you like in lieu of more tangible goods; however, if you expect courts to enforce these promises, you're playing with money.

Then we need another word or term. Because "property" that is real and "property" that is a politically generated myth are not the same thing. I went back to Locke for a useful definition. But I'd be just as happy with some other terms. Maybe "natural property" and "political property". In fact, I kind of like that, because entitlements are in fact the property of the political class. It is they who own and control what they distribute as entitlements.

How about "product"? What you produce is your product. "Property" covers a lot more territory, and I don't see the usage changing anytime soon.

Not bad. But if my product isn't also my property then it doesn't work. The point of the exercise is to distinguish between pure property and that which is corrupted by entitlement. Personally, I still think the best approach is to retain the term property for uncorrupted property, and use the term entitlement for property which has been corrupted by entitlement. Its like the saying, "What do you get when you mix fine wine and sewage? You get sewage". (Hat tip to Mencius Moldbug at Unqualified Reservations).

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension where a song from Golden Earring repeats over and over again and posts from Martin Brock denounce you for being into state worship because you've used the word property in a supposedly inappropriate manner. You've just crossed over...

The record of this discussion is very clear. I've accused no one of state worship. I stand accused of state worship instead. Pretending otherwise can reinforce your predisposition in your mind, but it doesn't change the words above your post.

Your Lockean "property" is an admirable idea, and I admire it, but I may claim things I didn't create as my property as a matter of fact, insofar as courts of law decide matters of fact, and some things I did create have never been my lawful property.

If you were lord of all proper things, I would ask you what my property really is. If Michael Smith or JohnK were the lord, I'd ask them instead. My problem, as I go through life, is that uniformed agents of the state need not agree with any of you, but to have a healthy respect for their guns, I must agree with them.

If you want me to "prove" that statesmen are "right" about what's "proper" and what's not, any more than I already have with reference to common use of these words, I can't help you, but the next time I have a disagreement with a policeman over the boundaries of my property, I'm happy for you to stand beside me with your own gun. My other problem is that you won't.

"I would ask you what my property really is."

Precisely the question that lead me to this framework. I agree with you that the men with guns have the ability to do anything they wish, and that they pretty much do anything they wish. So what exactly do I mean when I say I have property rights? And what exactly do the men with guns mean when they say that I have property rights? Obviously my money, my land, my house, etc., are not my property. I know this because the men with guns make me pay them regular rent payments in order to keep them. What is my property is my will, and what I create. I know this because the men with guns cannot force me to create. If they could, they would. They don't, so they can't. Therefore property exists. My property is what I create, and it is fairly easy to distinguish from entitlements up to the point that I trade it for entitlements (money). Beyond that point, everything becomes a mixture of property and entitlement - mostly entitlement.

Back to the questions;

What do I mean when I say I have property rights? I mean the extent of my freedom.

What do the men with guns mean by property rights? They mean the limit - the point beyond which it is not to their advantage to infringe on my freedom.

I do understand what you mean by "property". I've read the Second Treatise on Government. My point is that your definition won't stand up in court, and in reality, when a man on the street describes something as his "property", he almost certainly refers to the court's definition, not yours. We're discussing the meaning of a word here, and words mean what people commonly mean by them. God doesn't hand down dictionaries on stone tablets.

My point is that your definition won't stand up in court,

Hey Dipshit - we're not in court.

Now, you've made your argument clear, so I bow to your mastery of the language. Clearly, you know more about property rights than any judge, so the next time I need advice on my property rights, I'll ask you and ignore the opinions of judges. I hope you have malpractice insurance.

The courts are a tool of the political class, just one more method by which they seize property in order to create and distribute entitlements. And even the courts cannot distribute my will or what I create (at least not until I trade them for entitlements). My will and what I create are my property, in spite of the courts.

If you want to say that taxation is definitively voluntary ("trading your property for entitlements"), you may say so. It's a free country, sort of. You buck linguistic convention, but that's your right, in the U.S., for the moment. You even buck the conventions of this forum, which are extremely unconventional anyway.

I only say that "property rights" are what I learn in a court of law, not what I learn in the courts of Randy, JohnK and MichaelSmith, and I'm supposedly the weird one. This logic is absurdly unconventional.

As for you being supposedly "weird". Well, yes :) But it was our earlier conversations that got me started on this train of thought. Seriously, I appreciate it.

By trading property for entitlements I mean trading what I create (property) for dollars (a form of entitlement). The government immediately seizing a percentage of the entitlement (taxes) is in no way voluntary on my part, nor is there any expectation of any further entitlement in return for the entitlements that were seized.

I was thinking about this guy, and I've come to the conclusion that he is a worshiper of the law. In his simple mind lawful = right and unlawful = wrong. This is a wonderful world view because laws can be changed. This gives the lawmaker the power over right and wrong with the stroke of a pen, and the guns to back it up. Doesn't make them correct, but they'll kill you if you don't agree with them so they might as well me.

Your conclusions exist in your simple mind, not mine.

The words "lawful" and "rightful" often are synonymous as a matter of fact. Here's Merriam-Webster for example.

I worship the state like you worship the thing you hate, or distrust, most in the world. I don't at all equate "lawful" with "moral" or "ethical", but I do know that statesmen define property rights and you don't. I therefore don't confuse property rights with what I call "moral" or "ethical".

If and when people commonly use the word "moral" as a synonym for "lawful", I'll either adopt the same convention or become idiosyncratic, like you, but most people in my neck of the woods really don't associate lawfulness with morality. Many associate morality with their church, and most don't associate their church with the state, though a disturbing few do, at least when their political party controls the state.

I'm anxious to see what possibly could be coming in a reply. I am already on record that this is probably going to get really weird.

I can't argue with someone who says something is whatever the law says it is, because any train of logic based upon that false premise is a fallacy.

You can't (and don't) argue with the fact that your own nominal "wealth" is an accounting entry that's a product of countless laws including the TARP and endless Fed programming.

You may argue that something else is "real wealth", but you're left with the fact that you have no idea what your own wealth is by your definition, much less anyone else's wealth.

The fallacy of lawful wealth is all we have. That's a fact.

Martin, I can’t speak for JohnK, but for myself, I generally don't respond to you because your posts are, in many cases, a bewildering collection of unsupported, unproven and unexplained assertions -- assertions that you toss out as if they are axiomatically self-evident.

I don't accept your assertion about the definition of wealth. I don't accept your assertion that it belongs to whoever the government says it belongs to. I don't accept your assertion that this must be true or "nothing makes any sense". I don't accept your assertion that everything I own is "hopelessly mired in theft" by some unspecified "logic". And I don't accept your assertion that my wealth is only an "accounting entry" that is a product of government's actions.

But the burden is not on me to refute your assertions -- the burden in on you to provide the evidence and proof that establishes the truth of what you assert. And so far in your posts above, I don't see any evidence or proof. I just see one assertion after another.

So if you wish to give us some reasons to believe the truth of what you assert, I’ll evaluate the evidence you provide. Otherwise, your assertions are just a bunch of empty claims.

You may respond to whomever you like, of course, but "bewildering collection ..." is a vague, meaningless description applicable to anything you care to address without addressing it.

"Wealth" is a word. Words mean what people commonly mean by them. If you want to say that someone's lawful authority over resources is not really his "wealth", because you don't like the government saying so, you simply play a semantic game. You may play this game. If you play it, I may say that you're playing it. That's all I've done here.

I don't accept your assertion about the definition of wealth. I don't accept your assertion that it belongs to whoever the government says it belongs to. I don't accept your assertion that this must be true or "nothing makes any sense".

Either it's true or I can't make sense of who owns what. I know what the government says you own, and that's all I know. I should take your word for it instead? If Uncle Sam says Bill Gates owns Microsoft and you disagree, who do you expect me to believe?

I don't accept your assertion that everything I own is "hopelessly mired in theft" by some unspecified "logic".

If you want to say that someone's lawful authority over resources isn't really his wealth, just because the law says it is, then I have no idea what you call "theft" either. Without knowing what anyone's real "wealth" is, I can't know what's "stolen" either.

And I don't accept your assertion that my wealth is only an "accounting entry" that is a product of government's actions.

Look. If someone sues you, a judge doesn't order you to pay a settlement out of your neighbor's wealth, so the law has means of determining what is your wealth and what isn't. Your disagreement with a judge's accounting makes no difference to the judge, unless you can persuade some appellate judge to overturn his decision. That's just how the world really works, fella. It doesn't work this way because of my bewildering logic. It works this way because of the government's bewildering logic. I'm only describing the logic here. If you don't like the logic, tell it to the judge.

But the burden is not on me to refute your assertions ...

You aren't refuting my assertions. You're refuting the assertions of men who presume to make laws and thus lawfully to define words like "property".

-- the burden in on you to provide the evidence and proof that establishes the truth of what you assert.

We aren't discussing the acceleration due to gravity here. We're discussing the meaning of words like "property" and "wealth". If you think you define these words and judges and other statesmen don't, then you don't use words as most people do. People commonly accept the idea that your "wealth" is what some policeman says it is, as long as judges agree, even if you think the policeman's or judge's opinion illegitimate. Excommunicate the rest of the English speaking world if you want. Your semantics are your business.

Martin wrote:

"Wealth" is a word. Words mean what people commonly mean by them. If you want to say that someone's lawful authority over resources is not really his "wealth", because you don't like the government saying so, you simply play a semantic game

No, I say that someone having “lawful authority” over resources does not necessarily make it rightfully his resource. After Hitler got into power, the laws in Germany were changed so that he could legally loot the Jews -- after which he gained “lawful authority” over a great deal of Jewish resources. That did not make Hitler the rightful owner of that property.

The essence of the issue here is the distinction between having the power to do something and the right to do it. It is not a mere “semantic game” to acknowledge that the man who produces wealth and the man who steals wealth do not have equal moral claim to it.

As near as I can tell, your goal is to dispense with this distinction. You have no actual argument against it, at least not one you’ve offered here -- rather, what you have in place of an argument, is a view of reality wherein no one is open to reason or logic and where all that counts is the opinion of the man who happens to be holding the gun, said man also not being open to reason or persuasion. Your attitude is not so much that “might makes right” -- your attitude is that an immutable, unchangeable, unchallengeable “might” is all that exists, so there is no “right”.

And at root, this is nothing more than another unsupported assertion on your part. Yes, it is entirely possible that we are so far down the path toward statist tyranny that there is no hope of changing a sufficient number of minds to reverse our course. But you certainly haven’t proven that such is the case, and even if it were true, it would not justify the claim that the “right” does not exist.

There is little point in trying to pursue this. I've tried. He doesn't understand "rights" or "wealth" or "property", so he escapes the burden of understanding by simply discarding them as mere stipulation. Concepts and concept formation are a mystery to him that he appears to have given up on. You can try to nail down a fundamental principle, but I suspect you will find that to him, "reality" and "contradiction" are just semantics.

I know what the government says ... and that's all I know.

That's your problem.

The ellipsis is disingenuous. You're willfully obtuse here.

Don,
I am wondering if you ever get responses from your letters and could share them here?

I imagine Mr. Herbert would tell you he'd be fine with it if the Mexican workers had OSHA and the EPA and the UAW.

Without them, they're not really *jobs*, are they? :-)

Toyota should be applauded, because relative wealth is so ethically relevant, but expecting auto workers in Fremont, CA to applaud is futile. They want tenure, regardless of any ethical consideration. Needless to say, Toyota managers making this decision are no different, so they won't replace themselves with less costly managers in Mexico, even if they could or should.

Ouch, poor Herbert.